The Particl project has revealed that their token is now supported by the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet and, in a first for a cryptocurrency, will permit cold staking that does not involve the exposure of private keys.
The team made a special announcement, stirring interest for saying that the new development would be an unprecedented one in cryptocurrency. That promise has come true, though the significance of the cold staking feature will not make itself known until cryptocurrency becomes a mainstream phenomenon, and Particl itself grows in use.
Cold staking was first introduced by Particl in 2017, letting users sign and stake tokens on cold staking nodes without actually storing coins on them. However, the participation of the Nano S wallet marks the first time private keys will not be exposed in the cold staking process.
The introduction of this new feature can be seen as future proofing of the network, as cryptocurrency wallets are increasingly becoming a target for malicious agents. Currently, only Windows and Linux users can use the Ledger on Particl Core, but the team is working on compatibility with the MacOS.
PART tokens can be staked on the Nano S without requiring a connection to the internet and circumvents the security issues of desktop and mobile wallets, which asks for passwords and sensitive data on potentially compromised devices. Unlike hot wallets, malicious agents cannot extract private keys from cold wallets. The latter also requires the owner to make physical key presses on the device, without which tokens cannot be sent.
The team also plans to allow users to participate in its decentralized voting process with the Nano S in the near future. Their recent efforts have focused on improvements to the marketplace, integration with the Trezor hardware wallet, and the aforementioned voting process.
Particl prides itself as being a highly private and flexible blockchain platform, even calling its Proof-of-Stake protocol, now armored with cold staking, the most secure in the world. It has been described as resistant to quantum computer decryption by the team. Particl’s Head of Communications, Paul Schmitzer, in an exclusive interview with Invest in Blockchain, clarifies this feature:
The way Particl’s Cold Staking is quantum resistant revolves around the vulnerability of the public information being broadcast to the network during staking. Typically, a staking node sends the hash of the public key (pubkeyhash) to the network to claim the coinstake. Theoretically, a quantum computer can intercept that public key hash and solve for the private key of the sending address; effectively granting access to the coins inside.
The release of features such as cold staking is seen as preparation for its upcoming mainnet release, which has no date, but is expected within the next few months.
