It is finally here! After years of research, development, fine-tuning, refactoring, and community-testing, the Open Marketplace is now live on mainnet and ready to be unveiled as the world’s most disruptive and empowering marketplace the world has ever seen.

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What’s Particl and What’s the Open Marketplace?

Particl Open Marketplace - What to Expect on Day 1
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Particl is an entirely decentralized platform. There is no third-party or intermediary operating it or having any sort of control over its network. It uses a mix of P2P and blockchain technologies, meaning that it is exclusively run by its global community of users.

The Open Marketplace is an equally decentralized application that’s built on top of the Particl network. It allows anyone in the world to buy and sell goods and services, physical or digital, regardless of where they are located in the world. And because it is entirely decentralized, there’s no staff or support team to enforce rules and policies.

Furthermore, the Open Marketplace is completely private by default, meaning no identifiable data can be linked to any of its users. Transactions are hidden on the blockchain, images are stripped of their metadata, data exchange is encrypted, and you can even connect the marketplace through the Tor network. In other words, users of the marketplace are anonymous.

Get Started

To download the Particl Open Marketplace, go to https://particl.io/downloads or get it directly from Github.

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  1. If you have ever run the Particl Open Marketplace on mainnet before, you will need to wipe your existing marketplace database, otherwise, you may encounter errors that will break your experience. The location of your particl-market is dependent on the OS you use.
  • Windows:C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\particl-market
  • macOS:~/Library/Application Support/particl-market
  • Linux:~/.particl-market

2. To use the marketplace, you need to create a marketplace-enabled wallet. To do that, you need to first create a normal wallet as usual. Then, once that is done, create a second wallet and name in Market. Once generated, that wallet will have the marketplace enabled.

For a complete tutorial on how to download, install, and setup the Particl Open Marketplace, follow this link: https://particl.news/tutorial-how-to-use-the-private-and-trustless-particl-marketplace-11839ea30e09

For a Wiki version, follow this link: https://particl.wiki/prepare-install-marketplace

How to Use the Open Marketplace

Although the Particl Open Marketplace proposes a new and improved way to shop and do business online, it isn’t too different than the marketplaces you’re used to use.

For buyers and sellers, the simple process of going through a transaction can be summarized as follow:

  • The buyer places an order
  • The seller accepts the order
  • The buyer locks his funds in escrow
  • The seller locks his funds in escrow
  • The seller packages and ships the order. A tracking number can be included at this point
  • The buyer receives the order, inspects it, and marks the transaction as complete

Sounds easy? That’s because it is! In fact, the process of purchasing and selling something online without sacrificing your data shouldn’t be a chore and should be accessible to as many people as possible. Yet, if you want to have a full breakdown of how to use the Particl Open Marketplace, you can either read this tutorial blog post or consult this Wiki step-by-step guide.

What Can You Buy & Sell

Particl’s Open Marketplace is a two-sided marketplace. By definition, a two-sided marketplace is a marketplace for “exchange between two distinct user groups that provide each other with the benefits of a large network”.

That means it is entirely up to the users to figure out what they want to buy and what they want to sell, and when demand arises, supply should usually follow to fill a void. The best example of a two-sided marketplace is eBay — a marketplace where both sellers and buyers are “customers” of and provide each other benefits (the seller provides the buyer with items they’re looking for, and the buyer provides the sellers with revenue).

What’s Next?

This is only the beginning of a long journey for Particl. This mainnet release, dubbed a Beta release, marks the first mainnet iteration of many to come for the marketplace.

It means a lot of intended features are still not implemented yet, and that a lot of improvement will be made along the way. This is why your feedback will be extremely valuable. What do you think is missing from this marketplace? How was your experience in a particular situation and how could it be improved?

In the foreseeable future, the Particl team will be focusing on developing some of the core features identified earlier in the year. That includes, but isn’t limited to:

  • A mobile application and/or mobile integration
  • The possibility to use other coins on Particl Desktop and/or the marketplace
  • A market management tool allowing for the management of multiple user markets
  • A comment section to allow reviews to be logged in
  • Listing price pegging to allow listings to dynamically adjust their prices in PART
  • And more…

But for now, it is time to play with the world’s most private and decentralized marketplace as much as possible and observe how it will play out. The Particl team will be on the lookout and will be collecting feedback over the course of the next few days/weeks.

This important period will certainly help shape the future of the project and establish short to mid-term development priorities.

So install the marketplace, and let’s get down to business!