In 2018, Karl Kreder was working at GridPlus (a startup building physical crypto hardware) when he ran into a problem that wouldn't leave him alone. The blockchains his wallets were connecting to were fundamentally broken at scale. Broken in a "someone needs to rebuild the foundation" way.
He wrote a paper and brought it to the University of Texas at Austin, teamed up with professor Sriram Vishwanath and Alan Orwick. In 2019, the National Science Foundation funded the research. By 2022, Polychain Capital and Alumni Ventures had put in $10M. Testnets ran through Stone Age, Bronze Age, Golden Age. Mainnet launched in January 2025.
Today Quai is the only L1 simultaneously mineable by three algorithms (SHA-256, Scrypt, and KawPoW), and the first blockchain designed to function as a complete monetary system: a deflationary store of value and an energy-pegged medium of exchange, both produced through open mining.
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