<h2>Abstract</h2>

<p>Pico is a NO fee, highly scalable currency using DPOS.

There is a small incentive for the nodes to run rewarded through inflation rate, nodes are selected through DPOS.

avatars and human readable addresses using usernames.

pos rewards paid on time intervals, democratized rate, everyone gets the EXACT same ratio.

Stake rewards through savings accounts which pay 20% annually, reduced by 50% per year until 1% yearly.

When Savings are requested from the Pico blockchain, they are returned at 10% per week for 10 weeks.

Pico can currently perform a transaction in less than 3 seconds, allowing the receiving party liquid funds, which they can send if they wish
Pico will allow for pillar services to be decentralized on chain rather than centralized off chain
Pico hosts its own onchain exchange which will allow USDT and EURT to Pico
Pico allows users to create hidden wallets which are not publicly listed</p>


<h4>Community Mission</h2>

<p>Our intention with this movement is to utilize the efficiencies and foundational philosophies of the blockchain and its trustless nature to provide one of the fundamental services to the people of the world, in a fair and democratic way.

A Fast, Scalable currency system which doesn’t damage the planet or oppress and rob its users through unfairly distributed inflation.</p>

<h4>Solution focused movement</h2>

<p>Pico is solution focused, objective oriented, and is fundamentally a software service. Our current implementation may be fitting as a beginning and will only be held as long as it serves our purpose as a population. If the community is presented with a better system or solution, we are open, dynamic and adaptive, quick to move and experiment and if we come to a consensus on the new idea, we can rewrite completely, keeping only our databases of funds and accounts.</p>

<h2>Eliminating Transaction Fees</h2>

<p>Blockchain technology currently depends upon transaction fees to prevent spam.

These fees suffer all of the known problems with microtransactions and prevent blockchains from being used for low-value transactions.

Truly decentralized applications must offer users the appearance of free transactions if they wish to compete with their centralized alternatives. This paper outlines the approach used by Steem to eliminate the need for fees and thereby enable a wide range of previously untenable decentralized applications.</p>

<h3>The Problem With Fees</h3>

<p>Blockchains are decentralized networks where all transactions are broadcast to all peers.

Every so often a block is produced that includes some or all of the pending transactions.

All blockchains must find a solution to prevent malicious users from consuming all of the available network capacity with worthless transactions.

These worthless transactions can prevent other valuable transactions from being processed and ultimately destroy the network. The solution adopted by most blockchains thus far is to charge a minimum transaction fee. A fee worth just a few cents is enough to make attacking the network expensive and unprofitable. While this approach solves the spam problem, it introduces new problems. Imagine solving the email spam problem by introducing a small fee on every email; people wouldn’t use email.</p>

<h3>Fees and Micropayments</h3>

<p>The fundamental problem with charging transaction fees is that micropayments can be inhibitive, especially for low-value transactions.

A fee of a few of even half a cent can be an obstruction if the required funds are only 1 cent, this would discourage users from making these kinds of transactions which are likely to be a major part of the microtransaction economy of the future.</p>

<h3>Fees are a Barrier to Entry</h3>

<p>Any fee creates a barrier to the entry for new users. Before someone can experiment with transacting in Bitcoin they must acquire some BTC. If they receive small amounts from faucets etc, it becomes meaningless as it’s significantly lower than the cost to transact.

Feeless transactions allow users to experiment with the smallest denomination, made available on sustainable low payout faucets.</p>

<h3>Variable Fees</h3>

<p>Over time a network usually need to adjust fees. This can happen either due to an increase in the value of the token or a surge in network usage. This can create an array of issues such as bad user experience or need for redefining the rates etc. Which can all be avoided by removing fees.</p>


<h3>A Better Solution than Fees</h3>

<h4>Bandwidth!</h4>

<p>One solution to the problem of having fees, is in implementing dynamic fractional reserves like Steem.

Under this model, the blockchain will automatically adjust the reserve ratio for the network during times of congestion.

The blockchain will set a target utilization that leaves enough headroom for short term surges in demand. Any time the surges are sustained, the blockchain reduces the maximum bandwidth-per-share. When a surge is over and there is surplus capacity the blockchain can slowly increase the bandwidth-per-share.

Every time a user signs a transaction, that transaction is factored into their own individual moving average.

Any time a users moving average exceeds the current network limit, their transaction is delayed until their average falls below the limit.</p>

<h4>Impact of Capacity</h4>

<p>Blockchain’s capacity isn’t necessarily capped. It is well within the technological capability of internet infrastructure to increase the Bitcoin block size to 10MB which in turn will reduce the minimum required balance by a factor of 10. While Bitcoin currently supports about 3 transactions per second, alternative implementations are capable of over 1000 transactions per second.</p>




<h4>Effectiveness of Rate Limiting Relative to Fees</h4>

<p>To compare the effectiveness of rate limiting to fees, we can consider how the two systems react to intentional network flooding by an attacker.

If we go to an extreme case and assume the attacker holds 1% of all coins then we presume an attacker with 60 million dollars. Such an attacker could deny the Bitcoin blockchain service for 16 years unless the miners increased fees or capacity. Even if fees were raised to $15 per transaction, the attacker could still keep the network flooded for 16 days.

Under the rate limiting approach, someone who holds 1% of all coins with an intent to flood the network would achieve their goal for less than 30 seconds.</p>

<h4>Renting vs. Buying vs. Time Sharing</h4>

<p>When someone owns a house they expect the right to use the house for free. If a group of people buy a house together then each can expect the right to use the house proportional to their percentage ownership in the house.

 A fee based blockchain is like renting the house from its owners, whereas rate limiting is like a timeshare among owners. If a house is owned by multiple people then those individuals must decide how they wish to timeshare the house.

Someone who owns 50% of the house but only uses it one weekend per year might expect to be paid by the individuals who take their unused time. This is the mindset of a fee based system. On the other hand, someone who owns 50% of the house is speculating that demand for the house will increase in the future and they will be able to sell their stake for more.

Any owner who owns more of a house than they use, becomes a real estate speculator. With this mindset rather than collecting rent, they collect appreciation. The value of a share is derived from how much time it can potentially grant its owner.

Owning 1% of a house and getting it 1 weekend per year is the lowest value of a share. However, if half of the shareholders never use their weekend, then the value per timeshare rises to 2 weekends per year.

If those inactive users instead opt to rent their unused time, then it falls back to 1 weekend per year.

If those unused timeshares were sold to people who would use them then the value of a timeshare would fall by 50%. Unless the rent collected is greater than the fall in share value the timeshare owners are making an economic miscalculation.

Using this rationale we can assume that a system based on fees will either be more expensive for its users or be less profitable for its collective owners.

An individual small owner may profit by renting out his small time slice, but only at the expense of all other timeshare owners.

In effect, the cost of the falling timeshare value is shared among all owners whereas the profits are centralized in the single owner who decided to rent his share. We can conclude from this that a blockchain is best served by not using usage fees at all.

If a usage fee were to be charged as an alternative to rate limiting, then it should be the equivalent of buying enough timeshares and committing to hold them long enough to gain the right use it once.

Stated another way, a transaction fee should be equal to the minimum account balance necessary to transact once per week and it should be refunded at the end of the week.

Assume the minimum account balance is $1 and allows someone to transact once per week. If someone with a $1 balance that wishes to perform 5 transactions at once they will have to increase their balance to $5 for a week either before or after their transactions. In theory a market could form where users can borrow the stake required.

In practice it is more efficient for users to simply buy and sell the timeshares necessary to meet their desired usage rate. In other words, the cost of negotiating micro-loans is greater than the cost of maintaining a balance suitable for your maximum weekly usage. Decentralized rate limiting of transactions can enable new types of decentralized applications that were not viable when every use of the application required a micropayment. This new model gives application developers the ability to decide if and when to charge their users for transactions.</p>


<h3>Performance and Scalability</h3>

<p>The PicoPay network is built upon Graphene, the same technology that powers BitShares and Steem.

Graphene has been publicly demonstrated sustaining over 1000 transactions per second on a distributed test network, and has been tested for several years on Steemit and Bitshares, performing the highest number of transactions in the cryptocurrency space.

Graphene can easily scale to 10,000 or more transactions per second with relatively straightforward improvements to server capacity and communication protocols.</p>

<h4>Visa Scale</h4>
<p>VisaNet handles an average of 150 million transactions every day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second. <a href="https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/retail.html">https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/retail.html</a>

To achieve this industry-leading performance, Steem has borrowed lessons learned from the LMAX Exchange, which is able to process 6 million transactions per second. Among these lessons are the following key points:

<ol>
    <li>Keep everything in memory</li>
    <li>Keep the core business logic in a single thread </li>
    <li>Keep cryptographic operations (hashes and signatures) out of the core business logic </li>
    <li>Divide validation into state-dependent and state-independent checks</li>
    <li>Use an object oriented data model</li>
</ol>

<p>By following these simple rules, PicoPay will be able to process 10,000 transactions per second without any significant effort devoted to optimization. Keeping everything in memory is increasingly viable given the recent introduction of Optane™ technology from Intel . It should be possible for commodity hardware to handle all of the business logic associated with Graphene in a single thread with all posts kept in memory for rapid indexing. Even Google keeps their index of the entire internet in RAM. The use of blockchain technology makes it trivial to replicate the database to many machines to prevent loss of data. As Optane™ technology takes over, RAM will become even faster while gaining persistence. In other words, Graphene is designed for the architectures of the future and is designed to scale.</p>


<h3>Human Readable Addresses & Profiles</h3>

<p>Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies usually use an identifier of 26-35 alphanumeric characters. These can be difficult and intimidating for users.

PicoPay features a use of avatars and human readable addresses such as @sols, @ryan31 etc.

Users can register an avatar and add publicly visible profile information such as location or a short description.

Profile addresses will be maintained within the blockchain, with an option to set profile as public or private (profile visibility in searches).

Users will also eventually be able to register social media accounts to their PicoPay address, allowing users on the various social networking platforms to send and receive PICO.</p>

<h3>Distributing Currency</h3>

<p>Aside from being available to purchase from exchanges, PicoPay will also be distributed by several other means such as faucets, giveaways, events etc.</p>

<h4>Airdrops</h4>

<p>We will be allocating a large portion to be set aside and given to people who provide minor KYC (to maintain 1 per person).

Anyone who registers for our airdrop will receive a sum of PicoPay, between a minimum and maximum value, based on your registration details and your proposed additions or prior contributions to the community.</p>

<h4>Partnerships</h4>

<p>PicoPay will set aside a portion of the supply to use for onboarding new users through platform specific airdrops, such as exchanges, hardware wallets etc.</p>


<h4>Current Allocation & Supply</h4>

<p>Pico will begin creating new tokens at a yearly inflation rate of 20%.

The inflation rate decreases over time, starting at 20% and halving per year until at 1%.

The inflation will continue decreasing at this pace until the overall inflation rate reaches 1% this will take about 10 years.

90% of the new tokens are awarded to holders of SP.

The remaining 10% pays for the Nodes and community allocated payments to support the community and power the blockchain.</p>


<h4>Savings Account for Distribution of Currency</h4>

<p>Savings accounts and staking rewards, coins are staked and released back over a period of time when a withdrawal is requested.

The majority of newly created coins are given to users who have their currency staking in “savings”.

There is an amount of money to distribute regularly, and that the community who already have a long-term vested interest in the future value and utility of the currency are the ones who decide who to allocate it to.

When a user powers down their savings, they are slowly given 10% a week for 10 weeks.</p>

<h4>Fair Inflation for Positive Impact</h4>

<p>Rewards paid on time intervals at an even distribution rate, everyone gets the EXACT same ratio.

Inflation is not a tool for the rich to rob the poor but rather a means of creating greater liquidity and encouraging spending within the ecosystem.

There are countless examples of systems with centralized inflation to focused parties and how this structure concentrates wealth at the top. Many cryptocurrencies have resulted in a similar setup, either with disproportionately distributed proof-of-stake or masternode systems.

And of course we all know the examples in Fiat systems of inflation and its devaluation of the circulating supply, though even healthy economies sometimes have this structure weaved in, for example,

From August 2008 through January 2009 the U.S. money supply grew from $871B to $1,737B, a rate of over 100% per year and then continued to grow at about 20% per year for the next 6 years. All told the money supply in the U.S. has grown by 459% over less than 7 years. During that same time, the value of the dollar relative to goods and services has fallen less than 10% according to the government's price index. add source

Our fundamental difference from most other currencies including bitcoin and fiat is that our inflation is fairly distributed amongst all network participants at the same ratio, and it is not given to a select few at the top.</p>


<h3>Community Assumed and Community Assigned Roles</h3>

<p>There are several roles that can be assigned a small range from the inflation rate as a support system and incentive to attract important skilled individuals to our project head.

Several roles can be voted on, each user has a set of voting rights based on their voting delegation.

The Community can assign roles for a payment out of the inflation rate. These roles are given upto 10% of the inflation rate.</p>

<table id="roles">
  <tr>
    <th>Role</th>
    <th>Rate</th>
    <th>Description</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Support</td>
    <td>1.8%</td>
    <td>Members who are in the forums and websites such as reddit, discord, telegram, etc who provide the community with help and support.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Developers</td>
    <td>2%</td>
    <td>Software developers that build the Pico ecosystem for the community</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Nodes</td>
    <td>2%</td>
    <td>Reps who want to run nodes or reserves to support the decentralization of the currency</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Marketing</td>
    <td>2%</td>
    <td>Marketing and brand experts who are actively representing Pico and looking for ways to bring adoption to Pico </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Representatives</td>
    <td>1.5%</td>
    <td>To support people who are actively Presenting valuable content about Pico or Representing Pico online or to their local communities. This may be journalists, streamers etc</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Veterans</td>
    <td>0.7%</td>
    <td>An extended thanks to those who have made previous valuable contributions for extended periods of time and are made redundant or are moving on, temporarily or permanently leaving the project.</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<div class="space"></div>

<h3>Consensus Algorithm</h3>

<p>The following is an excerpt from Dan Larimers post you can find here
The information was written about the chain we forked from Steem, we have used Pico Interchably in the following.

This is the missing white paper and analysis of delegated proof of stake (DPOS). The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of why DPOS works and what makes it robust. An early description of DPOS can be found at bitshares.org; however, that description also includes many aspects that are not part of the actual consensus process.

All blockchains are fundamentally a deterministic state machine acted upon by transactions. Consensus is the process of agreeing on a deterministic order of transactions and filtering invalid transactions. There are many different consensus algorithms that could produce equivalent ordering of transactions, but DPOS has proven robust, secure, and efficient by years of reliable operation on multiple blockchains.

Like all consensus algorithms, the most harm the block producers can cause is censorship. All blocks must be valid according to the deterministic open source state machine logic.</p>

<h4>Consensus in Pico</h4>

<p>Conceptually, the consensus algorithm adopted by Pico is similar to the consensus algorithm adopted by companies throughout the world. People with a vested interest in the future value of Pico vote to select individuals responsible for including testimony in the public record. Voting is weighted proportional to each individual's vested interest. In the world of cryptocurrencies, the public record is commonly referred to as a blockchain. A block is a group of signed transactions. With Pico, block production is done in rounds. Each round 21 witnesses are selected to create and sign blocks of transactions. Twenty of these witnesses are selected by approval voting and one is time-shared by every witness that didn’t make it into the top 20 proportional to their total votes. The 21 active witnesses are shuffled every round to prevent any one witness from constantly ignoring blocks produced by the same witness placed before. Any witness who misses a block and hasn't produced in the last 24 hours will be disabled until they update their block signing key. This process is designed to provide the best reliability while ensuring that everyone has the potential to participate in block production regardless of whether they are popular enough to get voted to the top. People have three options to overcome censorship by the top 20 elected witnesses: patiently wait in line with everyone else not in the top 20, or purchase more SP to improve voting power. Generally speaking, applying censorship is a good way for elected witnesses to lose their job and therefore, it is unlikely to be a real problem on the Pico network. Because the active witnesses are known in advance, Pico is able to schedule witnesses to produce blocks every 3 seconds. Witnesses synchronize their block production via the NTP protocol. A variation of this algorithm has been in use by the BitShares and Steem networks for over two years where it has been proven to be reliable.</p>

<h4>Summary of DPOS Algorithm</h4>

<p>The DPOS algorithm is divided into two parts:

Part 1: electing a group of block producers
Part 2: scheduling production.

The election process makes sure that stakeholders are ultimately in control because stakeholders lose the most when the network does not operate smoothly. How people are elected has little impact on how consensus is achieved on a minute by minute basis. Therefore, this document will focus on how consensus is reached after the block producers have been chosen.

To help explain this algorithm I want to assume 3 block producers, A, B, and C, because consensus requires 2⁄3 + 1 to resolve all cases, this simplified model will assume that producer C is deemed the tie breaker. In the real world there would be 21 or more block producers. Like proof of work, the general rule is the longest chain wins. Any time an honest peer sees a valid, strictly longer chain, it will switch from its current fork to the longer one.

I will to show by example how DPOS operates under most conceivable network conditions. These examples should help you understand why DPOS is robust and hard to break.</p>


<h4>Normal Operation</h4>

<p>Under normal operation, block producers take turns producing a block every 3 seconds. Assuming no one misses their turn, then this will produce the longest possible chain. It is invalid for a block producer to produce a block at any other time slot than the one they are scheduled for.</p>

<img src="https://cdn.steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmUnFg35XqTednrwUiZo7AHX7SHQ7hAUTytA8BLwk64EN7/image.png" />

<h4>Minority Fork</h4>

<p>Up to 1⁄3 of the nodes can be malicious or malfunction and create a minority fork. In this case the minority fork will only produce one block every 9 seconds while the majority fork will produce 2 blocks every 9 seconds. Once again, the honest 2⁄3 majority will always be longer than the minority.</p>

<img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmaXit43FxdSQrn7PshKtJcnTY5SYJb1vSArf26ys34NDF/image.png" />

<h4>Double Production by Disconnected Minority</h4>
<p>The minority can attempt to produce an unlimited number of forks, but all of their forks will be shorter than the majority chain because the minority is limited to growing the chain slower than the majority.</p>

<img src="https://cdn.steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmXsgRLQhmTVxjte48va1Qe6QePVzXUtmXRS8pjGPzUqGg/image.png" />

<h4>Network Fragmentation</h4>

<p>It is entirely possible for the network to fragment in which case no fork has a majority of the block producers. In this case the longest chain will fall to the largest minority. When network connectivity is restored, the smaller minorities will naturally switch to the longest chain and unambiguous consensus will be restored.</p>

<img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmb4UaGGR8nNW5pmtoDE7Z9pvMd1LnKSpdi3utHUWeyfQZ/image.png" />

<p>It is possible for there to be 3 forks where the two longest forks are the same length. In this case the producers on the 3rd (smaller fork) will break the tie when they rejoin the network. There is an odd number of producers so it is impossible to maintain a tie for long. Later we will cover producer shuffling which will randomize order of production to ensure that even if two forks have the same number of producers, the forks will grow in different length bursts causing one fork to take over the other.</p>

<h4>Double Production by Connected Minority</h4>

<p>Under this scenario minority B produced two or more alternative blocks on their time slot. The next scheduled producer ( C ), may choose to build off of any one of the alternatives produced by B. When this happens it will become the longest chain and all nodes that selected B1 will switch forks. It does not matter how many alternative blocks a minority of bad producers attempt to propagate, they will never be part of the longest chain for more than a round.</p>

<img src="https://cdn.steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmXstNcMtg5H6o1a955LZNGwbiCaygQnWzK81yeR8Uirvz/image.png" />

<h4>Last Irreversible Block</h4>

<p>In the event of network fragmentation, it is possible for multiple forks to continue to grow for a prolonged period of time. In the long-run, the longest chain will win, but observers require a means to know with certainty when a block is absolutely part of the fastest growing chain. This can be determined by seeing confirmation by 2⁄3+1 of the block producers.

In the diagram below, block B has been confirmed by C and A which represents 2⁄3+1 confirmation and therefore we can infer that no other chains could possibly be longer if 2⁄3 of our producers are honest.</p>

<img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmWjbpfju5vj1EGBtfLKSGcM4CpHmYppgB9cfev2dFLtyF/image.png" />

<p>Note that this “rule” is similar to the 6-block confirmation “rule” for Bitcoin. Some smart individuals can contrive a sequence of events where two nodes could end up on different last irreversible blocks. This edge case requires an attacker to have total control of communication delay and to utilize that control not once, but twice, minutes apart. If this were to happen, then the long-term rule of longest chain still applies. We estimate the odds of such an attack to be close enough to 0 and the economic consequences to be so insignificant that it isn’t worth worrying about.</p>

<h4>Lack of Quorum of Producers</h4>

<p>In the unlikely event that there is no clear quorum of producers, it is possible for the minority to continue producing blocks. In these blocks stakeholders can include transactions that change their votes. These votes can then select a new set of producers and restore block production participation to 100%. Once this happens the minority chain will eventually overtake all other chains operating with less than 100% participation.

During this process, all observers will have knowledge that the network state is in flux until a chain emerges with 67% participation. Those who choose to transact under these conditions take risks similar to those who choose to accept less than 6 confirmations. They do so with the knowledge that there is some small probability that consensus may ultimately settle on a different fork. In practice this situation is far safer than accepting blocks with less than 3 Bitcoin confirmations.
Corruption of Majority of Producers

If the majority of producers become corrupt then they can produce an unlimited number of forks, each of which will appear to be advancing with 2⁄3 majority confirmation. In this case the last irreversible block algorithm reverts to longest chain algorithm. The longest chain will be the one approved by the largest-majority which will be decided by the minority of remaining honest nodes. This kind of behavior would not last long because the stakeholders would eventually vote to replace these producers.</p>

<h4>Transactions as Proof of Stake (TaPoS)</h4>

<p>When users sign a transaction they do so under a certain assumption about the state of the blockchain. This assumption is based upon their perception of recent blocks. If the consensus on the longest chain changes then it could potentially invalidate the assumptions the signer had when they consented to the transaction.
With TaPoS, all transactions include a hash of a recent block and are considered invalid if that block does not exist in the chain history. Anyone who signs a transaction while on an orphaned fork will find the transaction invalid and unable to migrate to the main fork.
A side effect of this process is security against long-range attacks that attempt to generate alternative chains. Individual stakeholders directly confirm the blockchain every time they transact. Over time all blocks are confirmed by all stakeholders and this is something that cannot be replicated in a forged chain.</p>

<h4>Deterministic Producer Shuffling</h4>

<p>In all of the examples we showed a round-robin scheduling of block producers. In reality set of block producers is shuffled every N blocks where N is the number of producers. This randomization ensures that block producer B doesn’t always ignore block producer A and that anytime there are multiple forks of identical producer counts that ties are eventually broken.</p>

<h4>Conclusion</h4>

<p>Delegated Proof of Stake is robust under every conceivable natural network disruption and even secure in the face of corruption of a large minority of producers. Unlike some competing algorithms, DPOS can continue to function when a majority of producers fail. During this process the community can vote to replace the failed producers until it can resume 100% participation. I know of no other consensus algorithm that is robust under such a high and varied failure conditions.

Ultimately DPOS gains significant security from the algorithms chosen to select the block producers and verify that the nodes are of high quality and unique individuals. Using the process of approval voting ensures that even someone with 50% of the active voting power is unable to select even a single producer on their own. DPOS is designed to optimize performance of the nominal condition of 100% participation of honest nodes with robust network connections. This gives DPOS the power to confirm transactions with 99.9% certainty in an average of just 1.5 seconds while degrading in a graceful, detectable manner that is trivial to recover from.

Other consensus algorithms design for a nominal condition of dishonest nodes with poor network conditions. The end result of alternative designs is networks that have slower performance, higher latency, high communication overhead, and completely halt in the event 33% of nodes fail.

With 3 years of successful operation on BitShares and a year of Steemit we have experienced all manner of network conditions and software bugs. DPOS has successfully navigated this environment and demonstrated its ability to maintained consensus while processing more transactions than any other blockchain.

<br></br>Reference:

Dan Larimer, 2017, Steemit Post
<a href="https://steemit.com/dpos/@dantheman/dpos-consensus-algorithm-this-missing-white-paper" target="_blank">https://steemit.com/dpos/@dantheman/dpos-consensus-algorithm-this-missing-white-paper</a></p>


<h4>Optional Privacy and Hidden Wallets</h4>

<p>The Pico ecosystem will allow for the use of privacy gateways, including but not limited to the following -

 TOR
 I2p network
 Private Send
 Stealth send and stealth addresses address

Pico also hopes to utilise hidden wallet addresses to help hide personal funds balances from prying eyes.</p>


<h4>Censorship Resistance</h4>

<p>Pico is a decentralized network that is operated internationally by witnesses in different jurisdictions around the world.

All user actions are publicly recorded on the blockchain, and can be publicly verified.

This means that there is no single entity that can censor transactions by Pico users.</p>


<h4>Environmentally Friendly</h4>

<p>The DPOS algorithm utilized by the PICO cryptocurrency is more environmentally friendly than competing technologies and has proven to be a sustainable option for deployment of blockchain-based systems.

DPOS requires significantly less resources to run than competing algorithms without compromising the security of the network.</p>

<h2>Why Graphene Fork?</h2>


<p>Graphene has many features and is not concentrated on being a currency, we want to utilise their prime features and remove the excess, trying for an even higher rate of transactions than achieved on steemit.

After removing some minor interactions we don’t need, we can utilize the extra space and power
to run extra applications on-chain</p>

<h2>Pico Ecosystem</h2>

<p>In today’s world, cryptocurrencies are still lacking user experience. Users and merchants do not have the proper technical tools at their disposal for accepting digital currency as a form of payment.

As a community we can increase the value of the product and service through creating different tools both onchain and offchain

These products and services help to facilitate the needs of the community and add utility to our currency through practical use and value creation.

Ease of adoption provided by the Pico ecosystem combined with easy access to mobile Internet in developing countries provides a secure, fast, and NO fee payment gateway for both consumers and merchants alike, regardless of where they live.</p>


<h4>The Pico Family of Products</h4>

<p>Pico’s family of products can be summarized into the following categories below and each product will be described in greater detail.</p>

<ul>
    <li>Desktop Wallets (Windows, Linux, Mac)</li>
    <li>Mobile Wallets (iOS & Android)</li>
    <li>Web Wallet</li>
    <li>Merchant Applications</li>
    <li>Plugins for eCommerce Applications</li>
    <li>Merchant Mobile Applications</li>
    <li>Merchant Desktop Software</li>
    <li>Decentralized Online Payment Gateway</li>
</ul>

<p>Each product will be available to any person who has a need to make quick and secure transactions with low fees. The development of wallets, applications and software are driven by the community. Each product will include an integrated support framework, containing user guides and live support from the community.</p>

<h4>Pico Services</h4>

<p>The following services will be provided across all products offered by Pico:</p>

<ul>
    <li>Private Send (display parties involved but hide balances)</li>
    <li>Stealth Send / Stealth Address (hide parties and balance)</li>
    <li>Integrated Merchant & User Support</li>
    <li>PicoPay</li>
    <li>PicoPay: Social</li>
    <li>Exchange - Euro Tether/USD Tether</li>
    <li>Web Wallet</li>
</ul>

<h4>Integrated Merchant & User Support</h4>

<p>At Pico we understand that the idea of managing a digital wallet and using digital currencies may be a little daunting for some. We are integrating a community support system into the Pico family of products. Regardless of where you are located around the world, you will find easy access to dedicated community support members that will be able to provide you with support and assistance using the Pico products and services.</p>

<h2>PicoPay</h2>

<p>PicoPay is a decentralized payment solution for merchants.

The codebase will consist of a decentralized payment facility connected through plugins available for most e-commerce platforms including Magento, WooCommerce and Shopify.

The PicoPay system allows merchants to receive payments for their goods and services by easily installing the plugin to their existing e-commerce websites.


PicoPay: Social

PicoPay: Social is a set of automated, decentralized applications that run on-chain and enables individuals and organizations to send funds to registered accounts.

PicoPay: Social allows content providers and organizations to send or receive PICO within their existing Social Media audiences.

PicoPay: Social application is currently being integrated with the platforms of Twitter, Telegram, Discord and Slack.

Future development will include additional Social Media platforms such as Steam, Twitch, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram, Steemit, Weibo, and others.

PicoPay:Social is designed for online communities who would like to send or receive PICO using their favorite Social Media platform.

PicoPay:Social allows users to send and receive PICO by simply posting a message to their Social Media account or querying the chain for the social media name registered into the blockchain

This message can be either public or private.</p>


<h4>Adoption through a decentralized, incentivized salesforce</h4>

<p>Our PicoPay platform will automatically charge and allocate a small fee for retail users which will ultimately allow users to sign up with a referral link allowing for lifetime earnings on terminals set up by Salespeople.

This provides an international opportunity for users to earn Pico by referring and onboarding merchants, ultimately adding value to the community as a whole through utility and multilayer liquidity.</p>

<p>References
<br>Steemit Whitepaper
Dan Larimer, The Missing Whitepaper, Steemit Blog Post 2017

</p>