Proof of Progress: Inside Quai Network's Energy Dollar, SOAP Burns, and More
By Varuni Trivedi18 Aug 2026A dollar backed by energy, not a central bank. Quai founder says it's been stable for a year.
QUAI supply burned
14%
Total algorithms merge-mined
3
Daily proof-of-work security
$20K-$40K
TL;DR
- Quai Network plans to merge mine Bitcoin itself by the end of 2026, co-founder Alan Orwick said on Keeping Up With Crypto.
- The chain's SOAP mechanism has burned roughly 14% of circulating QUAI supply using rewards from merge mining Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Dogecoin.
- Qi, its energy-priced private cash token, has stayed roughly stable for over a year, with payments settling in about 5 seconds.
- Orwick also revealed a work-based extension to the x402 payments standard, shared publicly for the first time on the show.
Proof of work has been out of fashion since 2019, and Quai Network's co-founder thinks that is exactly the opportunity. Alan Orwick spoke with Varuni Trivedi for Block Insider’s Proof of Progress to lay out a chain that pays for its own security, prices a dollar in energy, and wants to end 2026 by mining Bitcoin.
The conversation is the latest edition of Proof of Progress, Block Insider's franchise measuring builders against their own numbers. Orwick brought plenty, along with one reveal that had not been shared publicly before.
For scale: QUAI traded around $0.013 as of 14 August, per CoinGecko data, a small-cap by any measure. The ambitions however, are not small-cap for sure.
Proof of Progress: Quai Network by the Numbers
Figures per Quai Network co-founder Alan Orwick on Keeping Up With Crypto, August 2026. Revenue ranking and burn figures are company claims pending independent verification. The December 2026 entry is a target, not an achieved milestone.
From Apple's Supply Chain to Proof of Work's Last Believers
Orwick's route into crypto ran through Cupertino. The research behind Quai began at the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, where he studied computer science before joining Apple as a software engineer working on supply chain systems. That large-company view of how global networks grow, he said, shaped how he approaches building a layer-1 from the ground up.
The contrarian bet is the consensus mechanism itself. Most of the industry moved to proof of stake years ago, which Orwick summed up in one word when asked for the state of proof of work: "disenfranchised."
Quai leans into the abandoned niche with horizontal sharding built directly into the base layer, an architecture he compared to Ethereum's abandoned 2021 sharding roadmap, implemented rather than shelved.
One Chain, Two Tokens: QUAI and the Qi Energy Dollar
Quai runs a dual-token design, and Orwick's explanation is the cleanest version of it you will hear: a savings account and a checking account.
QUAI is the savings side, an EVM-compatible store-of-value token with decreasing inflation that pays for gas and smart contracts. Qi is the checking account, a protocol-native "energy dollar" meant to be spent like cash.
Qi's price tracks a moving global average of energy costs, readable through proof-of-work mining itself, which Orwick argues no proof-of-stake chain can replicate. It uses fixed denominations, like bills, for cash-style privacy rather than zero-knowledge cryptography, and settles in around 5 seconds against roughly 2-minute block times on Monero and Zcash.
He says the token has held roughly stable for over a year, with miners arbitraging between QUAI and Qi as the stabilizing force, and real-world usage growing through BlitPay, its Venmo-style wallet finding traction in Nigeria.
SOAP: The BOGO That Pays for Security
The mechanism Orwick calls Quai's answer to token emissions is SOAP, the Subsidized Open Market Acquisition Protocol.
Quai merge mines Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Dogecoin across three algorithms, but flips the usual deal: miners receive QUAI, while the protocol keeps the other chains' rewards and sells them to buy back and burn QUAI.
Roughly 14% of circulating supply has been burned so far, he said, with daily proof-of-work security spend fluctuating between $20,000 and $40,000.
Asked the honest question, who pays the subsidy and for how long, Orwick pointed at the host chains' own economics: Dogecoin's tail emission never runs out, and Bitcoin's schedule runs to 2140.
The bigger move is upstream. Quai has built the technology to shift its SHA hash rate from Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin itself, where a single block pays about $250,000, and Orwick wants that first Bitcoin block mined before the year ends.
Not everything got a victory lap. The Frictionless Markets partnership announced a year ago "never truly transitioned" to on-chain deployment, Orwick admitted. However, talks continue, and the institutional push now runs through Quainance, the DeFi platform Quai launched recently.
First Shared Here: x402 Gets a Work-Based Extension
The reveal came in the AI section. Orwick said Quai is extending x402, the machine-payments standard, to fit a work-based scheme in which AI agents mine their payment rather than send a transaction, keeping the data provider paid while making spam economically irrational.
"We haven't shared this broadly, so maybe this is the first drop," he said, adding that a platform built on the x402 work scheme is due for announcement soon.
The larger AI thesis runs through the same SOAP logic: making inference itself count as the useful work securing the chain, with real user-serving prompts rather than manufactured ones. Hundreds of AI agents already interact on Quai today, he said.
The Bottom Line
Proof of Progress exists for the follow-up, and Orwick set his own scoreboard for the end of 2026: the first Bitcoin merge-mined block, growing TVL and active addresses against the launch-and-fade pattern of recent layer-1s, and the x402 work scheme shipping as a usable standard. He asked to be held to it, and this franchise will.
The claims that need independent numbers- the top-10 revenue ranking and the 14% burn- are checkable on-chain between now and then, which is exactly how he'd want a skeptic to proceed. If the Bitcoin block lands, the maxis' heads can speak for themselves.
This article is part of Proof of Progress, Block Insider's editorial franchise profiling builders through verifiable milestones. The full conversation is live on Keeping Up With Crypto.
In their words
“Merge mining is the process of mining two tokens at once, so you kind of get a buy-one-get-one on your hash rate. Quai flips that buy-one-get-one on its head.”
“The two-token logic: Most people have a checking account and a savings account... If you go and buy coffee, you're not going to go whip out some stocks... Qi, this energy dollar, is that checking account. It is something that you spend like cash.”
“The majority of layer ones, they just have net emissions. How much do they actually need to pay for security? That is a kind of thing that is just put out into the air. They say, oh, we don't know; it's just secure.”
“The 2026 target: By the end of the year, being on Bitcoin, merge mine that first Bitcoin block. I want the Bitcoin maxis' heads to explode when they see another layer-one mining on top of Bitcoin.”
Frequently asked questions
What is Quai Network?
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Quai Network is a proof-of-work layer-1 blockchain with horizontal sharding built into its base layer, developed from research that began at the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. It runs two native tokens, QUAI and Qi, and was co-founded by Alan Orwick, Karl Kreder, and Sriram Vishwanath.
What is the Qi energy dollar?
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Qi is Quai's protocol-native token designed to track a moving global average of energy costs through proof-of-work mining. It uses fixed denominations for cash-like privacy, settles in about 5 seconds, and has stayed roughly stable for over a year, according to Orwick.
What is SOAP on Quai Network?
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SOAP (Subsidized Open Market Acquisition Protocol) is Quai's merge-mining mechanism: miners receive QUAI while the protocol keeps rewards from Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Dogecoin, selling them to buy back and burn QUAI. About 14% of circulating supply has been burned so far, per the company.
Why does Quai Network have two tokens?
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QUAI works as the savings account: an EVM-compatible store of value used for gas, smart contracts, and DeFi. Qi works as the checking account: spendable, private, energy-priced cash. Orwick argues the split mirrors how people already separate saving from spending.
Can Quai Network really merge mine Bitcoin?
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That is the company's stated end-2026 target, not an achieved milestone. Orwick says the technology to shift Quai's SHA hash rate from Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin is built, and a Bitcoin block currently pays about $250,000 in rewards.
Who founded Quai Network?
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Alan Orwick, who worked at Apple as a software engineer before going full-time on Quai, co-founded the network with Karl Kreder and Sriram Vishwanath out of UT Austin research. Orwick is CEO of Dominant Strategies, the company developing the protocol.