Every so often, a crypto project goes under the radar for a long time before completely exploding…

Raiblocks (XRB) is perhaps the most impressive example in recent times, having surged from complete obscurity to a $4bn market cap over the last four weeks.

Despite its recent prominence, XRB was actually being distributed way back in April 2017, with early adopters handsomely rewarded for their faith. Following its success, everyone in the crypto space is keen to find the ‘next XRB’, and we think Pascal Coin could be just that!

Pascal has been around for just over a year now. Like XRB, it wasn’t born out of a hyped ICO and therefore hasn’t benefited from a huge marketing budget or the shilling efforts of those who invested early on. Instead, its founders have been focused on building solid tech, knowing that the rest will follow. Pascal has been distributed fairly, with no pre-mine, and the price has slowly been gaining traction in recent weeks.

The drawback

Before we dive into why we think Pascal could be a game-changer for the crypto space, let’s address the obvious issue. Now, the first thing many of our readers will do is hit Google and land on the Pascal Coin website. And make no mistake, you will be bitterly disappointed. The website is awful, the logo looks like something from 1992 and the Pascal wallet is only available on Windows or Linux (although this will be changing soon). We did warn you that the founders were focused on tech! If shiny marketing is what you’re looking for, you’re in the wrong place, I’m afraid.

What you do get, though, is one of the most promising crypto projects in the entire space, with a market cap of under £100m! Those of you who were patient enough to scroll further on the Pascal website will have noticed that it boasts some incredibly impressive features, and in many respects actually looks even more promising than XRB.

Infinite, decentralised scaling

Pascal Coin was the first cryptocurrency to break the 100 transactions per second barrier and, theoretically, its structure gives it infinite scalability. To understand how Pascal Coin achieves this, you have to understand the problems faced by other cryptos. Take Bitcoin, for example, where 1mb blocks currently create a limit of 7 transactions per second. Bigger blocks would seem like an obvious solution, but bigger blocks mean a much larger blockchain, and a larger blockchain means fewer nodes as more people are excluded from participating in the network. Over time, Bitcoin would become more and more centralised, with network power sitting in the hands of those who can afford expensive technology infrastructure.

With Pascal, nodes don’t need to download the entire history of transactions, because its founders have created a neat solution in the form of a ‘safe box’. Simply put, this means that a checkpoint is created after every 100 blocks, and the ‘safe box’ becomes a record of balances, rather than transactions. That means we can all participate in the network by downloading no more than 100 blocks, and blocks can scale to meet increasing demand. This means that Pascal can deliver on all of the use cases that Bitcoin once promised, from micro transactions to IOT connectivity. Importantly, though, it offers all that without a complex, controversial second-layer solution like the Lightning Network.

Free, instantaneous transactions (and more!)

Like XRB, Pascal Coin is completely free to use (well, sort of). When moving Pascal from an exchange, you are likely to incur small fee, but when transacting through your Pascal wallet, the first transaction in every block is completely free. This adds to its scaling potential, while limiting spam on the network, because every second transaction incurs a small fee to discourage attacks.

Another similarity with XRB is that Pascal handles instant transactions, thanks to a double-spend detection system, which means you don’t have to wait for the next block to be mined before the money leaves or enters your wallet. This means that, one day, you will FINALLY be able to pay for your cup of coffee with crypto (which is apparently what everyone is dreaming of!).

Not only does Pascal promise to match XRB for speed and deliver greater scale, the coin also has additional capabilities in its roadmap. Using the Ethereum protocol as a second-layer solution, Pascal devs hope to implement smart contracts in the coming months. Over the long-term, this could give Pascal an edge over the other new kid on the block(chain). Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Simplicity

Getting to grips with the Pascal wallet may take a little while to begin with. The interface isn’t entirely intuitive, and installation can be a nightmare if you’re a Mac user (use WineHQ for an easy life!). However, once you’re up and running, you will realise just how powerful Pascal Coin really is. First of all, users can store and send coins using a short account number, much like you get with a traditional bank account. These are typically six digits long and you link them to your private key. This means you can hold multiple balances on the same private key, and the wallet even allows you to process batch transactions, such as transferring the entire balance of all wallets simultaneously. Best of all, it means that requesting a payment will no longer mean copying and pasting a really long public key!

Is now the time to buy?

We don’t pretend to be expert investors, and certainly wouldn’t give anyone tips on how to use their hard-earned cash. What we will say, is that recent history indicates that Pascal’s time could be coming. Bitcoin is failing to deliver on the vision and, as evidenced by the recent XRB surge, people are looking at alternative projects. Add to that a raft of new features that will be rolled out in the coming months, and Pascal is looking like a very attractive buy. If you missed out on huge XRB gains this last month, this could be your second chance!