The highly anticipated Particl Marketplace is set to go live today at 8am ET. Touted as the world’s most secure marketplace, it will give other popular marketplaces like Amazon and eBay a run for their money. In preparation for the marketplace launch, we’ve seen Particl launch a number of features in the past few weeks, including RingCT and Bulletproofs. As the marketplace goes live, merchants from around the globe will now have access to an ultra-low-cost and decentralized marketplace that gives them control over their bottom line.
Years in the Making
The launch of Particl Marketplace has been two years in the making, so it’s finally go time for the most anticipated platform in the blockchain e-commerce world. In the runup to launch day, we saw Particl drop an update to the platform that included RingCT and Bulletproofs. Particl is built using the Bitcoin codebase, and it’s one of the first networks using this codebase to deploy RingCT and Bulletproofs.
RingCT ensures that transactions are fully de-anonymized and untraceable, meaning nobody can link purchases from the Particl Marketplace back to you. Secondly, Bulletproofs ensure that fees are as low as physically possible. This gives Particl a huge edge over competitors that are using Visa and MasterCard, especially after the duo recently hiked their fees.
A Drastically Cheaper Marketplace
One of the huge advantages for merchants is the fees charged by Particl, as there are virtually none. Currently, Amazon charges around 45% of an item’s cost in commission fees, putting a huge dent in a merchant’s profits. By switching to Particl, merchants can remove this cost from their business model and choose to pass on the savings to customers by lowering their prices or pocketing the extra cash – it’s totally up to the merchant. Additionally, due to Particl being decentralized, merchants are cutting out the middleman. This means there is no central entity that can ban items you place up for sale, no central entity to lose the private data of your customers, and there is no central entity that can shut you down.
Couldn’t This Lead to Silk Road 3.0?
Silk Road was one of the biggest illegal shopping websites the planet had ever seen. It operated on the dark web to avoid being taken down by hosting providers, as well as in order to keep everything as private as possible. However, the FBI infiltrated the platform and slowly took down every ringleader and a number of top merchants. Now, a completely decentralized e-commerce platform that has no control over what you sell might sound like a bad idea, but the Particl team isn’t taking a cut from each sale and they’re not individually checking each item – it’s a decentralized marketplace, after all.
The onus falls on merchants to only sell legal and legitimate products, or face the wrath of the FBI. It’s very likely that agencies will be keeping a close eye on privacy-focused marketplaces like Particl, so selling illegal goods on these sites is a bad idea in itself.
Just Hours to Go!
The countdown to the Particl Marketplace launch is coming to an end, as it’s now just a matter of hours until it’s live. Finally, merchants have access to a marketplace that doesn’t take an extortionate cut of their sales – hallelujah!
