Development Update (23–10

Internal Testnet Builds and New Surprise Additions ✅

Since the last Development Update, Particl V3 has progressed remarkably well and has finally been compiled into a working build this past Friday, the 15th of October 2020, which is currently undergoing internal testing before going live.

Particl V3 is the upcoming massive Particl update. It brings forward a completely new and improved desktop application, a refactored marketplace with better performance than ever, and a ton of long-awaited features such as, among many, multi-markets. To learn more about Particl V3, head over to this blog post or check out this article published today on Decentralize Today.

We’ve got a lot to report on today, and a few surprise features and functionalities as well, so let’s jump into it.

Particl V3 Progress Report

As announced on the 15th of October, the first successful build of Particl V3 has been compiled and the client has been going through thorough internal testing before it can be published publicly.

So where do things stand now, considering that important development milestone is reached? Here is the latest progress report which should give you a good overall idea.

- All core functionalities of the marketplace have been completed and successfully integrated into the improved Particl Desktop 3.0 client. “Core functionalities” refer to all basic marketplace interactions, including the selling and purchasing of products, the escrow system, the creation/sharing of multi-markets, etc.

- Particl Desktop 3.0 is now at feature parity level with Particl Desktop 2.0, meaning that all desktop features that were present on Particl Desktop up to Particl Desktop 2.1 are now present in 3.0 and working fine. This excludes all the new features introduced by 3.0, which are now integrated as well.

- New features introduced by Particl V3 are completed, successfully integrated, and undergoing internal testing. These include multi-markets and storefronts, user identities, modular approach to desktop client, coin control, anon listing fees, increased default ring signatures, anon order releasing, user market dashboard, UTXO splitter, etc, More information on some of these features in the following section.

- Pre-existing features introduced in versions between Particl Desktop 2.0 and the current latest version (2.3.5) are currently being reworked and improved to reach much smoother integrations and interaction with the new 3.0. These include comments, as well as its new integration within the buy flow (you can now communicate with the other party, in the middle of an escrow transaction, to resolve any potential issue), bulk product import, and in-app swap module. These specific items are not expected to take much longer before they are fully ready.

- The first few internal builds of Particl V3 (there have been now over 5 iterations of it, each improving on previous issues and fixing bugs) have been very stable, fast, and smooth considering the scope of the improvements and new features added. There have, however, been a few issues notably with the speed and stability of Windows builds and this has been a major point of focus for the team during the past few days. It has now identified the root of these issues and is in the process of promptly applying the required fixes.

- Minor bugs and issues are being picked up and addressed all throughout this internal testing phase.

New Features and Functionalities Announcement

Particl V3 introduces a bunch of new features and functionalities that significantly improves the user experience. Most of these additions are a direct result of feedback and comments collected from you and all other Particl community members. Because of this, the Particl team would like to thank you for helping to identify areas of struggle and help improve DeCommerce.

We are excited to announce today a few features which have either been unannounced as of yet or have received minimal coverage. They are as follows.

Coin Control Arrives in Particl Desktop

This feature was teased on Twitter on the first of September and can now finally be revealed. Coin Control is the ability to better control the parameters of a transaction by selecting exactly which output(s) to use when sending funds.

Although this is an advanced feature, it is very useful to a lot of users which forced them to constantly switch between Particl Desktop and Particl-Qt wallets just to properly manage their outgoing transactions. Coin Control is now available right from Particl Desktop!

Anonymous Payment of Listing Fees (Anon Balances)

In Particl V2, listings used to be paid with public balances. Although that is still the default behavior, you can now easily choose to pay for listing fees using your anon balance. This significantly improves the level of privacy when adding listings to the marketplace, but it also has a few drawbacks such as longer delays for listings to appear on the marketplace and can also negatively impact the ability to list multiple listings at once.

That’s because anon “outputs” require 12 confirmations until they are confirmed by the network and can be used in new transactions. If you want to list multiple listings at once and pay for the listing fees using your anon balance, you’ll at least need as many anon outputs as the number of listings you’re trying to list at once.

UTXO splitter

To facilitate the creation of many anon outputs, Particl V3 will also introduce a UTXO splitter. This will allow you to set up your balances in such a way that you’re going to be able to buy and sell multiple listings at once.

When converting funds from a public balance to an anon balance, it used to create a single output. Outputs are kind of like internal balances that are used to execute transactions. A single address may have multiple outputs.

Whenever you need to make an anon transaction, for example paying for an item, listing a product on the marketplace, or just privately sending funds to someone, it locks the full amount contained in the output for 12 confirmations (~24 minutes). That’s true even if you don’t use the total number of coins contained in that output. And then, if you had, for example, 2 outputs in a single address and tried to purchase 3 items, then you would have only been able to buy 2 items and then having to wait 24 minutes just to buy the third one. Of course, if the cost of an item can’t be covered by the full amount contained in a single output, then 2 or more outputs may be used to cover the payment, leading to even more annoyances.

With Particl V3, you’ll now be able to specify how many outputs you want whenever making an anon transaction (or balance conversion). The recommended behavior is to create multiple outputs whenever converting balances, that way you’ll ensure that you’re not going to encounter any bumps when making marketplace payments for multiple listings at once.

Order Payments and Escrow Deposits Now Sent in Anon Balances

In Particl V2, order payments and escrow security deposits used to be sent into blind balances once transactions were completed. That is not the case anymore.

When completing a transaction, you will receive your due funds into your anon balance. This improves the level of privacy associated with using Particl Marketplace to even higher than before and makes it impossible for outside observers to track the revenue of sellers and deposits of buyers.

Higher Default Value for the Number of Ring Signatures

When making an anon transaction (RingCT), your privacy is protected using what’s referred to as “ring signatures” (read the Particl Explained — Private Transactions article for more details). As a general rule of thumb, the more ring signatures used in a transaction, the greater your level of privacy gets. But much more than that, a higher number of ring signatures also improves the level of privacy of other users’ anon transactions.

With Particl Desktop 3.0, the number of default ring signatures used to anonymize RingCT transactions (anon) has been increased to 24. You, as well as everyone else making anonymous transactions, will now benefit from greater data security!.

Thoughts From Particl Desktop Developer Arnold Bansermer

Recently, Particl Desktop developer Arnold Bansemer commented on a question from the community about the perceived slow speed development for Particl V3. Because his reply provides valuable insights into the process, we’ve decided to include it in this Development Update so that you can get an inside perspective on the matter.

“I want to mention that development is not occurring slowly. It’s progressing at a much faster pace than what we were producing before. It may appear slow from the outset perhaps due to visibility over the changes actually being made, so perhaps this is the actual concern.

But for perspective — in basically ten months, we’ve done major surgery on both Particl Desktop and the marketplace codebase which are both nearing release readiness. That’s compared to Particl V2 (which includes Particl Desktop 2.0 to the current version that’s live on mainnet) which took a lot longer than ten months to complete, taking in fact more than two years. That’s on top of doing the R&D that’s necessary to actually make the newer stuff work.

Keep in mind that this isn’t some copy/paste job, so when adding/updating functionalities we need to figure it out as well, and find a way to do it without sacrificing security/privacy which are core Particl values, or degrading the UX significantly, etc.

All of that is coming from a team that’s a lot smaller than most dev products out there as it is, let alone in the crypto space. So while team members and developers might seem quiet, it’s because we’re mostly focused on getting the applications finalized.” — Arnold Bansemer, Lead Particl Desktop Developer

Arriving at Destination

The Particl team would like to thank you for your continued support and patience in this long journey that has been the development of Particl V3. The team is fully aware of your expectations and is confident that V3’s release will be meaningful not only for the Particl project but the entire world of DeCommerce. Please bear with us as we thoroughly test the new builds and ensure the release gets the impact it deserves.

The team is very excited to finally be reaching the end of this phase of development and looks forward to embarking on new challenges following this long-awaited release.

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