It's the end of the week. So see you all on Monday! Oh, right, it's time for our weekly development update first! 😅
This week, most of the focus has been on adding a few key improvements to the marketplace and desktop client after receiving various feedback from the community. While these fixes may seem mundane to some, they fix relatively encumbering issues that affect both buyers and sellers in different cases. A few examples of these improvements will be given in the Particl Desktop progress report section of this blog post.
Additionally, we mentioned last week that, due to the larger-than-expected scope of adding digital items delivery, we were evaluating whether we'd include that feature in Particl Desktop 3.1 or not. After looking at the situation, we've opted not to include it.
A big reason for this decision is that Particl Desktop 3.1 now includes a lot of important and quality-of-life fixes and improvements over the initial mainnet release of Particl V3. Delaying their release would be counter-productive and unnecessary. Indeed, some of these fixes are relatively critical for some users, and so we're prioritizing releasing Particl Desktop 3.1 faster so that these users can benefit from the fixes and gain back a better user experience.
With that in mind, we've started planning ahead for the release of Particl Desktop 3.1 on testnet. We're finalizing the last few remaining items planned for 3.1 and will then build a testnet client for community testing. We'll communicate more details on the testnet release in next week's progress report.
Particl Desktop Development Progress
In the intro of this progress report, we've mentioned that several improvements have been added to Particl Desktop, notably relating to Particl Marketplace.
For example, we've added a shortcut in the Send/Convert page to split a transaction into multiple outputs, which should make it more visible as well as easier to set on a transaction-per-transaction basis. This has been a much-requested improvement by some of our vendors as it previously caused them some issues, especially concerning the process of publishing listings.
Also, if something goes wrong during a transaction and one party does not receive an updated order status from the other party (which means their client didn't properly pick up the intended SMSG message), that other party can now simply press a button that's been added to the order flow which conveniently allows for their last action status to be rebroadcast. It was possible to do just that in the past, but it required commands to be entered manually in the console window; a less-than-ideal user experience. This isn't needed anymore and can be accomplished with the simple click of a button.
Similar to the item above, another button has been added. This one rescans SMSG messages (executes the smsgscanbuckets command) for you, so in the case where it might appear that an SMSG message was unproperly received, you can just click on that button so that your client tries to find and process the message.
Another small change that was added is the display of a count of new listings that are not yet displayed in the market browser. Previously, an alert indicator would be displayed over the refresh button; this is still there but now a count of how many new items have been received is also displayed near the refresh button.
Aside from these, a variety of bug fixes and general improvements have been added, as is usual, making this week one that ended up being quite productive and helpful in improving the general user experience.
With all of that being said, here's the list of remaining items to be included in Particl Desktop 3.1.
- Several features related to better vendor inventory import/update. We can report that the ability to batch update prices to multiple listings at once is now complete, but has received various bug fixes and improvements this week. The addition of a product code and the ability to import images directly through the CSV file is still in progress and is expected to be wrapped up next week.
- The usage of markdown in product descriptions on the marketplace for better, more customizable formatting. This task has already been started but has been put on pause until the above item is completed. It is expected to resume next week or so and is also expected to be wrapped up relatively quickly.
- Enable the sale of digital items with no physical shipping address requirement (i.e., download links, crypto addresses for NFTs, user codes, etc.). While this task has seen some progress since it was started, it will not be included in Particl Desktop 3.1 and is pushed for later on.
Keeping the listed items above in mind, we will be starting the process of building and releasing Particl Desktop 3.1 on testnet very soon.
As always, we'd rather not give a precise date or estimate for its release, but we hope to begin the process towards the end of next week. We'll give you more accurate details on this in next week's progress report.
Particl Core and BasicSwap Progress Report
This week, Particl's Core Developer, Tecnovert, has focused mostly on Particl Core and on preparing the upcoming hardfork.
Indeed, Particl Core 0.21.2.5 has been pre-released a couple of days ago and you can now download and install it by following this link. For a complete list of changes, visit this page.
particlNotable in the changelog for Particl Core 0.21.2.5 is the fact that the upcoming hardfork has now been scheduled. Indeed, on the 1st of February 2022 at 17:00 UTC, the Particl blockchain will hardfork and include a variety of new features, including Taproot activation.
We'll make a formal announcement on the hardfork next week and will include in it all the necessary details about it. We'll also publish in that blog post a complete list of the new features and changes it will introduce.
Please note that, if you still have disabled outputs as a result of the emergency hardfork that happened earlier this year, you will need to submit your claim to have them re-activated before the hardfork. Failure to do so means you'll need to wait for the next, subsequent hardfork to have your outputs re-activated. To learn more about how to submit your claim, please refer to this blog post.
Aside from that, there have been some minor improvements made to BasicSwap's underlying protocol, notably around its UI and the use of RingCT/CT swaps. We are still working towards launching the Open Beta soon and will give more detailed information on this as soon as we can.
We'd like to thank you, as always, for your passion, dedication, and various contributions to the Particl project. Your feedback is always incredibly useful and helps make the platform better and easier to use for all.
We wish you a wonderful weekend and we'll see you back on Monday! 👋
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