JUST IN: pearl-2:native network hashrate 5x'd overnight — 30 EH/s → 180 EH/s in a few hours.
Emergency hardfork shipped and activated today at block 99000. The network is back to baseline.
Node v1.4.1: https://t.co/2uktF5a1m3
I am building a research interest and a small position in $PRL, which to disambiguate is from @prlnet.
The central feature of Pearl is that it is a proof-of-work system on top of GPUs and that the proof of work can be mixed in with AI inference workloads.
PRL calls this mining algorithm "proof of useful work". I don't like that name because as far as I can tell there is no actual proof that the work is useful, and I consider the transformation of energy into money inherently useful already -- as with Zcash or Bitcoin or many other coins.
That said, one might argue that ultimately hashrate and security will determine which commodity/internet asset is most valuable. I think PRL has a good shot at getting the highest hashrate and security of all chains.
One can also argue that as software is increasingly fluid, the actual code doesn't matter as much as the distribution (holders + hashrate) because the code is easy to modify or clone after the fact.
As AI consumes more energy, there may be marginally less energy available to secure other blockchains. I think this is already playing out as major Bitcoin miners switch to AI workloads.
If PRL gets successful mining distribution across many of the big server farms, and executes its software stack well to clone features from other cryptos, it may do well over time. That's a lot of IFs. So it is a small position.
Why now? The price has stabilized in a $0.20-$0.30 channel for a while after briefly going far higher. PRL has 100x the units of Bitcoin or Zcash, so consider it trading for $20-$30 in equivalent terms. If PRL is successful I could see it trading at 10-100x this value in a decade.
Some reasons NOT to buy now:
- The network is very early and the token is still very inflationary.
- Price may drop a lot before a real use case comes online.
- There's no proof that anyone will use this and it is not listed on any major exchange.
- It's not really clear what PRL *is* yet. Is it money? Is it some kind of industrial side-effect of inference?
- Other novel proof-of-work coins like Chia/XCH have failed.
Zcash and traditional equities are still my largest positions. PRL is sized like a high risk/reward angel bet in my portfolio (near 1%).
"Never punished for winning" made it into @Forbes 😄
Thanks @sobradob for covering @margin_trade's two bets: pro-rata ADL, and going where there's no competition -- listing $PRL (Pearl Research) perps before anyone else.
https://t.co/X2cIJd1uTU