(Graphics courtesy of Dreamtim)
Ahoy Pirates! What a crazy time these past few weeks have been. We achieved new all-time-highs in every possible measure including number website visits per day, number of twitter followers, weekly meeting audience size, and of course, the price action. Since Pirate Chain has no block reward taxes to pay for any centralized employees, we have every Pirate to thank for all the tireless voluntary efforts and generous donations that have nurtured Pirate Chain. In this edition's editorial, we present an analytical investigation and demonstrate the applicability of Metcalfe's Law to privacy and Pirate Chain. Normally, each edition of this newsletter focuses on events of the prior month, however, we have seen so much activity that we will cover recent events over this and the next edition.
Project Updates
Pirate Promotional Videos
We saw several new Pirate Chain promotional videos recently. Here's one of them
The Crypto Kid that is a Pirate Kid
Pirate Education Series
This is a section that features new "how-to" video guides and informational videos about Pirate.
Getting Started with Cryptocurrency ARRR - The Pirate Chain Mission
How To Run The Wallet From A Different Location
Wallet Updates
Mobile wallet on Google Play store
You can now download the first ever z-z Mobile Android wallet, aka Skull Island, on the Google Play store. A big 'thank you' to the @BPSAA_Official as without them, we could not make this happen.
Meeting Recordings
Monthly Project Update Meetings
The Pirate team will report on all project updates at a monthly meeting on the the first Wednesday of each month. Catch up on February's monthly meeting:
Pirate Fireside Chat meeting replays:
https://mixlr.com/cryptoradiolive/showreel
Catch up on the weekly Pirate Fireside Chats,
1. March 10th, - The meeting this week was canceled as the team was fully engaged in preparations for Anarchapulco and submissions for Pirate's Changelly listing.
2. March 17th - Anarchapulco recap with Firstmate Lootz
3. March 24th - listen to the AMA with Captain Draeth
4. March 31st - Don't miss the fun chat with @BankofErykah about financial freedom and Pirate Chain
Events
Anarchapulco 2021
Lootz represented Pirate Chain at Anarchapulco 2021 and our presence there was a huge success. The ideals of Pirate Chain and the strong privacy technology was widely loved and accepted by the TCV family. Thank you!
Watch this fun photo montage of Pirate Chain at Anarchopulco and Lootz:
Founder of The Crypto Vigilante Jeff Berwick gives a shout out to Pirate Chain 2021 at Anarchapulco
Social Media
New Pirate publication on Hackernoon
We published our latest Hackernoon article discussing the original ideals of a currency for the people. This article recounts the evolution of Bitcoin from being a cypherpunk digital currency as a tool against the behemoths of traditional centralized finance, to its position today as a tool of Wall Street serving to enrich the very people that it was designed to protest. We also explore the fundamental requirements of a digital currency. In particular, a feature that is sorely lacking in Bitcoin and all transparent chain assets, namely privacy. Lastly, the article presents the case for Pirate Chain as the closest iteration to cash by its anonymity, and its value proposition as the people's money. Read the article here.
BitBoy talks about Pirate and the BPSAA
Bitboy talks to firstmate CryptoRich about Pirate Chain, the BPSAA and BPSAA members Ether-1 and Sentinel.
"Everybody's looking for the next big project. Today I've brought on a guest to talk about three projects you may never have heard of. They may not only have the chance to moon, but also have the chance to change your life forever."
Crypto Rich discusses Pirate's new price all-time-highs
Crypto Rich talks about Pirate Chain's chart action
PROFIT WITH PRIVACY CRYPTO + HOW TO GET MORE BITCOIN
"I compare Pirate Chain with Zcash, Monero and a few other privacy cryptos. I also give an update on developments with Pirate Chain, and look at my 2 trading bots and how much $$ and BTC I am earning from them."
Block Chain Gang talks aboout Pirate Chain
Pirate Chain $ARRR Token Privacy to the next level. Could this replace monero as privacy standard?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrs5RNetdRY
Lootz speaks at RegionSummit 2021
LIVESTREAM: Crypto 3.0, The Decentralization Revolution Is Finally Here. Visit the website and watch the recap here.
Merchant-of-the-Month Highlight
Aynbath
Aynbath is a growing collection of magical webcomics, paintings and stories. From the website,
What is Aynbath
"It is – the – project of mine, depicting internal and external stories of characters in a spiritual fantasy world. Dream and reality, thoughts and imagination are melting into one big astral temple. Aynbath will take the form of a non-linear graphic novel series (One-Shots at first), but I will offer some of its panels as stand-alone prints. “Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind”. (Joseph Campbell) My approach is a more cinematic one, less text and more imagery, since pictures are the language of the soul. I don’t want to have comic pages spammed with bubbles. I want scenes to breathe, because I want to make it immersive. That’s the reason why I chose sequential art – the medium of the graphic novel – after long considerations."
Visit Aynbath today
Last word from the editor
Gradually, and then suddenly
I want to take this opportunity to thank all the Pirate community and all the volunteers who have helped Pirate Chain get to where it is today. At the time of writing this, Pirate is ranked 85th with a $1.3 billion marketcap. From making memes, to tweeting at exchanges, from creating blog posts to YouTube reviews, all of you have played a part in this grassroot-driven community project. Without block reward taxes to fund a treasury, every effort has been raised directly by and from Pirates. Please give yourselves a big pat on the back.
Pirate Chain has been relatively dormant for the first two years after its inception in 2018. Not often seen in crypto are community projects with no development funds such as Pirate Chain. Nonetheless, Pirate has been slowly but steadily building up its community and a hardworking team of volunteer contributors. Throughout this time, the team has inspired an ecosystem of privacy enhancing partnerships and products built around Pirate Chain, from the different wallets (paper, lite, Skull Island mobile, and Treasure Chest full node) to our privacy-centric operating system, Ghostship OS.
Over the past few weeks, the phrase “Gradually, then suddenly” by Hemingway has come to mind often with regards to the current events at Pirate Chain. Ironically, the context in which the phrase was used in Hemingway’s book “The Sun Also Rises” refers to a discussion about bankruptcy. The application of this quote to Pirate Chain, could not be further from the instance of its use in the book.
Traditionally, blockchain analysts of transparent chains such as Bitcoin determine adoption by assessing the quantity of addresses holding the asset and the net flows of transactions going in or out of wallets. Since Pirate Chain’s privacy strategy does not publicly reveal any addresses or transaction details except to the sender and receiver, this public approach to evaluate a blockchain was not available to take a deeper analytical dive into Pirate Chain.
However, there is one property of Pirate Chain that is publicly known and is probably the strongest asset in the privacy sector. This is the anonymity set aka “anonset.” A simple explanation of an anonset would describe it as the size of the crowd that you are trying to hide yourself. Too small a crowd (for example, 1 out of 10) and you’ll be fairly easily spotted. The bigger the crowd the more effective the privacy.
Let’s take a quantitave approach to this. For every block on Pirate’s blockchain, the nett anonset can be calculated from the number of transactions (UTXOs) entering and exiting the pool like so,
Anonymity Set size = Shieldedoutput - Shieldedinput
Armed with this knowledge, and with the help of firstmate CHMEX, datapoints were obtained from all 1,345,947 blocks since the start of Pirate Chain on August 29th, 2018 to April 14th, 2021. First, blocks 1 to 152,855 were excluded as these were under the Sprout algorithm. When Pirate Chain hardforked from Sprout to Sapling, the anonset had to be abandoned. The data set was left with
1,345,947 – 152,855 = 1,193,092 datapoints
With these boundaries, the anonset size for every block was calculated. Since we don’t really need to know the minute-to-minute change in anonset, the data was averaged to obtain the anonset for every 60 blocks or 1 hour. Here’s what was found,
First, we see an change in the slope around 200 days after Sapling. We initially see a steep but shallow dip followed by a longer and steeper increase (red circle). This corresponded to the days surrounding Pirate’s first halving in 2019. Following this rise, the anonset size continued to increase at a steady but less dramatic rate.
Next, we see the much more dramatic rise in anonset size starting around block 1,031,450 which occurred in August 2020 (red circle). Going back through Pirate Chain’s archives of monthly newsletters, Pirate Chain was just starting to gain traction in the cryptosphere. Around that time the project was also noticed by some strong and reputable cryptocurrency groups who saw the value of ARRR as the strongest private digital currency in the industry.
Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). The first iteration of this formula was presented by George Gilder in 1993, but it was attributed to Robert Metcalfe in 1980 with regard to telecoommunications and the Ethernet. Metcalfe's law was initially presented in terms of the number of "compatible communicating devices" (e.g., fax machines, telephones).
Today, Metcalfe’s law is frequently cited in regards to the effect of the number of users on Bitcoin adoption. In a paper by Peterson (1) that bases the argument of Bitcoin’s network effect on Metcalfe’s law, it posits that the increase in value of a network corresponds with the increase in the number of people within. He gave the following examples, “if you were the only person on Facebook or TikTok it would not be useful. Yet, with billions of users on these services they are very useful. A similar dynamic occurs with transactions. For example, if you’re selling a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert to one person, you may not get a good price, or any price at all. However, if you offer a ticket to a hundred people you’ll likely find an interested buyer. By offering it to millions people, as ticket exchanges do, you may well get the maximum price possible. Essentially the more people on a network, the more valuable the network is.” This is the value proposition that Bitcoin maximalists posit today, but we’re not here to discuss that.
Metcalfe’s law can be applied to the privacy network based on the anonset size. The size of the anonset can be seen similarly as the number of “compatible communicating devices” in Metcalfe’s original terms, or the number of Bitcoin users in its network. In fact Metcalfe presented an alternate formula for social networks, one that takes into account the potential nodes of the network,
n log n
One important assumption of Metcalfe’s Law is that every node in the network is of equal value. Once a transaction (UTXO) has been included into the anonymity set, we can assume that every shielded UTXO are of equal value.
An anonset of 1 is the same as being the only person in Facebook or Twitter, even at an anonset of 10 or 11, it’s not very effective. As you can imagine, the larger the anonset/number of users/compatible communicating devices the more effective the network effect. With mandatory shielded transactions, every transaction spent contributes to the anonset; hence, Pirate Chain’s anonymity set will continue to grow infinitum. In summary, this analysis demonstrates that Metcalfe's Law is applicable to the network effect of privacy, and may be applied to the growth of Pirate Chain.
Reference
- Peterson, Timothy (2018). "Metcalfe's Law as a Model for Bitcoin's Value". Alternative Investment Analyst Review. 7 (2): 9–18. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3078248.
Pirate Chain Anonymity Set
Every newsletter ends with the latest anonymity set size of Pirate Chain at the time of publication. Why is this important? Every privacy technology hides transactions amongst others in an anonymity set. Monero's maximum anonymity set is 11, Lelantus's maximum anonymity set is capped at 65k. The anonymity set of Pirate Chain can be tracked in real time at the Pirate Chain Privacy Stats website made by CHMEX.
At the time of publication, the anonymity set size of Pirate Chain is:
Connect with us:
Twitter : https://twitter.com/PirateChain
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/PirateChain
Telegram : https://t.me/piratechain/
YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/piratechain
Flote : https://flote.app/pirate
Mastodon : https://mastodon.social/@arrr
Lbry: https://lbry.tv/@piratechain:8
TikTok : https://www.tiktok.com/@pirateblockchain
Pinterest : https://www.pinterest.com/piratechain/
Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/piratechain
BitTube : https://bittube.tv/profile/Pirate/about
BitTube : https://bittube.tv/profile/Pirate/about
Medium : https://medium.com/piratechain
Line: http://line.me/ti/g/e8mOfEV4T7
Keybase: https://keybase.io/team/pirate_arrr
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/PirateChain
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/piratechain
Your Financial Privacy Today, Is Your Freedom Tomorrow
Thank you
Not impressed with the Lite wallet security. Appears there is no password to enter so anyone using your computer can access it. The set-up appears very basic and non professional. Need to hurry up and get a phone wallet to work with an apple I phone.
The marketable ecosystem is key to everyday usage. Where everyday goods and services are available without fiat or transparent coin. An anonymous debit card would be helpful. How can this be arranged?
Hi, I, as well as many others, have invested in the Pirate Chain (ARRR) because the technology is very promising, leagues above what Monero (XMR) employs, and because of the passion and intelligence that comes across from the developers and representatives during interviews. However, this is not currently not enough. Given the recent surge in negative publicity, and the resultant devaluing of the coin, the Pirate Chain developers and representatives need to be more vocal in addressing concerns and in informing the masses about the current plans and strategies they are implementing to promote and advance the coin.
The recent downward slide of the Pirate Chain is both alarming and disappointing. The Pirate Chain is promoted as being “future proof,” and “the most private and secure cryptocurrency to date.” This is meaningless if the value continues to drop, and the coin ends up being worth nothing when you go to use it. Social media is filled with comments from people who have made substantial investments in the coin and are wondering if they should cut their losses now and bail.
Of course, many factors are involved in the rise and fall of a coin’s value, but I feel in this case that a more active stance in handling damage control over recent concerns would help turn things around. I feel a significant contributing factor to this negative publicity is the Dollar Vigilante website and community, or more specifically the Crypto Vigilante portion.
The team behind Crypto Vigilante have put themselves in a position where they are seen as the go-to experts in the field of privacy-centered cryptocurrency for numerous individuals. They have a sizable following. The recent Crypto Vigilante reports (particularly the one that just came out on Thursday) and community comments seem to be actively working to undermine the coin. They tell people to invest in the coin, and then devalue it in an attempt to get people to sell and then purchase Monero. This “pump and dump” handling of the coin has made people suspicious that it’s a scam. This is not the fault of the Pirate Chain team, but it is still up to them to pay attention to it and respond in a way that assures people that the coin itself is not a scam and has long-term potential and that the team behind it can be trusted. If possible, I would suggest meeting with members of the Vigilante team or community to draw more attention to the strengths of the Pirate Chain coin, and to shed light on where the Vigilante team stands.
Other factors that would help is in making an effort to respond to any criticism of Pirate Chain made on social media platforms. Some criticism on reddit has been deleted instead of responded to. The amount of comments and complaints may make it difficult to respond to every one, but it is important to make an effort, especially for those that have serious implications. Not responding to criticism in particular can be seen as avoidance, and causes people to become suspicious. The Pirate Chain team needs to be more active on more of their social media platforms.
Another aspect that could be improved is the “Road Map” portion of the website. I recommend crossing out any items that have been achieved and adding notes to indicate progress. For instance, for 2021 Q1, it states, “GalleonOS development begins,” but nothing further is added to indicate how it is proceeding. The notes don’t need to be detailed, but enough so that an individual can get a decent overview at a single glance. This allows people to quickly get a better idea of what is going on and planned, and creates a sense of movement and anticipation.
Problems with the Pirate Chain wallet on Trade Ogre don’t help either, where people keep getting the message that it is unable to cope with the demands of the exchange. I fully expect the Pirate Chain developers to be working closely with Trade Ogre to rectify the issue, as well as notify the public that they are looking into it and doing whatever they can. Keep people in the loop. It isn’t that the Pirate Chain team isn’t posting, but rather that the frequency should be increased relative to the amount of negativity and concerns.
As I mentioned, I wholly believe in the Pirate Chain coin, or else I wouldn’t have invested into it, and want to see it reach its full potential. The Pirate Chain team does provide interviews and updates and I know that they don’t have direct control over the pricing of the coin, but, as I brought up in this message, I think taking a proactive approach in addressing concerns and issues as they appear would go a long way into getting the coin to go back up and even higher to make it more appealing and usable for individuals and merchants. I look forward to seeing that happen soon!