PAI News šŸ“° - March 22, 2021

News
#1

PAI News :newspaper: - March 22, 2021

51th Edition

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Announcements :speaker:

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:warning: PAI Up 1.4.8 is here! UPDATE TODAY. :warning:

:rotating_light: This fixes a crashing issue related to blocks that have a large number of stake voucher revocations :rotating_light:

You can also download the Android APK version and follow the mobile wallet links on paiup.com

PAI AMA Questions :mag:

The projectā€™s pouw open source repository https://github.com/projectpai/pouw-main-iteration has not submitted relevant code for 8 months. Is this work stalled? Or is there any public development success related to the team? If so, what are the contents and when can they be made public?

As you may know, the PAI Coin blockchain underwent a critical hard fork nearly 6 months ago (October 6, 2020 at Block Height 154,550). This hard fork launched the so-called Hybrid PoW/PoS Consensus Mechanism, making PAI Coin mining publicly accessible for the first time, and introducing a new additional form of validation: staking. During this time, and for several months prior, virtually the entire development team had been (and continues to be) focused on the ongoing success of the Hybrid hard fork, thereby temporarily pausing progress on Proof of Useful Work (PoUW). Hybrid Consensus is the foundation of the PAI Coin protocol, which necessitates that it is fully stable and complete before building additional features, like PoUW, on top of it.

Nonetheless, the team is actively exploring possibilities for the next phase of work for PoUW. To date, PoUW has been totally experimental in nature and worked on in controlled settings. Thus, as a next step, the team may want to present PoUW in a more accessible way by applying it to real-world use cases. One possibility is to launch an alpha-version interactive console that allows users to experiment with the protocol and better understand the impact that PoUW can have.

In any case, we will keep the community apprised of further developments. Please note that we thank you for your continuing interest and welcome your feedback. PoUW is undoubtedly a very exciting and innovative project that has enormous potential.

NFT is trending these days. Do you think this year will be a year when NFT will reach its height? At the same time, PAI is forking BTC, and NFT is based on Ethereumā€™s ERC721 and ERC1155. Whatā€™s Project PAIā€™s plan to enter the market?

Undoubtedly NFT is a very hot topic in the crypto space right now. As for whether or not this is the year that it will peakā€”thatā€™s anyoneā€™s guess, but the vast array of real-world applications that NFT offers certainly seem to bode well for its future.

NFTs are not exclusive to Ethereum, although the ERC721 and ERC1155 standards are great examples of how a NFT can be built in the Ethereum ecosystem. PAI has its own style of NFT ā€“ following the PDP2 data storage mechanism. Catenaart.com is an example of how PDP2 can be used to store NFTs on the PAI Blockchain.

PAI Coin Pool Staking Rewards Summary :chart_with_upwards_trend:

Currently pending stakes :egg:

  • Total staked amount: 58.9 million PAI
  • Total pending rewards to date: 6.5 million PAI
  • Average stake duration: 50.4 weeks

Matured stakes :hatching_chick:

  • Total staked amount: 54.1 million PAI
  • Total rewards: 13.4 million PAI
  • Average stake duration: 11.4 weeks

Promotions :red_gift_envelope:

  • Set up a full node and earn a PAI Coin Pool bonus of 666 PAI! Set up a full node according to these instructions, then email promotions@projectpai.com from the email address associated with your PCP account. In the email, include the IP address or URL of your full node. We will reply with further instructions on how to claim your reward.
  • Create a pre-compiled binary version of paicoind for others to use and get rewarded 10,000 PAI Coin! We want to make it easier for community members to run full nodes and to solo mine and solo stake. One of the ways we can do this is by providing precompiled binaries of the PAI Coin Core software (which comprises paicoind and the paicoin-cli) so that users donā€™t have to compile the software from source.
    • In order to participate, email a link to download your pre-compiled binary (either for Linux, macOS, or Windows) to promotions@projectpai.com. The first three valid entries received for each platform will be eligible for the reward.

The Evolution of a Decentralized Economy

The success of any new creation is a function of many factors and moving parts. Success happens in stages and has overlapping phases, which requires and depends upon the stakeholders to collaborate at every stage. The challenges encountered and forecasted can vary depending upon the structure of the creation, its value proposition and regulation.

As applied to the PAI blockchain, the initial core developers set about contributing code to open source for a network protocol on the lines of bitcoin protocol with some differentiating features such as decentralized storage. The code is completely open source and any developer can utilize it quickly and also contribute back to open source as well. The network by itself is also completely decentralized such that any person is able to contribute computational resources in order to support the network. The open source mining consensus has also been designed in a way to avoid malicious attacks on the network. The APIs available as part of the open source protocol allows any developer to interface from any applications. The developers maintain the open source code and provide support to new developers as well.

Complete decentralization brings challenges such as a lack of any central governing body or leadership. Thus the onus is on the community of users, developers and supporters to move things forward as they deem fit for the improvement of the protocol. The community holds the key to the success of the network protocol. In fact, one could potentially argue and imply from Metcalfeā€™s law that the value of an open source, decentralized network is a function of the role of the community behind it.

An open source protocol is analogous to an operating system (OS). Its adoption will depend upon how users interact with it. This is typically done using application layers (commonly known as apps, which can translate to both web and native mobile apps). A good developer should not only consider the value proposition of the network protocol but also the supporting community behind it, their KPIā€™s, and come up with apps which not just make practical sense but are also sustainable on its own with a viable business and revenue model.

Blockchain as an OS is still in a very early stage of market adoption as part as applications are concerned. It presents several challenges such as high transaction fees, lack of easy to use user interfaces, safety of digital assets and the reason to use digital tokens associated with the underlying blockchain. But every challenge also brings with it early adopter opportunities.

Some reasons that developers should consider using the PAI protocol include but are not limited to:

  • The PAI Protocol is fully decentralized
  • All code is available and open-sourced on GitHub, along with APIs for interacting with the network protocol
  • A community of users in different countries which act as the early adopter for an appropriate app and provides marketing support, thus driving down the cost of user acquisition for the app developer for their app
  • It has a decentralized and distributed storage protocol
  • It has an open source KYC system for identification purposes and single sign-on account management
  • Digital tokens which can optionally be utilized for transactions

Developers are encouraged to take advantage of current market trends in the blockchain space and create apps and interact with the community across the development process, extending to MVP launch and beyond.

Examples of upcoming applications utilizing the PAI protocol include an NFT-based art marketplace which utilizes all the above listed features of the network protocol. This application does the following:

  • Artists can create profiles using single-sign on (SSO) and list their art pieces (in both digital and physical form) for sale
  • All uploaded pieces of art are stored on a distributed and decentralized storage system
  • Collectors/Buyers can create their profiles using SSO and browse through listed artwork
  • Collectors and Buyers can interact with each other using a secure messaging system
  • Collectors can pay for art using digital tokens and/or fiat currency

Developers are encouraged to discuss on paiforum.com with the community about their ideas for new apps. The active community is looking forward to receiving more projects and using them as well.

The Evolution of a Decentralized Economy

The success of any new creation is a function of many factors and moving parts. Success happens in stages and has overlapping phases, which requires and depends upon the stakeholders to collaborate at every stage. The challenges encountered and forecasted can vary depending upon the structure of the creation, its value proposition and regulation.

As applied to the PAI blockchain, the initial core developers set about contributing code to open source for a network protocol on the lines of bitcoin protocol with some differentiating features such as decentralized storage. The code is completely open source and any developer can utilize it quickly and also contribute back to open source as well. The network by itself is also completely decentralized such that any person is able to contribute computational resources in order to support the network. The open source mining consensus has also been designed in a way to avoid malicious attacks on the network. The APIs available as part of the open source protocol allows any developer to interface from any applications. The developers maintain the open source code and provide support to new developers as well.

Complete decentralization brings challenges such as a lack of any central governing body or leadership. Thus the onus is on the community of users, developers and supporters to move things forward as they deem fit for the improvement of the protocol. The community holds the key to the success of the network protocol. In fact, one could potentially argue and imply from Metcalfeā€™s law that the value of an open source, decentralized network is a function of the role of the community behind it.

An open source protocol is analogous to an operating system (OS). Its adoption will depend upon how users interact with it. This is typically done using application layers (commonly known as apps, which can translate to both web and native mobile apps). A good developer should not only consider the value proposition of the network protocol but also the supporting community behind it, their KPIā€™s, and come up with apps which not just make practical sense but are also sustainable on its own with a viable business and revenue model.

Blockchain as an OS is still in a very early stage of market adoption as part as applications are concerned. It presents several challenges such as high transaction fees, lack of easy to use user interfaces, safety of digital assets and the reason to use digital tokens associated with the underlying blockchain. But every challenge also brings with it early adopter opportunities.

Some reasons that developers should consider using the PAI protocol include but are not limited to:

  • The PAI Protocol is fully decentralized
  • All code is available and open-sourced on GitHub, along with APIs for interacting with the network protocol
  • A community of users in different countries which act as the early adopter for an appropriate app and provides marketing support, thus driving down the cost of user acquisition for the app developer for their app
  • It has a decentralized and distributed storage protocol
  • It has an open source KYC system for identification purposes and single sign-on account management
  • Digital tokens which can optionally be utilized for transactions

Developers are encouraged to take advantage of current market trends in the blockchain space and create apps and interact with the community across the development process, extending to MVP launch and beyond.

Examples of upcoming applications utilizing the PAI protocol include an NFT-based art marketplace which utilizes all the above listed features of the network protocol. This application does the following:

  • Artists can create profiles using single-sign on (SSO) and list their art pieces (in both digital and physical form) for sale
  • All uploaded pieces of art are stored on a distributed and decentralized storage system
  • Collectors/Buyers can create their profiles using SSO and browse through listed artwork
  • Collectors and Buyers can interact with each other using a secure messaging system
  • Collectors can pay for art using digital tokens and/or fiat currency

Developers are encouraged to discuss on paiforum.com with the community about their ideas for new apps. The active community is looking forward to receiving more projects and using them as well.

PAI Developer Updates :computer:

Hereā€™s a snapshot :camera: of development work the team has been focused on:

  • [PAI Coin Core] Resolution of issues uncovered during testing of the release candidate for 2.3.0 is ongoing.
  • Recall that the primary goal of this update is to reduce the possibility of chain stalls due to a lack of votes for newly mined blocks. The teamā€™s solution to this comprises two fundamental changes:
    • Vote transactions are prioritized over standard transactions so that votes donā€™t get ā€œburiedā€ in the mempool.
    • If a given newly mined candidate block is still waiting on votes, miners can proceed to mine parallel tips (i.e., equivalent blocks containing a different set of stake vouchers that may be ready to vote immediately), but to be beneficial, other peers (nodes) in the network must be aware of them. To this end, updates were made to ensure that the broadcasting of parallel chain tips is also prioritized.
  • Following the aforementioned vote transaction and chain tip prioritization updates, it has been found that:
    • Newly joined peers may ban existing peers during IBD (Initial Blockchain Download).
      • To address this issue, vote transactions and chain tips are only sent to peers once the two peers are at the same or similar block height.
    • Repetitive transmission of vote transactions may also result in peer banning.
      • To address this, per-peer filtration of votes using an inventory bloom filter was implemented.
  • The 2.3.0 release will be made public once all tests pass. We are eager to make it available to you.
  • [Catena NFT Marketplace]
    • Synchronized messages coming from REST calls and those coming from Websockets
    • Infinite scrolling working for the messages of a thread
    • Resolving an issue where scrolling didnā€™t work if the messages were in a layout where the bar of the scrollbar was at the bottom of the scrollbarā€™s trough (a layout which represents most modern chat apps); it turns out this was a bug in Firefox that was resolved last September (github.com/philipwalton/flexbugs/issues/108)
    • Mobile optimizations to ā€œfitā€ the threads and messages in the same screen
    • Integrating this patch and other bug fixes into Catena Art in the coming week

Questions? Comments? Feedback?

Sound off on PAI Forum! :microphone:

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Thank you for your support! :pray: