Particl, the future of DeCom & Defi

Today i'd like to introduce this amazing community with a project I really keep close to my heart. I won't lie I invested in it back in 2017, and I am still holding and buying whenever I can because I truly believe in its philosophy and the overall scope of its roadmap.

I chose this particular time because they recently released their flagship product on Mainnet after years of development and are about to release a new private DEX with it. Something unique and without any competition for now. Something with the potential of being a leader in its domain, a leader in DeCom and DeFi based on real economy, period.

But more on that later ( if you don't wan't to read the whole thing, you could skip to the end of this post for a general conclusion that sums up the most important aspects of this project ).

So, what the heck is Particl ?

"To me it's all about freedom." ( CryptoGuard, Head of Communication department at Particl )

Particl is an open source Cyberpunk / Libertarian software project. Its aim is to build tools that protect individual freedom and privacy.

Particl is the successor of the ShadowProject (https://shadowproject.io/en), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency project started back in August 2014. The team behind this project are known for being innovators in the cryptocurrency scene, being the first to produce many feats such as an HTML5 wallet, a staking mobile wallet with encrypted messaging and transactions, as well as having the first ring signature and HD wallet implementation on BTC codebase. Their Angular.js graphical wallet is widely known in the “altcoin” community for being absolutely gorgeous and very user-friendly. Needless to say that it has been forked by many projects. It was not so long after switching from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake that this very capable team started working on a fully anonymous and decentralized marketplace. This has long been seen as the ultimate value proposition of the Shadowcash blockchain.

What's behind the hood of Particl ?

The most recent Bitcoin Code

The main principle components of the Particl Platform on which the privacy-centric dApps can be built is:

Blockchain protocol: It is based on an always up-to-date Bitcoin Core codebase with added privacy features like CT, RingCT, Stealth addresses, Bulletproofs, etc. The privacy implementations are audited by Quarkslab and several academic groups. For consensus rules it uses an improved PoSV3 with enabled cold-staking, allowing it to be quantum resistant.

This component can be used in dApps for privacy-preserving financial transaction, on-chain contracts via Script, settlement layer, voting, digital identities, etc

If you are interested in more technical details, take a look at this article explaining those in detail but in a very comprehensive manner:

https://particl.news/particl-explained-private-transactions-44cb120d9cd/

Note: Particl's team was the first one to modify Monero's RingCT algorithm and make it suitable for any codebase. Here is the Quarkslab audit on that:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/security-audit-of-particl-bulletproof-and-mlsag.html

Their Flagship dApp: Particl Marketplace

Their flagship dApp is a private-by-design fully decentralized Amazon-like e-commerce platform, called Particl Marketplace. After 3+ years of hard work and almost 1+ year of semi-open public beta testing, it was released to the general public. Anyone, anywhere can buy and sell goods and services in total privacy with the added advantage of very low fees. The platform is a mix of P2P and blockchain technologies and it is exclusively run by its worldwide users who are running nodes. The marketplace is private by default with no identifiable data being linked to users. Transactions are hidden on the blockchain, metadata is removed from images and data exchange and communications encrypted. This decentralized marketplace is certainly a huge step forward in countering the predatory behavior of the current big players such as Amazon, eBay and Alibaba.

"Silkroad, Ebay, Amazon on Steroids, without the hassle" ( Humble Me ahah )

So now we hear you ask, in the event of things going pear-shaped and one of the parties to a transaction doesn’t perform, who is going to be the arbiter? Well, in the true spirit of decentralization there isn’t one. There is however, an innovative system of double deposit escrow called MAD which stands for mutually assured destruction. Both parties to a transaction need to match, as a security deposit into an escrow smart-contract, the value of the item being purchased by the buyer plus the shipping costs. Then once the buyer confirms confirm that the transaction has been completed satisfactorily, the security deposits are returned back less only the regular cryptocurrency transaction fees and the seller also gets their payment. If there is a dispute, both buyer and seller are forced to reach a settlement as neither of them will want to lose the deposit. As the marketplace evolves, a new feature will be soon be added to the escrow system. There will be an adjustable escrow rate wherein a sliding scale of the required escrow amount will be available. There will also be an escrow opt-out option in the event that both buyer and seller have absolute trust in each other.

Another key ingredient here is is that the users create by default "invite-only" markets and can choose to make them publicly accessible by paying a tiny fee to broadcast the "invitation" (essentially decryption keys for that market specific data) on the p2p network for a limited period of time (up to 7 days). If one chooses to share manually the "invitation" via some other communication channel e.g some forum, then the market remain "secret" and only accessible by those who have an invitation. Simply put, it is impossible for anyone without an "invitation" to even detect that the specific market exists. While I don't want to make any assumptions on what can / will be traded on those "secret markets", one can imagine the potential of a brand new "Silkroad" , but decentralized this time, and with a clever escrow mechanism to protect both buyers and sellers. ( I won't go into a debate about what is good or bad for you, it's a very personal matter and each of you have their own opinion on this ).

Lastly, Particl Market place is meant to be crypto agnostic in a near future, meaning you can use any crypto token on the marketplace seamlessly thanks to the upcoming Atomic Swap feature.

The Particl Coin

The native token PART has multiple roles and it's essential to all the Particl Platform dApps and their functionalities. Imho the shortest closest to reality description of the PART token is as shares of a decentralized platform cooperative (despite the fact that it is also a top-notch private cryptocurrency).

PART coin functionalities include but not limited to:

• It is a governance token via on-chain and SMSG voting, as it allows every token holder to participate in the platform related decision making via on-chain voting e.g. Treasury funds allocation, and marketplace governance

• It is a utility token as it is used as a settlement layer on the marketplace to protect the privacy of trades, even when transparent coins like BTC are used for purchases.

• Its a staking token with 8% annual staking reward where 4% goes to decentralized Treasury Fund and 4% staking rewards are distributed to people (nodes). (8% of new coins are generated per year). In addition, all the fees generated by the Particl Platform e.g. transaction, listing and promotion fees, are payed to PART holders. So the more traction on the platform the more cashflow towards the stakers!

The PART coin is a good earner of passive income. It uses Particl version of Proof-of- Stake type of algorithm to achieve distributed consensus on the blockchain. Unlike Proof-of Work for coins such as Bitcoin, the creation of the next block is randomly assigned to some lucky staker and that luck depends on the number of coins staked and the period of time passed since the last time those coins staked or moved. Currently passive income is 4% per year however this is only true if 100% of the total coin supply is being staked. So if only 50% of the total network is up for staking then the reward rate for the year would be 8% plus all the network fees included in the staked blocks. Last but not least, even though the (hot) staking can be done on your old laptop one can also cold stake their coins. That is one can delegate the staking rights to some node that is 24/7 online (e.g. Raspberry Pi) while keeping the private keys for those coins in their hardware wallets. The cold-staking node can not spend nor move those coins and can only stake those.

The marketplace supports multiple-cryptocurrencies allowing everyone to use their favorite currencies for purchases but the trades are always settled in its own native token PART, to protect their privacy and allow private escrow smart contracts, etc.

Why such a low Market Cap then ?

I ask myself the same question, considering the scope of this projects, but there are still a few explanations, and for the sake of transparency, it's worth mentioning a few things:

First, during the crazy 2017 bull cycle, PART ATH reached 40$. Then bear market hit hard, price dropped and the foundation ran out of funds at some point in 2019. Particl decided to use the 996k PART it had from a funding round to pay the developers instead of going to VCs. As you can imagine a chunk of that was sold for food and rent. If one combines the natural non-attractiveness of a price bleed with the addiction of crypto-gamblers to chase hypes/pumps, one could potentially explain why a project like Particl could end up running out of funds.Also, a bug in the coin minting part of the Particl code was used by an attacker to continuously mint new coins since July 2019, and dump them on exchanges, putting a freakin load of sell pressure on the coin until the bug was discovered in January 2021. Approximately 1.7 mil extra coins were minted by the attacker and sold. This corresponds to 15% of the total supply.

For more details see:https://particl.news/roadmap-to-post-inflation-hardfork/

BUT both those issues were resolved:

Regarding the funds issue, The Particl foundation proposed a new funding structure to the community threw a vote back in July 2021. The strategy consists of a new decentralized treasury model that gets automatically funded by the protocol using a portion of the network’s staking rewards.

This funding request suggests bootstrapping the Particl team by claiming 35,250 PART, monthly, from the Treasury Fund for the next 6 months. Once this period expires, the proposal will no longer be valid. The team will then need to publish a new, updated funding request and get it approved by Particl stakeholders to claim funds again. Also Anyone with a project or initiative that benefits Particl can then submit proposals (referred to as funding requests) to request funds from the treasury and get them approved by stakeholders through an on-chain vote. This provides the Particl ecosystem with an adequate PART income source intended to support and enhance the Particl project, reaching back the financial stability they had in 2017.

For more details see:https://particl.news/decentralized-treasury-model-proposal-published/

Quick sum up of the funding proposal:

Circulating supply post-hardfork (estimate): ~11,750,000 PARTProposed yearly inflation rate: 8%Proposed treasury block rewards: 50%Proposed total yearly staking rate (APR for stakers): 4%Proposed yearly treasury rewards (estimates): 470,000 PARTMonthly treasury rewards (averaged from estimates): 39,166 PART

learn more about the funding proposal here:https://particl.news/decentralized-treasury-model-proposal/

Regarding the bug, a hardfork was deployed. Learn more here:https://particl.news/particl-hardfork-scheduled-12-07-21/

With both those issues totally resolved, Particl is finally able to function full speed again, with a very exciting roadmap, including an Atomic Swap DEX, Lightning network expansion ( LNP is already supported, see: https://particl.news/particl-lightning-network-now-available-on-testnet-eb87a5ab65cd/ ), a P2P encrypted chat and lot of more features coming ahead.

CONCLUSION

I hope it is now obvious to you all that this is not only the first real DeCom project but also the first DeFi project that allows yield farming based on real economy of the "Amazon for crypto" aka Particl Marketplace. To sum it up here a few key element to remember about Particl :

1/ An audited blockchain protocol based on the latest up to date Bitcoin code with all the perks like, Taproot, Lightning Network, programmability via Script, etc enhanced with privacy features from Monero like CT, RingCT, Stealth Addresses, etc
2/ A platform based on blockchain and E2EE data-exchange protocols were you can build privacy-centric dApps
3/ The flagship dApp is a fully decentralized marketplace that preserves 100% its users privacy, it's censorship-resistant, it has near-zero transaction cost (no commissions/service fees) and, finally its crypto agnostic and users can pay in their favorite currency.
4/ A state of the art two-way escrow system via smart contracts, aka MAD escrow, that protects the trades from any scamming.
5/ Exciting roadmap with a notable item the BasicSwap an atomic swaps based DEX (currently in a closed beta) that is going to be integrated in the Particl Desktop.
6/ A powerful, user friendly but also gorgeous wallet module.
7/ The PART coin that in addition to its awesome privacy features is also used as governance, utility, staking and settlement layer token.
8/ Passive income made easy and very secure thanks to cold staking, either on your own node (a Raspberry Pi 4 more than enough for a full p2p network node) or some cold-staking pool.
9/ The Foundation is back full steam with a healthy funding structure, giving it the ability to push the Particl project forward.
10/ A team of crazy bright and hardworking devs, that kept pushing the project even in the hardest times.
11/ An ultra low cap project considering the scope of the project. Remember ATH was 40$ ! It has the potential of reaching the top 10.

sexy isn't it ?

DYOR and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. You can also join the Particl channels on Element/Discord/Telegram.

Official Particl Website: https://particl.io/

Thanks to u/Bakounin u/csuko and u/Cyberpunk, from whom I borrowed this post.

Let's make some crazy gains now !!