QTUM ABSTRACT

Abstract. Blockchain-enabled smart contracts that employ proof-of-
stake validation for transactions, promise significant performance ad-
vantages compared to proof-of-work solutions. For broad industry adop-
tion, other important requirements must be met in addition. For exam-
ple, stable backwards-compatible smart-contract systems must automate
cross-organizational information-logistics orchestration with lite mobile
wallets that support simple payment verification (SPV) techniques. The
currently leading smart-contract solution Ethereum, uses computation-
ally expensive proof-of-work validation, is expected to hard-fork multiple
times in the future and requires downloading the entire blockchain. Con-
sequently, Ethereum smart contracts have limited utility and lack formal
semantics, which is a security issue. This whitepaper fills the gap in the
state of the art by presenting the Qtum smart-contract framework that
aims for sociotechnical application suitability, the adoption of formal-
semantics language expressiveness, and the provision of smart-contract
template libraries for rapid best-practice industry deployment. We dis-
cuss the Qtum utility advantages compared to the Ethereum alternative
and present Qtum smart-contract future development plans for industry-
cases applications.
Key words: smart contract, business network model, DAPP, mobile,
information logistics, cross-organizational, peer-to-peer, distributed sys-
tem, e-governance, Qtum framework