Quantus is a proof-of-work ledger aimed at one job: money whose signatures are built for a future quantum computer, with an optional private send beside the public one. QTC is the coin. The project’s whitepaper, version 0.4.1, is dated 9 September 2026, the day mainnet started. The name is the Latin for “how much”. It is not Quant (QNT), the interoperability token from Quant Network. The names sit next to each other in a search box. The assets do not. It is not a place to deploy applications. The project says it is closer to Bitcoin, Monero, or Zcash than to Ethereum or Solana.
What is Bitcoin? is the scarcity model and the public-payment model. What is Monero (XMR)? is private unless you opt out. What is Zcash (ZEC)? is the optional shield. Quantus is a third arrangement: every signature is the post-quantum kind, and privacy is a second address type you choose. This page will not describe how to construct that address, and it is not a reason to buy the coin.
Where it came from
The project’s own roadmap puts funding and the choice of software in December 2024, a public testnet in July 2025, and mainnet genesis on 9 September 2026. The chain is built with Substrate, the kit from the team behind Polkadot. What is Polkadot (DOT)? is that other network. Using the kit does not make Quantus a Polkadot parachain. It is its own proof-of-work chain. The project says it replaced pieces of the kit so signatures, the messages between nodes, and a tree of balance credits use post-quantum constructions.
A week after genesis the project’s own note said the chain had produced blocks without a stop, that more than 7,000 GPUs were mining, and that 16,463 QTC had been issued to 3,546 accounts. Those are the project’s figures for that week. They are not a current hashrate, and they are not a price.
The quantum claim
Most coins, including bitcoin and ether, sign payments with elliptic-curve cryptography. The project’s account of the risk is the standard one: a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, if it arrives, could derive a private key from a public key on those curves and forge a signature. No such machine is spending coins today. Quantus’s answer is to refuse the old signature type. Transactions use ML-DSA, the lattice scheme NIST standardised (the earlier name was Dilithium). The whitepaper says wallets default to the ML-DSA-65 parameter set, and that ML-DSA-87 is available for people who want the larger margin. Messages between nodes use ML-DSA and ML-KEM, so the gossip is in the same family, not only the payment.
The mining hash is a separate choice. Blocks are aimed at 12 seconds, and the proof of work uses Poseidon2 rather than Bitcoin’s SHA-256. The whitepaper says that swap is so zero-knowledge proofs are cheaper to build, not because a quantum computer breaks SHA-256. Hash functions are weakened by a quantum search, not demolished by it. A Poseidon2 miner is not a Bitcoin miner. The machines do not transfer.
Larger signatures are the cost. The whitepaper’s own table puts a transparent ML-DSA-65 transfer near 5.4 kilobytes, against a few dozen bytes for a classical signature. Each block allows 3.75 megabytes of transactions. The project’s throughput table is a design estimate from those sizes, not a rate this page has measured. Audits named in the whitepaper include Eiger, Neodyme, Hashcloak, an Immunefi competition in August 2026, and a formal check of part of the proof circuits. An audit is not a warranty. The whitepaper says so.
Two ways to send
A transparent address is the hash of a public key. Its balance and every transfer in and out are on the public ledger. An encrypted send, which the project also calls a wormhole address, is the optional lane. Coins sent there are treated as burned, and the owner later recreates them at an exit address with a zero-knowledge proof that does not name the source. To an observer, a deposit still looks like an ordinary balance sitting where it landed. The project says an encrypted send breaks the on-chain link between sender and receiver, and also says an observer who matches a deposit to an exit of the same amount at a suggestive time can narrow that link. Amounts in that lane move in steps of 0.01 QTC. Mining-reward addresses of this type are identifiable by construction. Privacy here is a mode, not the default, and it is not a promise that no one can guess.
The proof system is Plonky2, which the project describes as hash-based, with no trusted setup, and checked by the chain itself. There is no second layer that holds the proofs for it. This page will not describe how a proof is built.
A check-phrase is a short run of memorable words derived from an address, meant to catch a typo or a lookalike. It is a checksum. It is not an address, and sending to the words does not deliver the coins. For a large amount, read the address itself. What if you send crypto on the wrong network?.
Multisig is native, and only on transparent addresses. The signers and the threshold are part of the address, so changing either means a new account and a move. Up to 100 signers. A proposal that does not collect enough approvals expires within two weeks. An advanced account is an optional, permanent upgrade of a transparent account: the owner names a guardian who cannot spend, but who can cancel a pending transfer and can recover the funds. The project says most people never need one. A guardian is not a helpdesk, and naming one is not something a stranger should talk you into.
The 21 million, and who was paid first
The cap is 21 million QTC, the same shape of scarcity as bitcoin. The issuance is not. At genesis the chain minted 27 percent, 5,670,000 QTC. The other 73 percent, 15,330,000 QTC, can only be mined. Of the minted slice, the whitepaper says investors, founders, and the team hold 23 percent of the whole supply, locked for the first year after mainnet and then released in a straight line over 36 months, enforced by the chain. The company holds the other 4 percent. One percent of supply was liquid at genesis, to seed trading. The remaining 3 percent follows the same one-year lock and 36-month vest. There is no ongoing cut of the block reward for a company. Miners keep the block reward. A genesis mint is still a premine. Locked is not the same as never owned.
New coins after genesis follow a smooth decay rather than Bitcoin’s halvings. Each block’s new QTC is the still-unissued supply divided by 50 million. Fees that are burned go back into that unissued budget, so the cap still holds and the reward does not hit zero on a calendar date. The whitepaper’s fee card, which a runtime upgrade can change: a simple ML-DSA-65 transfer is about 0.0062 QTC plus an optional tip, paid to miners; ML-DSA-87 is about 0.0081 QTC; an encrypted send is 0.04 percent of the amount, with a minimum of 0.01 QTC, half to miners and half burned. What are crypto network fees? is the general idea. These numbers are the project’s schedule, not a quote you can take to a till.
Substrate can ship a runtime change without a hard fork that splits the chain. The project says a Technical Collective can fast-track urgent technical matters and has no mandate to change the monetary policy, and that the company intends to retire that body. Anyone can file a Quantus Improvement Proposal. A forkless upgrade is a convenience. It is also a statement about who can change the rules before that power is reduced.
Where the coin trades, and what it is not
On 16 September 2026 the project said mining was the only way to obtain QTC. That sentence was about that week. On 7 October, coverage of the project’s own launch said QTC could be swapped through Near Intents, from assets on other chains, because Quantus does not host an exchange of its own. On 15 October BigONE said it had listed a QTC/USDT pair. A listing is a venue’s decision. It is not a verdict on the design, and it is not this page telling you to trade. A site that offers QTC and asks for a recovery phrase is not Near Intents and not BigONE. How do you keep crypto safe?. How crypto wallets actually work.
QTC is not BTC, not XMR, not ZEC, and not QNT. A transparent balance is public. An encrypted send is optional and still guessable at the edges. Twenty-seven percent existed before anyone mined a block. A post-quantum signature is a choice of mathematics, not a proof that the software is finished, and not a claim that today’s bitcoin is already broken. Nothing here is an instruction to buy, mine, or move QTC.
