Hey,
Just wanted to chime in as we often get questions regarding this thread in particular.
I think it is obvious by now that Particl IS NOT a scam of some sort and that the developing team is more than competent. They has already delivered a lot of releases that are completely revolutionary to the crypto scene:
- First proof-of-stake project to implement
cold staking and quantum-resistance into its consensus mechanism
- First
native Segwit project, meaning 100% of transaction are made using Segwit
- First project to ever implement
CT and RingCT on top of the Bitcoin codebase. Particl did it even before LTC. RingCT is currently being peer-reviewed at the NJIT Department of Technology (
https://web.njit.edu/~qiang/)
- First project to implement
CT and RingCT on top of Segwit- First project to upgrade its codebase to
Bitcoin Core 0.15.1 after BTC of course, that is faster than BCH and even LTC
- One of the first project to effectively have
atomic swaps already enabled. I think we were the fourth project to do so and have been working with Decred to make it happen (
http://swapready.net/)
- Tecnovert, Particl's lead cryptographer, is also
ranked third in terms of contributions added to the Bitcoin codebase. In comparison, that is more than Gavin Andresen. (
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSe1T2pX4AE8pAE.jpg)
As for the many claims in this thread, grossly misleading and innacurate. It must be known to people that there is a long history between Monero and Particl (Shadowcash), and that the Monero community used to spread a lot of disinformation about Shadowcash as it was on of their biggest competitor at the time (and still is in my opinion). This is not surprising that this thread full of misleading comments has been started by someone named "xmrlove" (XMR stands for Monero). What follows is my reply to the claims made in this thread, as always, I advise the individual user to make his own independant research and see for himself the Particl project is nothing like people in this thread want to make it look like:
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Claims: Shadowcash was pre-minedFalse, Shadowcash was launched fairly with no pre-mine. At some point, a mining farm decided to massively mine Shadowcash and is the reason why the Shadowcash team decided to cut short the PoW period and switch to PoS (to block the farm's mass acquiring of coins). This was actually quite common back then and Shadowcash is not the only project that suffered from this kind of "attack".
The SDC/Particl swap was an exit scamFalse, all SDC holders were offered a 1:1 swap with the possibility to add BTCs to their swap to get extra PARTs as a funding contribution, meaning that anyone who proceeded through the swap process had the opportunity to get at least as much coins as they did before the swap. This was what is called a contribution round, and was a way to avoid being classified as a security or an ICO, as recommended by Particl's legal advisory firm MME, which is the same one used by the Ethereum Foundation. It is becoming more and more obvious this was a good thing as some other projects that have taken less legal steps are currently getting delisted from exchanges or being cracked down by their local authorities. Note that the Particl team only received ~750,000 USD as funding which is one of the smallest crowdfunds in crypto in 2017. If you want real scams, look for ICOs who raise tens and even hundreds of million with simply an idea on a pretty whitepaper.
Another reason for the swap was to start the blockchain anew with better, more private features. Back in Shadowcash, privacy was attained through the use of dual stealth addresses and ring signatures. While this stack of technology was not necessarily bad in itself, much better privacy protocols have come out ever since, namely Confidential Transactions and RingCT (what Monero uses, only Particl applies to the Bitcoin codebase rather than the Cryptonote codebase). This assures much better privacy to its users as ring signatures and dual stealth addresses are not considered safe from blockchain analysis anymore. This was done to protect the SDC users.
They also took the opportunity to start the chain as the first PoS chain in history (no pre-mine, PoW period or anything, just pure PoS) and also as the first native Segwit chain, meaning all transactions would be going through Segwit and that 100% of the blocks are compatible, unlike all other Segwit projects that have "activated" Segwit. Now consider that all CT and RingCT privacy transactions are going through Segwit, that is pretty innovative and makes the scalability of Particl's privacy tools much higher than most privacy coins, including Monero's huge blockchain. Also worth noting, the Particl PoS used to launch the Particl chain was much different than Shadowcash's basic PoS3 (which is still used by the vast majority of PoS coins).
The CINNI team moved to ShadowcashThis is innacurate. Ryno was hired by the CINNI team back then to develop their messaging system. Once Ryno started his own project and since cryptocurrencies are an open-source environment, he simply forked CINNI's messaging system, the one he coded himself, and merged it into his own project. This is no different than, for example, PIVX forking DASH and building upon it. This is a pretty standard practice in crypto. Also concerning Particl's relation with Blackcoin, there is none, only that Shadowcash started off as a Blackcoin fork, which is itself a Bitcoin fork. Again, common practice in crypto. 95% of coins are forked off something.
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I actually encourage anyone to do their own research about Particl and see how much this project has grown from Shadowcash. I am confident anyone doing their own research on this coin will come to the realization that it is not a scam at all and is actually a massively undervalued coin (probably due to the fact that this project was FUDed so much, thus going under everybody's rader). If you want to look for scams, look at the whitepapers being worth billions with no actual product. Particl only raised $750,000 and is barely doing any marketing at the moment, just working on their mission to build the best and most cutting-edge privacy platform in crypto. Particl's Github (
https://github.com/particl/) is actually one of the most active in crypto, I believe the quality of the work found over there speaks for itself. Particl is a much superior blockchain than what people realize and is actually innovating the crypto space unlike most projects.
Here are a couple of infographics that can kickstart your research:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iesm8ulr6edwrfh/AACbp3A-SbJkf1Up2CEjroj8a?dl=0Here are a few good links on Particl:
https://particl.iohttps://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Particlhttps://decentralize.today/@cryptoguardhttps://np.reddit.com/r/Particl/comments/7f28ja/the_intelligent_investors_guide_to_cryptocurrency/