PAI Newsletter 
- April 20, 2020
Hello! Welcome to the third edition of the new PAI Newsletter. We hope you’re enjoying the updates so far. As always, let us know if you have any feedback. PAI Forum is the best way to reach the team and connect with other PAI Coin enthusiasts. If you haven’t already, sign up now.
This week, we’re happy to announce a roadmap to launch PAI Coin’s Hybrid Consensus mechanism. If you’re unfamiliar with PAI Hybrid Consensus, you can read the full proposal here.
PAI Hybrid Consensus: A Roadmap
Phase 1: Core Technology Development
What’s the goal? The goal of Phase 1 is to successfully implement the core technology underlying PAI Coin’s proposed Hybrid Proof-of-Work (PoW) / Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. You can read the technical details of the proposed approach here.
What kind of work is involved? It is purely software development work.
What’s the final deliverable? When Phase 1 is complete, a stable, production-ready codebase implementing PAI Coin Core based on Hybrid PoW/PoS will be available on Project PAI’s GitHub. In fact, the code is already available while work is in progress.
When will this work be done? The target completion date is May 2020.
Phase 2: Testnet Launch
What’s the goal? There are several goals of Phase 2:
- To plan for and simulate the blockchain fork required to switch from the existing PoW protocol to the Hybrid PoW/PoS protocol (see Phase 4).
- To comprehensively test the work done in Phase 1.
- To set the stage for the development and testing of the work planned for Phase 3.
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To get YOUR feedback on the Hybrid protocol.
What kind of work is involved? Phase 2 involves a variety of work spanning such things as systems administration, quality assurance, testing, debugging, coordination, and marketing.
What’s the final deliverable? When Phase 2 is complete, a publicly accessible testnet version of PAI Coin using the Hybrid PoW/PoS protocol will be fully functional. Project PAI will have deployed geographically distributed seed nodes, miners, and stakers to form a mock P2P network in which anyone can participate.
When will this work be done? The target completion date is June 2020.
Phase 3: Transition of Dependent Services
What’s the goal? The PAI ecosystem comprises an array of applications that depend on PAI Coin. Some examples include:
- The PAI Block Explorer at https://paichain.info
- PAI Up Mobile Wallet
- PAI Up Web Wallet
- PAI Coin Pool
- PAI Pass
The goal of Phase 3 is to update and test such applications for compatibility with PAI Coin using the PoW/PoS Hybrid protocol.
What kind of work is involved? Phase 3, like Phase 1, is largely software development work, but spanning a much wider range of programming languages and interdependencies.
What’s the final deliverable? Upon completion of Phase 3, applications and services dependent on PAI Coin, such as those listed above, will have been updated and comprehensively QA’d against the testnet version of PAI Coin with Hybrid PoW/PoS from Phase 2.
When will this work be done? The target completion date is early September 2020.
Phase 4: Mainnet Launch
What’s the goal? Put simply, the goal of Phase 4 is to fork the PAI Blockchain and update PAI Coin to use the proposed Hybrid PoW/PoS consensus mechanism.
What kind of work is involved? Phase 4, being a rerun of Phase 2, involves largely the same type of work.
What’s the final deliverable? Upon completion of Phase 4, the PAI Coin blockchain will have successfully forked at a specified block height. Blocks added to the blockchain after that height must pass the validation criteria defined by the Hybrid PoW/PoS protocol. Mining and staking will be fully publicly available.
When will this work be done? The target completion date is late September 2020.
Beyond Phase 4: Proof of Useful Work
As many of you know, Proof of Useful Work (PoUW) is a PAI Coin inspired research project which aims to “recycle” the energy consumed by cryptocurrency mining. With successful implementation of such a protocol, the process of mining would verify blockchain transactions while simultaneously completing unrelated, but useful, computations. This summary and paper contain more information.
While PoUW specifically optimizes Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus, there is the possibility that PoUW could pair with Proof of Stake, paving the way for a Hybrid PoUW / PoS protocol.
Into 2021 and beyond, Project PAI will focus on this highly ambitious and exciting initiative.
Weekly Updates 
Last week, the team continued working on PAI Coin Pool optimizations, plugging away at PAI Hybrid Consensus, and began an effort to migrate PAI Forum to a new framework.
PAI Coin Pool
Last week, as promised, the team started work on a referral system. 
It works like this:
- As a user of PAI Coin Pool, you will be assigned a unique referral link. If a new user signs up through your link, and then earns mining or staking rewards, you will get a referral reward equal to 10% of what they earned.
- If the user you referred then refers another user through their own referral link, you will also earn 1% of what the second-tier user earns through mining or staking.
We’re also planning sign-up bonuses: 
- Any new users signing up during a specific time period and who stake or mine a certain amount will be airdropped PAI Coin.
- Existing users will also receive a bonus at a later date, provided that they fulfill staking and mining criteria similar to the ones new users will have to fulfill.
Over the next several weeks, the team will continue implementing the referral system and sign-up bonus.
PAI Forum
Last week, the team copied existing forum data to a new staging instance of the Discourse forum. This large data migration to the new Discourse system was a large undertaking. The staging forum is now in final review. Some data, like user passwords, could not be migrated due to security concerns and differences between the underlying platforms. Fortunately – with Discourse being open source software – this will not be an issue going forward.
This week, the team is preparing a launch announcement for the new forum. On the launch day, the old forum will be paused. Users will be automatically directed to the new forum using the Discourse open source platform.
PAI Pass 
Last week, the team completed work on PAI Coin testnet & mainnet code for the PDP2 personal data backup feature. This means that SSO users will be able to test this feature with all new PAI Pass accounts.
This week, the team will be finishing work on PAI Pass’ first production integration: PAI Forum. That’s right, the new forum will have PAI Pass SSO as an option for new and existing users. This release will follow the upgraded forum launch.
PAI Up Web Wallet Available NOW! 
The web-based version of PAI Up is now available at https://wallet.paiup.com ; sign up and create your wallet today! It’s easy to use, and it’s compatible with the 12-word seed phrase from PAI Up Mobile Wallet.
We need your help! 
Hong Kong Testnet Mining 
PAI Coin Pool has opened up a test website based in Hong Kong to test reported PAI Miner connectivity issues. The Hong Kong testnet uses a separate reward pool, and will not have any effect on mainnet mining activity. Find out more about how to participate here: https://www.paiforum.com/post/pai-coin-pool-hk-server-test
Any testnet PAI Coin that you mine in Hong Kong will be converted to mainnet PAI Coin at the conclusion of the testing period.
Questions?
Sound off on PAI Forum 
Thank you for your support!