Particl Marketplace (alpha) just released!
We’re pleased to announce that the Particl Marketplace alpha (for testnet only) has been completed and is publicly available for testing!
With this update, we’ve prepared a quick walkthrough to introduce you to the new features Particl Desktop offers.
→ Download Particl Market (alpha) from Particl Desktop GitHub ←
Particl Market walkthrough
Upon startup of the shiny new Particl Desktop, the first thing you’ll notice is that a new section has been added to the menu — the “Market”.
Let’s break down each page and how it works:
Listings page
Listings page is the Market’s “homepage”
As with all ordinary e-commerce sites, this is where all the listings/products are available. Top control bar allows you to search and/or filter listings as needed — for alpha, we have done the basics (search, filtering by country and by category); we’ll be adding more options in next releases.
Once you find a listing you like, you can either add it to your personal Favourites or add it to Cart and buy it — we’ll get to that in the next step.
Note: this is still just a testnet and the listings there aren’t real, also all transactions are done with tPART (testnet coins), so don’t worry — you can’t spend your “real” PART coins.
→Get tPART (testnet) coins for use at the Market: http://faucet.particl.xyz ←
Buy page
Now that we’ve found the listings we want and added them to cart, it’s time to proceed onwards. Your Cart can be accessed either by clicking the cart icon in top right (next to status icons) or by switching to Buy page.
Buy page summarizes everything related to you buying something. This part is again the same as with other e-commerce platforms. We have three sections here — your Cart (self-explanatory), your active and completed Orders and also your personal Favourites.
Checkout process
Let’s check out (pun intended) the Checkout process with the listing we just added to our Cart!
- Add listing(s) to Cart
- When your cart is full of things you want to buy, in Buy > Cart click Continue to Shipping
- Fill in your shipping details and (optionally) save the details as your new profile — that way you don’t need to fill them everytime you want to buy something
- Click Continue to Confirmation
- Make sure all the info is correct and you have enough money to pay for the items
- Click Place order and confirm the dialog
This sends out your bid* for the item to Seller (who can either accept or reject your bid) and takes you to Buy > Orders section, where you have an overview of all your buy orders and their statuses.
* Note, that we use the term “bid” when a buyer requests to buy an item. Please don’t confuse this with an auction-style ecommerce listing where you are competing with other buyers by increasing bids.
Brief overview of all Order stages
As the shopping experience on Particl Marketplace is based on a trustless & decentralized model, it’s a bit different than your ordinary e-commerce site. So to describe Order stages better, we’ve prepared this infographic to explain:
Note: you don’t need to memorize all of this; you can always expand the order by clicking on it and read in which stage the order is, in plain English.
In time, your Order page might get a bit crowded. That’s why you’ll see a little animated notification next to orders that need your action:
Sell page
As with Buy page for buying, Sell page is a go-to place for everything when you’re selling your items. This separation is needed as every user of Particl Marketplace can be both Buyer and Seller, without any restrictions. If you’re not planning on selling anything, you can safely ignore this page.
The main Sell page greets you with an overview of your own Listings (ie. the items you are selling) and their statuses. This is also the place for creating new Listings (click the Add new listing button):
Typically it may take a number of minutes for your listing to be seen on the main page. Be aware, after a while, the Listing will be available on Market for others to buy.
And finally, as with Buy Orders, here on Sell page are your Sell Orders — overview of items you’re selling to others. If selling, you should check this place for orders needing your attention (as described above in “Checkout process”) — ie. orders waiting for escrow payment, orders that need to be shipped etc.
Official Particl Swag
The Particl Team is proud to offer real t-shirts in the marketplace to celebrate this historic day! There are 3 styles to choose from currently with 5 size options (S, M, L, XL & 2XL).
In order to get these sweet tees you’ll need to download Particl Desktop, get some tPART testnet coins from our official faucet and bid on the items. This is a great opportunity to experience the clean, fast UI and learn the platform without using any of your own PART.
Non-Market updates
Besides this much awaited Particl Market update, you’ll notice that we haven’t left any other part of our flagship Particl Desktop behind. The whole client got a nicer, more polished look and some features have been redesigned from ground up (like the new Address Book).
We’ve switched to a new font that goes with our branding and you’ll find more iconography to guide you along in Particl Desktop.
Security and performance was also improved thanks to many new lines of code under the hood. And you can bet we’re not stopping there — we’re just getting started!
Finale
This concludes our initial alpha release of Marketplace MVP. We hope you’ll love what we’ve done and look forward to what’s coming at least as much as we are.
Download → Particl Market alpha for testnet
You’re all encouraged to help us with testing, catching all the bugs and reporting them to the team. You can get some tPART (testnet) coins to help with testing here: http://faucet.particl.xyz
We have a channel Particl Testing just for these matters, so come on in!
- on RIOT: https://riot.im/app/#/room/#particl-testing:matrix.org
- on Discord: https://discord.gg/6a5v7P9
- on Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/Gpl8aEYMR8go1QYbM-S2qw
In the spirit of our hashtag, #bePART of our effort in building the most private and secure decentralized Marketplace!
Until next time!
Particl Team
