Particl, the privacy-focused decentralized ecosystem powered by blockchain, has announced its Open Marketplace is now live on mainnet.
The Open Marketplace is a decentralized app that’s built on top of the Particl network. It allows anyone to buy and sell goods and services, physical or digital, regardless of where they are located in the world.
“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. 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 help shape the future of the project and establish short to mid-term development priorities.”
– The Particl Team
By being completely private by default, meaning no identifiable data can be linked to any of its users, Open Marketplace transactions are hidden on the blockchain, images are stripped of their metadata, data exchange is encrypted, and users can connect the marketplace through the Tor network.
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 much different than the marketplaces you may be used to using.
For buyers and sellers, the simple process of going through a transaction can be summarized:
- 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
What To Buy & Sell
Particl’s Open Marketplace is a two-sided marketplace, for “exchange between two distinct user groups that provide the benefits of a large network.” Thus, it is entirely up to the users to figure out what they want to buy and what they want to sell, and when the demand arises, supply should usually follow to fill a void.
An 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).
Road Ahead
This is only the beginning of a long journey for Particl. This mainnet release, denominated as a Beta release, marks the first mainnet iteration of many to come for the marketplace.
The Particl team confirms that a lot of intended features are still not implemented yet, and a lot of improvement will be made along the way.
In the near future, the Particl team will be focusing on developing some core features identified earlier in the year, which 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
For a full breakdown of how to use the Particl Open Marketplace, see this tutorial blog post or consult this Partcl Wiki step-by-step guide.
To download the Particl Open Marketplace, go to particl.io/downloads or get it directly from Github.