PChain- Fast Cross-Chain with Knowledge Graph

My TL;DR: A blockchain that runs Ethereum Virtual Machine, uses multiple side-chains and transaction sharding for scaling, allows cross-chain (ERC20, BCH, others to be added) smart contract invocation and uses Knowledge Graph tech to derive intelligence from data on the chain and outside (via Oracles) data.

A revolution was started with the creation of Bitcoin and later on Ethereum. Building on that momentum, a number of projects have come that aim to make them better or even be better themselves. Whether it’s making Ethereum faster, giving Bitcoin smart contract capabilities, or linking them and other blockchains together, we’re seeing more and more each day. Pchain adds itself to the list by proposing to do all of the above in one go.

They claim to be able to have smart contracts invoked for non-native tokens – BCH and ERC20 compatible are mentioned by name, others to be added. This is achievable by Pchain nodes running an EVM machine and connecting to other chains via a provided toolkit. There will be two types of nodes: regular ones that do computation, and qualified nodes that also do governance (requires staking of their PCH token and approved membership of their Governance Group). Regular nodes get split into distributed execution groups, the results of which are consolidated and verified by the governance group and then broadcast to the entire network.

As smart contracts or dApps are deployed on Pchain, multiple side-chains will be created in addition to the main chain, which will record data related to the specific smart contract or dApp. This will allow Pchain to scale and avoid hungry dApps from crushing overall performance (hello, Kitties!), and also generally improve performance via transaction-level sharding with a PoS consensus mechanism.

Knowledge Graph means intelligence derived from a list of things, their type, properties and how they are linked. PChain uses an Oracle mechanism based on its Knowledge Graph module to integrate blockchain data and external data as Smart Data, which can be used by AI to generate some interesting use cases for forecasting markets, social networks, digital identities and so on.

The team is led by a prominent figure in the Chinese blockchain space, who also founded ChinaLedger – an influential Chinese blockchain alliance with direct ties to the government and a number of local commodities exchanges, and a partner of Pchain. This could lead to very fast adoption of Pchain in China, as ChinaLedger focuses on coming up with blockchain standards fitting the unique Chinese regulatory system.

There are a number of things I don’t like about the project. First, it’s at whitepaper stage, the release of which is also the first step on the roadmap, which mentions mainnet release one year from now, and important developments even later on. The available code shows an Ethermint fork and not much else, with an April release promising to show more. I can’t find anything on the blockchain architect, other than an empty LinkedIn account that mentions “Wanchain Shanghai”, probably a coincidence of name with the Wanchain project, to which the person is not linked.

There is some hype around the project, but nothing big yet. They sell 35% of the tokens for 50k ETH or roughly $20mn, 25% are reserved for the team, 25% for adoption and 15% for POS rewards. The points I don’t like make me skeptical about the project at this point, but when thinking about Matrix, another Chinese whitepaper project with a strong team that’s doing well even in this market, I feel strong FOMO.

https://pchain.org

You can find more of their reviews on the Telegram Channel @TL;DR ICOs and on Twitter at @TLDRICOs

DISCLAIMER:

Please be aware this is not financial advice. You are responsible for your trading and investing decisions. It is highly recommended that you do your own research before investing in anything.