Frequently Asked Questions

Note

The Particl Academy is up-to-date with Particl’s latest version, Particl Desktop 3.3.1.

Got any questions not answered here? Then let us know about it so that we can help you out and update the Particl Academy!

PART and Blockchain FAQ

Coin Staking FAQ

When staking, your coins are separated into multiple outputs. Each output stakes separately with the hopes of finding and verifying a block.

When one of your outputs stakes a block, or when you receive a transaction, the output is temporarily unavailable until it can be moved or stake blocks again. This process is referred to as “maturing” and lasts for 225 blocks (~8 hours).

Once your output is mature once again, you’ll be able to transact the coins it contains, and it’ll be able to stake blocks once again.

Particl Marketplace FAQ

General Marketplace FAQ

The ability to create a new market identity is not enabled by default. To enable it, go to Market Settings > Advanced Features and check the Enable multiple identities for the current profile box.

Then, click on the downward-facing arrow located above the Overview button in the menu on the left. This will display a new option. Simply click on Click to create… button to create a new market identity.

This depends on many factors such as the total number of PART coins being staked by other users, your total number of coins, the number of transactions on the marketplace, the number of transactions on the blockchain, Particl dApp usage, etc.

To know everything about staking, head over to our staking guide.

To see listings on the marketplace, your Particl Desktop client needs to be fully synced with the Particl Blockchain AND the SMSG network. This process can take several minutes, especially if you have a slow internet connection. Just leave your Particl Desktop client open while it syncs and head over to the Browse page of the marketplace to monitor incoming listings.

Once your client is fully synced, it will be much faster to get started whenever you open the marketplace again. The initial syncing is a one-time process that doesn’t need to be repeated every time.

If you think you’ve found a bug or issue, click on the bug 🐛 icon at the bottom left corner of your Particl Desktop client and create a new Github report by clicking on the green New issue button.

Thanks for your help!

First, make sure that your question or issue isn’t already addressed somewhere in the Particl Academy. That’s the easiest way to fix most problems. Have you tried the search function?

If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for in there, then head over to the Get Support section to get more help!

Customer’s Frequently Asked Questions

Be sure to be on the latest version (Particl Desktop 3.3.1). The installation guide guide may help you greatly.
After the initial startup, let the network sync. On slow connections, it may take a while, but you can monitor incoming listings if you head over to the Browse page.

Be sure that you don’t see any warnings in the top right status bar. If you still don’t see any listings, feel free to Get Support.

ORDER REQUEST: You have requested an order on an item and are now waiting for the vendor to accept it.
ACCEPTED: The vendor has accepted your order and is now waiting for you to send the payment and your security deposit in escrow.
ESCROW: You have locked your funds in escrow and are now waiting for the vendor to lock their security deposit as well.
PACKAGING: The vendor is now packaging your order and getting it ready to ship.
SHIPPING: The vendor has shipped your item and is now waiting for you to receive and confirm the delivery.
COMPLETE: You have received your order and have confirmed the order as “complete”. There are no more required actions in this transaction, and you’ve received your security deposit back.

If your Particl Desktop is protected by a password (encrypted), you need to unlock it with your password to receive order updates. If you keep your client locked, you won’t receive the notifications and won’t be able to progress to the next step.

If your order is still not updated after unlocking your client, that’s because the seller hasn’t done it yet. Wait for the vendor to update the order, or try leaving them a message in the Chat section of your order!

That’s because you need to fund the escrow contract with a security deposit equal to the total value of your order. This deposit will be refunded to you at no fee once the transaction is fully completed.

To learn more about Particl’s two-party escrow system, head over to the Two-Party Escrow System guide.

No. Only the seller can access your shipping details and private chat conversations because they are end-to-end encrypted before they are broadcast to the network. Check out our marketplace privacy guide to learn more about data security.

Note that, contrary to private in-order discussions, public questions and answers posted in a listing’s Chat section are publicly displayed.

You can leave a comment in a listing’s Chat section. This will notify the seller that they’ve received a message and they’ll be able to answer you. Keep in mind that a listing’s Chat section is public, meaning all messages you and the seller leaves in there are publicly visible.

Alternatively, you may contact a seller in private once you open an order with them. A private chat window is accessible in Purchases as well as in the Chat Messages section.

When a seller leaves you a tracking number, you can check it out right from your Particl Desktop client. To do so, head over to the Orders page of the SELL section. Find the order that you want to find the tracking number of and click on its tile to expand its details.

A seller may not always leave a tracking number, but when they do, that’s where you’ll find it!

It’s only possible to cancel an order if the seller hasn’t accepted it yet. Otherwise, you can try reaching out to the seller by their provided contact information or through the order’s Chat section to reach an agreement.

Vendor’s Frequently Asked Questions

Due to the current stage of development of the Particl Marketplace (Beta), it is currently not possible. If you want to change the description or image of an item, please publish a new listing.

This functionality is plan to be added at a later stage.

Due to the current stage of development of the Particl Marketplace (Beta), it is currently not possible. This is, however, one of the next functionality that is going to be added to the marketplace. It will allow you to manage quantities for your products and various other variants such as sizes, colors, fabrics, etc.

Due to the current stage of development of the Particl Marketplace (Beta), it is currently not possible. This is, however, one of the next functionality that is going to be added to the marketplace. It will allow you to manage quantities for your products and various other attributes such as sizes, colors, fabrics, etc.

That’s all up to you! The expiry time for listings on the marketplace depends on the listing fee you pay. When publishing one or multiple listings, the Particl Desktop client will prompt you to select the number of days you want your listings to be published. Simply choose the number of days you prefer from the dropdown menu, and you’re all set!

Go to the Inventory & Products tab of the SELL page and find the template of the listing you want to republish. Click on it to display more options and click on the publishing icon (rocket) next to the market(s) or storefront(s) you want to publish your listing in. You can publish the same listing in many different markets.

Alternatively, you can instead click on the Batch (Re)publish… button on the same page to open up the publishing tool. On there, you can publish multiple listings at once on any market or storefront in which you have publishing rights.

Go to your marketplace Overview page and look for the New questions and New answers tiles. Clicking on them will bring you to the right page and show you all outstanding questions and replies.

If one of your listings shows up in the Reported listings section, it means at least one person has flagged it as inappropriate. If enough people do the same, it will be taken off the marketplace entirely. If your listing shows up in the reported listings section but still shows up on the marketplace, it means that not enough people have voted to delete it.

Want to know more about Particl’s marketplace moderation system? Head over to the Marketplace Content Moderation guide!

Listing fees are determined by two dynamic factors — the expiry time of the listing and its size (measured in kb). If you publish your listing for a long time, or if it contains many pictures and a large description, it will be more expensive to list than a smaller listing in comparison.

Vendor’s Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Sell Orders

BIDDING: A buyer has made a bid on an item and is now waiting for you to accept it.
ACCEPTED: You have accepted a bid on an item and are now waiting for the buyer to confirm payment and lock their funds (payment + security deposit) in escrow.
ESCROW: The buyer has locked their funds in escrow and is now waiting for you to lock your security deposit as well.
PACKAGING: The buyer is now waiting for you to package the order and ship it.
SHIPPING: You have marked the item as shipped and are now waiting for the buyer to receive and confirm the delivery.
COMPLETE: The item has been confirmed to be received by the buyer. There are no more required actions in this transaction, and you’ve received both the payment for the order and your security deposit back.

If your Particl Desktop client is protected by a password (encrypted), you need to unlock it so that it can pick up new orders from the Particl network. If you keep your client locked, you won’t receive any new orders now will you get updates from your currently active ones.

Once you mark an order as SHIPPED (Package and Shipping an Order), your Particl Desktop client will prompt you to enter a tracking number or note to your customer. It’s an entirely optional step, but it helps your customers keep track of their order(s).

You can also securely leave that information to the customer in the Chat section of each individual order located in the SELL page.

Due to the current stage of development of the Particl Marketplace (Beta), this feature is currently not supported on the marketplace itself.

Of course, nothing stops you from reaching mutually beneficial resolutions with your customers. You can discuss any matter from the Chat section of each order.

You can also securely chat with customers from the Chat section of each individual order located in the SELL page. Conversations here and end-to-end encrypted and cannot be intercepted.

You can only cancel an order you haven’t yet accepted. To do so, head over to the SELL page and click on the tile of the order you want to cancel. On there, you will find a Cancel button.

Due to the current stage of development of the Particl Marketplace (Beta), it’s currently not possible to cancel an order once you have fully locked your security deposit in escrow.

BasicSwap DEX FAQ

User Experience

No. BasicSwap is an open and unrestricted DEX protocol. It isn’t tied to a native coin or token and doesn’t contain any monetization layer. This approach makes it an ideal base layer for other DEXs to be built on top of.

We are always working on adding more assets to BasicSwap. You can see the list of currently available coins here.

If you’d like to see the addition of a specific coin or token to the DEX, please take a look at this page to learn how you can apply for a listing. Alternatively, you can integrate compatible coins yourself by following this integration example here.

0%. BasicSwap does not charge trading or service fees. However, please note that, because it uses atomic swap technology, all swaps are settled on-chain, meaning that you’ll need to pay the typical blockchain transaction fee for the coins that you are swapping. In most cases, this is only a few cents, sometimes less.

At this current stage of the beta, only full BasicSwap nodes are available. There are two main steps in setting them up: “building” the application and syncing the blockchains of the coins you’ve decided to enable.

Building the application should take between 10 to 30 minutes, depending on whether or not your system is already set up to build applications and if you follow the instructions carefully.

The process of syncing the blockchains on your computer is difficult to estimate because it is entirely dependent on your internet connection speed and which coins you have chosen to enable.

As a general rule of thumb, we recommend activating Bitcoin’s “fast sync” option, which will speed up Bitcoin’s syncing time by ~94%. For Monero, you don’t need to wait for the blockchain to be fully synced up to start swapping. That’s because we use its bootstrapping functionality, which temporarily connects you to a public node while it syncs.

We are working on more convenient solutions such as light services and alternative gateway frameworks (i.e., web availability). These are expected to come at a later stage of the beta.

The time it takes to complete a swap is entirely dependent on what coins are being swapped. Because BasicSwap uses the atomic swap protocol, swap settlements happen on-chain. That means you have to wait for a few blocks for swaps to confirm on both chains, thus making swap times dependent on the blockchains’ own block time.

You can estimate the time of a swap by multiplying a coin’s block time by 6 (10 for Monero), which is the average number of confirmations it takes to complete, in full, a swap.

BasicSwap currently only works with limit orders, but we’ll soon add market orders at a later point in the beta.

If any problem occurs during a swap, like a bug happening or the other swapper failing a specific step for any reason, the coins of both participants will be refunded automatically at no additional charge. That’s due to the “atomic” nature of atomic swaps.

The protocol is built in such a way to only progress through the next step when very specific conditions are met. In any other cases, the swap times out and the coins, temporarily locked in atomic swap smart-contracts, are refunded back to their original owner.

No. That is not possible due to the “atomic” nature of atomic swaps. If a condition fails to be met, or if one of the two parties stops progressing through the steps, the coins are released back to their original owners after a certain period of time. It is not possible for coins to get “stuck” in atomic swap smart contracts.

At this stage of the beta, yes. Your BasicSwap node needs to remain online for the duration of a swap.

BasicSwap uses the P2P SecureMessaging network (SMSG) to communicate between the two participating chains and send the required swap data to the atomic swap smart-contracts. Because the entire process is step-based and atomic in nature, an SMSG node cannot currently transmit the required data if it is offline in the first place.

We are working on resolving this requirement and enabling offline swaps, but that will come at a later time during the beta.

Although that is possible, we highly recommend against it. That’s because each BasicSwap instance contains the private keys of its associated wallet.

Remember, BasicSwap is entirely non-custodial, meaning that you are the one responsible for the security of your own funds. Just like you wouldn’t host a Bitcoin wallet on a cloud server, we suggest not hosting a BasicSwap node where others may have unauthorized access to your device.

No. BasicSwap is entirely peer-to-peer and open-source. It does not collect nor share any data.

1- Use Tor.
Prioritize trading in privacy coins such as Monero or Particl.
Everything else is being taken care of by BasicSwap! 🙂

Note

We are working on ways to make tracing more difficult on non-privacy coins such as Bitcoin with the future integration of Taproot and tapscripts to BasicSwap.

Technology

While BasicSwap is available on mainnet and generally works well, it is still considered a beta product for a few reasons.

For one, certain features and functionalities may feel less polished, in need of improvement, or simply missing. This is normal and part of the lifecycle of this beta phase. Please bear with us as we incrementally improve the protocol.

Additionally, we have much more than what you currently see planned for it, but we’ve now reached a stage where we also want to start gathering feedback and stress-testing the application more aggressively.

To build a strong product, you need to ensure its foundations are resilient, efficient, and built with longevity in mind. Opening up this beta phase to the public at this stage is a sure way to reach that goal more quickly.

BasicSwap is made up of three core components: the atomic swap protocol, the SecureMessaging network (SMSG), and scriptless scripts. Each of these fills a critical role and, when combined, form the BasicSwap DEX.

Atomic swaps: They are what make swapping possible without third-parties. Atomic swaps follow an “atomic” and condition-based approach in which coins get temporarily locked in smart contracts until specific conditions are met. Should any step fail during the process, the swap expires and coins are refunded to their original holder after some time. Read more about atomic swaps here and more specifically about Monero atomic swaps here.

SecureMessaging: The SMSG network is a peer-to-peer network that communicates between the two participating blockchains of a swap and feeds the swap data into the atomic swap smart-contracts. It is how two blockchains can communicate with each other without a central party. Additionally, the SMSG network provides other DEX-related services, such as BasicSwap’s distributed order book. Read more about the SMSG network here.

Scriptless scripts: Scriptless scripts are a typically overlooked feature of Bitcoin and blockchains in general. Originating from MimbleWimble, they are, in their basic sense, a way to execute secure, scalable, and, most importantly, private smart-contracts off-chain using Schnorr Signatures or ECDSA. On BasicSwap, they are used to exchange the private key ownership of successful atomic swaps without leaving any trace on either side of a trade. Read more about scriptless scripts and their benefits here.

Yes, there is no central point of failure or centralized aspect with BasicSwap’s order book. It is powered by the SecureMessaging (SMSG) network and is entirely decentralized. Read more about the SMSG network here.

The SMSG network is a peer-to-peer network of nodes scattered across the world. Whenever you run BasicSwap, you also become an SMSG node. That means that, as long as there are BasicSwap users, the SMSG network will have enough nodes to keep the DEX online.

But there’s more! SMSG is a powerful mixnet and, for this reason, powers other applications within the Particl ecosystem. Notably, it powers several functions of the Particl Marketplace dApp and is also directly integrated into Particl Core nodes.

As the Particl project fully intends on powering more and more of its privacy-first dApps with the SMSG network as time goes by, the level of decentralization of the SMSG network and its node count is expected to keep on growing. In other words, as the number of BasicSwap AND Particl users grows, so does the degree of decentralization of its dApp (i.e., BasicSwap).

None of the core or functional aspects of BasicSwap ever connect to third-party services; the DEX is entirely decentralized and devoid of central points of failure.

However, some convenience features within the user interface, such as the display of historical price graphs for coins, may rely on data fed from external APIs. None of this data is used in any functional part of BasicSwap (such as the order book or for determining prices).

Not at this time. BasicSwap requires to be manually compiled, which can be done by following the easy-to-follow instructions available here.

Of course, we fully intend on providing pre-made builds moving forward, but that’s planned for later during the beta.

No. The Particl team’s involvement is not required at all for BasicSwap to function. The DEX is completely open-source and peer-to-peer. The team may deliver updates and improve it but is not required for its functioning.

A critical aspect of BasicSwap that makes it stable is that every trader becomes a P2P node that helps keep the DEX online. As long as there are BasicSwap users, it will remain online.

Additionally, the SMSG network — the P2P network that powers BasicSwap — also powers other applications within the Particl ecosystem. Notably, it powers several functions of the Particl Marketplace dApp and is also directly integrated into Particl Core nodes.

As the Particl project fully intends on powering more and more of its privacy-first dApps with the SMSG network as time goes by, the level of decentralization of the SMSG network and its node count is expected to keep on growing. In other words, as the number of BasicSwap AND Particl users grows, so does the degree of decentralization of its dApp (i.e., BasicSwap).

We get asked this a lot, but fortunately, there is no catch. BasicSwap uses h4sh3d’s Monero atomic swap protocol. All other functions of the DEX are provided by the SMSG network and scriptless scripts. BasicSwap does not use wrapped Monero tokens, intermediate chains, or any other trickery.

And while there is no catch, there is one caveat: at this point in time, it is only possible to execute XMR swaps one way. Indeed, it is not possible to place XMR sell offers on the order book, only buy orders (in exchange for another coin).

That’s due to the current nature of the XMR atomic swap protocol. We’re happy to announce that we’re working on a solution to allow bi-directional XMR swaps. This is one of the next items in line during this beta.

The entirety of the code is open-source. Simply visit our Github here; every line of code can be thoroughly audited to ensure that BasicSwap does what we say it does.