Against the backdrop of high Gas fees and network congestion troubling users on Ethereum, PulseChain, a full-state hard fork of the Ethereum chain, officially launched on May 14, 2025. It fully replicates Ethereum’s transaction, account, and smart contract records, while attempting to become a "more efficient alternative to Ethereum" through technological innovations and token economic model design. By August 2025, its total value locked (TVL) in the ecosystem had surpassed 500 million USD, attracting widespread market attention. This article will delve into its technical mechanisms, controversies, and integrate the latest PLS. Price Prediction Data.
Core Mechanism of PulseChain
PulseChain is not just an ordinary new chain, but a hard fork chain that fully replicates the state of Ethereum. Its goal is to solve the problems of high fees and low efficiency by offloading Ethereum’s computational load. Key technical features include:
- Consensus mechanism innovation: Adopting the Proof of Staked Authority (PoSA) model, which supports validator rotation and penalty mechanisms. Users need to stake 32 million PLS Tokens to become a validating node (currently, there are 15,893 nodes in the whole network), and receive 75% of the transaction fee share, while the remaining 25% of Tokens are burned to suppress inflation.
- Performance optimization: Block generation time reduced to 12 seconds (Ethereum is 15 seconds), with a single transaction cost of less than 0.01 dollars, demonstrating significant speed and cost advantages.
- Airdrop and Token Distribution: A 1:1 airdrop of PLS will be given to all non-custodial Ethereum users at launch, but due to the extremely low initial price, the actual value is limited; the total supply of tokens is 135 trillion, with over 90% held by addresses controlled by the founding team, resulting in a highly concentrated circulation.
Founder Background and Project Controversy
PulseChain was created by the controversial figure Richard Heart (originally named Richard Schueler). His previous project, HEX, was based on the concept of "blockchain time deposit certificates," promising users a maximum annual return of 40% on locked funds, with a tenfold increase over three years, but it has also been criticized for its model being likened to a "Ponzi structure," leading to polarized opinions.
PulseChain continues its aggressive operational strategy:
- Sacrifice mechanism: The project relies on user donations to exchange for tokens, raising $670 million and $1 billion for PLS and PLSX respectively. Near the end, an address suspected to be controlled by Richard suddenly invested $13 billion/$54 billion, raising questions of manipulation.
- Strong ecological dependency: TVL is mainly concentrated in its official DEX PulseX (accounting for more than 80% of the total), and there have recently been signs of capital outflow, reflecting insufficient ecological independence.
Token Economic Model and Key Roles
PLS, as the native Gas Token, its economic model directly impacts the network’s value:
- Destruction Mechanism: 25% of transaction fees are permanently destroyed, gradually reducing circulation.
- Staking Rewards: Validators earn fees, and ordinary users can also stake PLS or PLSX to receive rewards (e.g., the staking rate of PLSX has reached 43%).
Core ecological projects include:
- PulseX: type Uniswap The DEX platform token PLSX adopts a deflationary model, with 21% of the transaction fees used for buyback and burn (1.8% of the total has been burned as of 2025). As of August 7, PLSX price is reported at $0.000036, with a market cap of $5.28 billion.
- Liquid Loans: Over-collateralized stablecoin protocol that allows users to pledge PLS to borrow interest-free loans in USDL.
- Ph series fork applications: Such as Phiat (lending), Phamous (perpetual contracts), etc., all replicate mature Ethereum protocols.
PLS Price Prediction: Huge Divergence in Market Expectations
The current price of PLS is extremely low (with many decimal places), and different institutions have significantly different predictions for its long-term trend. Based on the latest data from August 2025:
| Time range | Highest Prediction | Average Prediction |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $0.000000542 | $0.000052 |
| 2026 | $0.0000975 | $0.000113 |
| 2027 | $0.000127 | $0.000139 |
| 2028 | $0.000127 | $0.000139 |
Optimistic expectations believe that its technological advantages will drive value growth (for example, reaching a high of $0.0001689 in 2025), while pessimistic views point out:
- Token centralization risk (90% controlled by a single address);
- Reliance on market enthusiasm; if DeFi as a whole cools down, it could plummet (for example, at the beginning of August, Bitcoin’s drop caused PLSX to fall 7.33% in a single day);
- Single application scenario, mostly fork projects, lacking innovation.
Conclusion: High Potential Accompanied by High Risk
PulseChain has quickly accumulated users thanks to low fees, EVM compatibility, and airdrop strategies, but its development is constrained by three major challenges: token distribution centralization, lack of ecological originality, and founder controversies. If it can expand into lending, derivatives, and other scenarios (such as the promotion of Liquid Loans) and improve governance decentralization, PLS may break through its current price bottleneck. Investors need to closely monitor on-chain TVL fluctuations, burn data, and regulatory dynamics, being wary of short-term speculative risks.
