Pearl vs Bitcoin: what is the same and what is different

Pearl (PEARL) looks a lot like Bitcoin under the hood, and that is on purpose. It keeps Bitcoin’s coin model, addresses and wallet standards, then changes the one thing Bitcoin is most criticized for: the work miners do. This Pearl vs Bitcoin guide lays out what the two share, where they differ, and what it means for you as a holder or miner.

Pearl vs Bitcoin side by side

What Pearl keeps from Bitcoin

Pearl’s node, wallet daemon and light client were forked from btcd, btcwallet and neutrino, three open-source Bitcoin projects. That shows in the details:

• UTXO accounting. Your balance is a set of unspent coins, just like Bitcoin. Sending spends whole coins and returns change to your wallet.
• Taproot addresses. Pearl uses bech32m Taproot addresses, the same format as Bitcoin’s bc1p, with its own prl1p prefix. See the Pearl address format guide.
• Seed phrases and derivation. BIP-39 seed phrases and BIP-86 key paths, with Pearl’s own coin type (808276) in place of Bitcoin’s 0. A Bitcoin wallet will not find your PEARL even with the same words, because the path and network differ.
• Fees in sat/vB. Transaction fees work the same way: you pay per virtual byte, and a higher rate gets you into a block sooner.
• 100-block maturity. Newly mined coins wait 100 blocks before they can be spent, as on Bitcoin. On Pearl that is roughly 4.5 to 5.5 hours rather than about 16 hours.

Proof of useful work vs proof of work

This is the real difference. Bitcoin miners compute SHA-256 hashes over and over until one falls below a target. The hashes secure the network and have no other use.

Pearl miners instead perform noisy matrix multiplications, the same math used to train and run AI models. The work is committed and proven with a zero-knowledge proof, so other nodes can check a block cheaply without redoing the computation. The idea is that the same GPU time can secure the chain and do AI work at once.

• Hardware: Nvidia GPUs rather than ASICs. The official Pearl Research pool targets datacenter cards such as H100 and H200, and community pools accept consumer Nvidia GPUs.
• Other resources: Pearl mining needs little CPU, RAM or storage compared with the GPU itself.

To get started, read how to mine Pearl and compare Pearl mining pools.

Supply and issuance

Pearl’s maximum supply is 2.1 billion PEARL, exactly 100 times Bitcoin’s 21 million. Both have 8 decimal places.

The schedule is where they part ways. Bitcoin started at 50 BTC per block and halves every 210,000 blocks, about every four years. Pearl’s node computes each block’s reward from a smooth curve instead: the first block paid about 3,230 PEARL, and the reward shrinks slightly with every block after that. Half of all PEARL is issued after about 650,000 blocks, which is roughly four years at the target block time. There are no halving events.

About 329 million PEARL was in circulation in late September 2026. Pearl is described by its team as a fair launch: no premine, no founder allocation and no venture funding.

Block time and confirmations

Bitcoin targets a block every 10 minutes and resets difficulty every 2,016 blocks. Pearl targets 3 minutes 14 seconds and adjusts difficulty after every block, using a moving average with a one-week half-life. Recently blocks have averaged about 2.7 minutes. In practice a Pearl payment gets its first confirmation in a few minutes. For more, see how long Pearl transactions take.

What it means for holders

• Separate wallets. PEARL needs a Pearl wallet, such as the official Pearl Wallet desktop app or Oyster. See Oyster vs Pearl Wallet.
• Fewer places to trade. Bitcoin trades almost everywhere. Native PEARL trades on a few exchanges; see the best exchange for PEARL.
• Watch the ticker. Other tokens use the Pearl name or its old PRL ticker. Native Pearl lives on its own chain, with addresses starting prl1p. Read Pearl vs Perle.

New to Pearl? Start with what is Pearl (PEARL), or check the chain yourself on the Pearl explorer.

Frequently asked questions