Community Update #12 — Part 2
Development Updates
Due to this week’s Community Update’s size, we’ve opted to separate it into three parts to make it easier to go through. This is part 2, and you can read the two other parts by following the links below:
(Part 1) AMA/FAQ Livestream Summary: https://particl.news/community-update-12-part-1-fe6a3f3014c2
(Part 3) Community & Social Media Updates: https://particl.news/community-update-12-part-3-bbaf1b5bee51
Table of Content
- Github Goodies
- New Open Marketplace Alpha Builds Out on Testnet
- South Africa Update
- Cold Staking Pools
- Interview With Robert Edwards
- Particl Core 0.17.1.0 Moves to Pre-Release Stage
- Particl’s Github Page Reaches 20,000 Commits
- Particl Ranks as the 11th Best Crypto Github Account of 2018
- Particl’s Development Year in Review
- Mubiz About to Release its New User Interface
- Infographics
Development Updates
Github Goodies
These past few weeks, there have been a couple of interesting development pushed on Github, most notably about progress being made on the front-end of the marketplace.
Private markets (GIF inside): https://github.com/particl/particl-desktop/pull/1280
Q&A on Listing Pages (GIF inside): https://github.com/particl/particl-desktop/pull/1323
Listing expiration marker in cart (Image inside): https://github.com/particl/particl-desktop/pull/1318
New Open Marketplace Alpha Builds Out on Testnet
On the 4th of December 2018, we released new Particl Open Marketplace testnet builds for the community to test and see all the latest developments made to it. As a bonus, and since this was a generally stable version, we’ve decided to put the custom Particl lapel pins offered by ICOSensei up for sale, against testnet PART coins of course.
This promotion gave the opportunity for the community to acquire these beautiful lapel pins, rock the Particl brand, but most importantly, get a higher number of users testing the platform. The promotion was a success, and some of you have already starting to receive your own Particl lapel pins! MICH PIC
South Africa Update
From the 16th of November to the 24th, the development team and a good portion of its communications team met in South Africa for a series of meeting that would shape the short to mid-term path forward for the project.
These meetings presented themselves as a great opportunity for the team members to meet the co-workers they’ve been working with for some time (and in some cases, years), as well as being the perfect opportunity to get as many heads working together and brainstorming as possible.
These meetings have been very productive and a whole lot came out of them, including development process and release strategy improvements, new features being worked on or looked at, as well as a bunch of internal shuffling of tasks and priorities. You can get all the details by reading the South Africa Team Meetings Update blog post linked above, watch the video below, or re-read the AMA/FAQ questions and answers.
Cold Staking Pools
On the 14th of December 2018, we released the long-awaited cold staking pools complete with a user-friendly interface.
Cold staking pools allow you to “team up” with other stakers and combine your staking powers in order to earn more frequent staking rewards. All rewards earned while staking from a pool are sent over to the pool operator, which then executes payouts proportional to how much you’ve contributed to the total amount of rewards the pool earned. This is particularly useful if you own fewer coins and still want to stake your coins as it means you’ll earn more frequent, but smaller, staking rewards. To know all the benefits cold staking pools can bring you as well as the network, please read our blog post linked just below this paragraph.
Very shortly after the release of the cold staking pool protocol, we were delighted to see three independently ran pools see the day.
- Tecnovert’s Pool http://66.172.10.231:903/
- Tecnovert’s Pool (Testnet) http://66.172.10.231:902/
- CryptoAcademie’s Pool http://167.179.93.172/
- Particl.Page’s Pool https://pool.particl.page/
To get more technical information about cold staking pools as well as tutorials on how to connect to an existing pool or create one of your own, please read our dedicated Wiki pages linked below:
- Technical information: https://particl.wiki/pools
- Join an existing pool: https://particl.wiki/coldstakingpool_connect
- Create your own pool: https://particl.wiki/coldstakingpool_create
Interview With Robert Edwards
While most projects have been laying off staff due to shrinking budgets and the difficulties brought forth by this year-long bear market, Particl has been continuously hiring throughout the entire year.
The latest addition to the Particl family is Robert Edwards, a senior developer hired on the 2nd of December 2018 and tasked with initially working on updating Particl Copay with all sorts of goodies. The Particl Copay upgrades currently being worked on include multi-currency support (i.e. hold Bitcoin directly on Particl Copay), cold staking capabilities, iOS compatibility, and more.
To get to know Rob a bit better, don’t forget to read his interview published on our blog by following the link just above this section of the Community Update!
Particl Core 0.17.1.0 Moves to Pre-Release Stage
To get a strong start of the year, Tecnovert moved Particl Core 0.17.1.0 to its pre-release stage, on mainnet. This means anyone can now download and install this new Core update.
It’s important to note that, even though a lot of progress has been made on 0.17.1.0 as it relates to the Trezor hardware wallet integration, this update does not bring any new immediate feature or fix to Particl, and is being pushed in the spirit of keeping our codebase up-to-date with Bitcoin’s at all time.
Particl’s Github Page Reaches 20,000 Commits
On December 12, Particl Core’s Github repository reached an interesting milestone by registering it’s 20,000th commit (now standing at 20,185)! This is both a testament to the team’s relentless efforts at building the Particl platform and the benefits of keeping our codebase up-to-date with Bitcoin’s.
Particl Ranks as the 11th Best Crypto Github Account of 2018
Another clear demonstration of what we mean when we say we’re out here to code and develop, not just hype and waste time, is the fact that Particl was ranked by CoinCodeCap as the 11th best crypto Github project in 2018. CoinCodeCap is similar in nature to Darpal Rating (which unfortunately hasn’t put out any new Github ranking for months) and ranks projects not based on price or marketcap, but by the actual development being made to it.
Here is how Particl ranked throughout the year in code rankings:
- CryptoMiso (last 12 months) -> 21st
- CoinCodeCap (last 12 months) -> 11th
- Darpal Rating (monthly) -> Constantly between 3rd and 7th, except for their last report where they oddly started taking marketcap into consideration
- Chinese KOL (February 2018) -> 4th
Particl’s Development Year in Review
We’ve just published an animation of all the work that’s been done over the year on Github. Using the same open-source software we used for our Development Timeline blog post, we’ve focused on the work done by the Particl team on all active Particl Github repositories.
In the above video available on our Youtube channel, developers with their names in green represent Particl team members while developers with their names in white/grey are Bitcoin folks. Not only does this video proves that the Particl development team is relentless and very active, but also shows just how beneficial keeping our codebase up-to-date with Bitcoin is.
Yes, it does look like Bitcoin developers are making commits to Particl Core, but they’re really making commits to Bitcoin Core. The reason why they’re showing up on Particl Core is because all changes made to the Bitcoin Core code is reflected whenever we update our codebase. That means all security, stability, and usability improvements made to the Bitcoin codebase are directly reflected on Particl Core. It’s like two teams working hand in hand!
Mubiz About to Release its New User Interface
For those not aware of Mubiz, they are community members building a web interface that will allow you to access Particl’s Open Marketplace directly from the web as well as pay with more traditional means of payments than cryptocurrencies. Mubiz will also offer a wide array of services targeted to buyers such as customer support, returns of products, reputation, shipping management, escrow management (buyers won’t need to lock up extra funds), and more. In other words, Mubiz seeks to make Particl’s Open Marketplace as easy to use as any other traditional marketplace by building a service on top of the Particl protocol.
Mubiz announced this week that they will be releasing their new and improved user interface tomorrow (Saturday the 5th of January 2019), and we are very excited to see how it will look like!
Infographics
We released two Open Marketplace infographics in December, if you missed those, here they are! Share them far and wide!
This concludes the development update part of this Community Update. If you would like to continue and read the other parts of the update, please follow these links:
(Part 1) AMA/FAQ Livestream Summary: https://particl.news/community-update-12-part-1-fe6a3f3014c2
(Part 3) Community & Social Media Updates: https://particl.news/community-update-12-part-3-bbaf1b5bee51