Penguin FA — Pirl ($PIRL)
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Circulating/Max Supply: 30,900,000( approx) /157,000,000 (approx) (Check current circulating supply at https://poseidon.pirl.io/explorer/)
Mineable ✅
Masternodes ✅
Table of Contents
Overview
Pirl is an Ethereum fork that is trying to create a dApp platform that is more accessible for everyone. Their masternodes will make their platform more stable and scaleable, while also providing decentralized file storage services. This will allow developers to create a truly decentralized app in one convenient place.
Pirl’s ultimate goal is to create an all-in-one platform called Poseidon, a single place where a user can access features such as their payment gateway, peer-to-peer marketplace, exchange, and masternodes. In the words of their community manager Fawkes, Pirl wants “to give you a complete system where you go and you have everything. You have decentralization, you have complete control of your money, you have complete control of your content.”
Masternodes
Pirl has three different types of masternodes. These masternodes use the IPFS protocol to create a decentralized file storage system.
Premium Masternodes require 20,000 PIRL and help secure the blockchain while also providing content and storage services. These masternodes are currently live.
Content Masternodes require 10,000 PIRL and serve as the public file storage system for their dApps and marketplace. This is currently in beta.
Storage Masternodes also require 10,000 PIRL and serve as their private file storage system. This is currently in development.
ASIC Resistance
Like Ethereum, Pirl also uses the Ethash algorithm which is designed to be GPU-friendly and ASIC resistant. This helps to keep the network more decentralized by making it harder for ASIC miners to overpower the average miner and take control of the network.
ASIC resistance hasn’t stopped hardware companies like Bitmain and Canaan Creative from working on and launching Ethereum ASICS though. As more of these new Ethereum ASICs are released, Pirl will have to come up with new solutions in order to remain ASIC resistant.
PirlGuard — 51% Attack Protection
On October 14, 2018, Pirl suffered a 51% attack in which 1,961,500 PIRL was double spent. To prevent this issue from happening again, the Pirl team responded by releasing PirlGuard as well as other security measures on November 21, 2018. PirlGuard penalizes miners who have been mining without connecting to other peers by forcing them to mine penalty blocks. Masternodes will also be used to deploy notary smart contracts on both the Pirl and Ethereum blockchain to make it even harder to perform a 51% attack.
In a 51% attack, a corrupt miner spends the coins and broadcasts it on the public blockchain. At the same time, they mine on their own private blockchain in which the coins have not been recorded as spent. The blockchain follows the rule of “longest chain wins” to determine which version of the blockchain is correct. If the corrupt miner has 51% or more of the network’s hashing power, they can add blocks to their chain faster, create a longer chain, and then force everyone to accept their corrupted version of the blockchain.
Token Utility
Pirl is currently used to incentivize miners and masternode providers, and to fund continued development of the project. The reward from every block of PIRL mined is split between those three parties as determined in the monetary policy. 10,000–20,000 Pirl is required to create a masternode.
Their planned features such as smart contracts, storage services, decentralized marketplace, and video sharing will all use Pirl.
In the future, merchants can easily accept payments in PIRL through their PirlPay payment gateway.
The Poseidon marketplace will protect buyers by allowing the ability to hold PIRL payments in escrow until the seller fulfills the terms of the smart contract.
PirlTube (a video sharing service, NOT a Youtube replacement) will allow creators to monetize their videos through tips or paywalls that require PIRL payments.
Team
The Pirl team does not have very comprehensive profiles for their team on their LinkedIn page. This makes more comprehensive research into their backgrounds a little harder so if no other information is available we will have to go by what they have posted on their Team Page.
Founder and Lead Developer Julien Du Bois boasts 12 years of experience in programming on the Team Page. His LinkedIn page does not reveal where he got this programming experience. He previously worked with cloud application hosting service Hebus. Julien has some experience working on his own businesses but does not seem to have prior experience working on blockchain projects. As of June 15, 2018, he began working on Pirl full time.
Chris Bischoff (no LinkedIn) has 21 years of experience as an IT professional and says he has worked on a big project for the European Central Bank before working on Pirl. It is unclear what this project was and what prior blockchain experience Chris may have had, but he does seem to be one of the most experienced developers on the team.
George Delkos (no LinkedIn) is apparently really good with Unity, contributed to Microsoft’s Kinect, and has over 10 years of experience as a Linux sys admin. No prior blockchain experience is listed, but George is quite active on Pirl’s github.
Alex Trottier has had a year of experience working as a blockchain developer/engineer and previously worked as a full stack developer using Solidity and Golang for Etherparty.
Iskra Nikolova is a relatively new developer with only 2–3 years of experience, but completed a Blockchain Dev Camp course with training in smart contracts, Solidity, and creating dApps on Ethereum.
While Pirl has a lot of developers working on the code, it doesn’t have many listed team members working on their UI. If they want to create an accessible user-friendly platform, they will need some great designers who are focused solely on the user experience. According to their Round Table #15 discussion, Pirl is currently looking for a front end designer and possibly another Javascript developer.
The rest of the Pirl team consists mainly of a lot of community managers, and they aren’t just for show! Pirl’s Discord is quite active and there is usually someone there to answer questions. The weekly roundtable meetings allow anyone to hop on their Discord and ask the team (including the founder/lead dev) questions or give suggestions/feedback. These meetings are recorded, transcribed, and made available on their website or on Youtube. Such great communication and transparency could not be possible without all their community managers. They also have a South Korean community team and one member working on the Japanese community on a trial basis.
Overall, Pirl looks like it has a strong development and community management team. Their prompt response to the 51% attack and subsequent release of PirlGuard shows that they have a very active development team that is capable of coming up with innovative solutions to any problems they may have. Note however that the project had no pre-mine and no ICO. Instead, their development fund comes from their share of the block reward. This means that they do not yet have the funds for all their team members to be working on the project full time, though founder Julien has already made that transition.
Roadmap
Pirl’s roadmap does not have any specific dates listed, but does show that they have already completed important features such as their premium/content masternodes, desktop wallets and block explorers. They also launched the beta of PirlTube, their decentralized video hosting and streaming service in October 2018.
In Round Table #16, founder Julien (masterdubs) states that their Q1 2019 goal is to finish registering Pirl as a blockchain company, then make it easy to convert fiat to Pirl by finishing their Pirl/fiat exchange, then releasing PirlPay. This will enable the average user to easily pay for Pirl’s planned services and features. As of January 2019, Pirl has received approval for incorporating their company and are working on getting a crypto to fiat exchange license.
Other mid-term milestones to look out for should be the completion of PirlTube and the storage masternodes.
Pirl’s ultimate goal of Poseidon, an easily accessible all-in-one decentralized platform, is quite an ambitious one but they have made steady progress so far and are very transparent with their Github updates and weekly Pirl Round Table discussions.
Competition
Ethereum
The project that should need no introduction, Ethereum is the coin that gave us smart contracts and started an ICO craze. Ethereum is practically a standard in blockchain frameworks at this point. Amazon’s recently announced Managed Blockchain service supports only two frameworks — Hyperledger and Ethereum. Pirl has an uphill battle ahead if it wants to replace Ethereum as a development platform. However, Ethereum is not planning to be as all-encompassing as Pirl’s Poseidon platform, so that ease of use may give Pirl the edge it needs to draw new users and developers to it.
Ubiq
Ubiq is an Ethereum fork that focuses more on stability and reliability than innovation. Its aim is to provide a bug-free platform for businesses and enterprises to build serious applications so that they will not have to worry about an experimental new feature breaking some crucial part of their business.
Ubiq recently introduced a new hashing algorithm called Ubqhash which gives Ubiq greater protection against 51% attacks by moving away from the more popular Ethash algorithm (which Pirl currently uses). This gives Ubiq more protection because attackers can no longer easily use hashrate rental services to get the power they need.
Akroma
Akroma is also an Ethereum fork with masternodes, but it plans to provide free oracle functionality to developers who use their platform. Akroma is really looking to be developer-friendly and provide all the capabilities that a decentralized app developer might want. Pirl has a broader plan that focuses on ease of use for everybody involved in the ecosystem, including all users, content owners, and merchants who decide to use their platform.
A more in-depth look at Akroma can be found at: Penguin FA — Akroma ($AKA)
Conclusion
Pirl’s team has been making steady progress so far and their prompt response to the recent 51% attack shows they have a responsive and capable development team. Their strong community team, active Discord, and weekly Round Table discussions mean that it is one of the most transparent cryptocurrency projects.
The team is targeting one of the major problems that is stopping cryptocurrencies and decentralized apps from becoming more widespread — ease of use and accessibility. No matter how fast, secure, or transformative your platform is, it will be hard to get regular people to adopt it if the platform is too hard to use. The one-stop-shop approach of Pirl’s Poseidon platform could be the killer feature that persuades the masses to embrace blockchain technology.
On the other hand, Pirl is working with less funding than other projects with ICOs and premines, so it cannot afford to have all of its team working on the project full-time. Moreover, the team’s planned Poseidon platform has quite a lot of different parts needed. The establishment of a company, which is an important part of their plans, could take up precious time as Pirl tries to set everything up to the liking of the relevant authorities. These are all factors that could potentially allow competitors to overtake Pirl.
This is a very promising project, but as of now the value of PIRL lies mostly in the fact that it can be used for masternodes which give you more PIRL. Hopefully as the team finishes PirlPay and develops the unique features that require PIRL as payment, PIRL will start to have some real use.
Pirl is currently at historically low prices and could be a great buy for those who are convinced by the team and what they have planned. The next potential price catalysts to look out for this project should be the establishment of their company, storage masternodes, exchange, and PirlPay.
Recommended Resources
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