PascalCoin has moved to the second version of its protocol. In this move, it has improved upon a number of things, including difficulty calculation, account naming, modifying account information, and more. Additionally, some limitations present in the first iteration of the protocol have been removed.

Version 1 Limitations

PASA Distribution

Since accounts in PascalCoin are non-fungible assets, it is not possible to dole them out in parts. This causes an issue when new users attempt to acquire PASC by a method other than mining. For example, if a user acquires PASC through an exchange, they will not have an account to hold that PASC. Exchanges do not participate in non-fungible assets at this time. Using monetized APIs, such as GetPasa.com, users can be granted an account.This method also introduces issues when dealing with mining pools. Pools generally provide value to the miner proportional to their contribution. However, since accounts are awarded to the “miner” in a block reward, it becomes troublesome to determine who gets the accounts as these accounts cannot be divided.

Nodes Requiring History

New nodes had to gather a history from block 1. Version 2 updates this by allowing the SafeBox to provide verification.

Version 2 Updates

Difficulty calculations

As hashing power varies, difficulty calculations must be made. When users flock to a given currency, they introduce a level of difficulty due to the increased hashing power. However, once this difficulty becomes too much, they leave for currencies that are less difficult. This leaves a currency at a difficulty rating not suited to its current hashing power once the crowd leaves. Now, difficulty is more quickly adjusted when this occurs resulting in a far more accurate chain.

Accounts

Names are allowed and consist of 64 characters or less. They may not begin with a digit. Types have also been added in version 2. Types allow for accounts to be intended for purposes other than standard user accounts. For example, when using monetized APIs, you may have an account acting as a chat room or as a side chain. Considering that accounts simply send and receive transaction information which can be arbitrary user data, there are many possibilities for what accounts can do. Names help to make accounts more recognizable and human-friendly (even more so than the already human-friendly account numbers utilized in PascalCoin).Due to the addition of naming and types of accounts, an operation allowing a user to change this information had to be included. There are a few restrictions: (a) an account name may not begin with a digit, as described above, (b) the account name must be unique among all account names, © empty names are permitted. If there is a violation of these restrictions, the block attempting to register such a name will be considered invalid and will nodes will not propagate it.There is a character set for the naming of accounts called PascalCoin 64. As the whitepaper illustrates, the following represents the characters permitted for use in account names: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789!@#$%^&*()-+{}[]\_:”|<>,.?/~

Checkpointing

Checkpointing is crucial to the core of PascalCoin and its goal of infinite scalability. Without it, the SafeBox would not be able to operate as efficiently as it does now. Every 100 blocks, checkpoints are created. These checkpoints take a picture of what the SafeBox currently looks like for the last 100 blocks. This means that nodes do not need to download the entire chain in order to get going. They only need the latest checkpoint, plus a “few dozen blocks.” Checkpoints also be “distributed safely between nodes without the need for blocks to verify them.”

PASA Exchange

To overcome the limitation of PASA distribution from version 1, in-protocol PASA exchange has been created. New operations have been created to faclitate the “sale, purchase, settlement[,] and exchange of PASA assets between users.”Operations include listing an account for public or private sale. A public sale is accessible by anyone, while a private sale is only purchasable by using the intended buyer’s public key. You may de-list an account if you wish to take an account “off the market.” You may buy an account, as is inferred from being able to put an account up for sale. Transactions are modified to allow the purchase of an account by private sale whereby the transfer to the account listed for sale is credited by an amount equal to or greater than the sale price. This results in the sold account’s public key being changed to that of the buyer’s key. This occurs regardless of the origin of the transaction.There are numerous other improvements to be made PascalCoin according to their road map. Among them, checkpoint torrenting, multisig, and native mobile operating system wallets.