Hello everybody!

First of all, on behalf of the entire Particl team, we would like to apologize for dropping such a bombshell on you last Friday. To understand exactly why we did this, one must first understand what has been going on behind the scenes for the past several months.

On January 10th, 2017 the Shadow Project team flew in from around the world to Hong Kong for a meeting of minds. In total, 15 team members and consultants convened to discuss the future of the Shadow Project. The focus of the meeting was on how to best scale the project and help it go mainstream, and do so in a way that is legally sound. For days we deliberated, trying to find a solution that worked for the ShadowCash community but also adhered to legal requirements so that no individuals or groups were put in legal jeopardy in the future. During this event the following topics were discussed:

Transition to a project with cleaner, more professional branding.

Update the underlying technology behind the project and platform.

Raise working capital to help fund the development and legal expenses.

Expand the team and attract more developers, allowing for full-time ongoing development.

Create a marketplace that is currency agnostic, inviting to other crypto communities, and one that is self-governing.

After 4 days of constructive meetings, starting early and ending late, we came up with the idea to start the Particl Project and do so in a manner that gave ShadowCash members the first right of refusal to participate. From that moment on, the team worked full time to make sure all necessary arrangements were made.

We realize now, even though we believe all of it to be good news, it still is a lot to take in. Especially considering all of the hype leading up to the announcement. During all of this, most of our team members were pushing through some last minute fixes and changes that required all of our attention. We did notice a lot of excitement in the project’s communication channels at some point, but we felt like it did not deserve our attention and decided to stick to our main objective, which was to release on time.

We hope you all understand that the team’s last intention is to upset the community we cherish and work hard to please. This is why we all agreed that only SDC holders should be able to participate in the Particl seed round. We know Friday’s announcement has caused mixed emotions, some positive and some negative, but our desire is to settle any fears or feelings of mistrust and promise that we will carry out the grand vision we all share in this community. To make it more fair and equitable for participants, we have extended the bonus period from 2 days to 5 and have also decided to distribute 80% of the PART that is not claimed with SDC among ALL participants, respective of their contribution, after the end of the 4-week exchange period. The remaining 20% will still be donated to the Particl Foundation to cover debts incurred up to this point, such as salaries, legal expenses, and PR costs.

While for some the news is different than expected, we remain firm in our belief that this approach is the best way forward for our community and project in order to gain mass adoption. There were major legal hurdles we faced which confined our options in terms of a project pivot. Our goal is to engineer an effective decentralized self-governance mechanism into the network so as we go forward, the network (community) can operate in an autonomous fashion, determining the direction of the platform itself.

It delights us to know that a lot have already embraced the exciting transition. To attest to this, we can see the seed round at nearly 20% of total coins and just under $200,000 in funding in 24 hours. All of the contributions and efforts of the community will help fund the development of the project at a much faster rate. As I have pointed out, this is no longer a project worked on as a hobby, but a legitimate open source project that will be backed by a non-profit Swiss foundation. Additionally, we have hired professional legal and PR services to show the community we are now building up a fully legitimate project.

This new approach will encourage the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Dash, ZCash and other crypto communities to download and use our marketplace.

The reason is that most of these communities would finally have a real reason to use their coins for transactions instead of holding them merely for speculation. Based on this strategy, you will realize that every time a different coin will be used to buy an item on the marketplace, this will push the value of Particl as it increases the demand for our coins which are received by sellers.

Ask us anything!

We noticed that despite our FAQ on particl.io a lot of you still have burning questions about the token swap. Because of this, we will be hosting a AMA on reddit tomorrow @ 20:00 UTC.

Every question is important

We understand that not everybody will be able to attend the AMA. Because of this we have also setup up a form where you can ask your questions directly to the team. The intent of this form is to collect any and all questions from the community that haven’t been answered in the FAQs on https://particl.io — please read over those before submitting repeat questions. Thanks for helping us answer all remaining questions.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone for all of the feedback we have received so far, and for participating in the Particl token exchange. It has been amazing to see just how many people have already converted their SDC to PART.

Thank you for your continued support, we look forward to talking to you tomorrow!

The Particl Team