Introduction

This documentation outlines the purpose of Quadratic and the goals the project aims to deliver upon. Unlike many of the projects in the cryptocurrency and blockchain spaces, which discuss abstract ideas in verbose terms, the Quadratic project can be clearly defined and, therefore, easily understood.

A list of milestones provides a guide to what the Quadratic ecosystem is aiming to deliver.

Quadratic aims to open source everything. You can view our entire project, fork it and change it (in accordance with our GPL licenses) via Gitlab.

What is Quadratic

Much, if not all, of the technical infrastructure currently used to identify, store, collate, publish and archive academic and scientific media can be addressed using decentralized solutions. However, all systems currently deployed involve centralization. For example, the Handle service requires the registration of a resource identifier with a single organization. Other services, such as those involved in publishing, are controlled by multi-national corporations. Some archiving software systems do utilize open source licensing but deploying these systems can be beyond the capabilities of an institution, and may require 3rd party service providers. Additionally, such open source software uses a centralized architecture resulting in a single point of failure/control.

Quadratic aims to solve this centralization problem by replacing every part of the ecosystem with decentralized alteratives. For example, services such as Handle and DOI could be replaced with a fully autonomous, decentralized solution using blockchain technology to ensure provenance and authenticity of web objects.

Quadratic's replacements of existing centralized technologies with decentralized equivalents are listed in the section "Milestones".

What Quadratic is not

While Quadratic includes cryptocurrency features, it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. The fundamental idea of Quadratic is to explore the use of a cryptocurrency as a mechanism for attaching value to an asset in an ecosystem such as Quadratic's.

It should also be noted that cryptocurrency makes up only a part of the overall Quadratic ecosystem. Much of Quadratic is blockchain-based for provenance and immutability. Some of Quadratic is made up of off-chain software, using peer-to-peer technology to enshrine ownership and resist censorship.