Pearl reuses a lot of Bitcoin: SHA-256, Merkle trees, little-endian integers, secp256k1, Schnorr and bech32m. These are the places where it doesn't, each linked to the page that explains it.
Checked against Pearl's source at v1.5.2. Select a row's arrow for the full explanation.
Topic
Bitcoin
Pearl
Explained in
Proof of work
Guess nonces until a SHA-256 hash is low enough
Multiply matrices; the work becomes lottery tickets, proven with a zero-knowledge certificate
Block header
80 bytes, ends with a 4-byte nonce
108 bytes, ends with a 32-byte ProofCommitment, no nonce
What beats the target
The block hash itself
A BLAKE3 ticket inside the certificate; the block hash looks random
Block interval
10 minutes
194 seconds (3 min 14 s)
Difficulty adjustment
Every 2,016 blocks (about two weeks)
Every block (WTEMA, one-week time constant)
New coins
Reward halves every 210,000 blocks
Reward shrinks a little every block on a smooth curve
Total supply
21 million BTC (satoshis)
2.1 billion PRL (grains)
Addresses
1…, 3…, bc1q…, bc1p…
prl1p… (Taproot) and prl1z… (P2MR) only
Valid output types
Many, including legacy P2PKH and P2SH
Exactly three: Taproot, P2MR and OP_RETURN
Signatures
ECDSA and Schnorr
Schnorr, plus optional post-quantum XMSS
Block size unit
4 million weight units
1 million virtual bytes (no weight units)
Timestamp rules
After the median of 11 blocks, up to 2 hours ahead
At least 1 second after the parent, up to 5 minutes ahead
Block on the wire
Header, then transactions
A ~60 KB certificate, then the header, then transactions