As a portion of the Particl team is readying up for the Particl World Tour, the developers haven’t stopped a second tirelessly working on bringing some exciting features to Particl Core, Particl Desktop, and the Open Marketplace.
As a reminder, the development team is currently focused on eliminating as many barriers to adoption for its Open Marketplace as possible. The marketplace, having been released as an early Beta software on the 12th of August 2019, still has a few features, functions, and fine-tuning required before it can safely and easily be used by the “mainstream” crowds. These missing items are key to kickstart a massive adoption of the Open Marketplace, and it is for these reasons that the team has been almost exclusively working on completing these.
Without further ado, here are some of the latest developments related to the Particl project.
Note: Not all current developments are part of this update. The team has been working on some exciting stuff that is yet to be announced. Stay tuned as more will be revealed during the Particl World Tour.
Particl Desktop
Particl Desktop is the network’s flagship client and the most user-friendly way to use the available features and Dapps offered by Particl such as the Open Marketplace, for example.
Global Wallet Settings
Read more: Particl Desktop Settings
The lowest hanging fruit for improving Particl's user experience is by making several tweaks to the user interface of…particl.news
The upcoming Settings feature of Particl Desktop is pretty much self-explanatory — it allows you to manage your settings and preferences right from Particl Desktop and without having to modify configuration files.
What’s not yet common knowledge, though, is that the settings and preferences will be separated into two categories. The first category, Global Settings, are client-wide settings that regulate the entire Particl Desktop client. These settings are effective for all wallets and contain options like enable UPnP, connect clients via proxy, or choose the client’s language (for those who prefer their client not to display text in English).
The second type of settings, Wallet Settings, are parameters that are effective only within the specific wallet on which they have been set up. What it means is that when changing preferences within the Wallet Settings page, the changes only apply to the wallet you’re currently in. Changes will not affect other wallets and each one can have its independent parameters. An example of wallet-specific settings would be Notifications Settings, where you can specify what you want to be notified of (payment received, pending orders, staking rewards, new proposals, etc).
As it stands today, all the technical changes that were required for the Global Settings are now completed. The team is now busy with tweaking the GUI/front-end to display the new changes correctly and to easily allow for the updating of these parameters as well as the addition of new options, in the future.
Open Marketplace
The Open Marketplace is Particl’s first official Dapp. It is a decentralized and private-by-default marketplace where anyone can buy and sell stuff for crypto at near-zero cost and without leaving a trace.
Market Management
Read More: Market Management Tool
The lowest hanging fruit for improving Particl's user experience is by making several tweaks to the user interface of…particl.news
Market Management is the Open Marketplace’s tool which allows anyone to create a shop or a personal market. This is a key component for the Open Marketplace and will be a cornerstone for its adoption as it will allow more customization and tools for sellers (i.e. promoting listings, shops, or markets).
At this moment, the development team is working on the creation and integration of seller profiles. Seller profiles are a major addition coming along with Market Management. They allow users to create “profiles” for each wallet. Each profile has its very own “identity” and the client will offer a lot of options to manage profiles (i.e. a profile can be manually selected, per wallet, and can also be associated with multiple markets at once). To better understand the distinction between Markets, Profiles, and Identities, as introduced by the Market Management tool, there’s no better explanation than the image below that was put together by Juha Kovanen, Lead Open Marketplace Developer.
Additionally, because the Market Management tool is such a big feature, and because it touches most of the Open Marketplace’s components, the team’s going through a significant marketplace refactoring process so that the new changes can seamlessly be integrated.
Mystery Feature (Will be Revealed at SFBW)
The team has been quietly working on a secret feature which will be a major driver to adoption. This feature will only be revealed on Friday the 1st of November at 11:30 am at SFBW’s Epicenter during Dr. Kapil Amarasinghe’s talk. Of course, it will be mentioned at the conferences, even before the speech, so if you’re coming to SFBW or are in Vegas, you might get an exclusive scoop! This feature will be a major driver to adoption for the Particl Open Marketplace and has been a long-awaited addition.
The back-end code for this feature is now almost complete, with the front-end integration beginning this week, if all goes well. Particl’s development team plans on starting the internal testing by the end of the week. While it’s likely that the feature won’t be ready for release during SFBW, it will still be announced regardless, even if that means that it will be released a short time after the conference.
Once the feature is announced, a blog post will be published on Particl.news with all the details!
Particl Core
Particl Core is the underlying blockchain protocol on which the Particl ecosystem runs.
Particl’s Lightning Network
Particl Lightning Network Now Available on Testnet
⚡️First Testnet Particl LND Transaction Successful⚡️ Last week, Particl's Core Developer and Cryptographer, Tecnovert …particl.news
To make sure the Particl network can handle as many transactions as possible, Particl’s Lead Core Developer and Cryptographer, Tecnovert, has re-enabled Bitcoin-style Segwit scripts compatibility with Particl Core and reverted Particl’s Lightning Network to a simpler implementation that’s closer to Bitcoin’s. This will allow for a much simpler implementation of Particl’s Lightning Network on mainnet and also make PART easier to integrate to PSBT hardware wallets.
While it’s probably going to be some time until the Lightning Network is required for Particl to handle more transactions on its network (it’s estimated that the Particl network can do about 70–80 public transactions per second), this is a good pre-emptive measure to ensure that the protocol is ready as soon as it needs to be used.
It’s important to note that the Lightning Network can be used for more than just scaling a blockchain network. It can, for example, be used to facilitate and improve the performance of atomic swaps or conduct swaps directly on LND, without even using atomic swaps. It is expected that LND will be used, in the future, to facilitate PART swaps.
Particl Core 0.19.0.1 RC1 Pre-Released
Always with keeping with the latest Bitcoin Core development in mind, Particl Core 0.19.0.1 RC1 has been pre-released on testnet and mainnet. While this isn’t particularly the biggest or most exciting update of Particl Core ever, it is important to keep these updates coming as it makes sure Particl’s version doesn’t drift away from the “mother code”.
In reality, the longer you wait to update a Bitcoin-based codebase to Bitcoin’s latest version, the more complicated and time-consuming it gets to update it later. Additionally, it ensures that the chain benefits from all the same usability, performance, and security updates that Bitcoin gets.
If you feel like helping out, you can download Particl Core 0.19.0.1 RC1 today and report any bug you find on Github, that is, if you find any, of course! As always, it is recommended to hunt for bugs using testnet, not mainnet.
Download Particl Core 0.19.0.1 RC1 here: https://github.com/particl/particl-core/releases/tag/v0.19.0.1rc1
The Particl team is full steam ahead into the path to adoption for Particl and its Open Marketplace! With the most urgent items required to be integrated into Particl Desktop clearly laid down and planned out, the Open Marketplace is inching closer, every day, to reach the point where adoption can be made very easy.
For now, make sure you stay alert for when the Particl team will be in San Francisco for SFBW’s Epicenter conference as the mystery feature will then be revealed. That, too, will be a major driver to the adoption of the Open Marketplace!
