Should You Ditch Ethereum For PulseChain?
This Ethereum fork is fast and cheap, and it will give Ethereum a run for its money. If you’re a crypto OG, I know you’re tired of the “ETH Killer” narrative. PulseChain is not that. These forks can coexist, and one can take load off the other. Before you roll your eyes, read on. You won’t want to miss this…
The Problem: ETH gas is too damn high. Founder Vitalik Buterin said himself that transactions shouldn't be over 5 cents. 4 years later, ETH has become a whale party. This kills mass adoption of new people into crypto. A crypto network should offer a better user experience than the traditional system it aims to replace. That means cheap and fast, and ETH is neither. Making a trade on Uniswap now costs 3x more than a $30 wire transfer from an old-school bank. ETH 2.0 updates are slow to implement, complex, and may not completely fix this issue. One unavoidable reason gas will continue to be so high is because of the ETH price itself (in USD). This opens opportunities for a multi-chain world.
When the ETH network is forked in approximately 3 months, it will be unlike any other fork. The entire system state is being copied over, meaning a 1:1 copy of all coins. This is why some are calling it the “airdrop of a lifetime”.
This should be obvious, but it’s worth repeating. Just because there is now an eth-version and pulse-version of every coin, doesn't mean the USD value in your wallet will double overnight. The market will decide what each version is worth, and price discovery will be chaotic for a few weeks after launch. It will be interesting to see which communities adopt the PulseChain version of their coin over time. Will the dominantly used version of your favorite coin remain on Ethereum, or end up primarily moving to PulseChain? Most likely there will be some value split between the two networks. The price of a coin weighted towards either chain will be based on usage and adoption for that coin. Many are speculating that the sum total price of the 2 coin versions post-fork could be greater than the price pre-fork.
It’s hard to imagine, but you will be able to switch back and forth between Ethereum and PulseChain simply by changing a setting in your Metamask wallet. There will literally be an alternate network with a “pulse” version of every ERC20. In the short term, we can abbreviate them with letters. So Celsius token for example would turn into “pCEL” and “eCEL”. Again, the price and adoption of pCEL vs. the eCEL original remains to be seen.
How do I get my hands on Pulse token (PLS)?
2 ways:
- Just hold ETH in your non-custodial ETH wallet — Metamask is preferred. This means get your coins out of exchanges. Not your keys, not your coins. Any wallet will work as long as YOU own your private keys. Hold ETH, do nothing, and you will get the copy. All ETH tokens will be converted to PLS at the time of the fork as freemium (a 1:1 ratio). Any amount of Pulse token you receive will be more than enough to transact and pay gas on the Pulse network (due to the cheapness of gas).
- Enter the sacrifice phase. Engage maximum fomo.
The PulseChain Sacrifice Phase Explained
For a 30-day period, you will be able to sacrifice a list of popular cryptocurrencies in order to be credited PLS later when the network goes live. The amount of PLS you will get from the sacrifice phase is far greater than the freemium from holding ETH (a ratio of 10,000:1 greater on the first day of the sacrifice phase). You will get the most PLS from being early, and the benefit will taper off over the 30 days. You can also get more PLS from sacrificing a high USD value of coins. This also tapers off as more USD value enters the sacrifice lobby over time. Details about the sacrifice phase will be announced at t.me/PulseChainCom and will likely be updated on PulseChain.com too. The sacrifice phase is thought to be coming in the next few weeks.
Pro Tip: if you love it, let it go. In other words, consider sacrificing your favorite coin if you want its price to go up. Lots of people from the HEX community that have a need for this new network are first buying up the price of HEX on Uniswap, and then sacrificing it with reasonable confidence that their coins will essentially become dormant supply. This pushes the price of eHEX up before the fork, and ideally the perceived value of pHEX up immediately after the fork. Many are speculating that the sum of eHEX and pHEX could be greater than the USD value of HEX immediately before the fork.
My coin is staked in a smart contract, what happens now?
Many crypto users in coins like HEX have locked their coins in a smart contract to accrue interest. Don’t worry, smart contracts are all being copied over. The entire system state of Ethereum is being copied over. So yes: if you have staked HEX on Ethereum, you will have the same HEX stakes on PulseChain. In the system state, these coins aren’t going anywhere. You may notice some front-end changes coming to staking UIs such as go.hex.com that allow you to toggle between networks. Other projects that want the benefits of PulseChain will need to make some minimal changes to their UIs as well, to display both versions or toggle between networks.
Where will I trade on PulseChain?
Remember how I said the entire system state is copied over? Yeah. That means smart contracts like Uniswap are copied over. There is no need for ‘porting’ or bridging to bring liquidity over.
But can I port coins from ETH to Pulse?
Yes, with bridges. A bridge is basically a smart contract that allows you to send coins from one network to another. For example, you could hypothetically port over your “eCEL” on a bridge, and trade it on PulseChain. This allows for some interesting scenarios where price discovery between coin versions could happen. For example, a trading pair of “eCEL” / “pCEL” could exist on either network.
What about stablecoins?
Bridges become especially useful with stablecoins. It is unlikely that coins like USDC will continue to be valued 1:1, because they would not technically be backed by the US dollar. In this case, “eUSDC” could be bridged over to PulseChain and traded that way. It’s also possible that stablecoin issuers could simply issue tokens directly on PulseChain. For example, USDC is currently deployed on Ethereum, Stellar, Algorand, and Solana. They could decide to simply issue USDC on PulseChain too.
Seems risky, how can I trust PulseChain?
PulseChain is a copy of Ethereum with minimal changes to minimize attack surface while inheriting the battle-hardened benefits of the heaviest blockchain in existence. Ethereum has had a bug bounty program and thousands of developers in it’s ecosystem. The primary change in PulseChain is switching to Proof of Stake to validate blocks, rather than Proof of Work. It’s estimated that transactions will costs miniscule fractions of a penny, with 4x increase in throughput (blocks can be confirmed in as low as 3 seconds).
I still don’t get it…
Hold any amount of ETH and you will get that amount of Pulse tokens on the new network. This will be enough to transact freely. Hold any ERC20 token and you will get the pulse version of that token on the new network. Sacrifice a list of approved coins in the sacrifice phase and you will get a 10000:1 ratio of Pulse when the fork happens.
Will my favorite crypto apps support PulseChain?
Certain apps, especially from the HEX community, have indicated that they fully intend to support both chains and are working on offering that functionality ASAP when PulseChain goes live. This goes for GoStaker.com and go.hex.com. Other team’s and community’s dapps will need to make small front-end updates if they want to enable toggling between Ethereum and PulseChain. Reaching out to fiat on-ramps such as Coinbase, Transak, and Ramp will be an important part of the growth of the network.
What else should I know?
PulseChain will have 0% inflation. It actually will burn 25% of fees, making it deflationary. The total supply of pulse will be approximately 10,000x the supply of ETH.
If you or your community feels the pain from absurdly high Ethereum fees, there is a better way. There are greener pastures where it doesn’t require $300 and a kidney to swap your favorite coins. PulseChain is coin agnostic and welcoming to all. Get in early on the ground floor of a revolutionary new network. Bring your community or start your own project, and enjoy the mad gains.
