What is the most noticeable thing about your project? Perhaps it can be something you developed or something you achieved.

Hard to estimate. Despite the sheer amount of stunning technical innovation and achievements Particl Project is integrating into its products, the passion and devotion of the team and the contributing community to be the best in class and to deliver the best in class technical side, best in class user experience and best in class social impact, is something that sums it up quite well.

Now, give us a quick rundown of the future of the project. For example, what are you seeking to bring to life and what will it mean for the overall project?

There is a lot of great stuff coming for Particl, and we are about to start making much more noise than we ever did! In the short-term and mid-term our

Particl Marketplace. First and foremost we focus to release the Particl Marketplace Beta version officially on mainnet. We see this as the most important thing at the moment. It is an epic milestone for the Particl Project and will lead to an overall growth in our user base and gives us much more insights and feedback from a real-world point of view.

Cold staking pools. Cold staking pools are on the timeline and will give people that intend to stake their PART coins, but have a small amount of the PART Coin, a high-security environment with a more frequent distribution of the stake rewards compared to staking on their own.

Bulletproofs. The Bulletproofs will be an efficiency enhancement for PART Coin transactions where the amount transferred is hidden. Ten times less the size than it was before. So really remarkable and convenient while reducing transaction costs on the network.

SDK. For the developers, we are building a Software Development Kit which gives them a well documented and easy entry into Particl Development to match our high-security coding standards. Adding 3rd party Dapp development teams into the mix will have an additional big impact on the adoption of the Particl Platform, an organic growth on our community and more use-cases for PART.

More improvements. Even more improvements are scheduled for Particl Project, so we recommend to follow us at least on https://twitter.com/ParticlProject to stay in the loop of our progress. Every new piece added to the Particl Project leads to more mention and recognition.

The more people and the more developers get attracted by our achievements and start contributing the more solid gets the project and the more flourish gets our community.

Tell us about your team. Who’re the people behind the screens?

The Particl development team is an impressive group of talented developers. For one, Ryno has been a blockchain developer since at least 2013 leading the development of the Shadowcash project. Gerlof, Particl’s Lead Designer, is well-known in the crypto industry, having worked for many projects including EOS (he actually did most of their branding, including their current logo) and has has been linked to Disney and Yves Rocher as art director and industrial designer. Tecnovert, Particl’s Core Developer and cryptographer, is a devoted cryptography fan and has years of daily commits on Github, even outpacing some of the most prominent Bitcoin developers. This is not to forget the other very talented developers like Juha (Lead Particl Marketplace Developer), Arnold (Lead Particl Desktop Developer), Kewde (Particl Core & Desktop Developer), and the others. The Particl project would rather focus on developer quality rather than developer number. Sometimes, less is more.

The Particl project is also closely associated with Satoshi Citadel Industries (SCI), a leading remittance (the 2nd biggest Bitcoin remittance company in the Philippines) and blockchain company in Asia. In fact, two of Particl’s advisors, Miguel Cuneta and John Bailon, are both founders of the company and are regularly advising the company as well as offer them opportunities. The dynamic of this partnership is intended to really ramp up as we draw closer to the release of Particl Marketplace.

Particl can also benefit from the advice of other advisors like world-renowned Charlie Shrem, Business & Finance Expert Micah Spruill, and eCommerce Strategist, Career eCommerce Vendor, and Product Inventor Joe Fisher.

Particl also has the chance of benefiting from the dedicated work of some community members that have stepped up over time to help grow the Particl project!

Which partnerships have you engaged so far, and which ones are the most impactful?

Changelly and Ledger are two big integrations we are excited about. The project developers are also wrapping up a second roadmap item with Trezor integration. That should be here before the end of the year.

Changelly has a powerful developer API which we are looking at as a possible integration into Particl Marketplace and any future dapps. This is exciting because it allows users of other cryptocurrencies to be able to participate in the marketplace in a seamless manner without the confusion of needing to only use PART. The team had discussed two possible use cases for Changelly on the Particl platform: 1) During Marketplace checkout and 2) a future decentralized exchange dapp built into Particl Desktop.

Ledger builds some of the best hardware wallets on the planet. The Particl team did the PART integration with oversight being given by the Ledger team. One of the key reasons to integrate with Ledger was to provide one of the most secure staking packages in existence. PART can be cold staked on a Ledger hardware wallet which is the first of its kind in the space.

Also, although not exactly a “partnership” per se, but Mubiz, a web interface for OpenBazaar, is going to help Particl reach out to more mainstream users much more easily. In fact, as can be read in our interview with Albin, Founder of Mubiz, this service is going to make Particl Marketplace available from any regular web browser or mobile device. It is also going to allow buyers to use more traditional means of payments such as Paypal or banking cards, for example. It is also going to cover all the more technical stuff for the buyer as well as managing returns, customer service, shipping, escrow (Mubiz would act as an escrow agent), and much more.

While this solution will not offer all the privacy perks of using Particl directly from the wallet, it is going to offer all the services you would usually find elsewhere and is going to make Particl as easy to use as any other marketplace.

Video: Setting Up Particl on Ledger Wallet & Enable Cold Staking

What kind of marketing do you practice to let the world know about your project, your product, and your mission?

We keep it like Chuck Norris. We don’t sleep — we wait.

Marketing has, up until now, been very grassroots and mostly based on a word of mouth kind of marketing as well as being targeted mostly to crypto users. The reason why that is is that we have been in a heavy development phase since we launched the Particl blockchain in July 2017 and we have preferred allocating funds to hire more high-quality developers to make sure our actual product would be as good as possible.

In fact, “mainstream” marketplace users, those who already shop online but haven’t necessarily used a blockchain product ever, already have some pretty solid options available to them. The only way to encourage these people to move from a regular marketplace to a blockchain-based one is to offer a solution where they will not only save money and have their privacy protected, but also a solution that is as easy and convenient to use as any other marketplace they are used to. This goes a long way for most people and is, unfortunately, an aspect that is often forgotten by many blockchain projects.

That being said, as we draw closer to the mainnet launch of Particl Marketplace, we’ve started ramping things up on the marketing and communications side of the project. For one, we’ve hired a new team member that is going to be mostly focused on organizing and attending events both related to Particl and blockchain technologies in general. This is going to give Particl more exposure to a bigger audience and will help connect with people in real-life and growing our community.

As we draw closer to the official release of Particl Marketplace, you can expect these areas to ramp up:

Growing the Particl marketing team

Initiate more social media campaigns and contests to grow the community

Getting a bigger reach within the global crypto scene

Getting a bigger reach within the eCommerce industry

Attend more blockchain and eCommerce-related conferences

Organize more events across the globe (i.e. meetups)

Making roadshows

Initiate direct marketing to vendors

Initiate direct marketing to users

Do you attend any events or conferences?

We have recently hired in October a new team member which will focus heavily on organizing and managing Particl-related events, meetups, and be present at many conferences around the world. Attending and organizing events hasn’t been one of our priority since we’ve started this project a year and a half ago as we preferred focusing resources on development before marketing.

Now, however, we are entering a new phase of the project as we are getting ready to release the Beta version of Particl Marketplace, which will shortly be followed by the first mainnet (official release) version of it. That means we’ll increasingly start to ramp up our marketing strategy and, as one part of it, be present at more conferences, meetups, and real-life events. These events allow people to connect with each other and with new people in a more human way, what is not as easy to attain on the internet behind keyboards. Attending big crypto conferences is also a great way to form solid partnerships. Our partnership with Changelly struck during this year’s Consensys conference, is one excellent example of this.

In other words, you can expect Particl to increasingly start having a bigger presence in conferences and meet-ups around the world and start connecting with people in a more pro-active way.

So far, what is the best article that has been written about your project? Please throw a link below and let us know why.

Video: Particl — A Privacy-Focused Marketplace

We think it is a fair and unbiased view on the project at that given time.

Evergreens

Older Articles

In sum, these articles break down what Particl is all about. Without exaggeration, it’s a whole lot!

Now on a more technical side of things, what are the coin metrics, and how do these lead to a stable and balanced system?

All the metrics and numbers related to the PART coin can be found at the top of this page: https://particl.wiki/faq_part_coin

Particl has one of the strongest coin economics out of all cryptocurrencies and a has a lot of utilities within the Particl ecosystem, each of which generates its own demand for the coin. In very few words, the PART coin is designed to be

1- Be a source of passive income

2- Constantly increase in demand

3- Have a large portion of its supply constantly and organically be locked out of circulation.

There are two main aspects that really sets it apart from other coins in terms of economic dynamic: escrow supply lockup and platform revenue redistribution.

Image: Particl Decentralized Escrow

Escrow supply lockup

On one hand, Particl Escrow system (known as MAD escrow) requires buyers to pay their product using a smart-contract escrow mechanism and also add an additional equal amount as a security deposit. The vendor, on the other hand, ships the item and also adds an equal amount as a security deposit. That means each transaction locks out of circulation three times the value of the purchased item or service. This system works without the need for a third party.

If we are to assume that, on average, each escrow transaction takes around 14 days before it is complete (the time it takes to process, package, ship, and receive the order), it is possible to very roughly estimate the total amount of money that would be constantly locked out of circulation given a certain daily transactions value.

Escrow graphs:

Image: Particl Coin supply locked in escrow

Platform Revenue Redistribution

The other major economic aspect that sets the PART coin apart is the fact that all marketplace revenue generated from the listing fees are redistributed to stakers. These funds are added on top of the staking rewards normally received by stakers and constitute a great source of passive income. Additionally, any future marketplace feature that will generate revenue will also be redistributed to stakers, as well as revenue generated from future Particl Dapps.

In fact, no token can be created on the Particl platform, meaning all Particl Dapps can only use and will ever use the PART coin. This is a different approach from other Dapp platforms where anyone can create their own token, thus taking utility away from the chain’s main coin. The Particl approach means that as time goes on and more Particl Dapps appear and be used, both the demand for the PART coin and the passive income revenue potential will exponentially increase. On top of that, the passive income made from staking will become much more profitable in terms of number of PART earned per day, and so people are likely to want to stake their coins more, in turn reducing the available supply on the markets even more.

It’s important to note though that the Particl Foundation does not rely on the price of its coin to stay financially sustainable. Particl has indeed been designed and launched with a very responsible and sustainable strategy in mind. This strategy is mostly based on these two aspects:

Second Funding Round

The Particl Foundation owns 996,000 PART coins that have been set aside specifically for a second funding round. In fact, these coins are locked out of circulation and only intended to be given in some way to investors of a second funding round. This second funding round is intended to be Particl’s major fundraising campaign and will allow the project to exponentially increase the number of team members and resources for its marketing, communications, and development teams. This should prove to be a major milestone for the project which will fund it for years ahead.

Project Self-Sustainability

The Particl Foundation also automatically receives 10% of all block rewards which creates a self-sustainable model of funding for the project. In fact, this mechanism is designed to constantly provide the project with funds even without any additional fundraising campaign. This ensures the longevity of the project and is a strategy that becomes exponentially profitable for the Foundation as the value of the PART coin increases.

Both the second funding round and the self-sustainability model of Particl will ensure the project stays financially relevant and operational for many years to come.

Built to Last

Finally, not only is the project financially structured to last many years but so is its code. To learn more about how Particl’s code is designed to stay on top of the technological curve by integrating any new blockchain/P2P technology (i.e. IPFS, or a technologically superior successor), then please read the Particl Open Market Protocol document here: https://kewde.gitbooks.io/protocol/content/

If people would like to follow you on your social media pages, visit your website or read your important documents like your white paper, what are the links they need to visit? Please list them below.

Website https://particl.io

News https://particl.news

Wiki https://particl.wiki

What is Particl in depth https://particl.community/t/what-is-particl/

Social media & Chat https://particl.wiki/socialmedia-channels

Forum https://particl.community

FAQ https://particl.community/t/frequently-asked-questions-faq

Roadmap http://particl.io/roadmap/

Download https://particl.io/downloads/

GitHub https://github.com/particl/

Whitepaper https://github.com/particl/whitepaper

So if people would like to try out the marketplace or simply obtain your currency, where is the best place for people to start acquiring your currency?

All the exchanges on which Particl is available are listed here: https://particl.io/part-exchanges/

Thank you so much for your time, dros! Do you have anything to add before we finish?

If you want to learn more about Particl’s technical side, we highly recommend visiting our wiki page at https://particl.wiki, especially the https://particl.wiki/what-is page.

We also invite anyone to come to join our awesome community on Telegram and Discord https://particl.wiki/socialmedia-channels and be part of the very early days of a true revolution in the eCommerce industry.

To test Particl Marketplace Alpha, join our Discord channel https://discord.gg/m27aqEq and join our #testing channel to get the most up-to-date download links.

Thanks for having us on the interview it was a real pleasure and we look forward to doing more of it again!