Introducing PepChain, an Ethereum compatible DPOS sidechain

5 min readSep 10, 2018

Demand for capacity to run decentralized complex smart contracts is increasing. The term smart contract was actually initiated by Nick Szabo in 1994, way before Bitcoin was launched and mined its first block.

In the perception of the crowd, Bitcoin was a novelty up until 2014. However since a short time after its inception in January 2009, thousands of programmers have been working relentlessly on other cryptocurrency & blockchain projects, including early (second layer) platforms that supported digital assets like Nxt and Mastercoin/ Counterparty (runs on bitcoin).

In 2014 Vitalik Buterin did one of the first known ICO’s (Initial Crowd Offerings) for his big idea Ethereum; instead of only doing transactions and assets with Ethereum, it should become possible to enter (turing complete) logic on the blockchain; smart contracts.

Since the launch of Ethereum (genesis block in august 2015), Ethereum has experienced exponential growth. At the peak in january 2018 it processed more than 1.3 million transactions on 1 day. The Ethereum network currently almost has 18,000 nodes running vs almost 10,000 bitcoin nodes.

On a daily basis now, new ICO’s are done, DApps are introduced and since the introduction and the huge commercial success of the game CryptoKitties, game developers are rushing to get their blockchain game out. Most if not all on Ethereum.

Most if not all on Ethereum.

Currently the Ethereum network can’t handle that load, mempools (the place where transactions go after you click confirm transaction and before you can view them as pending or confirmed on e.g. etherscan) are getting completely full and overloaded. What happens to transactions that can’t go into the mempool ? They are dropped and get cancelled.

For these reasons there were several occasions where it wasn’t possible to transact on the Ethereum network for several days. As the financial stakes get higher and higher, this is an undesirable situation.

Enter PepChain

PepChain is build upon the Parity codebase with a modified Aura consensus protocol to enable DPOS. The number of validators is liquid and is voted on by the active validators. This allows for bigger blocks and a 5 second block time offering a far more scalable network

Ethereum needs to host thousands of ICO’s DApps and games. PepChain doesn’t have that burden so transaction costs (GAS) can be much cheaper and transaction times much lower.

PepChain will therefore be more suitable for transaction intensive applications because of low-gas and faster confirmations.

You could compare PepChain to for example Poa.network and Gochain but more decentralized in the sense that Poa.network and Gochain do not offer the possibility to own validators for the public whereas PepChain does offer that possibility. People who run validators get block rewards and have the possibility to vote in other validators and earn some predefined amount of their block rewards too. This will ensure much greater decentralization and a more democratic process overall.

We wrote an earlier article in which we describe that process more in-depth on the CryptoPepes medium;

https://medium.com/@cryptopepes/an-introduction-to-the-pep-chain-728962520375

Up until now we have 2 projects that will launch on PepChain that we would like to introduce to you. The first one is a decentralized blockchain game called CryptoPepes (that will start on Ethereum initially) and the second one is an app that is called Airdrop Challenge.

CryptoPepes

CryptoPepes is a game where you can breed, collect and fight digital frogs. All CryptoPepes are ERC721 tokens living on the Ethereum blockchain and are 100% owned by you!

No Pepe is the same due to our unique gene algorithm which mixes genes in a way very similar to humans. Some characteristics are more rare than others so they require careful breeding to get them to show in your Pepe. You can collect, breed, sell and in the near future battle your pepes in epic fights.

You probably know the concept of CryptoPepes from the most popular blockchain game so-far; CryptoKitties. While CryptoKitties was an inspiring example for us with lots of innovation applied to it that we learned from, we think the underlying economy can be improved; there are 50,000 GEN-0’s which doesn’t make them really scarce.

For those who don’t know, generation 0’s are the most valuable asset in CryptoKitties since all other kitties are descendants from them. Some of these Gen 0 kitties have been sold for extraordinary high amounts of money. With CryptoPepes only 1,100 Gen 0 Crypto Pepes will ever exist, so these are much more scarce.

For more information on this project please read this post: https://medium.com/@cryptopepes/please-welcome-cryptopepes-to-the-blockchain-mineable-collectible-breedable-fightable-pepes-896efaaa6bd7

Launch date will be in september.

Airdrop Challenge

Airdrop Challenge is the tool for our (semi) internally developed — yet to be announced — CryptoPepes Airdrop.

The tool will be transformed into a platform named AirdropChallenge.com, for ICO’s and crypto currency startups to boost their social media presence and arrange distribution of their token at the same time. Participants have to complete tasks on a range of social media platforms and custom tasks can be added to it. It integrates well with Telegram and their are lots of possibilities like game integration to make sure people that engage in the Airdrop Challenge actually learn something about the project and become ambassadors instead of only raking in the tokens.

Projects that will launch their project on the PepChain will have 65% discount on the AirdropChallenge fee.

We are also considering a ‘Provably Fair’ system (known from gambling sites) and log all actions of users on the blockchain so there will be a publicly available audit trail for all projects and its challenges.

DAPPB DApp browser

We are working on an internally developed DApp browser, featuring a DAppStore. Next to the CryptoPepes DApp, one of the featured DApps is a wallet that supports a wide range of cryptocurrencies in which each wallet is derived from the same private key phrase.

Imagine generating a key phrase once and then be able to use the same key phrase for all the wallets (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Aeternity, Litecoin etc.) that can be accessed in your DApp browser. In our eyes that would increase the usability of the wallet substantially. There is only 1 private key to backup, it will be a big relieve; much less administration to do.

The DAppStore will also have DApp that will provide critical info to validators. They will be able to vote in other validators and see some statistics on the network and other validators key info.