With the official release of the last Testnet version of the Pascal blockchain V5 protocol implementation, preparations for the launch of the v5 protocol and its exciting features have resumed. Long awaited, the V5 protocol brings in many amazing features to the Pascal blockchain with its carefully crafted features opening various use case opportunities for the Pascal blockchain.

While the blockchain technology keeps making technological grounds and modifying the way we manage financial information, data sourcing, sorting and arrangement, and improving the privacy system and the Internet of things concept; it’s no doubt that the cryptographic currencies and tokens attached to these blockchains have brought in a higher chunk of the excitement surrounding the advent and progress of blockchain technology.

The arousing idea of a virtual currency which depicts some of the features of its parent blockchain (such as fast transactions and cheap charges per transaction) has unarguably drawn more participants to the blockchain ecosystem than the blockchain technology and its prospects.

However, just owning these cryptocurrencies wouldn’t create much excitement for anyone, much excitement has come from exchanging them as a sort of virtual value system in a fashion which puts the coin holders in higher control of how they spend these assets and also in a more privacy-focused system.

Setting up exchanges where holders of these currencies and tokens can trade it against other cryptocurrencies and tokens of their choice and also reliable crypto to fiat exchanges which have emerged over the years have collectively added real value to these assets. Currently most prominent exchanges are centralized and thus the need to transfer the digital assets to a hot wallet before one could trade them against other cryptocurrencies listed on such exchange.

Many irregularities have since then surrounded centralized exchanges some of this includes censorship, hack attacks, manipulated trade statistics, some of the themes of blockchain technology which includes security, decentralization, resistance to censorship, rapid transfer of funds between cold wallets and low transaction charges have also been defeated. Most importantly, the stress and risk of having to transfer your digital assets to an exchange can also be tedious and inconvenient some times, thus the concept of Decentralized exchanges.

The Pascal blockchain is constantly evolving to suit the trends in blockchain technology as well as transactions using virtual currencies powered by the blockchain technology. The V5 protocol consists of features which enables the development of a sophisticated decentralized exchange on the pascal blockchain —THE PASCALDEX, and also decentralized exchange of Pascal coin on other decentralized exchanges (DEXes)

                      The PascalDex

Prior to the release of the Testnet versions of the v5 upgrade and the actual experimentation of how this upgrade will enable decentralized exchanges of Pascal coins in (cold) wallet to wallet transactions on a decentralized exchange, the pascal project have already been levitating towards decentralization in cryptocurrency transactions by getting listed on decentralized exchanges. However, with the lack of adequate facility for a real decentralized transaction on exchanges, it have struggled to really fit into a perfect definition of ‘decentralization’ in this case, but this will unarguably change with the implementation of the V5 protocol and the PascalDex is just one of the numerous use case opportunities which this upgrade presents.

How the Pascal project hopes to build a decentralized exchange on its own blockchain

The following features of the V5 protocol are vital to the creation of the PascalDex:

Atomic swap technology: In line with Pascal Improvement Plan (PIP–0032), the atomic swap technology has been developed as a core aspect of the V5 protocol. Atomic swaps are the lifeblood of decentralized exchange of cryptocurrency, it makes for secure, time-bound and non-censored exchange on the blockchain. The V5 protocol implementation also features implementation of the atomic swap feature on the Pascal blockchain to enable interchain transfer of tokens. The atomic swap technology work Hash-locked-time-contract. Hence the both parties encrypts and claims funds at a given range of time which is determined by themselves.

The atomic swap is an important step in the integration / listing of the Pascal Coin (PASC) on decentralized exchanges and also the development of the PascalDex for exchange of tokens on the Pascal blockchain. The Atomic swap is a smart-contract technology that enables the exchange of one cryptocurrency for another without using intermediaries, such as 3rd party exchanges, occurring as smart-contract events within the respective blockchains involving only the exchanging parties in a cryptographically secure manner. With the atomic swap technology, the exchanging parties trade their token while these tokens are still locked in their cold wallets. Pascal blockchain’s atomic swap which will be introduced with the implementation of the V5 protocol works so well in this aspect.

The Safeboxroot [PIP–0030]:

The safeboxroot allows light clients to cryptographically prove the account segment without the safebox. This also enables many features needed for a sophisticated decentralized exchange such as:

A truly decentralized network topology: While most cryptocurrencies claim the concept of decentralization, this claim only holds in the aspect of account security and decentralized mining, however, the aspect of no third party influence is defeated in most cases as these cryptocurrency blockchains depends on third party servers to access and use the network for storing, validating and updating their blockchain, hence one depends on the third-party to get their account balances, receive payments and perform other transactions, hence they are open to censorship attempts. The safeboxroot solves this problem by allowing every user to take part in peer-to-peer network directly whilst retaining the user experience. With the achievement of a proper decentralized blockchain, an exchange built on it will unarguably provide full resistance to censorship and individual freedom.

Instant wallet synchronization: With the light nodes, synchronization of blocks and validation of the safebox will not be needed, users simply needs to query other nodes for that latest safebox root and the account segments for the account they wish to know about, the other nodes will only need to provide short needle proofs that can be used to cryptographically prove that those account segments are connected to the safebox root. This action is instant, hence reducing the time required for synchronization allowing for recent transactions to be easily updated thus providing efficient information about recent trades and token prices on the Dex.

Account seal technology 

The account seal technology which enables the Pascal address (PASA) function as a decentralized ledger and also and also as an embedded blockchain will also be vital to the creation of the PascalDex.

New mobile wallets

With the successful release of the Pascal BLAISE wallet, the Pascal project have created a portable means of using the Pascal blockchain on the go. The BLAISE wallet creates a colour atmosphere which gives users a very welcome feeling while they transact their coins from their personal wallets to a peer’s own wallet or to exchanges and also other transactions on the pascal blockchain. This will also add another bliss to the PascalDex as integration of the dex to the wallet will enable users trade their coins on the Dex while on the move.

Competitive advantages of the PascalDex

The features of the Pascal blockchain will place the PascalDex ahead of other decentralized exchange projects:

A truly infinite scalable blockchain: The synergy of the safebox technology, delible blockchain and the account seal technology brings infinite scalability to the Pascal blockchain as it is able to handle the increasing amount of data stored on the blockchain without expanding its memory capacity to a reasonable extent. The PascalDex will surely trigger an increased rate and amount of daily operations on the pascal blockchain, hence more data to be stored on the blockchain, the infinite scalable pascal blockchain is as a matter of fact very ready to take these data and keep them stored while ensuring that the blockchain doesn’t expand much in its memory capacity.

Instant low–charge wallet to wallet transactions: A charge of about 0.001pasc and a zero charge one the first transaction makes the Pascal blockchain one of the cheapest blockchains in terms of charges per transaction. This also puts the PascalDex in a good position to provide its users with a good decentralized platform to trade the Pascal coin and other coins on the exchange.

Portable and efficient wallets: The thoughts of using the PascalDex right inside your beautiful BLAISE wallet is exciting, and yes the V5 protocol will provide just what is needed to make this dream come alive!

Merits of the PascalDex

In addition to the competitive edge of the PascalDex, here are other advantages it will bring to the Pascal coin holders and traders:

Eliminates payload issues: Active members of the Pascal discord channel can attest to the frequency of complaints about issues with payloads, failed transactions and lost coins due to mistakes on payloads. The PascalDex will enable in-wallet exchange where users will not bother to enter deposit payloads to help trace the transferred funds to their accounts on the exchange. This will put an end to loss of funds due to mistakes with payloads.

Immutable trade statistics: Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges are currently being faces with the issue of trade statistics manipulations in the form of wash trades, fake volumes and also some acts of fake tokens being traded in some exchanges. The wash dilemma is the principal cause unreliable trade statistics from centralized exchanges, the ability of any trader to simultaneously sell and buy a particular (the same) cryptocurrency without limits have been utilized by many traders to create misleading statistics which makes cryptocurrency more tedious as decisions are hard to be made with the wrong information. Wash trades are only possible in centralized exchanges as each assets are held in one hot wallet and tracked to individual profiles on the exchange, hence one can easily sell his own assets to himself at a certain price that allows them achieve a desired goal which might be creating a false spike in price or a false slump in price. Decentralized exchanges provides a situation where every asset is traded from a cold wallets, this makes statistics manipulations more difficult and impossible –to an extent.

Convenience and ease of use: As already stated, with decentralized exchanges, cryptocurrency exchange will be done from the comfort and security of individual wallets, this makes exchange of assets easy as any trader simply needs to enable an asset for trading right from his cold wallet and easily exchange it with available cryptocurrencies, this keeps the assets owners in total control of the transaction and relegates the need for transfer of assets to a specified address before trading could be possible. It also saves the time taken for confirmation of deposits, and also reduces cost of transactions as withdrawal fees and trading costs are saved.

Asset security:

Private keys gives everyone a complete control over their individual cold wallets, security of the assets in these wallets are only compromised when the wallet owner give away their private keys, the recipient of the private key assumes ownership of the concerned wallet and the assets there in. In centralized exchanges, the traders are not in possession of any private key, these keys are rather held by the exchange and thus they are in complete control of the assets in their possession. In cases of exchange scams, or accidental demise of the holder of this key (as seen earlier this year), the assets held in these exchanges are completely lost and there are little or no chances of the holders reclaiming there lost funds. This won’t be the case in a good decentralized exchange as wallet and asset ownership is not compromised in any way, traders retain the private keys to their individual wallets and simply Conner’s to the exchange and enable their assets for trading.

Excited? of course!

We have also released the source codes of the Pascal Version 5

Source code release and binaries of the Pascal V5 are available at GitHub also at SourceForge

Technical info about how to upgrade is here

Slated Hard fork will be at block 378000, approximately during 12-13 of December 2019.

Kindly update to the new version!

Stay tuned for more interesting stories on this series, we continue analyzing what the V5 protocol will bring to the Pascal blockchain!