Quant (QNT) is the native coin of the Quant Network, a blockchain platform that makes it easier for blockchains to operate with one another.

Quant launched its token, QNT, in 2018. The token started trading at about 27 cents, and by the start of 2021, it reached about $12. It hit a high of $428 in September 2021, but fell to below $100 by February 2022.

QNT has a maximum supply of 14.6 million. At launch, the initial coin offering didn’t sell out in time, and so Quant burned 9.5 million of the existing supply (then worth $6.2 million), bringing its total supply to 14.6 million by April 2019. Quant gave away close to 10 million QNT during a public ICO, reserved 2.65 million for operations, 1.3 million for company founders and 650,000 for advisers. The supply is fixed, although the circulating supply may decrease over time when tokens are locked into Quant’s services.

The Quant Network lets blockchain developers launch their multi-DLT dapps (mDApps) on several blockchains at once. This interoperability prevents the risk that a developer will devote time and money to building on a blockchain that fades from popularity in a few years.

In addition, developers can benefit from the network effects of the largest blockchains and ecosystems without having to discern which one is most likely to succeed and can take advantage of a given blockchain’s advantages.

Quant’s multi-chain smart contracts are based on standards set by security token issuer QRC. These tokens are issued across multiple blockchains and are backed by escrow accounts. mDapps can be queried by the REST API from Quant’s multi-chain operating system, Overledger, no matter the blockchain on which it’s based.

QNT is the glue that holds the entire operation together. It’s an ERC-20 utility token (meaning it's housed on the Ethereum blockchain) that’s used to pay for the licenses and annual fees that developers need to access the Quant Network and to pay for items within Overledger.

Quant is one of several blockchains trying to bring about interoperability and end the era of “blockchain maximalism,” which is when a blockchain develops a cult-like following who believe that only their preferred blockchain will succeed.

While Quant isn’t on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), it allows companies to interface with the EVM through the Overledger API. Several other blockchains, like Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain and Fantom, are compatible with the EVM, meaning that developers can redeploy apps on other blockchains without expending additional resources.

Token bridges like Multichain, Ren and Wormhole allow synthetic variants of tokens to move across blockchains, and Cosmos’ Inter-blockchain Communication Protocol makes it easy for IBC-compatible app-chains to work with each other. Quant’s focus, however, is on connecting private blockchains (business blockchains, like ConsenSys’ Quorum and R3’s Corda) with public ones (like Ethereum).

Quant was founded in 2018 by Colin Paterson, economist Paolo Tasca and Gilbert Verdian. Paterson and Verdian both have backgrounds in information security. Quant raised $11 million in a token sale. The token is defined by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority.

The company is based in London and is part of the Digital Pound Foundation, an organization that advocates for a digital pound.

Quant launched the test version of the Overledger Network in 2020 before going live with the network in September 2021. The network added support for the Polkadot and Polygon platforms in 2022.