params is not used at all for the moment.
It is deprecated in V2.0 for the name 'attribs'
The idea behind that is to store JSON formated object to dynamically extend the table informations.
Obviously, the datas stored inside cannot be used easily in SQL queries, so it is only to store attached specific parameters of contents to each item.
For the moment Cook do not use it, and even your component do not access to it.
In future, I would like your model to store there in a very useful and easy way to parse any kind of object.
But anyway, you can remove it if you don't like it.