Why should I generate/forge BPL tokens?

Andrew Cox
BLOCKPOOL
Published in
4 min readDec 5, 2017

This week I want to touch on something that I get asked quite a lot. This may go into a little more technical depth than my previous posts however I will attempt to keep the technical language to a minimum; you may well get to the end of this post and decide you want to get involved also, so I want you to understand.

Wait a minute, what IS forging … and isn’t it illegal?

Forging FIAT is illegal, that is true. However forging on Blockchain is literally how the whole thing operates.

First of all you’ll need to understand a little about the Blockchain. Simply put the Blockchain is a Chain of Blocks of Transactions, all of which are verified and are built upon every previous Block of Transactions. This is what makes it immutable (and therefore so secure and suitable for financial stuff).

Based on this, when a transaction is created it is added to a Block however it still requires that verification step. A Forger uses their Delegate node to “discover” a unique string with which to verify this transaction and add it onto the Chain. Hence the term Blockchain.

OK… but what benefit is there for me?

You are not going to be arrested for Forging BPL however that is not the only benefit you can gain.

Every time your Delegate Software forges a new unique string (called a Blockhash) you are rewarded with BPL for your trouble. The amount of BPL you earn is directly related to how many coins you have voted to your Delegate. This means that your Delegate is earning compounded interest as each reward is applied immediately at the point of forging and therefore affects the Forging Reward you receive during the next round.

Round? What is that?

As BPL is a “Delegated Proof of Stake” coin we do not operate in the same way as Proof of Work coins. Proof of Work coins require huge amounts of power to crunch supremely complicated equations to “discover” the Blockhash.

BPL works on a simple queuing system that cycles through the top 201 Delegates (sorted by the number of coins your Delegate has; the “Stake” referred to above) and therefore is far cheaper both in terms of your cost and the cost to the environment. The amount of energy expended Forging BTC is staggering; BPL avoids this problem.

This also means that you can calculate your rewards based on your Stake; I’ll cover this calculation in a future update, however it is not all that complicated.

OK, I get all that… but why BPL and Blockpool?

If you have got this far through all that technical language then well done. There’s only a little more jargon to come in the next couple of paragraphs.

Blockpool currently has its BPL currency. You can sign up to be a Forger (also known as a Delegate) immediately and if you want help with this please join us on our Discord, where we will be very happy to help. This is not the end of the story, however.

Blockpool are working very hard as a company to bring out what we call Sidechains. Without explaining exactly what THEY are what this will mean is you will be able to Forge not just for BPL but for a number of Sidechains. Each Sidechain will pay out Forging Rewards as described above. This will massively increase your earning potential while the costs of your infrastructure stay the same.

What an excellent deal that is.

But wait, there’s more!

Not only are we working hard to bring the Sidechains online as soon as possible, and therefore make Forging for BPL even more profitable for you, we have a range of bonuses which Forgers can earn for supporting us through the early stages of our development.

This means that, even if you do not have very many coins to Stake and do not think it’d be worth your while Forging, we will work to make sure that it IS worth your while. We may run competitions which reward the most active Forger on Social Media, or those who manage to sign up the most new Forgers via their referral code. These are only two of the ideas that we have had to encourage and support the community that is helping us to succeed.

So there you have it; if you are interested the join us on Discord for free by clicking this link -> https://discord.gg/wRPZcag and ask a question in the #delegates channel. We’ll be very pleased indeed to see you there and answer any questions you have.

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Andrew Cox
BLOCKPOOL

Andrew is responsible for writing software for Blockpool. He also loves getting involved in the crypto community. And whisky — good whisky…