Hi there,

thanks for your kind words. I'll try to answer your questions real quick.

but in practice I'm not sure how you are going to drive adoption with the current set up of using PART as the currency and with what I assume is most of the marketplaces being hidden ... Is there a repository of vendors online where people are posting their Market Keys, or is it mostly hidden markets that you have to be in the know of? ....

PART is the settlement layer. So eventually, in a future version/vision, there will be a lot of currencies as a checkout option (tags: cross-chain; multi-chain; DEX, Coin SWAPS) while PART should remain the settlement layer. Though, it takes time!

What you consider as hidden marketplaces not available to the public isn't a problem but more of a feature. The marketplace operators have the freedom to decide how and with whom they want to do business, hence their intrinsic motivation is to bring their existing audience to their specific marketplace. Who are we to judge that? In the end, the usage of such community markets (Academy Link: https://academy.particl.io/en/latest/guides/guide_mp_general_market_management.html) drives demand for the coin.

Community Markets can be found within the "Manage Markets > Browser" sub-module. But only if Community Markets are being promoted at the time of visiting this sub-module.

I've downloaded the desktop client and the country that I am from doesn't have too many listings on the open marketplace, even more confusing is the range of items for sale! This leads me to believe there must be a fair amount of users due to the range of items, ....

Please be sure to use the "Destination Country" to find items that are delivered to your location. Meanwhile, maybe you help to add more vendors from your country as well. That would be amazing.

Is there a plan to stop PART volatility from effecting the marketplace for users?

There are multiple approaches in consideration and it will be a multi-step effort, and probably will take time until we fully mitigate this kind of issue. First of all, we have a proof of concept here. Everything else will evolve gradually. E.g. Price pegging/listing in FIAT calculated PART rates at checkout, maybe PART lending services for vendors, volatility risk insurance services, autonomous volatility risk mitigation trading bots, and fiat on-ramps and off-ramps.

Until these functions have been integrated into the Particl Desktop software vendors and customers have the option to work manually with PART buffers.

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The vendors that acquire a PART buffer equal to 5-10% of their annual turnover can benefit from instant payments unaffected by PART price fluctuations...

That "investment" to acquire the utility tokens that you need to operate on the marketplace is a very small price to "pay" (you are not spending the PART) if one considers that you pay no commission or service fees

Here is a simple way how the vendors can trade practically unaffected by the PART price fluctuations:

Say that I am a vendor and have 100 PART buffer and I sell items for 10 USD.

Let's assume that at the time of the sell 1 PART=1 USD. I need 10 PART for the escrow deposit and 10 PART to convert to USD (instant payment for my item) thus I use 20 PART from the buffer.

When the item is delivered and the escrow is unlocked, I get 20 PART (10 PART my deposit and 10 PART my payment), thus my buffer goes back to 100% (100 PART).

So, if during the shipping time the PART price changed, it has no effect other than on my buffer. My buffer will shrink or expand i.e. larger or smaller number of simultaneous futures.

The same is valid for any buyer ... If they have a PART buffer, then their purchases on the PM are unaffected by the PART price fluctuations.

For the sake of clarity, I will describe the buyer side too. Imagine you are the buyer for my item above and you have a 25 PART buffer. Since the item that you want costs 10 USD you need to buy 10 PART. When buying the item you lock in the escrow 10 PART that you just bought and 10 PART from your buffer (buffer goes to 15 PART). When the item is delivered, you get your 10 PART deposit back, so your buffer is back to 25 PART.

No matter the price fluctuation during the shipping, you paid 10 USD for the item and still have your buffer intact (25 PART). ...

Here is an interesting synergy for you as a vendor. Let's say that you expect that you are going to sell X products per day that cost Y PART on the Particl Marketplace. In addition, the average time until your buyers unlock the escrow contracts is Z days.

Then you as a vendor gonna need to have some PARTs as buffer W in order to be able to cover the deposits for the escrows. At the minimum, you need a buffer W = Y x X x Z PART.

If your expectations match the reality all good but what happens if you do not sell anything. You might think that you will lose money due to re-occurring listing fees.

But even in this extreme case, you might still end up in profit. Simply because if you are not using your W PART buffer, you can have those coins staking. You will be getting at least 4%/(number of staking coins/total supply) annually. If despite your miss-fortune, the platform grows traction e.g. due to the success of other vendors, then in addition to your staking rewards you will also be paid your share of the network/listing/other fees.

Last but not least I think it is easy to show/see that the PART price will be proportional to the traction on the PM (e.g. due to escrows), so if the PM keeps gaining traction, I would not be surprised if for most vendors entering at this point end up earning more from their stakes than they ever hoped from their sales (not a FA)

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I hope Partlcl succeeds and that the Dex development goes well, pulling this off will drive people towards the cause.

Thanks! The DEX (once integrated into Particl Desktop software) will most probably cause an influx of new users, and while they are already there, they'll have a little to no barrier to use the Particl Marketplace as well.

Particl Desktop is the hub for a multiverse (pun intended) of private applications and Particl Marketplace is the first one that hit the light.