Alan Orwick — Personal Homepage

I. About

Things I care about: energy-backed money, proof-of-work scaling, open source infrastructure, and the future of technology.

Started coding at 12. Studied computer science at UT Austin, founded Texas Blockchain in 2017, taught blockchain and emerging tech courses. Did research on distributed ledger scalability, zero-knowledge, prediction markets, hash functions, cryptography, and more under Dr. Sriram Vishwanath in the ECE department. That's where I met the people that came together to start Quai Network.

After graduation, I was full time at Apple working on supply chain ETL pipelines, analytics, and internal tooling for the Americas org. Started as an intern in Operations Research and stayed on to build systems that people across the org relied on every day. Great training for building infrastructure that actually has to work.

Left in 2021 to co-found Quai Network and run Dominant Strategies. Raised $15M+ from Polychain Capital and Alumni Ventures. Built and validated the only scalable Proof-of-Work blockchain with smart contracts. Visiting scholar work at McCombs, researching blockchain economics under Prof. Fracassi.

More recently: building out the Quai ecosystem, decentralized AI inference, Qi (an energy-backed flatcoin), agent payment infrastructure, and a desktop AI assistant called Entropic. Interested in the overlap between adversarial distributed systems and autonomous agents.

II. Things I think about

Energy-Backed Monetary Systems Thermodynamic money · currency tied to energy expenditure · flatcoins · the QI model
Scalable Proof-of-Work Consensus Merged mining · hierarchical chains · multi-algorithm PoW · workshare validation
Proof of Entropy Minima (PoEM) Intrinsic block weight · objective fork choice · instant consensus · orphan reduction
Privacy-Preserving Transactions UTXO models · Schnorr signatures · transaction parallelization · minimal disclosure
Distributed AI Inference Agent coordination · on-device models · multi-provider orchestration · skill security
Blockchain Economics & Tokenomics Dual-token systems · deflationary emission · game-theoretic rewards · SOAP buybacks
Decentralized Identity & Naming On-chain name services · wallet identity · cross-chain address resolution
Mining Infrastructure Stratum protocols · non-custodial pools · KawPoW, SHA-256, Scrypt support

III. Some of the things I work on

Quai Network qu.ai

Hierarchical proof-of-work blockchain. 50,000+ TPS through merged mining and PoEM consensus. Two tokens: QUAI saves like gold, QI spends like cash. Live since January 2025.

Go · Solidity · PoW · EVM · 2,400+ stars on GitHub

SOAP soap.qu.ai

Merge-mining protocol that unifies Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Ravencoin miners. Point existing hardware at SOAP, earn QUAI. Proceeds flow into buybacks and burns.

Go · Multi-algorithm merge-mining · Buyback/burn mechanism

StratumX stratumx.org

Non-custodial mining pool infrastructure for Quai. Multi-node aggregation, real-time dashboard, per-algorithm hashrate tracking. Built from scratch.

Go · PostgreSQL · React · WebSocket · Stratum Protocol

Quai Intelligence github

Decentralized inference network. GPU miners running Llama 70B, DeepSeek V3, Mixtral. Coordinator handles load balancing and model distribution across nodes.

C++ · CUDA · Go · Distributed LLM inference

Qi Agent SDK github

SDK for AI agents to manage wallets and execute payments on Quai autonomously.

TypeScript · Agent SDK · Wallet automation

Entropic entropic.qu.ai

One-click desktop AI agent. Browses, manages files, messages, remembers things, runs code. Multi-provider. Skills security-scanned via Skill Scanner.

TypeScript · Electron · Multi-provider LLM · 241+ stars

Kipper Money kipper.money

Crypto tipping on X. Reply to a post, send QUAI, SOL, or USDC. No wallet popups. 15,000+ tips sent.

TypeScript · QUAI / SOL / USDC · X/Twitter Integration

Pelagus Wallet github

Browser wallet for Quai. Nine-chain network, one simple interface.

TypeScript · Browser Extension · Multi-chain

IV. Publication

[1] Scalable Multi-Chain Coordination via the Hierarchical Longest Chain Rule Georghiades, Kreder, Downing, Orwick, Vishwanath IEEE International Conference on Blockchain, 2022 · arXiv:2112.11072

V. Writing

Understanding SOAP Pt. 1 How Quai turns merge-mining into token buybacks via AuxPoW and multi-algorithm workshares
The Currency for the AI Economy Why traditional crypto fails for AI agents and the case for energy-denominated units of account
The Paradox of Stablecoins How centralized dependencies undermine blockchain autonomy and create systemic risk
Considering Bitcoin as an Energy Dollar Why Bitcoin pioneered energy-secured currency but can't be an energy-denominated medium of exchange
Proof of Stake is Slow Why PoS consensus overhead limits throughput — with data from Ethereum, Solana, and Sui

VI. Open Source

Repository	Description	Lang	Stars
dominant-strategies/go-quai	Official Go implementation of the Quai protocol	Go	2,400
dominant-strategies/entropic	One-click desktop AI agent (OpenClaw runtime)	TypeScript	241
0xnovabyte/quai-intelligence	Decentralized LLM inference across GPU miners	C++/CUDA/Go	—
0xnovabyte/qi-agent-sdk	Agent-native wallet and payment automation	TypeScript	—
dominant-strategies/quai-gpu-miner	GPU mining implementation for ProgPow/KawPoW	C++	26
dominant-strategies/go-quai-stratum	Stratum proxy for mining pool infrastructure	Go	25
dominant-strategies/quais.js	JavaScript SDK for Quai Network interactions	TypeScript	6
dominant-strategies/quai-cpu-miner	CPU miner for Quai Network	Go	13
0xalank/skill-scanner	Security scanner for AI agent skills	Python	—
dominant-strategies/quai-docs	Open-source protocol documentation	MDX	2
dominant-strategies/Quai-Macro-Model	Macroeconomic modeling for Quai tokenomics	Jupyter	2

See more at github.com/dominant-strategies, github.com/0xalank, and github.com/0xnovabyte