Did you miss our last AMA/FAQ livestream on Youtube? Don’t worry, this update should keep you up to speed with all the latest developments and news surrounding the project!

AMA/FAQ Livestream Summary

When is the RingCT and governance hardfork is going to happen?

There is no official date set for it yet, and the plan to combine RingCT and governance into the same hardfork hasn’t changed since we last spoke about it. Tecnovert is still working on some RingCT improvements on stability, performance, and security, and wants to complete those before releasing it on mainnet. He did start to officially work on the Bulletproofs implementation and so it is likely that it will hit mainnet WITH bulletproofs included.

Does the Particl team plans on integrating a lock-up time for PART coins when they are unlocked for staking so that coins are locked for a longer time and can’t be moved/staked/sold before your node finds a block?

In short, it is not an immediate issue we are targeting. While this might be a good idea, in theory, to make it more difficult for people to accumulate coins and then misuse them to attack the project by abusing the Proof-of-Stake protocol, such as measure would likely severely handicap Particl as a currency. This isn’t to say that a similar measure won’t ever be considered or implemented, after all, Particl is all about security, but right now the focus is mostly on Particl Marketplace and Particl Desktop. It’s important to note that we have a Research & Development team constantly putting up to test, researching, and evaluating the many solutions popping up all over the industry, meaning that our team is pro-actively putting your security at the highest priority.

One interesting dynamics related to this question specifically is how Particl Marketplace’s escrow mechanism, which is based on the MAD game-theory and requires double security deposits from both vendors and buyers, will actually lock some of the supply out of circulation. In fact, both vendors and buyers need to deposit funds into an escrow smart-contract to ensure both parties’ honesty. This, in turn, results in a portion of the supply being locked. Contrary to the proposed solution in this question, having some of the supply locked through the marketplace’s escrow is much more organic and less intrusive, as everyone who’s going to contribute to this “lock up” will do so in a perfectly voluntary basis, as opposed to being “forced” to lock some coins up for an extended period of time by the protocol. This is a scenario we believe to be more fair to the users and less handicapping. Additionally, in the future, more Dapps could make use of Particl’s decentralized escrow mechanism and lock even more supply out of circulation, especially once we release the developed SDK toolkit. This will make it considerably harder for attackers to acquire large sums of coins and misuse them against the network (although that behavior is akin to an “economic suicide” from the attacker’s standpoint).

Looking at recent events with Charlie Shrem, does he have access to any documentation or internal chats?

No, none of our advisors have any access to internal chats and documents, except for Joe Fisher which has been heavily involved with Particl Marketplace lately (as per his experience as a career product inventor and online seller). All of Charlie’s communication with the team has been done through private messages. Like any other company that would have one of its advisors accused of some misbehavior, we’re adopting a wait and see approach to the situation, instead deciding to keep a close eye on the situation rather than proceed to hasty conclusions. Should Charlie Shrem be recognized guilty of the allegations made against him, we will have no choice but to distance ourselves from him and his brand. Until that point, we’re staying alert to the situation.

Will Particl hire a market maker and make deals with bigger exchanges like Binance?

It seems that some representative from Binance may be hanging in our community and chatrooms as we get some pretty pointed questions from them from times to times regarding happenings, updates, and news we publish. While in reality, this may not mean anything, it is definitely a good thing for the industry in general that this exchange is keeping itself super diligent. Some of their questions are actually pretty good and shows they really are keeping a close eye on what’s happening surrounding the project.

Right now, we’re mostly focused on larger exchanges such as, of course, Binance, but also Coinbase, Circle, Poloniex, Bitfinex, and other similarly large exchanges. We do not focus on smaller exchanges that are asking for a listing fee and that we believe wouldn’t yield us some return (in terms of community growth) on our investment. This is directly in line with our responsible fund management strategy and part of the reason why we are guaranteed to have funds for development for at least until the end of Q1 2019 (after which an additional funding round will be in sight).

News & Updates

Status Report

Particl.io * Privacy-focused Decentralized Applications
Particl provides a decentralized privacy platform with a suite of tools to enhance your online privacy * Private…particl.io

As always, a new Status Report was published at the same time we did our last livestream. This report indicates a couple of items to be completed, such as uniformed height of listing items, drag’n’drop capability added when adding listings, and proposals/votes to be based on time instead of blocks. Newly added to the In Development section are the governance system coin weight system, private markets, and proposal enhancements. As always, Tecnovert is still working on improving the RingCT implementation with enhancements and Bulletproofs. The current team meeting in South Africa is likely to shape future Status Report and further the internal roadmap.

Conferences & Meetups

As we have been saying lately, our intention is to start getting a more direct exposure by directly reaching out to the most passionate individuals of the crypto scene by getting a better exposure at various crypto events. Nothing beats the human interaction of discussing in-person the subject we are all passionate about!

Our newest team member, Lina Seiche, was specifically hired with this in mind and has already started integrating Particl into the blockchain presentations she had already scheduled. Because she is seemingly falling in love with Particl, and also because of her own company, block-chats, it is to be expected that Particl will now be integrated into most of their events, in some way or the other, in addition to the Particl-themed events she’ll be organizing.

As such, she’s started planning the first of many future Particl-themed events. In fact, on the 14th of December, Particl is going to hold its first official event in Manilla, Philippines. This Christmas-themed Particl event will not only focus on Particl but will also hold a panel of experts and well-known blockchain public figures in that region. The panel will focus on eCommerce and why it is in dire need of decentralization and will be composed of leaders in the Philippines blockchain industry such as:

  • Miguel Cuneta — Co-Founder of SCI & Particl Advisor
  • Mark Vernon — Founder of TagCash, a large Philippines-based crypto company and very well-known within the Asian community
  • Chris Verceles — Blockchain developer at Consensys
  • Colin Goltra — Head of Cryptocurrency Program at Coin.ph
  • Gerb Inajada — Head of Blockchain Technology at UnionBank
  • Alenna Dawn Magpantay — Philippines Ambassador for Coding Girls

For more information about this event, please follow these links: https://block-chats.com/christmas-fair-2018/ & https://www.meetup.com/BlockChatsPhilippines/events/256492831/

We’ve also have been reaching out to our key contacts within the French community and are planning a meetup/conference in Paris shortly. We will give more information about this one at a future time.

Particl Chosen to Present at the Toronto CryptoCamp Blockchain Unconference

Home
Toronto | 29.11.18 Crypto camp Get your tickets!www.cryptocamp.community

Particl has been chosen among 80 applications to present its Particl Marketplace product at the Blockchain Unconference in Toronto on the 29th of November.

CryptoCamp is Toronto’s first-ever blockchain unconference. This 100%-volunteer-led event aims to bring the entire blockchain community together, showcase some of the most interesting products and projects, and pay it forward by offering Blockchain Bootcamp workshops. Organized by the community for the community, CryptoCamp aims to grow, connect, and diversify the ecosystem. Come to meet other crypto-curious and crypto-scaredies, and connect with professionals working in this space. This event is for you.

This conference is mainly focused on two things: education, and the presentation of actual products making use of the blockchain technology. This event will be hosted at the Deloitte Office in Toronto and will take place over two entire floors.

The first part of the day will be dedicated to education. In fact, many speakers will give educational talks about crypto and blockchain technology in general to a wide audience of crypto enthusiasts. The second part of the day, which is when we are scheduled to present Particl Marketplace to the crowd, is focused on showcasing actual blockchain products. In fact, a series of speakers will each be demonstrating their blockchain products in front of experts in the field and explain how they foresee it making an impact on the industry they’re each targeting. With around 80 submitted applications or so, the event has chosen Particl as one of the projects it wants to see presented!

Tickets for the entire event are available at this link, and we hope to have the chance to meet some of you who live close to Toronto. This event is organized in part by CryptoChicks, a rather well-known blockchain group in Canada, and has partnered with several key sponsors such as Deloitte, Shyft, BlockGeeks, TWG, and many more to make it a memorable moment. If you’re around the area and would like to come, let us know in advance so that we can meet up at some point!

See the full list of speakers here: https://www.cryptocamp.community/speakers/

Development Team Meeting in South Africa

The team is currently meeting near Elizabeth Port in South Africa for its quarterly meeting. This time, instead of solely focusing on development strategy, the team has also invited most of the communications team to join the meeting and further develop the marketplace launch strategy and communications strategy moving forward. Topics to be discussed include the coming release of Particl Marketplace, the coming funding round, the internal development roadmap, and many other topics. We will keep you updated as we go, of course!

BitcoinAfrica.io Interview with Desi-Rae

NodesOfValue Interview with CryptoBeans

New Desi-Rae Video:

We wish you all a good week and don’t forget to follow our particl.news page to not miss any update and #BePART of our great Discord community!

The Particl Team