Bounding Forward — Quality Feedback From A Private Peer Review

I’d like to share with you some feedback our team received back recently from a private peer review of the Open Marketplace. There are many challenging yet achievable goals proposed by this company that validate the contributions everyone has made to Particl so far. They also give positive reinforcement to our short and long-term direction of building better tech and attracting more daily users; aka adoption.

The “who” isn’t as important as is the fact that this is more an intriguing sampling of many peer reviews our products are receiving from potential partners, investors, services looking to join us on this ride. However — of course — it does matter “who” is really, truly looking at what is going on in the De-Commerce (has a nice ring to it 😉) space so I can divulge that it’s a large crypto company that touches nearly all the top projects and products in our space. This is a group we first reached out to about integrations for broader adoption and the relationship has been nurtured for over a year-and-a-half.

So what do they have to say? My first thought when I read their feedback and recommendations was, “We need to share this with the community!” I’ve said it many times, in the early stages our voice needs to get louder and louder for real adoption to happen. That means all of us.

It got me excited about 2020 and beyond — I hope it does you as well.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein, Thinker

I’ll start at the bottom and work up. First, we have things they identified as unsatisfactory or in need of improvements.

As a trained architect, critique like this is like gold. It’s enlightening to read through honest observations, and when we’re enlightened we change.

Reducing barriers for adoption

Privacy-focused products are niche, underground and nerdy. That’s cool, but can’t be “good enough” and can’t be a crutch to expanding outside of the crypto ecosystem. To this end, Particl is falling into the same trap as Tor, Tails and even DuckDuckGo — building better alternatives that add more steps to ensure privacy.

• What are ways we are reducing barriers to see significant marketplace adoption of the Particl Open Marketplace?
• Is our product available where the target users will find it?
• Mobile app vs downloadable client

Low transactions using privacy features

Particl base transactions are private by user choice. Open Marketplace transactions are private by default. Privacy for senders and receivers only improves as the anonymity set increases on chain. Marketplace transactions utilize the full suite of privacy features on Particl.

• What are measurable methods to increasing the amount of transactions using privacy features?
• Are there incentives that can be built in to increase transactions using privacy features?
• Can services and exchanges be receptive to enabling private transactions with PART?

Quality and depth of product inventory

Currently we have around 500 items listed daily on the Open Marketplace. There is a lot of variety from games to electronics to health products. However, I think this is one of the most insightful points within the review. Quantity vs quality can be the difference between 1,000 daily users and 10,000 daily users.

• What tools to vendors need to move their inventories onto Particl Open Marketplace?
• Customers use their phone to shop while Particl only offers a downloadable client, when and how does a mobile version of Open Marketplace improve the quality of products available?
• Who is the target audience?

Next are three areas we actually are focused on at the moment and internally see as crucial to improve on. There is no question the Open Marketplace is an attractive product — especially compared to traditionally clunky privacy-focused applications and cryptocurrency clients. What can we improve upon to metaphorically put some meat on the strong bones in place to take things to the next level?

More awareness of the growth on the marketplace

Our Open Marketplace has been live on the main chain for close to 6 months and the small amount of measurable metrics track-able show that it has been relatively successful and is growing. Being private-by-default doesn’t give companies reviewing our products much to work with to show either profitability or growth. It is really just 2 things, volume and transactions. A third metric we can track is MAD contracts. Not the content but just the amount of them that get completed. Keeping things private, but finding better ways to bring awareness to the popularity of the Open Marketplace will take an army — who’s in?

• Will private markets and private sales featured in the upcoming Market Management module improve secondary/private marketplace awareness?
• Does pegging prices to a volatile coin like PART hurt growth possibilities versus introducing a stable coin/fiat pairing?
• How do vendors promote their products?

Additional dapps featuring PART

I think growing our development community outside the primary team is a big hurdle we haven’t figured out yet. All our repos are open source and there for improvements by anyone at anytime.

• What type of incentive structure can be established to spur on new developers joining the mission of Particl?
• Can community funding (kickstarter-like) campaigns usher in more ideas, initiatives, opportunities that the team frankly hasn’t even considered or thought of yet?
• What is the timeline on a simple SDK toolset with documentation so development teams looking for a solution like Particl has already built can jump-start their big business idea?

Increasing the anonymity set

Privacy projects are always fighting among themselves as to who is the best (of course except us — of course 😛). There’s pros and cons on each out there. The real winners are projects that actually code, the real losers are projects that just copy other work and turn around an claim to be somehow better. That said, privacy gets better on chain on every solution with a larger anonymity set. That’s the coins in the most private state — Anon for PART. Monero potentially wins this battle and can lay claim to the most private coin. They can thank being private-by-default for that. It forces users to always be in the most private state of coin, thus increasing the anonymity set.

This is why, ultimately, the Open Marketplace is private-by-default. The whole network of users, even if you never #sellstuff4crypto on the marketplace, benefits from everyone else’s private PARTs.

<!-- That came out weird, but I like it, I’ll keep it in here. -->

• Can staking be advanced to include fully anon PART by default?
• Would 3rd party services be open to accepting transfers with stealth addresses and private addresses?
• Is there a future where everything on PART chain is private-by-default?
• Is it even desirable?

Finally the private review identified 3 milestones Particl should emphatically consider to drive more interest from services, partners and exchanges.

Again, I think these are great goals and 1,000% achievable with an army of passionate users. The louder and louder we become, the simpler the path to adoption becomes.

Reach 2,500 average daily product listings for one month

• Currently, we are around 500+ listings and growing.

Reach 25,000 total Particl Desktop & Desktop core downloads

• Currently, we are around 17,000 downloads combined.

Public reviews for the Marketplace

• These reviews can be on YouTube, Twitter, Medium, etc

If you haven’t taken the time to read the latest updates from the team, please add the most recent posts from Crypto Guard to your reading list. There’s a lot to get excited about this year. Come along for the ride! #DeCommerce

Thank you

Particl Team