Particl Protocol

Particl Protocol solves the NFTs ownership and fractioning problems by allowing users to control their NFTs at a binary level in a seamless way.

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What inspired me to create Particl

I always found crazy how NFTs were split by having the asset off-chain and only a reference on-chain and how people got scammed exactly by exploiting this issue. Another thing that inspired me was the hype I got when I first heard about fractional.art and how disappointed I was when I realized that they don't really fraction anything.

Nuclear Physics is as well a big influence on how this product came to be. Many of the features are inspired by various interactions that happen between atomic nuclei in a nuclear reaction. The branding decisions felt so natural as the underlying algorithms are so abstract and I always found myself making correlations with principles as atoms, particles, entropy, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, chain reaction, nuclei.

What it does

Particl is a innovative Protocol that solves the above described problems and by doing so it also unlocks a new world full o capabilities in terms of digital assets and NFTs. It allows the users to mint NFTs that will be further referred to as Primordial, Primordial Shards, Meta Primordial.

These NFTs can be further fractioned by doing a process called fission. Fission products are NFTs. Fission triggers a chain reaction where a process of creating multiple pointers to different memory zone locations is happening in cascade, ownership of data bytes gets transferred to the newly created shards. gets transferred and the operations produces two different NFT's (Primordial Shards). Primordial shard have the exact same metadata as the originating token but the difference lays at the data bytes associated with it.

Multiple fissioning might be limited by a point of maximum entropy where splitting "nuclei", or better said splitting bytes can no longer be possible.

Fusion does the above described operation in reverse.

How I built it

Internet Computer is the catalyst of this project as this deep level of complex operations, algorithms and memory zones manipulation can not be done on any other blockchain. Contracts are written in Motoko and they make use of an dynamic storage scaling creation. The contracts make intensive use of experimental stable memory and do a lot of data processing for different operations.

Challenges I ran into

Technical - creating a complex protocol and make it look stupid simple for adoption.

  1. The main technical challenge was/is/will be creating/enhancing the algorithm for byte splitting. I knew from the start that it was going to be a really big wall that would not fall easily. I had to rewrite the algorithm several times and this is because of the huge number of edge cases that where discovered on the way and handling those implied entirely new approaches.
  2. When I finally had a alpha-ish version of the protocol I was looking at the code and I was no longer seeing complexity but rather a very clear image of a product that has the potential to become the most disruptive project in the dApps scene in the next few years. All good but I needed a way to simply demonstrating it's powers to the world so everyone can see what I see. I thought about demos involving songs/movies/images. The final choice were PNG files. What I basically tried to do here is to build the foundation of what a particl sdk could look like in the future where users create NFT's from images and then splits them apart. I was working on the compression/decompression algorithms so the sdk can properly instruct the user on ways that his Primordial can be fissioned so he does not corrupt the file when cropping. The challenge was immense as direct correlation needed to be made between pixels and the bytes that lay in different memory zones. Slicing the middle of IDAT or any other chunk type is not something that you would really want. I spent an entire week working on it and it is still a work in progress, but for the sake of the Demo day I made some workarounds on the frontend so a showcase of the product could be properly made.

Non Technical - joining late and not having time to form a team

Some friends introduced me to supernova and they asked me to compete with them on a different project but the team quickly disbanded. But it was to late for me as I already started engaging with the community and got completely fascinated by the Internet Computer as a whole. Going through the docs I was already envisioning Particl and 20 days ago I had to make the decision if I am going to build an alpha version for Particl and get the chance to step on stage with it at supernova or miss the opportunity window.

I realized I no longer had the time to build a new team that can fully coordinate for a 20 days deadline on a project this complex that made sense only in my head so I decided to go solo in a 18h coding/day marathon for the remaining time. I usually do these types of marathons but this one felt the most exhausting. I got to somehow manage it by never going more than 12 hours at a time on a particular issue so I was often switching between frontend, smart contracts, product identity, ux decisions, competitor analysis, branding and so on.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am proud of being able to deliver a baby version for Particl Protocol, even though it is a buggy one, even though it is hours before the deadline and I'm still pushing my last commits. I am proud of the fact that I met a cool community of developers around Internet Computer and I am proud of being part of it.

What I learned

  • A new programming language -> Motoko
  • Different File standards
  • Internet Computer Architecture
  • Having a sticky burger menu in a container in the middle of the page is not really that easy.

What's next for Particl Protocol

I want to emphasize a bit of what Particl is and what isn't. Particl is a protocol that allows unlimited possibilities in terms of digital assets manipulation on a blockchain. Particl is not an NFT. Primordials that are created through Particl are NFTs.

I envision a world where Particl develops two business lines.

  1. Software as a Service that empowers developers into using the protocol by creating meta primordials and defining their own fusioning and fissioning rules.
  2. NFT Marketplace that fully uses particl protocol.

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