PulseChain (PLS)

PulseChain is a layer-1 blockchain launched in May 2023 as a fork of Ethereum, created by entrepreneur Richard Heart (legal name Richard Schueler), who is also known for founding the HEX token.¹² PulseChain replicated a full copy of Ethereum's blockchain state — including account balances, smart contracts, and NFTs — at the moment of its launch, then layered on a faster, proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and a fee-burning model intended to offer lower transaction costs and quicker confirmation times than Ethereum itself.¹³ Its native token, PLS, is used to pay transaction fees and to participate in staking on the network.³⁴

Ticker	PLS
Category	PulseChain Ecosystem
Website	https://pulsechain.com/
Twitter	@pulsechaincom
Telegram	PulsechainCom
Reddit	https://www.reddit.com/r/Pulsechain/

PulseChain's history is inseparable from the extensive and still-unresolved legal controversies surrounding its founder: the project and Heart were the subject of a 2023 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit alleging fraud and unregistered securities offerings, a case a federal court dismissed in 2025 on jurisdictional grounds, even as Heart has separately remained the subject of an active Interpol Red Notice and Europol "most wanted" listing tied to European criminal allegations unrelated to the SEC case.⁵⁶ As of July 2026, PLS traded at approximately $0.000006, with a market capitalization estimated at roughly $80–90 million, down more than 99% from its all-time high.⁷⁸

Overview

PulseChain is built as a hard fork of Ethereum, meaning that at launch it copied Ethereum's entire transaction and account history up to a specific block, giving every Ethereum wallet holder and smart contract an equivalent, duplicate presence on the new chain.¹³ Heart and PulseChain's promotional materials described this as one of the largest token distributions or "airdrops" in cryptocurrency history, since it effectively replicated the balances of essentially every Ethereum-based token and NFT onto the new network simultaneously.¹ Rather than Ethereum's own proof-of-stake validator design, PulseChain uses Parlia, a delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism originally developed for Binance Smart Chain, and targets block times of roughly three seconds, considerably faster than Ethereum's roughly twelve-second block time.¹⁹ PulseChain also incorporates a transaction-fee-burning mechanism similar in spirit to Ethereum's own EIP-1559, intended to offset new token issuance with an ongoing, usage-based reduction in supply.¹ The project is closely tied, both technically and in community composition, to HEX, an earlier token created by the same founder, with PulseChain's initial distribution designed in part to reward existing HEX holders alongside the broader Ethereum community.¹²

History

Richard Heart and HEX (2019–2021)

Richard Heart, born Richard Schueler, built an online following as a self-described entrepreneur and marketer before launching HEX in December 2019, a blockchain-based token marketed as a high-yield "certificate of deposit" that rewarded users for locking up tokens for extended periods.¹⁰² HEX drew substantial attention — and substantial criticism — for its aggressive marketing, celebrity endorsements, and structure, which some commentators compared to a Ponzi-like design given its reliance on new participant deposits to help fund promised yields to earlier stakers.¹⁰² Heart promoted HEX extensively through billboards, sponsored content, and prominent claims about the token's potential returns, building one of the more visible retail followings in the cryptocurrency industry at the time, often referred to within the community as "Hexicans."²¹⁰ Building on HEX's financial success and community, Heart announced PulseChain in July 2021, positioning it as a faster, cheaper alternative to Ethereum designed in part to benefit the same community of HEX holders.¹¹¹

Sacrifice phase, testnet, and mainnet launch (2021–2023)

PulseChain's initial token distribution used a mechanism Heart called a "sacrifice," in which participants sent various cryptocurrencies to project-controlled addresses in exchange for a future allocation of PLS tokens once the network launched, rather than through a conventional token sale with immediate delivery.¹¹¹² This sacrifice phase reportedly raised the equivalent of roughly $650–670 million from approximately 115,000 participants.¹² A public testnet followed in December 2021, allowing developers to begin experimenting with the network ahead of a full public launch.¹¹ The extended gap of nearly two years between the initial sacrifice-phase fundraising and the network's eventual mainnet launch drew some criticism from parts of the community and outside observers, who questioned the length of the development timeline relative to the scale of funds already raised.¹²¹¹ PulseChain's mainnet went live on May 13, 2023, an event marked by the burning of roughly 3 billion tokens within the network's first twelve hours as part of its initial supply mechanics, alongside the simultaneous launch of PulseX, PulseChain's native decentralized exchange.¹³¹

The SEC lawsuit (2023–2025)

On July 31, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Richard Heart and three affiliated entities in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleging that Heart had raised more than $1 billion through unregistered securities offerings of HEX, PulseChain, and PulseX.¹⁴¹⁵ The complaint further alleged that Heart had used deceptive "recycling" transactions to create a false impression of organic trading demand for HEX, and that he had fraudulently misappropriated at least $12.1 million of PulseChain investor funds for personal luxury purchases, including a 555-carat black diamond known as "The Enigma" (valued at nearly $4 million), high-end watches, and luxury vehicles including a McLaren and a Ferrari.¹⁵¹⁶ Heart publicly denied all of the allegations.¹⁷

Separately from the SEC case, on-chain analysts identified that wallets linked to Heart converted stablecoins held from the PulseChain and PulseX sacrifice phases into approximately 162,937 ether — worth roughly $619 million at the time — in early March 2024, near the peak of that year's Ethereum price cycle.¹⁷ The purpose and ultimate disposition of these funds became a recurring subject of community and journalistic scrutiny in the following years.¹⁷

Finnish investigation and international fugitive status (2024–2025)

In parallel with the SEC litigation, Helsinki police opened an investigation into Heart in 2024 after identifying discrepancies between his self-reported income and estimates produced by Finland's tax administration, alleging gross tax evasion tied to underreported cryptocurrency-related earnings between 2020 and 2024.¹⁸⁶ Finnish authorities issued an arrest warrant in September 2024 covering allegations of tax fraud and, separately, an assault against a minor.⁶¹⁹ Interpol issued a Red Notice for Heart (under his legal name, Richard Schueler) in December 2024 based on these Finnish allegations, and Europol added Schueler to its "Europe's Most Wanted Fugitives" list on the same basis.⁶¹⁹ In January 2025, Finnish police searched Heart's residence in Espoo, Finland, seizing approximately $2.6 million worth of luxury watches, most of them Rolexes, as part of the ongoing tax investigation.¹⁹²⁰ As of mid-2026, Heart had not been apprehended, and Europol's listing continued to describe the matter as an "ongoing investigation."⁶

Dismissal of the SEC case (2025)

On February 28, 2025, U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon dismissed the SEC's lawsuit against Heart and his projects in its entirety, though critically on jurisdictional rather than substantive grounds.¹⁹¹⁷ The court found that the SEC had failed to establish that Heart's conduct had a sufficient connection to the United States to support the agency's jurisdiction, characterizing his online communications and promotional activity as "untargeted, globally available information" that was not specifically directed at American investors, and finding that the alleged misappropriation of funds — which the SEC claimed involved cryptocurrency mixing services — had occurred entirely outside the United States.¹⁹¹⁷ The ruling did not address, one way or the other, whether HEX, PulseChain, or PulseX were in fact unregistered securities, nor did it make any factual finding regarding the truth or falsity of the fraud allegations; it resolved the case purely on the threshold question of the court's authority to hear it.¹⁷²¹ The judge initially gave the SEC until March 20, 2025 (later extended to April 21, 2025) to file an amended complaint addressing the jurisdictional deficiency; on that date, the agency informed the court it did not intend to do so, formally closing the case.²¹⁵ Heart's attorney stated that, to his knowledge, it was the only SEC cryptocurrency enforcement action ever to be dismissed in its entirety by a federal judge covering every claim the agency had brought, and Heart publicly celebrated the outcome, stating "the SEC lost and crypto won."⁵²¹ This framing was echoed enthusiastically by segments of the PulseChain and HEX communities, who treated the ruling as a broader vindication of the projects, even though legal commentators were careful to note that a jurisdictional dismissal is a substantially narrower outcome than an affirmative finding that the underlying tokens were not securities or that no fraud had occurred.²¹¹⁷ Commentators noted that the dismissal came shortly after a broader change in SEC leadership under Chair Paul Atkins, which coincided with the agency's voluntary withdrawal of several other crypto-related enforcement actions, though analysts distinguished Heart's case as a judicial defeat on the merits of jurisdiction rather than a discretionary policy-driven withdrawal like several of the SEC's other 2025 dismissals.²¹⁵

ProveX and continued developments (2025–2026)

In November 2025, Heart announced a new venture called ProveX, described as a project aiming to replace centralized cryptocurrency exchanges using cryptographic proof mechanisms, launched through another "sacrifice" fundraising phase similar in structure to PulseChain's original 2021 launch.¹⁷ Commentary on the new project noted that ProveX's sacrifice phase attracted substantially less capital than PulseChain's original 2021 raise, which some observers suggested reflected diminished trust among past participants following the extended legal controversies surrounding Heart's earlier ventures, while others argued the lower entry valuation could make early participation in the newer project comparatively more attractive if it gained traction.¹⁷ As of mid-2026, PulseChain and PulseX continued to operate as functioning, actively used blockchain infrastructure despite the unresolved legal situation surrounding their founder, and HEX, PLS, and PLSX all remained tradeable on a number of cryptocurrency exchanges.²⁷

This structure — a decentralized, permissionless protocol layered beneath a highly centralized, single-founder promotional apparatus — has made PulseChain a frequently cited case study in broader discussions about how far responsibility for a founder's individual conduct should extend to an otherwise functioning, openly running blockchain network that continues to operate independently of that founder's day-to-day involvement.¹¹⁷

Technical design

Ethereum fork and state copy

PulseChain's defining technical feature is its complete replication of Ethereum's historical state at the time of its fork, giving holders of Ethereum-based tokens, NFTs, and smart contracts an equivalent balance or deployed contract on the new chain without requiring any separate claim process for most assets.¹³ This approach was central to PulseChain's early marketing as offering one of the largest simultaneous token distributions in the industry's history.¹

Consensus and tokenomics

PulseChain replaced Ethereum's original proof-of-work mining (and, later, Ethereum's own shift to proof of stake) with Parlia, a delegated proof-of-stake consensus algorithm adapted from the design used by Binance Smart Chain, targeting roughly three-second block times.¹⁹ Transactions use the PRC-20 token standard, PulseChain's equivalent of Ethereum's ERC-20, and a share of transaction fees is burned rather than paid entirely to validators, a mechanism intended to create deflationary pressure that offsets new token issuance over time.³¹ PulseChain's total token supply is exceptionally large in nominal terms — data providers have cited a fully diluted valuation calculated against a maximum supply in the range of 140 trillion PLS tokens — a design that results in an extremely small per-token price (measured in millionths of a cent) despite the network's tens of millions of dollars in aggregate market capitalization.⁷ This structure is a direct consequence of the network's launch mechanism, which distributed tokens proportionally against both the original sacrifice contributions and the replicated Ethereum state, producing a nominal per-unit price far lower than that of most established cryptocurrencies even where aggregate market value is comparable to other small-capitalization tokens.⁷¹

PulseX

PulseX, PulseChain's native decentralized exchange, launched alongside the PulseChain mainnet in May 2023 and functions as an automated market maker broadly similar in design to Ethereum-based exchanges such as Uniswap, providing the primary venue for trading PLS, HEX, and other PRC-20 tokens directly on the PulseChain network.¹¹³

Market history

PulseChain's native token reached an all-time high of approximately $0.002198 and has since fallen more than 99% from that level, trading at roughly $0.000006 as of mid-2026, with market capitalization estimates varying considerably by data provider — from roughly $80 million to $90 million on platforms that report a circulating supply figure, to not-available on several exchanges that decline to report circulating supply for the token at all.⁷⁸²² PLS's trading liquidity is comparatively thin relative to major cryptocurrencies, with reported daily trading volume in the tens of thousands of dollars on some tracking platforms, and the token has not been listed on several major exchanges, including Kraken.⁷²³ This combination of an extremely large nominal supply, thin secondary-market liquidity on major venues, and a founder facing significant unresolved legal exposure has made PLS a frequent subject of both enthusiastic community advocacy and sharp external skepticism within broader cryptocurrency market commentary.⁷²

Legal and regulatory controversies

PulseChain's legal history centers on two largely separate matters that are frequently conflated in casual commentary but rest on different legal theories and different outcomes. The SEC's civil case, filed in 2023, alleged securities-law violations and investor fraud tied specifically to the sacrifice-phase fundraising for HEX, PulseChain, and PulseX, and was dismissed in 2025 solely because the court found the SEC had not established jurisdiction over Heart's conduct — a resolution that leaves the underlying factual allegations neither proven nor disproven in a U.S. court.¹⁹¹⁷ The Interpol Red Notice and Europol listing, by contrast, arise from an entirely separate Finnish criminal investigation alleging personal and business tax fraud and an assault against a minor, allegations that as of mid-2026 remained active, unresolved, and — under both Finnish and broader European legal standards — subject to a presumption of innocence unless and until proven in court.⁶¹⁸ Heart has continued to reside outside jurisdictions willing or able to extradite him and has remained active and vocal on social media throughout this period.¹⁹¹⁷

Balanced assessment

PulseChain's supporters and detractors offer sharply different readings of the same set of facts. On the technical side, PulseChain has functioned as a live, operating blockchain for more than three years, executing one of the more ambitious full-state Ethereum forks attempted in the industry, and it continues to process transactions at a fraction of Ethereum's typical gas costs, with an active decentralized exchange and a loyal user base that has persisted despite the project's legal turbulence.¹² Heart and his supporters have also pointed to the 2025 SEC dismissal — the only instance, per his counsel, of an SEC crypto enforcement action being fully defeated through litigation rather than a negotiated settlement or policy-driven withdrawal — as a meaningful legal outcome, even though the ruling turned on jurisdiction rather than a finding that the underlying conduct was lawful.⁵²¹ At the same time, the still-active Interpol Red Notice and Europol listing over serious, unrelated criminal allegations in Finland, Heart's continued fugitive status, the token's extreme and sustained price decline of more than 99% from its all-time high, and the documented movement of hundreds of millions of dollars in sacrifice-phase funds into ether shortly before Heart's legal troubles escalated all represent significant, well-documented sources of ongoing risk and reputational concern for the project and its founder.⁶¹⁷⁷ Prospective users and investors evaluating PulseChain are, in effect, being asked to separate their assessment of the underlying blockchain technology — which functions largely as advertised on its own technical terms — from their assessment of its founder's conduct, an unusually stark version of a tension that recurs, in milder form, across many founder-driven cryptocurrency projects.²¹⁷

References