1. Introduction
This audit has no commercial purpose and its conclusions are not investment advice. The audit is intended for a broad audience; its aim is to identify the weak points of the $QNT token and to show them both to the project itself and to every $QNT holder. Only public data from the internet is used in the audit.
Quant Network is an infrastructure platform built to solve blockchain's key problem: the incompatibility of different distributed ledgers (DLT). Its goal is to enable seamless interaction between different networks (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Hyperledger Fabric and others) and to connect them with traditional enterprise systems.
QNT is the native utility token of the Quant Network ecosystem, created to the ERC-20 standard and running on Ethereum.
Total supply: 14,612,493 QNT.
Website: quant.network
2. Token price
2.1 Token price analysis
| Metric | Date | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Launch price at the start of trading | 09.2018 | $1.51 |
| Current price | 07.2026 | $65.88 |
| All-Time High (ATH) | 09.2021 | $428.28 |
| All-Time Low (ATL) | 09.2018 | $0.29 |
At present we see an interesting situation: the QNT price is consolidating while the project's fundamentals are growing.
- Weak price response. Despite a series of high-profile partnerships, the price has trended down over the past two years (around −24% in 2025).
- Strong fundamentals. At the same time Quant is signing contracts with central banks and the largest financial institutions.
The QNT price history shows the classic situation where a project builds a product in demand but the token plays a secondary role.
2.2 Conclusions on the token price
The project has no TVL in the classic sense, but 9,550,880 tokens (65%) are locked in a smart contract. These are team tokens, development fund tokens, validator tokens and Overledger licence payments.
At the same time the price chart shows a strong dependence on prevailing market trends rather than on growth in the number of Quant Network protocol users.
3. Token distribution
A total of 14,612,493 QNT tokens have been issued into circulation; no new issuance is expected.
The original document mentioned the possibility of issuing up to 45.47m QNT, but in the end only 14.62m QNT were issued. All unissued tokens were burned.
3.1 How tokens are distributed, cliffs and unlocks
List of allocations at TGE:
- Public sale (ICO): 68% (around 9.96m QNT) — the largest share, sold on the open market during the initial offering;
- Company reserve: 18% (around 2.65m QNT) — tokens to fund development, infrastructure, marketing and other operating expenses;
- Founders and advisors: 14% (1.35m QNT to founders and 0.65m QNT to advisors) — these groups' tokens had a lock-up (vesting) period.
All lock-up periods have already passed; all tokens are in circulation.
Current distribution among holders:
- Top-1 holder (Treasury) owns 65% of all tokens (around 9.55m QNT);
- Top-3 holders together control 12% (around 1.8m QNT) of total supply;
- Top-10 holders (excluding exchanges) together control 24% (around 3.6m QNT) of total supply.
Almost a quarter of all QNT coins sit in the hands of a dozen addresses, and 65% are locked in the Treasury, which creates a potential risk of volatility and price manipulation.
3.2 Conclusions on token distribution
Token distribution: positive factors and risk factors
- ✓All tokens are in circulation — there is no risk of hidden issuance
- ✓Almost 70% of the originally planned tokens were removed from the network
- ✓68% of current tokens were sold at the ICO at market price
- −A quarter of the tokens are held in ten wallets
- The remaining tokens are concentrated on centralised exchanges, which creates volatility risk
At the time of TGE the company managed to achieve a broad distribution of tokens through the ICO, but years later the tokens have been consolidated by dozens of large investors.
Today the token carries no risk of pressure from unlocks or vesting of new tokens, but its price depends on the decisions of a small number of investors.
If those investors have colluded, or could collude, the token price would be entirely controllable by that group. As a result they could create hidden pressure on the token price whenever it rises.
4. Staking and farming
At present Quant Network has no classic staking for securing the network, but its roadmap through the end of 2026 mentions a move to such a system.
4.1 Analysis of the instruments
Right now: gateway operators — staking for gateway operators.
This is a way of prioritising transactions for the network's technical participants. Gateway operators can lock their QNT in the project treasury to receive higher priority when their transactions are processed on the Overledger network. The higher the priority, the more transactions they process and, accordingly, the more rewards they receive in the form of gas.
In the future: the Trusted Nodes programme.
This is the most important update for QNT holders. According to Quant's roadmap, Trusted Nodes will appear on the Overledger Fusion network. To become an operator of such a node and guarantee its honesty, a certain amount of QNT tokens will have to be staked. A delegated staking function is expected to be introduced: it will allow a small holder to pass their tokens to one of these nodes and share the validation reward with it, which will most likely come from the network's licence fees.
QNT is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, not a standalone Layer-1 blockchain with validators. That is why it does not yet have classic PoS staking, although it does have a queue prioritisation that closely resembles a PoS mechanism.
The QNT token can be placed in yield programmes on exchanges, in DEX liquidity pools and in DeFi lending. But these are separate instruments outside Quant Network's control.
5. Token utility
Quant Network solves the problem of compatibility between different blockchains and enterprise systems, and QNT is the key that makes this possible and that incentivises participants.
5.1 Use cases
- Annual licence fees. Enterprises using Overledger pay for a licence. The price may be pegged to the US dollar, but payment is accepted exclusively in QNT tokens. These tokens are then locked in the project treasury, reducing the amount in free circulation;
- Tokenised deposits and settlement. Banks use Quant to settle in real time;
- CBDC (central bank digital currencies). Quant is a key partner in projects with the Bank of England and the European Central Bank. Potentially this utility could create the largest demand for the token;
- Application development (mApps). Developers pay a fee for using the network: they must buy and use QNT to access the Overledger API and deploy their applications;
- Transaction fees (gas fees). QNT is used to pay transaction fees on the Multi-Ledger Rollup (MLR);
- Transaction validation (gateway operators). Technically, every transaction passing through Overledger must be confirmed using QNT tokens;
- Participation in governance. QNT holders can vote on important questions about the platform's development.
Demand for the token is created by institutional investors, so it is quite difficult to assess how much the utility functions affect the token price.
5.2 Tools and services
- Overledger — an API gateway that lets developers and companies connect their applications to different blockchains through a single interface. Access to this API requires payment in QNT tokens;
- Quant Flow — a platform for programmable payments that lets banks and fintech companies automate payouts, taxes and other financial flows;
- QuantNet — a system for settling tokenised assets between different networks. It uses the ISO 20022 financial standard;
- Quant Fusion — a "Layer 2.5" network that connects public blockchains with private enterprise networks through Multi-Ledger Rollup (MLR) technology. It is in this service that QNT is used to pay transaction fees;
- PayScript — a tool for building financial logic: banks can describe complex rules for the movement of money without programming.
On the one hand, use of the token is diversified across several products; on the other hand, all of those products sit inside a single Quant Network ecosystem.
5.3 Conclusions
The QNT token is integrated into every Quant Network product, but in publicly available documents (roadmaps, cooperation agreements, partnership agreements) the token is either not mentioned at all or has no clearly contracted use.
Because the token's participation in the announced partnerships, including on CBDCs, is not documented, the token price remains volatile and tied to the general market trend. It is currently impossible to assess how growth in Quant Network users translates into growth in demand for the QNT token.
6. Token circulation
6.1 How tokens move
The full QNT circulation cycle starts on the market and ends either in vaults or back in circulation. A token with a limited supply serves as the access key to the enterprise platform Overledger.
Inflow into circulation:
- Tokens can enter circulation from the Treasury;
- Tokens are paid to validators as transaction fees;
- Tokens can be bought on an exchange.
Withdrawal from circulation:
- Licence payments and other payments for the company's products;
- Locking of tokens when a new institutional partner joins: the partner pays for the licence in a convenient way, and if that is not QNT the system locks an equivalent amount of QNT in the Treasury;
- Staking by gateway operators.
The main demand for the QNT token comes from Overledger licences, but in the future CBDC transactions may take the leading position.
6.2 Risks
- A licence sale does not necessarily create demand for the token, because the company may accept payment in a stablecoin and lock part of its own QNT in the Treasury without buying tokens on the market;
- The Treasury wallet has the ability to burn tokens and to release them to the market, and control over it sits with the company;
- The Treasury already holds 65% of all tokens, which creates scarcity, yet this has no effect on the token price.
Without a transparent mechanism for buying back, holding and re-issuing tokens, growth in the number of users will not produce a clear positive effect on the token's value.
7. Critical observations
- Without the token you cannot obtain the company's products, and this is the strongest possible link between the token and the company's success; on the other hand, the demand mechanism for the token is not market-based and therefore has no effect on the price;
- There is no public information on the exact number of Quant Network clients or the prices they pay for the Overledger subscription. As a result it is impossible to model how new client growth affects demand for the QNT token;
- The Treasury holds around 65% of all QNT tokens, and the terms on which it locks, burns and issues tokens remain in Quant Network's hands. The company retained control so that it could adjust the mechanism to current commercial conditions in good time, but the end result deprived the market of transparency;
- Only legal entities can use the token, so it is cut off from a large pool of potential demand from individuals;
- The token rarely appears in official contracts between Quant Network and its clients, so future demand for the company's products does not guarantee demand for the QNT token;
- A large amount of tokens is concentrated in the hands of a narrow group, which can be read both positively — they are ready to hold long term — and negatively: they will sell as the price rises.
Quant Network has signed a series of high-profile partnerships, which should have driven demand for the token and, as a result, affected its price. But because the Treasury lacks balance and transparency, licence purchases do not translate into a higher token price.
8. Final conclusion
Quant Network builds a service that is in demand and takes part in CBDC pilots for the Bank of England. The company thought through the mechanism for using the QNT token carefully, making it the only pass to its technology.
One material nuance is worth noting: Quant's strategy is still largely in the delivery stage. Despite participation in high-profile pilot projects, the company does not publish precise data on how many QNT tokens are actually locked against licences. This creates a risk of uncertainty for investors.
The company's plans to introduce staking for QNT holders look like an attempt to attract the attention of retail investors, but without a real product they can obtain for the token this initiative may have an immaterial effect on the token price.
At this stage, licence sales, gas fee payments, application testing and validator staking are not capable of creating enough demand to lift the token price. On paper the link between the token and the company looks strong, but in practice it is ineffective.
8.1 Recommendations for the project
- Develop products for individuals: dozens of legal entities cannot create material demand for the token, but hundreds of thousands of individuals can;
- Set up a fund to buy tokens back from the market and replace with it the existing mechanism of locking tokens held in the Treasury;
- Disclose the total number of tokens withdrawn from circulation and deposited against Overledger: that would preserve commercial confidentiality while letting investors see the real demand for the token;
- Publish an up-to-date roadmap for the token's development and its use in future projects.
Overall, Quant Network should become more transparent in disclosing the token's role in its announced projects. Today investors have no guarantee that the token will actually be used in the CBDC project or in any other integration with an institutional partner.
8.2 What holders should watch
Two events change the picture: the launch of staking for QNT holders (tokens leaving the market) and the appearance of products for individuals. Until then, demand for the token is limited to dozens of corporate licences at 3 QNT each — roughly 120 QNT a year across the entire client base.
You can have your own token economy assessed against the same methodology in an 8Blocks tokenomics audit, and model issuance and unlocks in the free Token Lab calculator.
