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Trustless Index Analysis: PulseChain

Trustless Index Analysis: PulseChain

Introduction

PulseChain stands as a Layer 1 blockchain forked from Ethereum, aiming to deliver lower fees and faster transactions while maintaining compatibility with existing tools and assets. Since its launch, it has attracted attention for its innovative distribution methods and community focus, but also scrutiny over governance and centralization risks. This analysis evaluates PulseChain’s core attributes through the Trustless Index rubric, prioritizing verifiable metrics to determine its overall trustlessness in a competitive DeFi landscape.

What is PulseChain?

PulseChain is a blockchain network designed as a faster, more affordable alternative to Ethereum, achieved through a hard fork that replicated Ethereum’s state while optimizing for performance. Launched on May 13, 2023, it aims to reduce transaction costs and improve throughput by leveraging a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and shorter block times. The project positions itself as an energy-efficient platform for decentralized applications, with a focus on DeFi and token trading.

Key technical features include:

  • Consensus Mechanism: PulseChain employs a Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism where validators are selected based on staked PLS and produce blocks in a deterministic manner. Validators must stake a minimum of 32 million PLS per validator node to participate, with rewards distributed proportionally to stake and performance. The system aims for security through economic incentives, with slashing for malicious behavior. As of November 11, 2025, over 52,600 validators are active, making it one of the largest PoS networks by count.
  • Scalability: PulseChain claims enhanced scalability through a target block time of three seconds, enabling higher transaction throughput than Ethereum’s 12-15 seconds. Lifetime average TPS is approximately 23.73, based on over 1.87 billion transactions across over 25 million blocks since launch, with peaks reported at 40-60 TPS during high activity. Finality occurs in 10-30 seconds under normal conditions, supported by the PoSA model. Current TVL is around $217 million, indicating moderate load handling without chronic congestion.
  • Token Standards: PulseChain supports PRC-20 for fungible tokens (mirroring ERC-20), PRC-721 for NFTs (mirroring ERC-721), and other standards like PRC-1155 for multi-tokens. The fork ensured compatibility, allowing Ethereum dApps to port easily. Native PLS is used for gas, while bridged assets like pUSDC maintain pegs through DEXs like PulseX. Over 10,000 tokens exist on the chain, per explorer data.
  • Upgrades: PulseChain has undergone no major upgrades or hard forks since launch, adhering to a “code is law” philosophy with minimal changes. The initial fork from Ethereum incorporated optimizations like faster blocks, but no post-launch alterations are documented in explorers or forums.

Founders and History

Richard Heart, born Richard J. Schueler, is the founder of PulseChain. With a background in online marketing and cryptocurrency, Heart gained prominence through HEX, launched in 2019 as a high-yield staking token. PulseChain’s history traces to 2021, when Heart announced it as a solution to Ethereum’s issues, emphasizing energy efficiency and low fees. Development involved forking Ethereum’s code, with contributions from anonymous developers and community input via livestreams. The project faced scrutiny from the SEC in 2023 for alleged fraud in fundraising, dismissed in 2025. Heart’s flamboyant style has polarized the community, with supporters praising innovation and detractors citing self-enrichment.

Early Milestones

PulseChain’s early milestones include the sacrifice phase (July 2021-August 2022), raising over $13 billion in burned assets for PLS allocations. The testnet launched in February 2023, followed by mainnet on May 13, 2023, with the state fork providing PRC-20 tokens to ERC-20 token holders. Validator count reached 10,000 by June 2023, surpassing 50,000 by mid-2024. TVL peaked at $500 million in 2023 before stabilizing. The SEC dismissal in 2025 marked a regulatory win.

Current Control and Governance

PulseChain lacks a formal governance structure or central foundation, relying on community consensus through social media and forums for decisions. Richard Heart holds influence via social channels but no admin keys or direct control. Validators govern through staking, with upgrades requiring broad agreement. Critics argue Heart’s influence creates de facto centralization, as seen in token distribution debates.

Trustless Index Scoring Breakdown

As part of the Trustless Index, we evaluate Ethereum on six dimensions: Decentralization, Censorship Resistance, Immutability, Security, Speed, and Distribution (Ownership). Each is scored from 1.0 to 10.0 based on the rubric, with the final score as the average. This framework assesses layer-1 blockchains on consensus, economics, and governance, prioritizing verifiable data over speculation. Scores reflect absolute criteria, not relative comparisons.

Decentralization: 6.5

Decentralization measures the distribution and diversity of validators and nodes, using metrics like validator count, operator diversity, stake distribution, and the Nakamoto Coefficient—the minimum number of entities needed to control 33% of a PoS network.

PulseChain features a substantial validator network, with over 52,000 validators across 34 different countries as reported in community metrics. These validators secure the network through staking, with a minimum requirement of 32 million PLS per validator.

However, stake distribution shows concentration issues. The Nakamoto Coefficient for PulseChain is currently 7, meaning 7 entities control 33% of the stake. Top validators hold significant portions, with the top single validator controlling ~8.8% of the network share.

This fits the 6.0-6.9 range: 1,000-5,000 validators, moderate diversity, emerging concentration (e.g., top operators at 30-40%), Nakamoto Coefficient 20-29. Although PulseChain has much more than 5,000 validators and is geographically diverse, the concentration of those validators and a NC of only 7 leads us to place it in the 6.0-6.9 range.

Censorship Resistance: 9.5

Censorship resistance evaluates the network’s ability to prevent transaction blocking, verified through history, compliance data, and code features. Cross-referenced with decentralization, as concentrated validators enable collusion.

PulseChain’s protocol lacks any built-in freeze, blacklist, or clawback functions, with community claims of 0% OFAC-compliant nodes. No incidents of transaction blocking have been reported, and X discussions highlight its community-driven, geographically diverse validators as resistant to regulatory pressures.

However, the low Nakamoto Coefficient raises theoretical risks of potential collusion among top stakers. Although there is no history of freezes or blacklists, validator concentration allows plausible coordination under external pressure or insider collusion.

In February 2025, a U.S. federal judge dismissed the SEC’s case against Richard Heart on jurisdictional grounds, establishing the precedent that PulseChain operates outside the purview of the United States. This reduces a major risk of potential future government-mandated censorship from the U.S. and bolsters PulseChain’s Censorship Resistance score.

This fits the 9.0-9.9 range: Extremely resistant, no protocol features enabling censorship; rare, isolated validator-level issues only. (<1% OFAC-compliant validators, no impact history)

Immutability: 10.0

Immutability assesses resistance to rule changes or reversals, checked via fork history and governance.

PulseChain adheres to a strict “code is law” ethos, with no rollbacks, halts, or reversals in its history. No admin keys exist, and upgrades are rare, with zero hard forks post-launch documented in explorers or forums. Governance relies on community consensus without a central foundation.

This fits the 10.0 range: Strict “code is law”; no rollbacks, admin keys, or halts ever; forks solely for non-reversing upgrades (1 or less total in history).

Security: 8.5

Security evaluates consensus reliability, uptime, attack history, and economic metrics (PoS: total staked value).

While PulseChain’s economic security is relatively low at only ~$50M currently staked value there has been no record of any chain-level attacks and zero downtime since launch. While many tokens and dApps on the chain have suffered exploits, PulseChain itself has proven to be secure for over two years.

One main factor of the low value staked is the poor price performance of PLS, which is currently ~$0.00003. The total value staked at all-time high price would be ~$150M. While the total value staked, or economic security, is a factor in the Security score, it represents the relative cost of a disruptive attack. Despite the low value compared to other chains, PulseChain has a strong record of 100% uptime with zero exploits.

This fits the 8.0-8.9 range: Highly secure; >$10B economic security, strong record, rare centralized infra issues.

Note: PulseChain underperforms this score on economic security alone, but overperforms in uptime and attack history.

Speed: 4.5

Speed measures real-world finality and throughput from mainnet metrics.

PulseChain’s block time is currently ~10 seconds, but the average since launch stands at ~3.15 seconds. Real-world TPS averages 20-50, with finality around 15-30 seconds. Handles low loads well, but TVL around $215 million and current network utilization ~50% suggests it hasn’t faced very high stress.

This fits the 4.0-4.9 range: Slow; 15-30s finality, 50-100 TPS, clunky DeFi UX

Distribution (Ownership): 5.5

Distribution analyzes token supply concentration via on-chain data.

PLS has a total supply of 135 trillion tokens, with no formal premine but a “sacrifice” phase allocating based on contributions—critics view it as premine-equivalent, with estimates of 20-30% controlled by Richard Heart and insiders, excluding the “Origin Address” holdings. PulseChain currently has over 1,400,000 total wallets and ~9,800 daily active users, indicating broad ownership despite whale concentration.

This fits the 5.0-5.9 range: Notable concentration; 50-100K holders, >30-40% linked to foundation/insiders.

Final Score: 7.4

Average of the six metrics: (6.5 + 9.5 + 10.0 + 8.5 + 4.5 + 5.5) / 6 = 7.4

PulseChain demonstrates exceptional immutability, with no recorded reversals, halts, or hard forks since launch, but it underperforms in distribution, speed, and effective decentralization due to notable stake concentration among a small number of entities. While decentralization and immutability remain the foundational pillars for assessing a Layer 1 blockchain’s resilience against external steering or disruption, PulseChain’s design prioritizes accessibility and low barriers to entry over unyielding robustness, as evidenced by its modest economic security and moderate throughput under current loads.

Critics highlight risks of over-centralization and limited adoption, pointing to insider allocations from the sacrifice phase and a TVL of approximately $220 million that trails major competitors, yet the chain’s Ethereum-compatible fork structure provides verifiable potential for ecosystem growth through seamless asset migration and tool interoperability.

Key Strengths and Criticisms

Strengths:

  • Zero admin keys, zero hard forks, zero downtime: Verified on-chain: 25,057,824 blocks produced, 100 % uptime, no state reversals since May 13, 2023.
  • Largest validator set in PoS history: 52,625 active validators across 34 countries — more than Ethereum Classic, Fantom, and Avalanche combined.
  • Instant, fee-free airdrop of every Ethereum asset: Every ERC-20 holder received free PRC-20 copies worth ~$20 B at fork — the biggest airdrop ever executed.
  • 3-second blocks, 23.7 TPS lifetime average: Outperforms Ethereum’s 12–15 s blocks while keeping gas under $0.01.
  • SEC lawsuit dismissed in full: February 2025 ruling that PulseChain operates outside U.S. jurisdiction. No appeals filed.

Criticisms and Risks:

  • Stake concentration risk: Nakamoto Coefficient = 7. The top seven wallets control 33.3 % of staked PLS, enabling a theoretical 33 % attack for ~$16 M.
  • No third-party audit of go-pulse: Core client has never been publicly audited. Community relies on inherited Ethereum security + internal review.
  • Economic security only ~$50 M: At current price, the cost to 51% attack is lower than Solana’s daily trading volume.
  • Informal governance: No on-chain voting, no foundation, no roadmap.
  • Sacrifice-phase opacity: $1B+ raised, zero public ledger of final point-to-PLS conversion. Critics call it a disguised premine.

Why PulseChain Matters

In a world where every major chain has been paused, forked, or censored, PulseChain is the only top-50 blockchain that has never stopped, never reversed, and never bowed. It is the living proof that a hard fork can deliver Ethereum-grade tooling at 1/1000th the cost — without a foundation, without VC money, and without admin keys.

For the 1.4 million Ethereum wallets that woke up on May 13, 2023, to free copies of their entire portfolio, PulseChain was the biggest wealth transfer in crypto history. For the 52,625 validators earning yield on 32M PLS stakes, it is the most accessible PoS network ever built. And for the privacy advocates who watched Tornado Cash get blacklisted on Ethereum, PulseChain is the chain that cannot be censored.

It is not perfect, but in the Trustless era, perfection is less important than verifiable immutability.

And on that single metric, PulseChain scores a perfect 10.0.

If you believe the future belongs to chains that cannot be turned off, then PulseChain is not a gamble. It is the control group for every other experiment.

Trust nothing. Verify everything.

References

  1. https://pulsechain.com/
  2. https://www.gopulsechain.com/about-pulsechain
  3. https://www.pulsechainstats.com/pulse-stats
  4. https://20lab.app/blog/how-to-create-erc-20-token-on-pulsechain/
  5. https://gitlab.com/pulsechaincom/go-pulse/-/releases
  6. https://x.com/RichardHeartWin
  7. https://hex.com/
  8. https://www.hexpulse.info/sacrifice/pulsechain/
  9. https://www.howtopulse.com/what-is-pulsechain-airdrop/
  10. https://www.g4mm4.io/
  11. https://www.pulsechainstats.com/validators
  12. https://nakaflow.io/
  13. https://scan.pulsechain.com/
  14. https://www.pulsechainstats.com/