Qtum January - April 2024 Development Roadmap

Development progress continues on the Qtum-Ethereum bridge. Currently, the audit is underway by Certik. Some of the priorities had to be accelerated, like the MetaMask Snap. It became obvious that launching a “stopgap” wallet to use the bridge while we waited for the Snap was redundant, so we shifted more resources to getting the Snap released. 

If the Certik audit process goes smoothly, there should be no delays in getting the bridge released on time, and users will be able to transfer wrapped ERC-20 tokens to Qtum and back. 

The “Circle Bridged USDC Standard” contracts have been deployed on Qtum testnet and Ethereum Sepolia, so expect to have access to wUSDC on Qtum after the bridge is in production.

On the Qtum Core front, delegating Qtum tokens to an offline staking node using a Ledger device is now possible. It took a while for this update to get merged into “Ledger Live,” and it requires the user to use the Qtum Electrum wallet alongside their Ledger device. The Qtum Core team is also researching new items in Bitcoin v25.1 that could be applied to Qtum:

Bitcoin Core:: Bitcoin Core 25.1

The final update is the BRC20/Ordinals development progress, which is hard to summarize without getting technical. A key takeaway from this work is that Qtum can natively support multiple token standards without a layered approach.

Because Qtum is based on Bitcoin Core but supports a native implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, it’s possible to have BRC20 and ERC20 token standards on the same chain. Is one better than the other for certain applications? We’re asking ourselves this question and should have some updates on this topic once we do some testing. 

We’re not aware of any other blockchain that has an activated Taproot implementation and native access to the EVM, so this may be a good opportunity for some original research on the topic.

Listed below are some of the technical updates we’ve worked on recently:

Qtum BRC20 Development Update

There are so many updates involved in describing the work involved in getting this portion delivered that we had to break them down by month. What we want to do is give a general overview of the work involved in delivering BRC20 functionality on Qtum.

December 2023

Since Qtum is UTXO and EVM compatible, we want to bring Bitcoin tech innovations to Qtum. We researched the EVM version of the inscription and the BRC20 token standard and decided to implement the BRC20 technology in the Qtum main network.

We chose the BRC20 standard because the indexer costs of the standards are similar, and BRC20 is Bitcoin native and has a wider adoption. 

Tech development goals:

• Modify and implement BRC20 on the Qtum main network, QBRC20.

• Develop the corresponding indexer API.

• Complete an interactive web page similar to Unisat. 

January 2024

• We deployed the first version of ordinal_index to the test environment: it can consume events that comply with BRC20 specifications, maintain user balances, transaction history, and token information, and provide API query services.

• We started forking and modifying ordinal_index.

During the development process, we discovered the Indexer's maintenance of the standpoint where the inscription is located to prevent duplicate inscription, and verifying the ordinal inscription and BRC20 authenticity is time-consuming. 

We then researched the existing open source projects ord and OPI: ord is officially implemented as the ordinal inscription indexer on the Bitcoin network, maintaining the inscription's standpoint information to ensure that it will not be repeatedly inscribed. OPI has transformed ord and implemented the BRC20 indexer on the Bitcoin network and performed BRC20 verification on BRC20 event data.

We adjusted the technical architecture as follows:

1. Refer to OPI's transformation of ord, fork ORD, and transform it into QORD, adding BRC20 verification and output BRC20 data and events on the Qtum chain when running index.

2. Refer to OPI and implement a background task to regularly call the index run command of ord to generate the BRC20 event file, parse and save the events to the database, and also process possible block reorg events.

3. Improve the ordinal_index code to digest the BRC20 event data produced by the above-scheduled tasks. Improve the BRC20 balance model in ordinal_index.

February 2024

• We completed forking and modifying ordinal_index. Now, qord can verify the BRC20 standard and output valid BRC20 data and events to the file.

• Completed modifying and deploying the scheduled task qord_event_consumer that consumes qord BRC20 events.

• We completed configuring it as a supervisor background task, executing qord index run once every 5 seconds and dropping the obtained time in the SQL database.

• Plan to improve the BRC20 account balance model in ordinal_index and consume the verified BRC20 data.

• Plan to submit to testing in 2 to 3 weeks.

March 2024 (Plan)

Plan to merge code for Qtum BRC20 into the existing Qtum ordinals repo qtum/qord.

Qtum - Ethereum Bridge Update

After deploying the “Circle Bridged USDC” contracts on Qtum testnet and Ethereum Sepolia, work has progressed toward getting them to talk to each other. In order for this to happen, a bridge is required. 

This bridge has been developed and exists on the Qtum test network. It’s currently being audited by Certik, and there should be a report whenever they finish, probably within the next couple of weeks. 

The screenshot below shows a working implementation of a MetaMask Snap, which should make the bridge more familiar for most people. This will be in the form of a Chrome extension, so users will need the Google Chrome browser or Microsoft Edge. 

Currently, we are investigating if we can “piggyback” our Snap through MetaMask so an entirely new Chrome Extension isn’t required just for using this bridge. Users will just need to install MetaMask as they do normally. 

We’ll know more about this later. If we have to submit our own extension, the bridge deployment will have to be delayed while we wait.

Development Test Version of “Metamask Snap” being tested with the Qtum Bridge.

Listed below is a demo flow of how users will interact with the testnet bridge:

Go to https://wallet.bridge.qtum.net and create a new snap wallet or import existing private key.

Transfer USDC from Sepolia to Qtum testnet:

1. Open bridge.qtum.net and choose Sepolia as “Chain From.”

2. Connect Metamask

3. Enter the amount and destination address from the snap.

4. Click Transfer.

5. Wait until the transaction is confirmed.

6. You will see a button to connect snap. Connect snap.

7. Click the redeem button to send the transaction via snap.

8. You will see the updated balance on https://wallet.bridge.qtum.net.

Transfer USDC from Qtum testnet to Sepolia:

1. Disconnect the current provider and choose Qtum testnet as “Chain From.”

2. Connect snap.

3. Enter the amount and address on Sepolia.

4. Click Transfer to send transaction via snap.

5. Wait until the transaction is confirmed.

6. Click the button to disconnect snap and connect MetaMask.

7. Click the button to redeem USDC.

Note that this is a demo version, and bugs have been found. Here are some known issues:

• You have to disconnect Metamask/Snap and connect again when switching networks.

• In some cases, wallet.bridge.qtum.net may evict storage. In this case, just reimport your private key.

That's it for the latest updates on the Qtum roadmap. We are very excited for what's to come and to share it with our loyal community.

Warm Regards, The Qtum Team.

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