About

Particl is a privacy focused blockchain platform, designed to interact with any cryptocurrency. Particl intends to facilitate decentralized applications to be built within a secure, highly-scalable environment. The first of such application will be a distributed and private marketplace for goods and services, without the need for a third party facilitator.

History

Particl is intended to work as a distributed privacy platform on which decentralized applications (DApps) are built. Particl is a privacy platform by design, utilizing technology such as ring signatures, default private transactions, encrypted data, secure messaging and IP address anonymization. The Native token (PART) is intended to work as a privacy coin and as the fuel to run DApps on Particl.

The Particl project team has prioritized an initial DApp, an entirely autonomous and distributed e-commerce marketplace that is governed by a proof of stake mechanism. This private platform will be a person-to-person, EBay-style marketplace that is self governed by its community of token holders.

Privacy based platform tokens have a difficult history. Where projects prioritize privacy, the question follows whether these projects enable the development of dark net markets where criminals conduct commerce. A predecessor project, ShadowCash, was abandoned in early 2017 due to the general perception that this project would facilitate trade in illicit goods.

A set of developers from ShadowCash decided to launch Particl as an entirely new and separate project, including lead developer Ryno Mathee. The Particl project team has stated that the intention is not to facilitate trade in illicit goods and that a clean break from ShadowCash is necessary to avoid preconceptions on the goals of the Particl project. However, given that the intention is to build a marketplace with a focus on privacy and that entirely private listings will be possible on the network, it’s unlikely that it will be possible to eliminate the potential for trade in illicit materials in PART.