Binance, the world’s largest crypto spot exchange (by trading volume), announced on Wednesday (July 31) that it is adding support for Qtum (QTUM) staking. This news comes just five days after Binance announced that it was going to launch Algorand (ALGO) staking starting on July 27.

What is Qtum?

Here is what Abra’s “Ultimate Altcoin Guide” has to say about Qtum:

Qtum was designed as a business-ready blockchain… with an initial coin offering (ICO) in March 2017…

With a strong team and strong backing, Qtum can be best thought of as a hybrid between Bitcoin and Ethereum, taking good parts from both, and creating a new and accessible place for businesses to launch distributed applications built on smart contracts…

A rarity in the blockchain world, Qtum is also backward compatible with ethereum contracts as well as bitcoin gateways and will remain backward compatible even after updates.

Qtum uses a Proof-o-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

On 16 June 2018, Binance Info gave the Qtum project a BB overall rating (“Technical feasibility is good and the risk of the project is moderately controllable”). 

Binance’s Support for QTUM Staking

In a support article published on Wednesday (July 31), Binance said that it would be adding QTUM staking support starting on August 1. Other cryptoassets for which Binance supports staking are NEO (GAS), Ontology (ONG), VeChain (VTHO), Tron (BTT), Stellar (XLM), Komodo (KMD), and Algorand (ALGO).

The Binance team said that QTUM staking rewards would be distributed as follows:

  • Starting on August 1, snapshots of users’ QTUM balances will be taken daily at 00:00 UTC.
  • The following two equations will be used to calculate the ALGO staking distribution:
    • “QTUM generated by each user = Total QTUM staking rewards received by Binance * User QTUM holdings ratio”
    • “User QTUM holdings ratio = User QTUM holdings / Total QTUM staked by Binance”
  • To qualify for staking rewards, users need to have at least 1 QTUM.
  • The first distribution will be calculated up to September 1, “with the total amount distributed equal to the staking rewards accrued on holdings during the period.”
  • QTUM rewards will be determined on a daily basis and paid out on a monthly basis.
  • Staking reward distributions will be completed by the 5th of each month.

Since Binance found out that it had been staking Qtum for some time, it has decided to distribute these staking rewards (50,000 QTUM, which is worth roughly $145,000) to its users at the same time as it pays out the first distribution of the Qtum Staking Airdrop Program. 

Featured Image Courtesy of Binance