Started in April of 2017, newly emerging blockchain based startup Quantstamp (QSP) shows lots of promise for 2018. Having identified problems with the security of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, QSP developed secure protocols to automate security checks without the presence of a third party. Their novel method offers two significant improvements to the existing technology [1.]

The protocol allows end-users to directly submit programs without the possibility of a bad actor manipulating the results of an audit. The project incentivizes miners by making the verification and certification of smart contracts part of the validation node software on Ethereum.

Quantstamp is the first fully scalable security-audit protocol to enter the large market of Ethereum based smart contracts.

With their highly qualified team of Ph.D.s and former Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Engineers, it is unsurprising that they were accepted as part of Y-Combinator’s Winter 2018 cohort [2.] Y-Combinator is one of the largest accelerators in the country. Their demo day, occurring March 19–21, 2018, brings millions in VC money in front of participating companies.

2018 looks promising for QSP since the only news of the Y-Combinator acceptance thus far has come from QSP CEO Richard Ma’s post on popular blog site Medium. Once Y-Combinator announces their full Winter 2018 cohort it will likely bring more attention and investment money to QSP.

Keep track of announced W2018 Y-Combinator companies here: http://www.ycombinator.com/companies/

QSP CEO Richard Ma has been having meetings discussing security with Coinbase

In addition to the growth potential from a Y-Combinator acceleration and demo day, there have been discussions between QSP and Coinbase.

Coinbase has announced that it will be adding new coins to it’s exchange in 2018. Adam White, General Manager of Coinbase parent company GDAX, commented that before adding a coin to the exchange it is important to evaluate the coin’s technical stability, security, and compliance considerations [3.] The team and technology supporting the Quantstamp project have proven their technical potential with their experience and through the support of hard to come by institutional investment. QSP’s position in the security space makes it a sound technology on the securities front. Due to QSP’s involvement with institutional investment and Venture Capital it also has agreeable regulation compliance.

As of December 19, 1QSP = $0.18 USD. There is a total supply of 1B tokens, with 65% distributed through the token sale. The QSP token presale was from November 7–15. Their fundraising goal was $31M and they got $22.3M (72%) [4.] QSP’s current market capitalization is $108M.

Historic price information for the QSP token

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