ETHSanFrancisco Wishlist
Good ideas for great hackers
ETHSanFrancisco is coming up fast, and we’re getting excited about the possibilities. There is a long (okay, 1.5 year) history of incredible projects being built at ETHGlobal events, and we’re excited to keep that train rolling.
So, we’ve put together some ideas for projects that could be built on Connext within the time constraints of the hackathon. If you’ve ever wanted to build an application that uses state channels to enable fast, gas-free micropayments, Connext has you covered. Streaming micropayments, P2P marketplaces, IoT interactions, and DEXs are just a few of our favorite use cases.
Our wishlist is split into two broad categories: Extending Connext (improving ease of use, decentralization, etc) and Building New Things on Connext (creating dapps, ecosystems, and functionality that use micropayments) . If you’re interested in building with Connext and you’d like to chat with team members before ETHSF, please reach out to us in our community chat.
Without further ado:
Extending Connext
Generalized Browser Wallet UX
UX is hard. Make it easier by creating a generalized in-app browser wallet UI/UX like the SpankCard that takes care of signing, creating, and keeping track of threads. You could do this by integrating Connext into an open source wallet implementation like Balance! This could also be done for a mobile wallet.
Non-Hub-specific Dispute Resolver
If a Hub goes offline (bad Hub!), its users will need to go onchain to retrieve their funds. For less-technical users of a Hub without a built-in dispute resolution UX, this could be difficult. Make it easier for those users by building a generalized dispute resolver: plug in the Hub address, gas, and latest state and you’re good to go! Such a service could charge users a small fee.
P2P Messaging Layer for Connext Threads
Want to improve the privacy of transactions using Connext Hubs? Right now, parties pass state updates through traditional web communication layers. You can help improve Connext by implementing WebRTC or another similar P2P messaging protocol.
Opening and Closing using MetaTransactions
MetaTx are all the rage right now. Check out this post to learn more about them. The goal of Connext is to make it absolutely seamless for users to micropay each other or for services, so why not let them be able to forgo using Eth altogether and instead use tokens to open/close/dispute channels?
Decentralized State Storage Service/WatchTower
For simplicity’s sake, Hubs store a backup of user state in their database in case the user’s browser session crashes or their local state is lost. This is obviously not very trust-minimized because Hubs could accidentally “lose” states in order to execute a replay attack. What users really need is a service that lets them easily store their state in some type of highly available, decentralized database (e.g. IPFS).
Bonus points if your data storage service also detects when channels are in dispute (listens for a dispute event) and automatically submits latest state!
Building New Things on Connext
Venmo, but using Connext and DAI
Ever wanted to pay your friends in crypto without paying gas or waiting for confirmation times? Build a Venmo-like front-end, integrate a Connext Hub into the wallet layer, and voila! You’ve created the world’s first trustless, noncustodial, peer-to-peer payment application. We now support ERC20 tokens, so a solution like this would let you pay your friends back for lunch in DAI!
Jukebox
Sick of paying monthly fees to Spotify? Build a new (old) way to listen to music: let users listen to a song by submitting tiny micropayments.
Penny Arcade
If you’re feeling nostalgic for old school video games, you could create a penny arcade! Users would submit a micropayment to play a game and have their score recorded on a leaderboard.
Extra credit: turn the micropayment into a bet! This part would most likely need to be trusted to be feasible within 72 hours.
News Curation
Tired of paywalls? Build a new way to monetize news content! You could require micropayments to view, upvote, or comment on a news article. Ready-made slogan: “Defeat fake news, one micropayment at a time”.
Cross-chain Streaming Swaps (hard)
Allow for a streaming swap between ETH and BTC by setting up a Connext Hub and a Lightning Node. Then make nonce-d (one by one) transfers of 0.01ETH/0.0001BTC back and forth in the channels until you swap the whole balance. If someone cheats, your risk is capped at 0.01ETH/0.0001BTC
Other Projects
We’re just scratching the surface here, and we’ve listed only projects that can easily be done in a trustless way. Other projects like DEXs and recurring payments are also possible, but would probably need to be trusted if you want to finish inside of 72 hours :).
If you have another idea, we’re happy to chat and help get it off the ground — Look out for our tech talk, come hang with us at our booth, or message us on Discord!
In the meantime, get in touch with us by:
- Joining our Discord
- Tweeting at us
- Emailing us at support@connext.network
- Checking out our website
- Following this medium account
And lastly, please share this with your friends in the community. We’re really excited to help projects in the space scale to the mainstream market!
Thanks for your support,
Team Connext
