Building an app with HandCash Connect
This is my first public article, so I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. My name is Brandon Cryderman I am the lead Connect representative for HandCash. I’ve observed the development of Connect from its very early stages until now, and personally developed the backend for the popular ‘Pay Pistol’ app, never having held a role as a professional coder. What excites me most about Connect is its extraordinary low barrier to entry. In this article, I will share some suggestions for those looking to jump straight into making their first app.
Idea
To create your first app you’ll first need an idea. Find something you know well and are also passionate about. The idea can be simple. Don’t worry if you don’t have a complete road-map right away. From my overall experience, even a vague idea can turn into something great. Don’t be afraid to jump in and see where it takes you.
Below are some ideas that could be covered thanks to nanopayments:
1 on 1 Video Game
Imagine a game of pong where every goal is a $0.10 payment from one user to another.
Content creation
Start a podcast hosting service or video platform, charge people by the second to stream content.
Start a microsubscription service
Imagine subscribing to 30 content creators at $0.01/day, versus 1 content creator at $10/month.
Motive
Once you’ve found an idea, you’ll want to think about your motive. Why are you building this app, and more importantly, who are you building this app for?
For us the idea was to shoot your friends with payments, and the motive was to showcase that Connect is social, instant, and highly scalable.
We found many enjoyed using HandCash for sending tips. So we decided to market it as “The world’s fastest tipping app”.
Who you’re building for is helpful to keep in mind. In our case, asking ourselves “who are our users?” played a big role in the decision-making and overall design.
Getting started
To get started you’ll need some level of programming skills, but you don’t need to worry about knowing Bitcoin or understanding its infrastructure. Connect abstracts all of this into a simple and straightforward payments SDK.
If you can understand the code snippet below, then you’re skilled enough to develop a Connect app:
Officially, we support two versions of the SDK, both Flutter and NodeJS. (Golang is also available thanks to the development team at Tonic Pow.)
If you are familiar with one of these languages, then great! If not, you can always dive in and create your own version of the SDK, after all, the SDK is just a wrapped set of HTTP calls.
Once you decide to get started, register your app to our developer dashboard. Then view our documentation for resources on getting started.
Iterate
The fastest way to get feedback for your app is to develop a minimum viable product (MVP), just some basic functionality that works as advertise. At that point, feel free to share it with a couple of friends and remember to start small.
Through each iteration, you might expand out and reach more users. Once you feel established, we’ll help you get it listed in our App Gallery.
Success story
This is Haste, a successful Connect app originally developed in under two weeks. Haste sees thousands of transactions run through their app on a regular basis. Their Match game (my personal favourite) is a competitive game that tests the users’ ability to time a button press. Each failed attempt adds money to a pot, and any successful attempt wins it all. Haste became popular overnight when they first launched. For the first time, users could enjoy friendly competition online, one penny at a time.
Thanks to their success over the past month, the Haste team is now looking to launch a native mobile app and expand into more advanced games.
Conclusion
Find your idea! Nanopayments open up a new realm of possibilities. A world of untapped ideas for you to explore. Once you find it, you can get started on the next big thing; there’s nothing holding you back.
