Established Mining Coin QUBIC Transforms into AI Public Chain, Far More Than Just the Next KAS

Written by: Siwei Guai, BlockBeats

If we were to rank the narratives of this bull market, AI and Meme would undoubtedly be at the top.

Since OpenAI released the Sora model in early February, AI coins have been rotating in the spotlight. First, mainstream coins like WLD, LPT, ARKM, and FET on CEX doubled in a week. Then, AI dog projects on the chain suddenly appeared like wild grass, including some miracle projects like GPU that saw gains of several dozen times within a month.

However, after the big drop in April, most AI coins have fallen at least 50% from their ATH, and many small-cap projects have even directly rug-pulled, with no further project updates.

Amidst the recent market downturn, an AI public chain project has defied the trend and caught the community's attention. On May 9, it achieved the milestone of listing on Gate. This project is Qubic.

Restarting KAS's "Value Flywheel"

It is important to note that Qubic is not a new project but an established "mining coin." The biggest feature of mining coins is the use of the PoW mechanism, with an economic model similar to Bitcoin's issuance mechanism, with no pre-mining or pre-sale; all tokens can only be obtained through mining.

Before listing on Gate, Qubic was plagued by liquidity issues as it could only be traded on specialized PoW exchanges like SafeTrade.

According to CoinGecko, SafeTrade had only $610,000 in trading volume over the past 24 hours. QUBIC/USDT, the top trading pair on the platform, accounted for 71% of this volume, but liquidity was still severely lacking, with a trading spread of 0.8%.

High trading costs and distrust of the platform were major factors deterring many retail investors from buying in. Last November, a user openly stated in the community, "I want to buy QUBIC, but I don't trust SafeTrade at all," and expressed a preference for OTC trading rather than depositing money into the exchange. At that time, due to the high number of QUBIC buyers, the server was temporarily unable to handle the load, leading SafeTrade to close the trading channel, causing QUBIC's price to drop 69% from its peak to $0.0000023. The token price only rebounded after SafeTrade reopened the trading channel.

After listing on Gate, the liquidity issue was finally alleviated. Over the past 24 hours, QUBIC's trading volume on Gate reached $2.91 million, and the spread narrowed to just 0.02%. In the mining coin community, listing on second-tier exchanges like Gate seems to have become the "main consensus" and "fixed expectation" for buying mining coins. Last year, the widely-followed mining coin KAS also started from the small PoW exchange TxBit, then listed on MEXC and Gate, and finally achieved the significant milestone of listing on Binance contracts.

QUBIC is expected to follow in KAS's footsteps, once again traversing the "value discovery path" from third-tier "PoW exchanges" to mainstream trading platforms.

AI is the Biggest Catalyst

However, compared to the potential benefit of listing on Binance, the "AI public chain" itself is QUBIC's biggest catalyst.

According to CoinGecko, the current market cap of AI coins is only $35.4 billion. In comparison, the market cap of DeFi is $105.6 billion, and the market cap of L1 public chains is $2.16 trillion. Meanwhile, the market cap of the top 47 AI companies in Web 2 is $9.945 trillion.

As Pima emphasized, "Secondary AI is in a situation where everyone is talking about it, but everyone is severely under-allocated." From all perspectives, we are on the eve of an AI Summer.

UPoW (Useful Proof of Work) Consensus Mechanism

Qubic was initiated by Sergey Ivancheglo, the founder of IOTA and NXT ( https://twitter.com/c___f___b ). Unlike other mining coins, QUBIC adopts a unique UPoW (Useful Proof of Work) consensus mechanism. This article will delve into QUBIC's design philosophy and core mechanisms, and explore its impact on the future development of decentralized AI.

UPoW, as the name suggests, is a "strong>meaningful proof of work." Unlike traditional PoW, UPoW cleverly applies mining computing power to actual AI task processing, ensuring that valuable computing resources are no longer wasted. The UPoW ecosystem consists of four roles: Computors (computing nodes), AI miners, Arbitrators, and Candidates.

1. Computors (Computing Nodes)

Computors are the core nodes of the QUBIC network, playing dual roles in executing smart contracts and maintaining consensus. Specifically, Computors are responsible for executing transactions on QUBIC's own ledger system, Spectrum, and participating in voting on the execution results of smart contracts. A result must receive the endorsement of at least 451 Computors, or ⅔ of the total, to become a final decision.

Each epoch lasts one week, generating 1 trillion native tokens, QU. The majority of these tokens will be distributed as system incentives to the current 676 Computors. The earnings of a single Computor depend on the amount of work completed during that epoch. The more work done, the more QU earned, up to a maximum of 1.479 billion (i.e., 1 trillion ÷ 676) QU. Notably, if a Computor performs poorly, its portion of QU will not be redistributed but will be directly burned.

2. AI Miners

AI miners are the "workers" connected under Computors. They receive AI-related training tasks from Computors, complete the computations, and report the results back to Computors. This process constitutes the core essence of UPoW. Unlike Bitcoin, QUBIC's "mining" is not purely a computing power game but involves AI training, which has real value.

In fact, AI miners themselves cannot directly receive QU incentives. However, the computing power they contribute enhances the workload of the bound Computor, helping the latter earn more rewards. Computors need to reasonably allocate a portion of their earnings to AI miners to attract more miners to join their mining pool, thereby consolidating their position in the network. QUB

IC does not have strict requirements on the number and performance of AI miners. Theoretically, there is no limit to the number of AI miners that Qubic can accommodate.

3. Arbitrator

As mentioned earlier, Computors focus on maintaining the consistency of the Spectrum. However, in a decentralized system, it is unrealistic to expect Computors to spontaneously reach a consensus. This is where the Arbitrator comes in to coordinate.

Specifically, the Arbitrator is responsible for selecting the top 451 Computors for each epoch and arbitrating the contributions of AI miners. If it is difficult to form an effective consensus during the voting phase, the Arbitrator has the authority to make the final decision. Additionally, when individual Computors fail, the Arbitrator selects substitutes from the Candidates. In short, the Arbitrator acts as the "general manager" of the network, handling matters that Computors cannot autonomously manage.

Similar to Computors, Arbitrators also receive a certain amount of QU as compensation for each epoch. However, the earnings of Arbitrators are significantly lower than those of Computors to prevent excessive power and improper motives. Furthermore, Arbitrators are not allowed to interfere with core Computor tasks such as executing smart contracts and voting, further limiting their potential for misconduct. Overall, while Arbitrators help maintain the normal operation of the network, they are strictly checked and balanced, making it difficult for them to pose a substantial threat to decentralization.

4. Candidates

Candidates are the reserve force of Computors. They participate in network consensus but have not yet become official Computors. In each epoch, the top 256 Candidates have the opportunity to be promoted to Computors. Candidates do not directly receive QU rewards, but they can earn rewards by being promoted to Computors.

These roles balance and collaborate with each other, forming the participant ecosystem of UPoW, which is significantly different from the single miner role in the PoW mechanism. UPoW improves professionalism through role division and introduces a system of checks and balances.

QU Token Economics

Qubic's native token, QU, is the core of the entire ecosystem. The maximum supply of QU is 1 quadrillion, with an additional 1 trillion QU added every epoch (7 days), primarily used to reward Computors. Transactions on Qubic are fee-free, while the fees required to execute smart contracts are decided by Computors through voting and are burned rather than paid to Computors. It is expected that at some point after 2041, the burn rate of QU will reach or exceed the issuance rate, stabilizing the total circulating supply of QU and preventing further growth.

AI Platform Aigarth

Aigarth is a decentralized AI platform based on the Qubic network, proposed for development by QUBIC last December.

Aigarth encourages data providers to upload data through a reward mechanism, and miners use this data to train AI models. A notable feature of Aigarth is the use of evolutionary algorithms, allowing different AI models to learn and evolve from each other, creating more powerful AI. According to official reports, nearly 550,000 miners have contributed computing power to Aigarth, creating billions of neural networks.

Conclusion

Compared to other mining coins, QUBIC has opened a new development path by positioning itself as an AI public chain, providing a model for the integration of blockchain and AI.

QUBIC's UPoW consensus mechanism not only enhances the practical application value of mining but also effectively transforms the energy consumption of blockchain technology into socially valuable output by using computing resources for AI model training. This innovation not only addresses the energy waste problem in traditional PoW mechanisms but also provides a new, decentralized source of computing resources for AI research and development.

Every narrative needs a catalyst, and behind AI are the top Web2 companies like OpenAI and NVIDIA.

・NVIDIA's Q1 financial report will be released on May 22.

・Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference will be held on June 10.

・OpenAI's GPT-5 is expected to be released as early as this summer.

AI is expected to continue to be the best-performing asset class in the foreseeable future. As an AI public chain, QUBIC is poised to benefit from the continuous positive developments in the AI industry in the second half of the year.

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