“The first native multichain system that supports EVM in the world, making large scale blockchain applications possible.”

Token Metrics & Dates

ERC-20? Yes

Yes Token Type: Utility

Utility Presale Dates: TBA

TBA Public Dates: TBA

TBA Public Price: TBA

TBA Presale Price: TBA

TBA Hardcap: $ 25,000,000

25,000,000 Total Supply: 2,100,000,000

2,100,000,000 (%) Supply Sold: 35%

35% Token Distribution: 35% investors, 25% team/early contributors, 25% community building, 15% POS mining

35% investors, 25% team/early contributors, 25% community building, 15% POS mining Token Allocation: 65% R&D/team, 20% marketing, 10% misc ops, 5% legal/advisors

65% R&D/team, 20% marketing, 10% misc ops, 5% legal/advisors Founder Token Lockup: Yes but unsure how and for how long

Overall Score - see spreadsheet

What do they do

The team at Pchain are creating the next generation multichain blockchain that supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) by using a POS consensus based mechanism. What does this mean? Let’s first start with understanding the current state of the blockchain ecosystem. Large scale decentralized applications cannot live in our current environment because scalability is the major hurdle. There are still a few years left in developing this young, new emerging asset class that is blockchain tech. Compare it with the underlying protocols governing the internet such as TCP/IP. It took many years of infrastructure development to support today’s giant apps such as Facebook. So relating it to the internet/web emergence of the 90’s, I feel it will take a few more years to develop the protocols necessary for building large dApps.

Current chains cannot possibly process the amount of Tps necessary in running a FB type app-which would require approx 175,000 tps. To put it into perspective, Ethereum averages 13 transactions per second (tps). There are quite a few projects with few solutions to this problem. Examples include sharding(zilliqa), cross-chain interoperability(polkadot), and side chains(RSK). But none seek to combine all of the above elements into one chain alongside EVM integration, until now, introduce Pchain.

Pchain is a new system for native support for multichain applications, making it possible for large scale applications based on smart contracts. However, there are problems facing smart contract design and implementation such as secure oracles, insufficient support for large scale transactions, external data compatibility problems, and dApps upgrade limitations. Pchain plans on using their designed Smart Data oracle based off Knowledge Graph to help guarantee the validity and authenticity of outside data. Smart contracts are executed based off the data it receives from oracles. To illustrate, you only get out what you put in-garbage in=garbage out. Oracles can be corrupted and fed garbage data in order to sku smart contract functions. Based on Knowledge Graph, Pchains new oracle mechanism, an endogenous W3C-compliant Smart Data seeks to provide validity and authenticity back to outside chain communication.

SWOT Analysis/Competition

Strength: The team wants a public chain with an open sourced code. Now just waiting for testnet to be released so that we can view its code. Based on Knowledge Graph tech, Pchain plans to merge external data with the use of their “Smart Data oracle” in order to grab unadulterated real-world information to invoke smart contracts is a big deal. Combine that with the ability to upgrade smart contracts, then you have a powerful platform for which Smart Contract will thrive. Pchain will also have support for dApps being built on chain in the future. There will not be one chain to rule them all, so interoperability will be a huge focal point in the coming years. Pchain can use non-native currencies to invoke smart contracts, not just in its native PCH(PCH is the native token). Currently, Pchain will use BCH and EVM, with more public chains planned in the future. I am backing this team because of in fact, their team. A very strong team headed by Dr. Cao Feng(see team description). The website lists an array of partnerships but I have not been able to validate all partnerships and the extent of those marriages have yet been determined. It has been released that 3 notable international projects set to launch on their platform, but which ones? Depending on the project size and current stage of development, I feel the ideal hardcap is 15 to 25 M. So their 25M hardcap sits well with me. I find it ludacris many ICO’s with mediocre teams, terrible business model, and no partnerships/clients are asking for 50 or more million. Sooner or later investors will wisen up.

Weakness: There are a few weaknesses that I would consider redflags at this point. Most notably, being a White Paper project — a research project essentially. There has only been a handful of projects that I have ever supported without a prototype and the reason I backed those MVP’less projects were because they all had a very strong team, idea, and partnerships. If I believe in their team, idea, scope and its network, then I am willing to risk a medium size bag as an early investor. The roadmap is short and vague which i also do not like. I would like to see past achievements added alongside a more detailed roadmap with future target dates. I would classify their weak marketing presence as a negative as well. I am not a fan that only 35% of the total supply (2.1 b) PCH will be sold to investors. Depending on the utility of the token, generally 50% tokens sold to investors would be indicative of solid token metrics. 35% is on the low end.

Opportunities: Since there hasn’t been much effort put into marketing at this stage in development, they definitely have a strong opportunity to increase their brand awareness, especially to western countries. Increase hype with increased PR. In order for Pchain to thrive, there will need to be more partnerships with blockchains other than Ethereum and BCH. The team has plans to operate on several chains so in order to gain widespread adoption, they would need to partner up with many blockchains.

Threats: There is already a high level of competition from established projects. Considering they are essentially a WP project at the moment, Pchain has much work to do. Add China’s less than favorable view of cryptocurrency with its constant inflood of restrictions, bans and FUD, it may be hard to gain traction if additional regulation is added. But don’t forget Pchains connection to ChinaLedger with its ties to the Chinese Government. So it will be interesting how future events unfold.

Competition/comparison: There are no direct competitors in that they are trying to solve the scalability with Ethereum smart contract (smart data) integration. However, there are quite a few of cross-chain interoperability projects that are much further in development such as Wanchain, Ark, Polkadot, cosmos, block collider. Competition is fierce to say the least.

Centralized/Decentralized: Pchain wants to be a decentralized blockchain. But I have a question, how to ensure that the nodes on a single derivative chain collude with each other? Therefore, Pchain considers the introduction of reward-penalty function, and the nodes on the single derivation chain can be balanced as far as possible to avoid centralization.

Open Source: They plan to publish their code in Github when the Testnet is ready sometime in April 2018.

Team/Advisors

Dr. Feng, also known as the “godfather of chinese blockchain” previously co-founded ChinaLedger which is a leading open-source blockchain network of 11 chinese exchanges. OpenLedger is amidst partnerships with Chinese government projects as well. Pchains ties with ChinaLedger seems to indicate future collaboration with the CEO’s immense network at his disposal. Dr. Feng is the first inventor of the first international blockchain patent from China. Founded several blockchain startups and became quite successful at IBM where he won IBM Global Technical Achievement Award 3 times. Published 22 papers in the ACM/IEEE Top Conference and 30+ international patents. Dr. Kai Zheng, a PhD in computer science with over 100 publications in technical journals. He was the recipient of the Australian Discovery Early Career Research Award in 2013 and Best Paper Award of International Conference on Data Engineering (2015). There are many more well known and awarded persons on the Pchain team. Vast majority of the team members are very accomplished which leads me to believe that they are capable of making large-scale applications possible.

Partnerships/Investors

Partnerships: There appears to be many notable partnerships as well as 3 well-known international application with plans to launch on Pchain. Partnerships in the pipeline for 11 chinese exchange consortiums.

Investors: I am not aware of notable investors at this time.

Community

Their telegram and twitter are still flying under the radar, at the time of this article. However, today gained almost 1,000 new members in telegram as reported by telegram tracker. Seems to suggest that this little known chinese project is heading into the limelight. Historically speaking, chinese projects have always lacked marketing, especially with western countries. Their admins are fairly active on telegram answering most but not all questions. I’ve tried repeatedly in getting my questions answered from various admins, but to no avail. Pchain has uploaded initial commits but they were done 2 months ago. I cannot comment much onto the quality of their code as it looks like a clone of Ethermint, but that’s not an issue considering Wanchain and POA are also clones.

Roadmap/Progress

Roadmap: They are severely lacking when it comes to providing detailed information on milestones reached, progress and future targets.

Progress: They do not have a working prototype but the team has just finished the 1st integration of 3 basic features, 1) New incentive mechanism with native PCH token, 2)Dynamic validator, and 3)Validator rewarding with PCH. The MVP test run is stable to achieve consensus. And we will integrate their new high efficient consensus algorithm in the next round. Plans to have a MVP by April 2018.

Positive Takeaways

-Cross-chain interoperability with EVM integration

-POS based using multi-level sharding similar to Zilliqa

-Based on Knowledge Graph, Smart Data oracle for securely communicating with external data points outside of the blockchain

-Many Partnerships as well as 3 notable projects set to launch on Pchain

-An all-star team headed by Dr. Cao Feng

Negative Takeaways

-Currently not much hype built from marketing/promotions

-No working testnet til April ’18 and mainnet expected in 1 year

-Vague unclear Roadmap

-No mention of desired or expected Transactions per second (tps). This is kind of important considering their mission is to scale large dApps.

Summary

I do not like projects doing an ICO with only a White Paper therefore Pchain did not score well on my Spreadsheet mainly due to the Prototype scoring column — which is weighted quite high. I normally would pass in a heartbeat but compare historically the returns of similar projects, such as ICON, Zilliqa (even Wanchain) coupled with the scope of the project and the team behind it, i feel fairly comfortable making a medium size investment. Now assuming the team can publish a more detailed roadmap with past accomplishments, and actually achieve the roadmap, produce a prototype with a high verified tps, alongside increased marketing and chain partnerships. Then I would most certainly buy a large bag for the long term hold. If the team does increase hype through marketing awareness, then it could be a nice short term bet as well.

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