Chat demo inside Qal Walletopen fullscreen
Interactive wallet prototype. Its Chat tab demonstrates encrypted messages and in-conversation gold lightning payments.
QALS — the system, in action
The whole system, in one page
The wallet, the phone app, the live dashboards, honest comparisons and the numbers — all on one page.
Live Demos
Try the wallet, the phone app and the explorer — embedded here, running live.
running surfaces
Explorer demoopen fullscreen
Embedded explorer surface for walking the system from a single review page.
Phone demoSIMULATED DEMO — the live bridge serves the same UI on the tailnet
1,284.20 Qals= AU$1,284.20 · qals://phone-bridge
TAILNETBridge is live. DID pinned, relay ciphertext-blind.09:41 · encrypted
Send the courier hold and anchor the receipt.09:42 · signed
⚡
Payment cardEscrowed, capped, receipted
42.00 Qals
receipt: qal:rcpt:7f31...a92 · cap ok
Paid and anchored. File hash attached to the channel root.09:43 · delivered
PDF
mint-ceremony-report.pdfsha256 anchored · 14/14 checks
CSV
reserve-ledger-export.csvAU$ entries · cent accounted
MOV
phone-bridge-demo.movtailnet served · relay proof
KEY
device-did-binding.jsontailscale nodekey bound
API
Compute creditRun a capped agent job
18 Q
FUEL
Petrol card holdWorst case escrow first
120 Q
PASS
Qal Pass monthTransaction sponsorship — the network never charges
9 Q
DATA
Audit bundleReceipts, hashes, roots
35 Q
The mock is static HTML/CSS with an internal tab switcher so the bridge experience can be reviewed without connecting to the tailnet.
UI Gallery
Five live dashboards, embedded and ready to click.
fullscreen on hover
The Loom
The Vault
Qalx
System Map
Hub
Comparisons
Mechanisms, not marketing — how QALS actually differs, row by row.
Date 2026-09-11
QALS vs IOTA vs BTC vs Solana
scroll sideways| Dimension | QALS (private) | IOTA (public, 2026) | Bitcoin | Solana |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | qalarc's own private ledger for money and records, plus its 12 services (built on IOTA's open code, run privately) | public L1, Sui-fork since Rebased | public L1, PoW | public L1, PoS |
| Consensus | small validator committee we run (1 today → 4 planned; Starfish) | Starfish, public validators | PoW | Tower BFT + Proof of History |
| Finality | sub-second (private committee) | sub-second | ~60 min (6 conf) | ~13s (optimistic ~400ms) |
| Fees | The network never charges. Full stop. (Qal Pass sponsorship covers user transactions) — scoped fee policy | low, paid in IOTA | high variance | low, paid in SOL |
| Value unit | credit: AU$1-anchored, no cash-out Phase 1-2 | market-priced token | market-priced | market-priced |
| Supply | 1,000,000 Qals max, sales cap 500,000 Qals in bytecode, zero inflation | public token economics | 21M hard cap | inflationary schedule |
| Who can join | qalarc ecosystem (licensed phases open it) | anyone | anyone | anyone |
| Smart contracts | Move (qal_data/credit/reserve live) | Move + EVM layer | script-only | Rust/Anchor + SVM |
| Trust root | qalarc (validator set + reserve) → opens via gates | public validator set | miners | validators (VC-heavy) |
| Data layer | first-class (anchors, receipts, audit trails) | first-class (notarization) | none (OP_RETURN only) | costly on-chain data |
| Best for | companies wanting money+data+compute rails w/o token risk | IoT/trade provenance on a public net | absolute scarcity store | high-throughput public apps |
The honest position: QALS is not competing with public chains — it uses one lineage privately. When external trust is needed, checkpoint-anchoring to public IOTA is the bridge (and the real-IOTA swap gateway is designed, gated on licensing).
QALS vs Tailscale
scroll sideways| Tailscale | QALS identity layer | |
|---|---|---|
| Identifies | machines on the network (nodekeys) | humans, agents, devices — economically (DIDs, anchored) |
| Answers | "which machine is this?" | "who may spend, how much, provable?" |
| Proof | WireGuard keys, ACLs | ed25519 sigs + anchored docs + caps |
| Revocation | remove from tailnet | DID REVOKED + ledger agent revoked (~2s) |
| Relationship | QALS binds tailscale nodekeys INTO device DIDs — network identity becomes part of value identity (qalid tailscale-bind) |
They're complements, deliberately joined — Tailscale is the transport perimeter, QALS is the trust-and-value layer on top.
QALS chat vs WhatsApp
scroll sideways| QALS chat (qalchat) | ||
|---|---|---|
| E2E encryption | Signal protocol (double ratchet, full FS) | X25519+HKDF ratchet + AES-GCM + ed25519; ratchet-lite FS (MLS upgrade documented) — honest gap |
| Key verification | QR safety-number compare | QR invite PINS + anchored DIDs + relay proof-of-possession |
| Metadata from relay | Meta sees who/when (sealed sender partial) | relay is ciphertext-blind by construction (byte-proven) |
| Value transfer | none (payments via partners, regional) | first-class: ⚡ payments in-conversation, escrowed, capped, receipted |
| Data provenance | none | conversation Merkle roots + file hashes anchored on-chain |
| Self-host | impossible | relay is one file, runs anywhere; multi-relay + offline ferry |
| Groups/communities | yes | workspaces/channels/threads/roles/pay-to-post (Discord-model) |
| Agents/Bots | limited, platform-gated | first-class (DID'd, capped, MCP-driven) |
| Trade-off | mature, universal, phone-SMS onboarding | ecosystem-internal today; FS not yet Signal-grade |
Pros & Cons
No softening. The honesty is the feature.
extensive list
PROS
- Capped agents: bytecode-enforced spend ceilings — the runaway-agent failure is structurally impossible (nobody else ships this).
- Full-reserve credit: born from AU$1, retired from circulation on use, redemption accounted to the cent — no fractional reserve anywhere.
- Finite supply as code (over-cap sales refused; sellable supply pre-endowed in the issuer wallet) — not policy, not promise.
- Escrow everywhere: escrow holds bound every purchase's worst case before it starts.
- Receipts on-chain: every job, trade, redemption, exec, and ceremony is an anchored, publicly-verifiable fact.
- Encryption with teeth: ciphertext-blind relays (proven), pinned contacts, proof-of-possession registration.
- Private-chain pragmatism: no token volatility for users, no public-attack surface, enterprise-clean story.
- Recoverable by design: agents/devices controller-bound; humans mnemonic-rooted; nothing self-sovereign that can't be revoked.
- Zero-dep services: every component is one Python file; audit-able in an afternoon; fleet-deployable in minutes.
- Real testing culture: 25+ suites, ~700 assertions, two red-team campaigns, a full-system lifecycle ceremony — all re-runnable.
- AI-native: MCP control plane, agent marketplaces, gmux fleet wallets — built for the agent economy, not adapted to it.
- Composable money: the same credit pays compute, content, chat value, API calls, and service redemption at one rate.
CONS (own them honestly)
- Trust concentration: qalarc runs the validators, the reserve, and the escrows today. Mitigation path exists (fleet validators, on-chain escrow, audits) — but today, you trust us.
- Ratchet-lite forward secrecy: not yet Signal-grade; MLS upgrade designed, not built.
- Paper-phase money: the ledger of record is loopd; the on-chain twin is proven but not yet the live rail. Real value isn't moving yet — deliberately.
- Single-machine fragility (improving): core services on superlocal; relay #2 federated but DERP-flaky; bb-mini still offline. Multi-validator milestone pending.
- Legal gate is the bottleneck: everything public (transferability, real-IOTA swaps, cash redemption) waits on VASP/licensing — slow, external, non-technical.
- Python services at scale: rails are fine for thousands/day; a Rust rewrite of loopd/relay will be needed for hundreds of thousands (planned, priced).
- Ecosystem lock-in: credit spends inside qalarc rails Phase 1-2 by design — freedom is gated on the legal path.
- No formal audits yet: internal + red-team coverage only; the paid Move audit is budgeted, not spent.
- WebAuthn gap on Linux: passkeys degrade (WebKitGTK limitation) — documented, plugin path exists.
- Operational maturity: monitor exists, on-call is documented — but this is a founder-scale operation, not an SRE team.
The one-line summary: a legally-boring, receipt-anchored private economy with bytecode-capped agents — trading public-chain decentralisation and Signal-grade crypto maturity for control, compliance, and shipping speed today, with the upgrade paths designed and gated, not hand-waved.
Numbers
The operating numbers at a glance.
tabular facts
68wiki pages
25+suites
~700assertions
14/14full-system ceremony
3on-chain contracts
12core services
500Ksales cap