Some of you have already heard about “Pi Network” — mobile cryptocurrency and smart platform, launched by four Stanford students in March 2019, which is “secured and operated by everyday people”.
Pi Technical Whitepaper is the subject of today’s brief review and rating.
Pi consensus is, basically, a lighter version of the Stellar consensus protocol (SCP), which, in its turn is a variation of FBA. Unlike SCP, which relies on “certified” validators (companies mostly), Pi allows its regular users to build their own quorum slices (an agglomeration of trustworthy nodes).
This, of course, allows for “malicious users entanglement”, which Pi tries to address by introducing a “validating hierarchy”, which includes: “Pioneer” (a user), “Contributor” (provide a list of Pioneers he/she trusts), “Ambassador” (introduces other users), “Node” (runs SCP algorithm).
Although I’ve liked this approach, which aims to grasp power from hands of centralized “miners”, I can’t rate it higher than “b-” by “Security” sub-scale for it can reliable function only within relatively small users group built upon socially homogeneous substratum.
As to “Velocity” authors themselves acknowledge that the traditional limitations of FBA does not allow Pi to exceed 3–5 TPS. Hence, “c+”. However, imho, this is normal for protocols, which target a niche markets.
For types of systems, which are based on (or present themselves variations of) well known consensus algorithms I usually do not assign better than “b”, but I’m ready to make an exception fop Pi and make it b+ for their out of the box thinking.
“Transparency” is the strongest part of this architecture and my rating is “a-” (I keep “minus” because its not functional globally.
Overall this well-written, short and “simple language” white paper is recommended for your attention.
System sub-rating: Security- Velocity- Engineering- Transparency: c+b-c+a-
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