This review is strictly technological, focusing on chain infrastructure. Consider refraining from expressing negative sentiments unless you are a developer or a technical professional.
As a developer, I have worked with various EVM chains. While most of them function well for users, the developer experience can differ. Having spent considerable time with PulseChain, I must express my admiration for what it offers.
Firstly, the request latency of official public RPC nodes is incredibly low, with response times hovering around 90ms—less than half of the industry average. This can be attributed to the fact that these nodes operate on Erigon. Additionally, the official RPC nodes appear to be distributed across numerous data centres worldwide, ensuring exceptionally fast responses for users of dApps on a global scale.
Running my own RPC nodes for PulseChain has allowed me to observe the magnitude of peer nodes from various locations and data centres. This indicates a high level of decentralization for PulseChain, especially notable for a chain that is only six months old (as of December 2023).
Of particular utility to me is the fact that these RPC nodes serve as archive nodes, enabling the execution of EVM RPC requests at any block height. This decentralised approach allows me to construct my dApps in a more decentralised manner. For instance, I can check token balances or prices directly form the chain at any point in history, facilitating the creation of a price graph without reliance on a centralised third-party API.
Adding to its merits, PulseChain's public RPC nodes have no rate limits. This is a significant improvement for me compared to other chains where I often had to resort to commercial RPC providers to prevent my users from experiencing degraded performance due to RPC nodes giving up on their requests. This aligns with PulseChain's commitment to maintaining decentralization.
While none of the aforementioned features is outstanding on its own, collectively they create an impressive offering. Developers on PulseChain benefit from free EVM infrastructure that matches or surpasses commercial, often centralised, alternatives. My estimation of the cost to operate such infrastructure may be in the hundreds of thousands of USD per month.
Acknowledging areas for improvement, the absence of an Etherscan explorer is noteworthy. However, I have adapted to using Otter Scanner, and the latest updates to PulseScan (running on Blockscout) seem very good. Additionally, there is a lack of support for centralised API providers like Moralis, necessitating crypto developers to invest more time in designing their applications to function in a more decentralised manner, aligning with PulseChain's overarching ethos of decentralisation.
References: https://chainlist.org/chain/369 - list of RPC nodes, response times. https://otter.pulsechain.com/ - fast, truly decentralized block explorer for PulseChain https://beacon.pulsechain.com/ - number of validators and statistics Show Less
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