Guides D'Utilisation

Proof of Stake is an emerging consensus mechanism that needs to be performed in order to create a new group of trustless transactions (the so-called block) on a distributed ledger called blockchain. In the new age of Digital Currencies, there has to be something to back the creation of the coins, and with that comes Proof of Stake. It is the green way of receiving (staking) crypto in comparison to the Proof of Work coins you have probably heard of with Bitcoin or Monero. They use more energy than a small country to power their blockchain. PIVX uses far less energy than Bitcoin or Monero.

Compared to the PoW cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Monero, it is far easier and less costly to participate in the network and receive rewards with PIVX. You can stake even with 1 PIV, and with PIVX's Cold Staking, you have the opportunity to keep your energy and hardware costs as low as possible.

Staking is the process of locking your coins for any time period set by you in order to help the network achieve consensus of proof of stake by validating every transaction that occurs on the network to be written permanently to the blockchain. In return stakers that mint the next block are rewarded a block reward.

Whenever an user has at least 1 PIV in their fully synchronized PIVX core wallet, that node then is permitted to participate in the network with its corresponding amount of stake. PIVX uses an advanced Proof of Stake algorithm, which effectively secures the network against malicious actors. This allows PIVX owners to receive block rewards just by helping to secure the network. Anyone who owns PIV can stake and receive rewards.

It is simple. Buy PIVs on the exchange, move coins to your wallet, hold, and unlock your wallet for staking. The more coins you hold in your wallet, the more likely you will get a reward.

Hot staking is a staking method that requires the wallet containing your coins to be online 24/7 in order to receive rewards. Cold Staking allows you to delegate your PIVX to a staking node to stake on your behalf without sending them your PIV. This allows you to securely stake without the need for the wallet storing your PIV to be kept online.

Delegating allows for your selected cold staker address to stake on your behalf without having an access to your funds. After delegating you can safely leave your wallet offline and still receive PIV even from a hardware wallet.

Cold staking does not require time and attention to monitor the status of your wallet and staking. Also, you do not consume any additional electricity, since your wallet does not have to be turned on. However, if you don’t run cold staking node on your own but use 3rd party services it is worth noting that there is a dependency on those parties that provide you cold staking, and in some cases the variables include security, service fees, and hot wallet node uptime. Remember, if a 3rd party hot wallet goes offline, you will no longer be participating in staking.

A Masternode is a specially configured wallet that will support the network in more ways than a normal staking wallet. These functions require 10,000 PIVs to start and therefore the user is rewarded for both supporting the network and locking the collateral.

Your 10,000 PIVX is still yours to completely control, however should you spend the 10K PIV your masternode will stop and you will no longer earn block rewards. The 10,000 locked PIVs simply act as collateral and allow you and your masternode server to secure the PIVX network.

Being a Masternode holder is incentivized by being rewarded more PIV than stakers through the higher block reward. Masternode reward is equal to 3 PIV, while staking reward is 2 PIV per block. Masternode holders also gain the ability to take part in the PIVX DAO by voting on proposals in the network.

Any proposal submitted can be voted on. The range of the proposals vary between marketing, products, development, community management or fun projects. The community decides, YOU decide.

You vote via your wallet. There are various places to also discuss and get a read on the proposals that are up for voting in the wallet.

We feel that if you are your own bank, you should have a choice in what direction the bank goes. Voting in our DAO/Governance can be making important changes or trivial ones just like in real life. So we find it important to act in the interests of everyone who participates and everyone has a chance to. The PIVX treasury is also completely transparent to show users that we are well established and trusted as a DAO that allows users to vote on how the funding should be used.

DAO stands for the Decentralized Autonomous Organization. It is simply an organization that is purely ownerless and its rules are written in a code. PIVX DAO is governed by the PIVX community by voting model, which is currently 1 Masternode = 1 vote. Through voting, community can decide which proposals they want to support and fund to get the service offered in a proposal.

There are two main types of addresses in the PIVX ecosystem: shielded and transparent. PIVX-Shielded addresses remain hidden, and any transaction that takes place between PIVX-Shielded addresses keep the address, the transaction amount, and any content of the Encrypted Memo field, completely hidden. PIVX-Transparent addresses are publicly viewable, and any transactions between them and other addresses are completely publicly viewable on the PIVX blockchain, meaning addresses and amounts are visible anytime.

An owner of a shielded address may choose to share their shielded-address and transaction details with any trusted third parties. This is accomplished through the use and sharing of specialized view keys.

It is recommended that the machine running the PIVX wallet has 2GB RAM, although 1GB RAM with 1GB swap is fine. The PIVX blockchain is only ~18GB, but, for future use it is recommended to have at least 30GB free storage space. Additionally, a single core processor is sufficient to run the network. With these low requirements, it’s possible to run the entire network on a 2GB RAM model Raspberry Pi.

PIVX has consistently had some of the lowest transaction fees in the industry (typical sends “cost” the sender < 0.003 PIV (< $0.01) per transaction. Remember, these fees are burnt from the total coin supply, thus reducing inflation assisting in stabilizing the coin value.

PIVX transactions are incredibly fast. Watch payments remit in < 1 second, with full ability to spend/use those funds after 6 confirmations (~ 6 minutes).