On the night of August 6, 2026, a softfork took place on the Pearl network. The rank-penalty softfork activated at approximately 02:00 UTC (block 96251). This is the event many miners discovered in the morning after noticing a drop in hashrate. In the Pearl protocol there is a parameter called noise rank. The higher the rank, the “easier” it was to obtain a valid jackpot (reward) for the same amount of work. Some miners deliberately mined at high ranks and received a disproportionately large effective hashrate and rewards. The team investigated abnormal mining optimizations. As a result, the softfork introduced a penalty mechanism and established new rules.