There are a multitude of available blockchain platforms. Many of which claim that they will have functionality similar to that which Qortal aims to provide. However, there are many key differences between the way that Qortal was built at the base level and the way that the other platforms that claim to be able to provide the same functionality were built. There are also many differences in the method of launching these other platforms that are essential differences Qortal meant to shine light on with its completely fair launch.

‘Alt coin’ is a term that Qortal doesn’t even use because the ‘coin’ portion of Qortal is a very small portion of what the platform overall is meant to accomplish. Calling Qortal an ‘alt coin’ is really almost a demeaning term considering the plethora of functionality and potential use cases Qortal aims to provide. The most common ‘alt coin’ platform is called Ethereum (ETH). According to the available information on the web, Ethereum is meant to be a ‘decentralized internet’ platform. However, upon closer inspection one realizes that Ethereum is not anything like a decentralized internet, and in fact is much more focused on what is called ‘DeFi’ (decentralized finance) projects, many of which end up being scams.

There are many things about Ethereum that the Qortal team (and many others) consider scams. For example, one of the first major SmartContracts that Ethereum launched was called the ‘DAO’. This was supposed to be a Decentralized Autonomous Organization SmartContract. This SmartContract received multiple millions of dollars in investment from many large Ethereum holders. When the contract launched, it was flawed partially due to overly complex nature of the Ethereum SmartContract system (they have the potential to be flawed and hacked in comparison to where Qortal’s SmartContracts do not have this potential), and ultimately the SmartContract was hacked, causing a loss of many millions of USD in value. Blockchains by nature only go one direction. They continue forward forever, adding new blocks and securing the history of old blocks continually. Blockchains never go backwards and ‘rolling back’ the chain is something that is against every core tenant of blockchain technology. This core tenant information must have been missed by the Ethereum development team as they did exactly what should never be done by rolling back their blockchain in order to go ‘back in time’ and ‘refund’ the investors into the flawed and hacked SmartContract. This showed how ‘owned’ (and centralized) the Ethereum chain actually is, that the development team will actually roll back the chain simply to refund their big investors. In a truly decentralized system something like this would be unthinkable and not possible. Bitcoin has never and will never roll back the chain, no matter what, it is an absolute rule in the core tenants of blockchain technology.

There are multiple reasons that Ethereum is considered a scam and a joke by many true blockchain enthusiasts. Another main reason is that Ethereum was launched with what’s called an ICO. An ICO is an ‘initial coin offering’. This is similar to what a company does when it ‘goes public’. An ICO is completely ridiculous for projects that claim to be decentralized, as there is no possible way to do an ICO in a decentralized fashion. The money gained from the sale of the coins (that were created without mining or following network protocol rules, another big no no) goes directly to the people who started the platform and the ICO. The ICO for Ethereum raised over 16 million dollars. This money went directly to the founders of the platform. Any decentralized project that is launched with an ICO, is a scam or unethical in our opinion. The only way to launch a decentralized blockchain project in a fair manner, is to do so with a launch from block 0 with 0 coins on the chain, and create the coins following the rules of the code from the beginning, just like Bitcoin did. That is the fair way and the same way Qortal launched. There were no coins on the Qortal chain at launch, even from the transition from QORA (the platform that was taken over by the Qortal development team 2 years after its launch when it was considered ‘dead’), not a single coin existed on the Qortal blockchain prior to launch. Every coin was minted following the network rules.

The term ‘decentralized’ is used relatively loosely by the crypto community. Many of the platforms that claim to be fully decentralized simply are not. Especially when it comes to trading, many platforms claim to have decentralized trading when in reality they are simply lying. Many platforms use what is called ‘wrapping’ or ‘tokenizing’ in order to provide the ability to trade in a decentralized fashion. ‘Wrapping’ is taking an existing coin on a blockchain and converting that coin to a ‘token’ on another blockchain. Many of these conversions use a ‘gateway provider’ (as seen with tokens on Bitshares and the failed DEX CryptoBridge) that provides the service of wrapping the coin into a token on another chain. Most other blockchains do not have cross-chain trade capability like Qortal does and in order to trade for another coin, they must first make that coin into a ‘native asset’ on their blockchain. Once they have the coin wrapped into an asset on their chain, they can exchange the asset for another asset within their own system. However, the gateway providers that provide the wrapping service itself, are centralized entities. Due to the fact that creating the token in order to trade is not decentralized, that makes the entire concept not decentralized. Wrapping coins in order to trade is not required in Qortal. Qortal provides local wallets and direct cross-chain trades for the coins in the Trade Portal, allowing users to maintain full control over the private keys for the coins involved in the trades. This is true decentralized trading without the need for any third party to execute any portion of the process.

There were multiple reasons that Qortal was written from scratch and was not ‘cloned’ from another existing platform (which would have taken much less time and been much more simple than writing the entire platform from the ground up). The main reason was that there simply were not any other platforms that were able to accomplish every goal that Qortal meant to accomplish while also retaining 100% decentralization. Nearly every other blockchain platform requires some form of centralization in order to accomplish certain things. For example, the majority of the other blockchain platforms cannot trade without a centralized exchange. This is a major cause for concern, especially for the platforms that are focused on simply being a method of value transfer and storage. If the users of their network cannot trade, the platform may as well not exist as they essentially only have the functionality of a medium of exchange.

Qortal is much more than simply a coin and aims to provide a massive array of different functionalities. Every one of these functions must be able to be carried out with no third party involved. The functionality must be able to be accomplished via communication only with the user’s own computer system. This is the mark that identifies something that is actually decentralized versus something that is not. If a user must communicate to any other computer, outside of their own system (localhost), then they are not using a completely decentralized platform. Many other blockchain platforms have this requirement (whether the requirement is obvious and clear, or not) and a lot of the time there is confusion from the users with regard to the nature of the platforms they are using. Since many platforms make many bold claims of decentralization, it is often assumed by the users that they are not making use of any centralized components. In many cases, however, this simply isn’t the reality.

There is no other blockchain-based system that can accomplish both the ‘application layer’ and the ‘data layer’ for a decentralized app. Other systems often provide one or the other, and rely upon another to provide the missing portion. For example, a system like ‘steemit’ (which claims to be a decentralized, blockchain-based blog platform) utilizes a centralized server to provide the user interface for their system. Without the user interface, users would be required to make all of the calls to the blockchain manually and would have no clue how to actually post information to the blockchain in most cases. The data from blog posts is stored on the steemit blockchain, but the user interface that allows the data to be put up on the chain, is a centralized web server on a centralized domain. Without that centralized web server and domain, the majority of the users would have no clue how to actually put any information on the blockchain. Also, the majority of the users do not even run their own node which means that without access to the centralized domain and web service, they would have no access to the system at all. This is NOT true decentralization.

There are countless differences between Qortal and any other blockchain that exists. Countless reasons why Qortal was built the way it was (to address many of the ever-growing concerns in the crypto space) and why there will never be a disregard for the core tenants of blockchain and decentralization in Qortal. The future of the world is reliant upon a system that can actually put the power back into the people’s hands and free them from the big companies that seek to control everything. This means that nothing in the system can be centralized, nothing can require a third party or access to centralized servers, and everything must be fair, honest, trustless, and able to adapt to an ever-changing world.

There truly are no other existing platforms that are executing their development in alignment with the original concepts of blockchain technology when it comes to decentralization. Nearly all of them contain at least one ‘fatal flaw’ that will ultimately provide a similar scenario as what already exists with centralized control over the majority of the world. Mining and staking end up giving control back to a small minority with a larger amount of money. This is why Qortal does not give influence of any kind to QORT itself or any currency for that matter. The ability to ‘buy influence’ is completely removed from Qortal. Influence is only gained with the continued contribution of the user over time. The future built on a vastly improved system with capability similar to what exists now in a centralized world, but without that nasty centralized control and censorship, is the future Qortal intends to help bring to fruition!