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Richard Heart has been on fire this holiday season with his live streams and interviews releasing a torrent of information detailing what’s to come for PulseChain. From sacrificing, to PLS tokens, testnets, Decentralised exchanges, forks and Liquidity Pool tokens – it’s reasonable to say many who are just tuning in might be a little overwhelmed in trying to keep up. So let’s join the dots

What is PulseChain?

Paraphrasing gitlab/pulschaincom –

PulseChain is a stateful fork of Ethereum running Proof of Staked Authority consensus system with the stated goals of increased performance and significantly reduced fees. Copies of all Ethereum contracts, tokens, and user accounts at time of fork will exist in the PulseChain.

That is, exact copies of all smart contracts, ERC-20 tokens, ERC-721 NFTs, and user accounts will exist on the PulseChain network. If you’d like to go into the full story behind PulseChain and its journey so far you can see my previous article

The PulseChain Journey

The image below summarises the PulseChain journey from initial sacrifice phase through to, what I’ve termed, the “3 Epochs” to represent 3 phases once it is live. We will go through each section in some detail.

PulseChain Sacrifice (August 2021)

The sacrifice phase for PulseChain involved the option for people to send their crypto to an address as an expression of support for a cause (freedom of speech) and in return receive at some stage in the future a valueless token. “How many tokens?” is the obvious question. This followed a rate, starting at 10000:1 which became 5% worse each day after the first 5 days. You can still sacrifice now to receive PLS on launch, however at the time of writing this article you’d be over 2000x worse off than day 1 (i.e. you’d get about 5PLS for a dollar).

Testnet V1 (Late September 2021)

The launch of PulseChain Testnet was a key milestone demonstrating some first glimpses at what PulseChain would look like. Gitlab repositories were updated accordingly, users could connect with Metamask as well as view the block explorer https://scan.pulsechain.com/ and view blocks being processed every 3 seconds or so.

TestNet V2 (Early December 2021)

TestNet V2 offered more key capabilities including:

• viewing different tokens (eg HEX)
• a TPLS Faucet – an address that sends test PLS to your test MetaMask wallet
• Uniswap equivalent for swapping PRC20s (to be covered further below)
• staking PLS and voting for Validators

PulseX Sacrifice (Late December 2021)

We know what “sacrifice” means as we went over it earlier. Richard has confirmed the sacrifice process for PLSX will be almost the same as it was for PLS with some minor “improvements” in that it will have a longer initial period with a maximum rate 10000:1 as well as a slower worsening rate of exchange. It will also offer a different cause to sacrifice to – “freedom of assembly”.

But hold on, what actually is PulseX?

PulseX is to PulseChain what Uniswap is to Ethereum. That is, it’s a Decentralised Exchange (DEX) enabling you to swap one token for another without a trusted third party (i.e. using smart contracts). It is a “fork” that takes the best characteristics from existing Ethereum DEX’s and Decentralised finance Defi apps (Uniswap, Pancakeswap and YAM). Just as the UNI token accompanies Uniswap DEX, so does PLSX do the same for the PulseX DEX.

PulseX takes attributes from existing DEXs.

Interestingly, PulseX will have copies (PRC20s) of practically all token pairings that currently exist on the Ethereum DEX’s (eg Uniswap, Pancakeswap) with the added benefit that that each pairs liquidity (i.e. total number of tokens) will be sourced through the removal of those very tokens from the other copied DEX’s liquidity into PulseX.

Therefore, PulseX will be the most liquid Automated Market Maker (AMM) not only on PulseChain, but possibly in the whole crypto space in terms of variety and depth of tokens.

Ok, here’s where things get super interesting – PulseChain Go LIVE (looking like late February 2022 according to PulseX.info) – and you can refer to my previous article that goes through the Minimum Viable Product in terms of what functionality and capability will be available.

Viewing Richard’s streams and tweets over the last few days has painted the picture, for me anyway, of a Big Bang. That is, we are about to witness the birth of a new chain and with it live through 3 epochs of its existence – sounds dramatic hey?

1^st Epoch: PulseX (decentralised exchange) Duration: 1-2days?

With PulseChain live the first phase is to arm PulseX with maximum liquidity as explained above. This will be carried out by an Automated Market Maker fixer bot. As PLS is the ETH equivalent on this chain but with a much higher token supply (10000:1) the bot will mint enough PLS to correct the ratios. According to PulseChain.com this means about 2.5% of supply will be minted. Importantly any ETH holders on Ethereum will only receive 1, yes 1 PLS for each ETH – so they will be massively diluted and will need to exchange post go live to receive equivalent value/number of PLS of they wish to pursue a competitive DEX. With PulseX in place and the chain live we enter the next epoch – Walled Garden.

2^_nd Epoch: Walled Garden (a closed ecosystem) Duration: 1-2 Days?

This phase will see the capability and functionality outlined in TestNetV2 (with the PLS faucet the obvious exception) become available for all who hold PLS, PLSX or any PRC20 tokens. They will have the ability to do the following within a closed ecosystem:

• Transact
• Trade
• Stake
• Deposit tokens to Liquidity Pools
• Yield farm

That is, there will be no available connection (Bridge) to the Ethereum network.

This is where price discovery will begin and HEX could likely play a significant role in that it will have a fully functional front end. Hexicans will gravitate to low fees enabling much more flexibility when it comes to staking strategies, for instance.

Some pairs on PulseX to expect are: PLS:HEX, PLS:PLSX, HEX:PLSX along with many other PRC20 combinations. (Note: (I believe the PRC20 tickers keep their Ethereum naming convention and later any tokens transferred from the Ethereum chain have the prefix “e” eg eSHIB).

Liquidity Pools and Yield Generation

Perhaps the most popular initial use-case on PulseChain is for users to generate yield accumulated through fees for providing liquidity. That is, you deposit a pair of PRC20 tokens into PulseX providing liquidity and receive a percentage of the fee charged every time someone swaps one token for another. Richard has also confirmed the added bonus of a new token (not named as yet) to be granted to liquidity providers on top of the received percentage of fees. This new token can be deposited to a yield farm as well as become the reward token for potential future pairs governed by PLSX holders who may vote through a DAO.

Fees

For each trade on PulseX a 0.29% fee is paid. The table below provides a summary:

It must be stated, a great incentive for users is the simple fact they receive half of their liquidity – the PRC20 copies of ERC20 tokens – for free once PulseChain is live. So they are half way to generating the fees above if the decide to bridge over their ERC20s – which brings us to the final epoch – a New Order.

3^rd Epoch: New Order (a new beginning) Duration: Unlimited

The final phase sees the bridge from Ethereum become active, meaning all the functionality described above is available along with the ability to wrap ERC20 tokens and send them to and from PulseChain. As per PulseChain.com (noting the naming convention may not be finalised) the Bridge operates as follows:

• ETH on PulseChain: You can send ETH to the PulseBridge contract on ETH which locks it and issues pETH (pulseETH) on PulseChain at a 1:1 ratio.

• PLS on Ethereum: You can send PLS to the ETHBridge contract on PulseChain which locks it and issues ePLS (ethPulse) on the Ethereum network 1:1.

So users will be able fund other side of their liquidity pair and enter that into the PulseX Liquidity pool to earn fees, the LP token and yield farm.

Concerns

As with any project launch there are always possibilities for bugs – and while the chances are quite small given the underlying code is extremely similar to Ethereum, one should not completely ignore this risk when considering transacting on it. That said, if Richard Heart’s HEX token is anything to go by then the risk is probably a lot lower than competing chains. I covered some other concerns in my previous article on PulseChain if you would like to look further.

Conclusion

Needless to say, if all of the above functions with minimal issues to build a thriving ecosystem, then it will only be a matter of time before many other projects make the switch from Ethereum to PulseChain unlocking limitless possibilities. PulseChain can certainly be the new beginning so many communities in the crypto space have been looking for.

^{If you enjoy my content and would like to help keep the lights on, you can throw me a few Sats and enter an amount in USD below to pay with a Lightning transaction,
Thanks!}

When it comes to shopping – and let’s face it, these last few years have been all about online shopping – we all want to maximise our dollar value. Healthy competition in the market place offers many incentives to users to forgo their time and/or personal details to receive a discount. This could be in the form of signing up to a program, promoting products, entering competitions, promo codes or registration to receive “cash back”. The discounts are wide and varied, from elaborate tiered store credits to a simple percentage discount at specific stores. Shoppers are also bombarded with emails, DMs and advertisements as part of such “deals” – sometimes for the better, in helping one stay across latest products or services – but more so at the cost of personal data often being shared with an ever-growing syndicate of third parties.

What if all of the above could be replaced simply by paying in a particular currency and receiving a meaningful discount? That is, no signing up, no sharing of personal information, no spam and no elaborate rules on when and how to spend store credit? This is actually a trend taking hold in front of our very eyes – for those who decide to see. Which currency you ask?

Bitcoin (₿).

Hang with me for a minute. I’m not going to take you through any technical, philosophical nor complicated explanations of what Bitcoin is – that’s all readily available with a simple google. You may not even be interested in Bitcoin as an investment at all – which is absolutely fine.

I’m just going to show you in 4 easy steps how to be ahead and get shopping discounts 🙂

Once completed, you will be able to pay for products and services instantly in Bitcoin through Lightning Payments. You can think of Lightning Payments as the same as the “tap and go” experience – and there are a growing number of businesses offering this payment method. In fact did you know Bitcoin is legal tender in the nation of El Salvador with millions of people holding the digital currency and starting to transact via Lightning payments?

Once you learn the basic steps, repeating it will be even more straightforward. I will now take you through a hands-on approach where on completion, if you so choose, you can send me a 1 cent transaction to see how easy and instantly it works.

Two points of caution before we start:

1. This process is intended for small to medium, ad-hoc spending. You can think if this conceptually as the cash in your wallet – for safety reasons and in case you lose it – you never walk around holding too much for too long.

2. It is also not intended for converting significant amounts of dollars and holding the bitcoin long term on a third party platform (i.e. a bitcoin exchange site). This becomes a whole other topic on securing your bitcoin which is not part of this article.

Shopping Discount Example: From Dollars to Bitcoin to Lightning Payment

Imagine you can receive 20% off a $50 item by paying $40 with a Bitcoin Lightning payment.

The image below is a high-level, end-to-end flow we will go through in detail.

_{(Note: The figures you will see on the screenshots to follow are not exact for security reasons, however a final summary at the end provides accurate overall figures).}

Step 1 – Get Bitcoin

Unless someone is willing to give you some, generally you will need to do the following:

• Sign up at a Bitcoin exchange website,
• Link your bank account (for depositing and withdrawing cash) and;
• Send funds through (Debit/Credit Card/Bpay etc) to be converted to Bitcoin.

Sign Up

The sign up process might feel a bit clunky as you will need to verify your identity (eg upload an image of your passport or driver’s licence and then have it compared to a selfie). ID verification is usually completed within 10 minutes.

There are many international and local Bitcoin exchanges you can choose from. Personally, I’ve used Coinjar for a number of years with no issues. That said, do your own research, Google and ask around to see what works for you (in fact if you are based in the US you may be able to use Strike which looks to make the process below even more streamlined).

Before your first cash deposit to the exchange be aware there may be up to a 1% fee for buying Bitcoin (this may be considered expensive by today’s standards, so you may find cheaper options – noting there will always be a balancing act between convenience, quality and price.). Also note the “Buy” bitcoin price is higher than the “Sell” bitcoin price, so if you mistakenly convert into bitcoin and decide to convert back you will see a noticeable loss, depending on the Exchange.

Your First Cash Deposit to convert to Bitcoin

The time for your first deposit to appear in your Exchange Cash Account can be instant with debit/credit card or take up to 1 business day (e.g. with BPay, PayID, Faster Payments). You should purchase $5-$10 more to account for some fees in the process (generally under $5 total). Once you have made your purchase you will see your Bitcoin Balance. For this example, I converted $50 into 0.000718 Bitcoin. Note: After you have gone through this process once, future deposits and bitcoin purchases can be carried out in a matter of minutes.

Bitcoin appears in “Everyday Bitcoin” Account

Now it’s time to send this Bitcoin to your Lightning Wallet.

Step 2 – Download a Lightning Wallet

There are a number Lightning Wallets available – essentially mobile phone apps – you can store bitcoin in. For the purposes of ease, my suggestion would be to use “Wallet of Satoshi” (WoS) – available on both Android and Apple phones.

Once you have installed the app, you will need to think of it as managing two “accounts”. The first is an “On-Chain” account – you can consider it as an equivalent to a Deposit or Savings Account.

Secondly, your “Lightning” account – which behaves as your day-to-day transactional account.

You can see both account types when you click the “Receive” button when you first open the app.

Wallet of Satoshi (WoS) app – On-Chain Account Receive Address

Wallet of Satoshi (WoS) app – Lightning Account Receive Address

There is only one transaction list combining both “accounts”. Swipe up on the home screen to see the list and click on a transaction for more details. Example below (obviously you won’t have any transactions just yet).

^{Hint: You should also register an email address with WoS by clicking on the three dots “…” in the top right corner of the app. This will ensure you can recover the app and funds in it if you need to reinstall it on any device.}

Ok let’s get your Lightning Wallet loaded.

Step 3 – Load up your lightning Wallet

Unless someone is willing to send you a lightning transaction directly or you have a lightning balance on another device, when starting from zero, you will usually need to load up with an On-Chain transaction (i.e. like Depositing to your Savings/Debit account). This means sending the bitcoin in your Exchange Bitcoin Account to your Lightning On-Chain Account.

To do this:

1. Go to your Wallet of Satoshi app and select “Receive” and then “On-Chain”.

Fees are incurred here so be prepared – you won’t receive the full amount of bitcoin sitting in your exchange wallet if you choose to transfer all of it.

Fees to be noted:

• Coinjar Exchange withdrawal/network fee – a few dollars (normally ranges are from under a dollar to about $5 max and is independent of how much you are transferring)

• 0.3% of the value you are transferring charged by Wallet of Satoshi on receipt of the bitcoin deposit

2. Copy the QR code from WoS. This is your deposit address (and it changes for each transaction).

Now in your Exchange Bitcoin Account you should see an option to “withdraw” or “send” bitcoin. There should be a “to” address/recipient. Paste the deposit address there and click next.

Enter the amount you wish to withdraw (i.e. send to your wallet of Satoshi “On-Chain” Account) and select “Next”. Below, I entered $45.00 AUD which brought me to the “Review and send” screen to check the amount and fee (of about $2.80 AUD). I hit “confirm” to send the bitcoin.

Confirming amounts

Send complete

The payment will be on its way within a few minutes and you will see your deposit appear in the transaction listing in your Wallet of Satoshi app shortly afterwards. It may take a few more minutes until the app confirms the transaction is complete.

Step 4 – Instant Pay

Once the transaction is confirmed, you will now notice a balance denominated in “sats” – which may sound strange. Underneath that however you will see the dollar amount. There are 100 million “Satoshi” (Sats for short) in 1 Bitcoin. So the 0.00056 bitcoin I sent is now denominated as 55,942 Sats (the difference is about $0.15 AUD in fees).

In this example I will pay $40 AUD ($29.55 USD) via a Lightning payment to my Hasoforsoundmoney.com site to simulate the payment for the product in our initial example. To do this, I click the “Pay with BTCPAY” button below which generates an invoice/QR code to be paid.

Now, in your Lightning wallet all you need to do is select the “Send” button to enable your phone’s camera to scan the invoice/QR Code and then hit “pay”. If you are unable to scan you can select the paste icon while the camera is enabled (after copying it from the store site). If you are shopping on the same device as your WoS app is on, then you can press the “Open in wallet” button to skip to your wallet’s pay screen.

After Scanning the QR code WoS automatically shows you the amount to be paid.

In just a few seconds you will see the invoice change to a green tick to confirm the payment went through. You will also see the successful transaction in your Lightning wallet.

Notice the transaction fee of 6 Satoshi (48305 – 48299) or about $0.0002 AUD

That’s it.

Learnings and Conclusion

Here is a summary of the Fees and Total Saving for the complete process:

The outcome of our walkthrough is a 13% saving on an originally 20% discounted item priced at $50. The reason for the hypothetical and significant discount was to incentivise the use of Lightning Payments so the online store can receive Bitcoin. This is a trend that is already starting to take place. The most expensive fee in the process was when we sent through the On-Chain deposit from the Coinjar Exchange to our Lightning Wallet (Wallet of Satoshi), which was $2.79 AUD. This fee can be greatly reduced as a percentage of items purchased. That is, 1 On-Chain transaction could be used for multiple Lightning Payments (i.e. deposit more Bitcoin in your lightning wallet in readiness for future spending). In this example we have only carried out a single Lightning Payment. Finally, it is worth noting many credit cards charge fees generally ranging from 1% to 2%, which is another deciding factor for both consumer and merchant when considering adopting Lightning payments.

Recap

So as a quick summary the steps are:

1. Get Bitcoin

Sign up at an exchange and convert $’s to Bitcoin (cost may be up to 1% in fees)

2 & 3. Install and Load up your Lightning Wallet

Download Wallet of Satoshi and hit “receive” for the On-Chain account, copy the address/QR code and paste it in your exchange withdraw/send screen and send it through (takes 10-15mins for verification and may cost a few dollars in fees).

4. Spend away

Choose “Send” and then “Lightning” to send by either scanning or pasting the address from the invoice of the product/service you want to buy and hit “pay”. If you are shopping on the same device as your WoS, then you can press the “Open in wallet” button to skip to your wallet’s pay screen without scanning the QR code/address.

If you have come this far without actually making a payment, you might want to do complete the walkthrough by sending me a small 1c transaction (about 15-30 sats at the time of writing). Enter an amount in USD below to make your very first Lightning payment 🙂

You Can Start Getting a Discount Using Lightning Now

If you are looking for somewhere spend your Bitcoin through Lightning, you can check out Lightning Bazaar. They offer over 20% off for a few items (mainly for Australian locals).

For almost everything else there is Bitrefill. They offer 1%-5% in rewards (in Satoshi) when you purchase from a range of over 1600 online gift cards spanning 170 countries. Simply choose the gift card and enter the amount of funds you wish to add to it, select to pay with Lightning and receive your code for use.

Happy Lightning spending and congratulations – you are now ahead of the curve!

What do you think?

Turned out to be an interesting social experiment. I thought I’d share a rational argument for Sound Money with the Dan Carlin Reddit group – whose members should be renowned as open-minded and able to discuss nuance etc. I didn’t mention the “B” word mind you – I figured that may be too much to chew. It obviously didn’t go down very well, so I sought some reassurance in the Bitcoin sub – and well – see for yourself the stark contrast in reception

_{Donations Welcome: If you enjoy my content and would like to help keep the lights on, you can throw me a few Sats and enter an amount in USD below to pay with a Lightning transaction, thanks!}

Full talk here —> Simon Dixon’s Public Commitment Day 81 talk “Surviving a #Bitcoin crash”

Donations Welcome

(Enter an amount in USD and you can pay with a Bitcoin Lightning transaction)