Qtum (pronounced ‘“quantum”) is a proof-of-stake (PoS) smart contract open-source blockchain platform and value transfer protocol. It aims to bring together the strengths of Bitcoin and Ethereum in one chain. Qtum is built on Bitcoin's UTXO transaction model with the added functionality of smart contract execution and DApps. Recently the platform added support for DeFi applications. As of March 2021 there are more than 20 tokens created on the Qtum blockchain.The project was announced in March 2016 and held an ICO a year after in March 2017 which brought its founders $15 million USD. The Qtum main chain was released on Sept.13 2017. Initially the Qtum coin was issued as a ETH-20 token but with the launch of the mainnet it was converted to native blockchain.