There is a new interview with the creator. I'll post it here for people who have not seen it yet.
http://www.quarkcoin.cc/2013/12/17/an-interview-with-quarks-creator/"A coin called SifCoin, released on the Russian forums, caught my attention because it used six different algorithms for hashing instead of one. All coins up to that stage (that I am aware of) used only one hashing algorithm. The obvious advantage of having multiple hashing algorithms on top of each other is to make the hash as a whole more secure. If one of the hashes is ever broken, there are five more to break. I modified this approach to interweave an additional three rounds of hashing for a total of nine rounds of hashing. These three rounds use a random hashing algorithm, making it even more difficult to break. Sifcoin used an approach where block reward increases over time, making for a very inflationary money supply. I instead attempted an approach where the coin supply would stay relatively stable over time. This is achieved in two ways, firstly by producing the coins in a relatively short period of six months, instead of years as is the case with Bitcoin, and secondly to have a constant yearly coin production of around a million coins per year.
The yearly million coin production has two purposes, the main purpose being to keep the network secure by permanently rewarding miners, and secondly to make up for coins lost through lost wallets, making for a relatively constant money supply.One economic definition of inflation is an increase in money supply. By that definition, other coins still have high inflation rates, as many new coins are still mined, while Quark is almost at the stage where the one million coins will produce around 0.5% inflation for the first year. Ever since its release Quark had good community support from various fantastic members who ran forums, developed a GPU miner and provided other services.
KJ: One of the most persistent and cliched criticisms coming from Quark-naysayers, is the accusation that ”Quark has been pre-mined.” Could you elaborate on why this statement is false, and if it’s not false, then could you explain how this is a non-issue?
MG: Generally the term “pre-mine” in the alt-coin community refers to mining a coin before releasing it to the public, or where a coin has a special block in the beginning (usually block 1) that gives a large reward to the developer. Neither of these apply to Quark. Quark was released on bitcointalk, the most active alt-coin community on the web, with only the genesis block mined. During this period on the alt-coin forum, many new coins were released, sometimes multiple coins a day." .....
Sounds solid to me, and this is also part of the reason it's being attacked so much. Quark is going to make some people very rich, because it works well, and it's secure and it can compete alongside the giants.
