What is Pulsechain?

Pulsechain is a blockchain network that aims at bailing out every Ethereum network user suffering from the crippling network fees, irrational gas cost increases, and continuous delays in network upgrades.

Pulsechain will fork the entire Ethereum blockchain database and use a modified Geth network client with code upgraded for a delegated proof of stake (PoS) network consensus with 33 validator nodes. It will be Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible, which is extremely important for adoption (Solidity support). The block time will be 3 seconds and the block gas limit could reach above 120 million when needed. This will allow it to be at least 20 times faster than the current Ethereum network and have faster finalization of transactions. Later upgrades can further improve the throughput and provide layer 2 solutions.

The network utility token of Pulsechain will be called Pulse (PLS). The main on-chain exchange will be PulseX (an AMM DEX, fork of Uniswap).

The network will launch disconnected from the markets to allow people to get airdrops and forked assets at no market value. After at least 48 h required for regulatory purposes, it will connect to the markets, first by using bridges, then eventually direct fiat on-ramps, centralized exchanges, and cross-chain exchanges.

What is a blockchain fork?

Forking a blockchain means that there will be a live fork at a predetermined blockheight where the PoS validators running the network clients stop synchronizing with the Ethereum blocks and start validating transactions incoming with new remote procedure call (RPC) settings, thus adding Pulsechain blocks rather than Ethereum blocks.

The consequence of a fork is that Pulsechain starts with the entire blockchain history of Ethereum. Not only will all your transaction history be available, but also all your assets on Ethereum will be “copied” (coins, stakes, liquidity pools, NFTs, etc.). Forked coins will be freely tradable, which means the market will decide their value.

Most smart contracts will not immediately have functioning frontends, except for HEX, Uniswap, and PulseX frontends which will be available from day one. Project teams will need to provide frontends for their contracts to make them easily accessible.

Beware that except for intra-chain wrapped tokens (e.g., WETH, which will become WPLS), no fork of bridged or externally wrapped tokens will be redeemable for their underlying asset (e.g., WBTC, renBTC, USDC, USDT, and other redeemable tokens). Even though forks of these tokens will be irredeemable, this does not necessarily mean they will be worth nothing. As their liquidity pools will get forked too, these tokens will have a liquidity providing utility which will support some market value.

Contrary to popular belief, a fork does not involve a snapshot of specific asset balances at a certain time. It will be a live fork and the balances information is already part of the blockchain database.

Forks of tokens locked in bridge contracts will become inaccessible, so make sure you transfer HEX from Polygon and xDai back to Ethereum in time for the launch, if you want them “copied” over to Pulsechain.

Who is launching Pulsechain?

The original idea for Pulsechain originated out of the despair of the HEX community due to the growing network fees, in particular due to the irrational decision of the Ethereum foundation, which rather than working on reducing the fees, increased the gas cost with the Berlin fork. Richard Heart, the founder of HEX, proposed a solution that could provide an off-load for the Ethereum network congestion while at the same time solving the PoW to PoS transition problem which has been hindering the progress of Ethereum since years.

The Hexican community immediately supported the idea. A team of developers, designers, game theorist, content creators and other volunteers spontaneously formed, first recruiting from the HEX community, but soon people from other communities joined the effort. Without doubts, the informal Pulsechain team is now composed by some of the best experts in crypto.

What about HEX?

Initially this was all about providing a better and more independent platform for HEX, but as ideas grew, it became clear that Hexicans need to help the entire ecosystem. For this reason, the blockchain will not start empty with just the HEX contract forked over. Instead, the entire Ethereum blockchain will be forked, so that all crypto communities have an equal opportunity (whether they take it is up to their decision).

The HEX balances and HEX stakes will be copied over seamlessly without you having to do anything whatsoever. The contract state of HEX, which includes all your stake shares, accrued interest, the share price and any other blockchain data, will be forked as it is set at the forking blockheight. From there on, the contract state will diverge between the two networks.

In other words, all your balances and stakes will be doubled and have separate lives from thereon. Obviously, as HEX on Ethereum and HEX on Pulsechain will be freely tradable and non-fungible, their price will also diverge, though it may stay highly correlated due to liquidity coupling in the PulseX exchange.

HEX on Ethereum will continue functioning as if nothing happened. It cannot be stopped, as the code is immutable and there is no admin key for the contract. The price may see volatility in the initial period, but due to the self-balancing mechanisms and community support, it is likely to get back on its path later on.

The goal is having HEX on two networks, both valuable, but allowing diversity in regard to the ecosystem, gas fees, speed of transaction and HEX share price.

What will Pulsechain do?

Rather than competing with Ethereum, Pulsechain aims at fixing it by providing an ecosystem where smart contracts that are currently outpriced on Ethereum can again start functioning properly. The game theory fundamentals have been designed in such a way to attract priced-out users into a familiar environment, motivate keyholders to take responsible ownership of their forked assets, or at least not being able of doing much damage by behaving irresponsibly. It also gives an opportunity for the project teams now using Ethereum to gain additional profits and adoption on a new network by simply pointing their contract frontends to both Ethereum and Pulsechain.

Perhaps the most important game theory fundamentals are:

• Sacrifice

To inject the primary value into the network without using actual liquidity, a new method for token distribution was developed. A sacrifice where people were able to give up on value in favour of a political statement on freedom of speech was organized. From the so created sacrifice set, the team in control of Pulsechain launch will know who gets the airdrop of the PLS network utility token at no market value. Each sacrifice is evaluated based on the USD denominated market value at the time of transaction approval and given a volume bonus based on sacrifice address. About 0.7 billion USD of value was sacrificed for Pulsechain.

Another sacrifice for a political statement on freedom of movement and assembly is currently still undergoing (February 2022) and will result in the airdrop of PLSX tokens at no market value. Over 1 billion USD of value was sacrificed at the time of writing.

The sacrificed tokens are sacrificed,* which means that participants in the sacrifice cannot be entitled to have expectation of profit from the work of others based on their sacrifice. It is important to note that nothing of market value will ever be delivered to the participants: no promises or promisecoins, or any coins with market value. This is of particular importance in certain jurisdictions.

* Definition of sacrifice is “to suffer loss of, give up, renounce, injure, or destroy especially for an ideal, belief, or end.” (Merriam-Webster dictionary)

• PLS network utility token

Forked ETH, branded as Pulse (PLS), will be diluted by over a million times from the airdrop of PLS coins to participants of the Pulsechain sacrifice. This way the Ethereum whales will not be able to do harm to the new ecosystem while the initial value creation will occur through sacrifice, similarly as value is often created in real life.

PLS will be a deflationary token. The entire supply will be airdropped at launch and as it is being used to pay for network fees, 25% of fees is being burnt while the remaining 75% is taken by the network validators. Initially, while the blocks are not yet filled up, this may not induce much scarcity, but over time and adoption, this can result in significant supply deflation.

• PulseX exchange and PLSX token

Immediately after launch, a so called “fixer bot” will go through all AMM pools containing PLS at a ratio distorted due to the airdrop, and adjust the ratio by buying up PRC-20 tokens with PLS. This excess of tokens will then be deposited as AMM liquidity against PLS into a new DEX on Pulsechain called PulseX.

PulseX will incentivize users to provide liquidity for pairs of bridged ERC-20 tokens and their forked versions (PRC-20). A liquidity mining program rewarding token pairs selected by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) will make the liquidity providing more profitable for these pairs causing a strong liquidity coupling effect. This will cause their price movement correlation, because of the so called Heart’s law. Since the current ERC-20 token owners get their PRC-20 fork for free, the opportunity is rather unique and may result in the largest “yield farming” ever seen in crypto.

Since the price of the highly coupled PRC-20 tokens will tend to follow the movements of their Ethereum counterpart, this will allow indirect trading of Ethereum assets through direct trading of their Pulsechain “derivatives” with much cheaper fees and faster transactions. As we know from legacy finance, correlation can create value by itself and offers plenty of arbitrage opportunities (i.e., see CFD derivatives).

On top of all, holders of the deflationary PLSX tokens will be able to participate in the PulseX value creation, because a part of the swapping fees (0.06% of the trading volume) will be used for PLSX buybacks and token burns. This way, the increasing value of PLSX can correlate with the PulseX trading volume. It is worth noting that this scarcity inducing mechanism will be significant since launch, as it does not depends on block fullness as is the case with PLS token burning mechanism.

When Pulsechain?

The fork will occur once the testnet v3 is fully tested, no more bugs found, and the developers feel confident everything is exactly as it should be. Current estimate is March or April 2022.

The testnets v1 and v2 have been successfully deployed and the tesnet v2 is currently being intensely tested for potential issues. The live fork launch, the airdrop, and the fixer bot will be tested in testnet v3.

Further information:

Pulsechain.com (official Pulsechain website)

PulseX.com (official PulseX website)

HowToPulse – Pulsechain & Hex Crypto News (amazing community website)

PulsechainCom and PulseX Telegram groups (block&report anyone who direct messages you)

By @Benzenoid

Disclaimer: None of the above is meant to be a financial advice. Never rely on a single source of information and do your own research before any investment. Don’t trust, verify!

If you found any of the above useful and want to give a tip, please use the Ethereum address: 0x4BaE10B7B20A4f92670f03474dbDD6716D2C143f