Public Index Network

PIN is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency designed to index web3 metadata. PIN also exists as a wrapped token on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon.

Users and developers can "pin" metadata, permanently and immutably storing it on the network for public use. Pins can then be retrieved and read by any PIN-based application. When combined with its supporting metadata library, the Open Index Protocol ("OIP"), PIN provides a new standard for publishing, indexing, and monetizing any digital content.

A robust development community is actively using PIN to create and index immutable links that will help to serve as the infrastructure for web3.

PIN is designed to achieve four goals:

1. Provide a decentralized metadata layer

2. Provide proof of data integrity

3. Prevent widespread data atrophy

4. Provide high throughput of transactions

PIN, formerly FLO (The Flo Blockchain), is in its eighth year of growth and development. It launched in 2013 as a Litecoin fork and was established to be decentralized, secure, fast and efficient. PIN's blockchain structure is derived directly from Bitcoin's UTXO model, and its security is also provided from Proof of Work. PIN was created with no pre-mine, no ICO, no master-nodes, no airdrops, and no dev-fund. It was launched fairly to all participating miners and continues to maintain this core ethos of true decentralization. As a result, its community has driven its development since its inception and continues to do so to this day.

"Pins" can be added to any transaction and broadcast to the network. Pins cannot be changed without changing the input to the signature, which would invalidate the transaction. If the transaction is invalidated by a change to a pin, the block containing the invalid transaction will become invalidated as well, causing a cascading effect invalidating every block chained after it. This feature can be deployed to a variety of file storage, indexing, and retrieval applications.

Initially, pins were limited to 140 bytes. Currently, 1040 bytes of data can be stored on the blockchain with a maximum block size of 1MB. Currently, 1040 bytes of data can be stored on the blockchain with a maximum block size of 1MB. If the blocks are consistently filled, the maximum block size may be increased. With a target time of 40 seconds, PIN is fast. In fact, it is 15x faster than Bitcoin, and 3.75x faster than Litecoin. To further assist with transaction throughput, the maximum ancestor limit for an unspent transaction output (UTXO) chain has been increased from the Bitcoin default of 25 up to 1250. This permits large amounts of information to be efficiently indexed.

PIN does not allow reorganizations of 100 or more blocks, and uses a continuity of Proof-of-Work blocks to secure the blockchain. Once a transaction receives 100 confirmations (~1 hour), it cannot be tampered with or removed from the blockchain.