Not too long ago I covered PIVX on my youtube channel because I have made it no secret that I am a huge fan of their team, their vision, and the entire community. I wanted to share my original research on the project and also throw in some recent updates that I think are going to make 2018 a great year for their project. Let's get started.
What is PIVX
It is a fork of DASH and sometimes referred to as “Dash 2.0” but let me clarify it is not a direct DASH clone. It runs on a newer bitcoin base, and has different algorithms that set it apart from DASH. PIVX is a community-centric cryptocurrency with a focus on decentralization, privacy, and real-world use.
PIVX was originally launched under the name Darknet (DNET) in December of 2016, It was re-branded to PIVX on January 2017 so it is a relatively young project. It is a proof of stake coin which means you can hold it in your wallet and receive rewards, and there are also rewards for running a masternode.
PIVX is a open source crypto currency that focuses on private transactions, meaning it sole purpose is to be a transactionary cryptocurrency. It was designed out of the interest of fixing Bitcoin’s shortcomings, where transactions are public,can take up to an hour, and are extremely expensive. What makes it different from other privacy coins? I'm glad you asked:
As noted in the image PIVX uses a custom version of Zerocoin which is a protocol that does what Bitcoin can not. Zerocoin provides full privacy to the users of PIVX. The PIVX implementation of the Zerocoin protocol converts publicly view-able PIV into anonymous PIV (dubbed by the PIVX team as Zerocoin PIV or zPIV for short). When a user wishes to spend zPIV, the zPIV appear in the receivers wallet as regular PIV without history of where that PIV originated from.
PIVX made history as being the first PoS (proof of stake) digital currency to implement the fully private and anonymous protocol. Zero-Knowledge proof enables a user (prover) to prove to another user (verifier) that a transaction is true without publicly providing any information aside from the fact that the money was indeed sent or received.
Q1 2018
Coming up in the first quarter of this year they are expecting to release the ability of zPIV staking. Users will be able to stake zPIV just like normal PIV, but also earn higher rewards and maximize privacy and ease of use. With the proposed new block reward scheme, zPIV staking block reward will be 50% larger than PIV staking rewards. Although PIVX already has orders of magnitude higher anonymity set sizes than most privacy coins, and maturation time to prevent timing attacks, zPIV staking will further optimize privacy by ensuring zPIV minting and spending occur more frequently.
How is anonymity achieved?
Convert your PIV into zPIV denominations. (Wallet auto-mints some by default) and then spend (send) your zPIV as PIV to any internal or external PIVX wallet address. Essentially the zerocoin protocol pools combine all the zPIV that people have converted (minted) from their PIV balance into set denominations and uses them to send when a spend is initiated.
Keep in mind that the pooling does not mean that everyone’s zPIV is stored in a centralized location. Rather, the public ledger (decentralized blockchain) keeps track of how many zPIVs are created. In other words, this is a way for a user to prove to someone that he/she knows something without revealing any details about it.
Unlike with Bitcoin, it is not possible to trace the history of any given payment thus no one can data mine and recover information to identify patterns and users in the transactions. PIVX also has the ability to send transparent transactions as well, and they're entirely separate from zPIV transactions giving you the freedom to chose how you manage your own wealth.
Their white paper has a fun anology for how zPIV works: "Think of zPIV as casino chips. You give your 100 dollar bill (i.e. PIV) to the cashier and you get some 1x$10, 2x$20, 1x$50 dollar chips (i.e. zPIV). This means that you no longer own that particular 100 dollar bill you exchanged and instead have “proof” that you still own $100. Now when you need 50 dollars of it back as fiat (PIV), you give your chips (zPIV) back to the cashier and the cashier delivers a brand new uncirculated 50 dollar bill to a recipient of your choosing." Neat right?
Instant Transactions:
SwiftX technology allows PIVX tx to be broadcasted almost instantly, PIVX SwiftX costs 0.01 PIV, and will give 5 confirmations in under 1 second. PIVX is also protected from double spends that other cryptocurrencies are susceptible to.
Self funded:
PIVX has it’s own fixed budget allocated for awarded proposal to maintain and improve the project, and is 100% self-sufficient. It gets this fixed budget by using 10% of the block rewards.
Self governed:
PIVX has a proposal and voting system that includes everyone who has PIVX who guides the further development and overall direction of the coin, guided by their Manifesto
Low fees:
Transaction fees are currently fractions of a penny, and can vary slightly depending on how quickly you want to send your transaction through the network. The faster the transaction time, the more expensive it will be. Compartivaly to something like bitcoin though, its extremely cheap.
PIVX recommended fee costs 0.0001 PIV, and will be confirmed within the next block (~1 minute). PIVX can be sent with no fee, and will be confirmed within the next block unless the transactions per second capacity is reached.
Decentralized:
PIVX has no central authority governing it. It is globally distributed and does not have a single point of failure.
Community Driven:
PIVX is a global community using Swarm Methodology to empower users to get involved and make a difference
Low Inflation:
Between 2,366,768 and 2,629,743 new coins are created each year, paid to those who help secure the network through staking and running Masternodes. Coin supply inflation is already LOW at around 4.5%, but since almost all the new coins are paid to anyone who holds PIV, the actual/effective inflation rate is much lower. Further, since all fees are burned, soon there will be more fees burned than created, thereby eliminating inflation, and making PIVX slightly deflationary.
The PIVX network has a block time of 60 seconds with fixed block rewards. They use a “seesaw algorithm” on their “nodes”. Basically this dynamically changes the amount paid to masternodes and those staking. If there are too many stakers and not enough masternodes, it increases pay to masternodes and decreases to stakers , and also vice versa, to balance the network. Detailed information about the seesaw algorithm is available in PIVX’s whitepaper.
What is the total amount of PIVX coins planned for circulation?
No current max (but please note that the inflation rate is currently set at 2.6 million coins per year, which means inflation trends towards zero). In 100 years there will be around 300 million coins at the current rate. That being said, as this is a community governed coin, in theory at some point if enough of the community elected, they could adjust that.
Current market cap is $341 billion, putting it at number 62 on Coinmarketcap.
Notable Roadmap Mentions for the first quarter:
2018 is going to be a big year for crypto in general, but I want to highlight some things PIVX is planning:
- iOS Mobile wallet is finished, and pending Apple's approval and addition to the app store.
- Desktop wallet redesign: The PIVX Qt wallet’s graphic user interface will be streamlined and give easy access to options such as zPIV auto-minting, automatic backup on external storage, and auto-split threshold for staking.
- In wallet proposals and in wallet voting: Users will be able to easily perform all PIVX governance functions and vote for all PIVX proposals from within the QT wallet’s graphic user interface.
Sources:
Main website
Pivx Twitter
Pivx Reddit
Pivx Manifestp
Pivx makes history!
Steemit post on Zerocoin
Investinit article
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