Crypto Project Report: PAC Protocol

As a crypto enthusiast, I wanted to start a series of articles about crypto projects that I believe have a lot of value to offer but are overlooked by mainstream crypto news and crypto social circles. My intent is not to cover every fine detail of the project but to provide a fairly quick summary. If I have any details wrong, please let me know.

The first project I would like to discuss is PAC Protocol. PAC Protocol (PAC) was launched in 2013 as a legacy Bitcoin fork and thrived briefly before being essentially abandoned by the original developers. In 2017 a community-lead effort to revive the coin emerged and has resurrected this cryptocurrency along with a very active and devoted community today.

Technology and Specifications

The current version of PAC originated as a fork of Dash; however, it has been modified extensively since then and it currently uses the PoSv3 algorithm (compared to Bitcoin’s SHA-256 or Litecoin’s Scrypt). One modification was a transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus with deterministic masternodes. POS rewards are 100 PAC. The PAC Protocol network is secured by approximately 22,000 masternodes at the time of this writing and claims to be the world’s largest distributed data network. Total supply is 16,475,991,191 PAC with an impressive 66.72% locked up as masternode collateral which require 500,000 PAC each (approximate value $550 at today’s price). Current ROI for a masternode is approximately 15.86% annually. The masternode reward is 8280 PAC which is distributed approximately every 38 days at the time of this writing. The payout time varies depending on how many masternodes are active in good standing. Operating a masternode allows the owner to participate in governance and submit and vote on proposals. With yanSAFE, masternodes are a breeze for almost any novice to deploy requiring only a dedicated host account with a supported provider such as VULTR. Transactions are fast and economical, costing only a few cents. Block times are about 150 seconds on average.

Partners

PAC has partnered with several impressive organizations including but Tron, Digibyte, Binance Charity, Flare Networks, and Gala games among others. With approximately 22,000 masternodes, these partners are looking to take advantage of the scale and network size that PAC can provide. Details of these partnerships are not available.

Applications

PAC has several wallets available including desktop wallets (yanSAFE) for Mac and Windows, as well as mobile wallets (PACapp) for iOS and Android. yanSAFE wallet allows users to setup and control their masternodes.

Future network functionality currently being tested will provide support for NFT and token minting as well as yanDNA functionality which will provide distributed file storage functionality similar to the Interplanetary File System (ipfs). This feature will allow people who need storage space to purchase it with PAC and will compensate masternode providers who opt in to provide storage space resources with YAN. The latest update is that this upgrade will be released as soon as testing is complete which is anticipated soon.

Although not announced or mentioned anywhere, one can assume that along with or shortly after introducing token minting ability there will be a PACswap decentralized exchange to facilitate token sales.

Markets

PAC is currently traded in volume on Bilaxy, BKEX, MEXC, and Bitrue exchanges. A lack of volume likely keeps it from being listed in additional places. Another possible reason is that exchanges or PAC may be waiting to list until the upcoming hard fork is complete.

Outlook

Development speed and progress has been slow but steady with a fairly small development team. Otherwise, this project has almost all of the ingredients you would like to see in a project. The executive team is active at crypto conferences and events and communicates fairly often and directly with AMA sessions. The community is active on social media and the masternode network size and performance is impressive. With key functionality (yanDNA, NFTs, and tokens) about to be released, PAC is likely to see a significant boost in popularity and value as its utility grows and becomes a viable and competitive platform.