Pearl Improvement Proposals

FP PoUW Certificates

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Pearl Proof-of-Useful-Work (PoUW) certificates (versions 1/2; see PIP-2 [1]) prove integer noised matrix multiplications: operands are committed as INT8 values with one bit of headroom (INT7). This PIP specifies a new protocol in which the operands are floating-point matrices. Henceforth, the previous and new protocol are referred to as the INT Protocol and the FP Protocol respectively.

Certificate version 3 becomes mandatory at the activation height: version 1 and 2 certificates are rejected from this height onward. We stress that version 3 certificates are not valid under version 1 or 2 validation rules. Activation is therefore a consensus hard fork: upgraded nodes MUST parse and verify version 3 certificates according to this specification, while non-upgraded nodes will reject blocks using this certificate version.

Grouped-GEMM Proof-of-Useful-Work for Mixture-of-Experts

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

This PIP specifies a version 2 Pearl Proof-of-Useful-Work (PoUW) certificate for grouped general matrix multiplication (Grouped-GEMM) workloads, with Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architectures as the primary motivating case.

In the version 1 Pearl PoUW protocol, a miner commits to two matrices, derives low-rank noise from the commitments and chain state, executes a noised tiled matrix multiplication, opens a winning tile, and supplies a succinct zero-knowledge proof that the opened computation is consistent with the commitments and satisfies the proof-of-work target. This works well when the useful computation is naturally represented as one large matrix multiplication. In MoE layers, the input activation matrix is naturally viewed row-wise, with each row corresponding to a token. A router assigns each token to several experts, so the useful work becomes a grouped collection of smaller expert matrix multiplications, rather than one dense multiplication. Treating each expert multiplication as an independent version 1 PoUW instance repeats commitment hashing, noise generation, and peeling work over the same activation data.

PIP Purpose and Guidelines

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

A Pearl Improvement Proposal (PIP) is a design document providing information to the Pearl community, or describing a new feature for the Pearl network, its processes, or its environment. PIP-1 itself describes what a PIP is, the kinds of PIPs that exist, the lifecycle a PIP goes through, and the minimum format a PIP must follow.

PIPs are the primary mechanism for proposing new features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Pearl.