The year 2020 will go down as one of the weirdest years of our generation. What started as a normal year filled with optimism took an unpredicted bend. While the global health and economy are yet to completely recover from the infamous pandemic, the crypto space seems to be on a faster recovery track.
Starting off the year in a normal fashion, the pascal coin project has once again lived through another exciting year. Numerous expectations and additions to our road map from the previous year… entering 2020, we set our efforts towards achieving these goals and an overall improvement of the Pascal blockchain technology and realization of our dreams of a perfect blockchain. Every goal requires constant efforts and interactions of unfortunate challenges which tends to drawback these efforts.
In a remarkable year for the pascal project, we’ve channeled efforts towards developing the pascal blockchain and delivering our roadmap while maintaining a stable ecosystem for investors and users of our technology. It’s a brand-new year! Here we bring you a recap of the just ended year.
Mining reward halving: Reducing supply to increase scarcity and drive value.
As a POW coin, the mining process is the major (only) means of generating pascal coin (PASC). As at the month of March, reward for mined blocks stands at 50PASC. However, to reduce inflation and slowdown the rate of supply, the miners' reward for mining was reduced to half the previous value.
On 2nd May, Pascal recorded the 420,480th block mined on its blockchain and completed the block reward halving. Halving? Yikes!, maybe a nightmare for miners, but good for the economy. Just as the saying goes “Create scarcity, drive value”. Pascal coin and its blockchain are parties to this.
Improvements to version 5
We upgraded to version 5 in the last quarter of 2019; the V5 upgrade is one of the most significant upgrades for Pascal blockchain. The upgrade centered on improving most technological features of pascal blockchain and adding new exciting features where possible.
Fast forward to a barely one year later, our developers have continued to work on the version 5. We have improved core aspects of the version 5 to enable a smooth running blockchain with more user-friendly features.
On the February 2020, we released a second update to the version 5 —the V5. 2!
The pascal V5.2 is a very important upgrade of the v5.1 which focuses on improving on the efforts made in V5 and subsequently v5.1 while fixing numerous bugs and adding more exciting features.
To ensure the best experiences while using the pascal blockchain, the version5.2…
- Fixes CryptoLib4Pascal multithreading bug
- Fixes bug caused by bad calculated "more work" blockchain
- Limited NAT to 7 seconds by default
- Fixed invalid "balance" rounded decimals value caused by FPC (daemon or Linux versions)
- Improved on hashlib4pascal library
- Introduces CryptoLib4Pascal usage
- Add other Minor improvements and fixes more bugs
Sequel to the release of V5.2 our developers discovered an "out of memory" bug that has special effect on new Nodes (Fresh nodes) or nodes that had been offline for a significant time. This was fixed using a filememory (TTemporalFileStream) instead of memory to mitigate usage and prevent "out of memory"
We have also fixed some bugs which have been noticed by our users and developers as well. We are in continuous research for new features and also working towards developing these features as we strive to deliver the best technology on the pascal blockchain.
We also released the V5.4, another significant improvement to the Version 5 protocol.
Major improvements added to the pascal blockchain with the V5.4 includes:
• Improved performance when downloading Safebox (Fresh installation)
• The AbstractMem library which allows developers build a PascalCoin version using virtual memory and efficient caching mechanism.
The AbstractMem library is written in Pascal language and use a mix of "memory" and "disc" storage with a cache process so the developer does not need to know where is the data, neither how to store on disc or recover, because library is designated to use same load/save function calls for "on memory" that "on disc".
This allows the developer to access memory intensive data structures with a low memory RAM.
This solves the issue of high memory requirements to run some Pascal blockchain applications and prevents the ‘out of memory’s error, once again making the pascal blockchain even more sleek and flexible.
Administrational changes
Since our genesis block and even before, the Pascal core team have devoted untampered efforts towards the development of the Pascal blockchain and their efforts have led to the development of one of the most technologically advanced blockchain in the crypto space. The core development team isn’t immune to changes however and so many amazing developers have joined the team over time and few leaving due to other personal engagements.
In keeping with this, a couple of changes were made to the core development and management team.
Due to personal reasons and the need to focus on other engagements, Pascal co-founder Albert Molina have handed over the management and development of our main github account to fellow lead developer Herman Schoenfeld. This handover makes Herman Schoenfeld the lead developer of the Pascal blockchain project and the custodian of our github repository, this handover has been concluded smoothly and technological developments have continued in earnest.
We also wish to announce a major change to the core management team and a major change in the management of the project’s treasury and finance and a new custodian of the Pascal development treasury. Via community vote, we have elected a new custodian who will take charge of fund management, distribution and honoring community decisions to ensure that the financial aspect of our development goes on smoothly.
Re-writing Pascal code-base to Golang.
We have commenced the process of re-writing the Pascal blockchain code base to Golang. Originally written in Pascal, developers have proposed the code-base written in the older Pascal programming language be translated to Golang. Re-writing the codebase to a more modern programming language is expected to ease hasten the development of Pascal blockchain.
We are working on all fronts to deliver all proposals and at the right time. In our previous newsletters, we gave insights on how far we have gone with rewriting the Pascal blockchain codebase to Golang. We have not relented one bit on this and have channeled serious efforts towards this. Thanks to our developers, a very tangible percentage of the codebase have already been translated from Pascal to Golang and this exercise continues until we have the whole codebase written in the new language and integrated.
Improvements to RandomHash Protocol
The RandomHash protocol provides GPU and ASIC resistant hashing algorithm, solved the problem of centralized mining and saved the PascalCoin ecosystem from the harsh implications of dual mining and the PascalCoin being mined as a secondary coin.
With the RandomHash 2 released as part of the V5 protocol upgrade, we released of RandomHash2 v2. 0 which comes much improvements of the RandomHash2 and operates at a much faster than the original miner. The RandomHash2 is a very important improvement of the RandomHash to enhance all of its functionality.
Improvements to the Blaise mobile wallet
The BLAISE wallet is the official mobile wallet for the pascal blockchain which allows users perform essential transactions from the comfort of their mobile phones. We are working towards the continuous to development of this application to improve the overall user experience. With the latest update to the BLAISE wallet, V1.1.0. much improvements have been made to the mobile wallet.
The BLAISE wallet V1.1.0 presents the following improvements to the BLAISE wallet:
• Improved QR scanner reliability on some devices
• The Catalan language is now available for your selection!
• User experience improvements.
• Many more performance improvements and bug fixes.
• General user interface improvements
Implementation of PIP-0040 to improve Project governance and financial management system
Community is the backbone of the Pascal project, the community approves every proposals and decisions made, this includes funds distribution and personal employment.
Community management becomes paramount for a project that puts its community first. As regards to this we are preparing for the final stages of voting and decision making on our proposed PIP–0040 which focuses on governance and community management.
Still wondering what the PIP-0040 is all about? Have an extensive read here: https://www.pascalcoin.org/development/pips/pip-0040
The PIP-0040 proposes a strengthening of the present governance structure of Pascal with the aim of bolstering the general workflow of the Pascal ecosystem and community.
The proposed model will introduce an elected Key-Team that will be responsible for counseling, facilitating, and administering community decisions, including decisions related to the management of the Pascal Foundation.
The power of the Key-Team will be strongly limited by direct community votes and a Founder’s Veto on changes to Pascal’s core tech.
We successfully implemented this proposal during the previous year to ensure proper management of the community’s affairs and ensure continued community contribution.
Version 6
Since our upgrade to version 5, we have channeled tangible efforts to improving this version. After four major improvements to the version 5, we are super excited to announce yet another major upgrade. The version 5 is unarguably a very important stepping stone on our journey to developing the best solutions on the Pascal blockchain. We’ve furnished every feature of the version 5 to stability and with the upgrade to version 6 we hope to build even more exciting features on the Pascal blockchain!
The version 6 upgrade is focused majorly on improving the usability of the Pascal blockchain and solving pressing user-experience issues. The version 6 upgrade features improvements to PASA distribution issues and presents a more decentralized and simplified PASA distribution system. The version 6 is a major protocol upgrade which puts Pascal at the forefront of next generation cryptocurrency technology!
Click here for a more in-depth insight
One for the future…
New year, new hopes. We are persistent on achieving the best with pascal coin, this won’t change in the new year. We are working against all odd to give our best to the project and see our efforts flourish. While we can make bold claims on our technology, the coin itself hasn’t been the same on the market. However, pascal is not a speculative project and our focus is on our technology. We hope and work towards an improvement in price, but this won’t deter our commitment to the technology itself. We hope for a better year, we surely will work towards it. As always, we will promptly update our followers and community members.
Prosperous new year!!
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