Tackling the adoption issue — One DApp at a time
Cryptostaw : A peer to peer payments application leveraging decentralized components. Bringing together Utility + Scalability + User & business friendly features
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We should be able to use cryptocurrencies to make payments — and why not? They are permission-less and can be sent to anyone who has an address (basically an internet connection) without any third party interference. This cryptographic address, used for making payments is easy to obtain unlike bank accounts and will hugely empower the populace that has been deprived of legacy banking. Despite the advantages of this system there are some drawbacks that hinder its adoption. Before delving into Cryptostaw let’s first discuss the issues that the stakeholders on the business end of Dapps face today.
Let’s divide the stakeholders into two categories :
- Users who interact with Dapps
- Businesses looking to adopt crypto as a means of payment for their goods/services
There are other stakeholders on the development side but to restrict the scope of the article we focus on the two mentioned above.
Users:
People need practical use cases to adopt crypto into their daily lives. People don’t’ want to nurture virtual kitties daily, at least not the average Joe and for sure not right now!
Thinking about it, what is it that they want then? Payment is the first use case that comes to mind.
Let’s list some transactions an average person performs daily:
- Buy a coffee/meal
- Pay for a ticket
- Settle debts via on app payments
Nothing fancy right! Just the run of the mill, simple day to day stuff.
But!
Yeah that’s right there has to be a but here, can they do it today using a non-censurable medium? and while using a cryptocurrency?
Can it be done without long wait times, without paying huge amounts in fees?
The answer is, well at least right now, a resounding NO!
There are no apps that allow users to split bills, or make a small payment to their peers or buy the now mythical ‘coffee’ over the counter via crypto!
Businesses:
People run business to make profits. Period.
They can’t risk the money they make, by risk think about a 20% drop in value when they wake up the next day and see markets tanking. Or for that matter even a 2% drop, some business would get wiped out by that kind of volatility eating into their margins.
Thus, for any business to even begin to contemplate using a cryptocurrency there needs to be a guarantee that a $20 worth of crypto today will be worth $20 in the days to come as well. This is a basic requirement that we think needs to be in place before we see any meaningful adoption by businesses offering crypto payments.
Well it’s kind of an chicken and egg problem . Sellers, but no Buyers and on the flip side buyers but no sellers. To resolve this we need to address both sides of the issue. We are not even starting to cover the UX part of the problem but let’s just focus our attention on utility for now.
So how do we bridge this gap? How to we get crypto mainstream and into the hands of the average user?
We talked about an app under development that can offer scalable DAI payments in our earlier article mentioned above. Now lets get to it!
Enter Cryptostaw!
A quintessential product of Ethereum’s hacking spirit, Cryptostaw was shaped via dedication & continuous improvements upon a Hackathon project started in India at HackInOut Bangalore.
Chetan Badhe, A CS dropout and former contributor to Bitbns and Coindelta, is the creator of Cryptostaw. He was mentored on the project by Matic’s CPO — Anurag to help with ideation and implementation during and after the hackathon as well.
Cryptostaw has since been tested by various users for feedback and is now ready for its Beta launch! You can try out the Beta of the app here : https://cash.cryptostaw.com
So how does Chetan solve for the problems we listed above? Let’s dive in.
For users:
He first created a platform that enables them to use crypto for day to day transactions. It is modeled on the lines of a decentralized Venmo! Indian readers can think if it as a simpler PayTM on blockchain.
To make it usable the platform needed cheap and instant transfers for which Chetan has chosen to use Matic Network. The Matic team has been helping and supporting Chetan to make Cryptostaw a success.
“Having studied various other scaling solutions like Loom and Raiden. Matic was the perfect bet because of its focus on Payments and the its Sidechain based approach for faster and cheaper settlements” — Chetan
But just this wouldn’t be enough! What about the businesses who want a better and feasible mode of payment?
For Businesses:
For the ease of use for businesses Chetan & The Matic team decided to utilize the stable coin DAI. DAI having proved its merits in the ongoing bear markets seemed like a relatively easy choice to make.
Now for the coffee vendor $20 will be $20 even if Ether fluctuates by 20 % on a given day!
As Chetan puts it:
“ CryptoStaw is scalable peer to peer payments infrastructure based on stable cryptocurrency DAI to foster global adoption of the decentralised economy.”
Chetan is focused on building the app full time and is on the lookout for people passionate about building products to join his team. He likes to experiment and has had a start-up of his own as well, you can read more about his experience here.
“CryptoStaw cleverly solves above problem by building a platform combining various blockchain technologies including a stable cryptocurrency, plasma sidechain and public key cryptography.”
Cryptostaw aims to enable the following use cases using DAI:
- Global peer to peer payments with negligible fees
- Bill Splitting and settlement
- In app payments like Recharges, Utility Bills, Booking Movie Tickets etc
- Point of Sale for Payments
It is a designed to be a an enabler which lets you spend cryptocurrencies for real world use cases.
We at Matic are really excited to see how this shapes up! And we along with Chetan believe that it is time that you become a part of this journey process as well!
You can try out the Beta version of the app here : https://cash.cryptostaw.com
Here is a sneak peek of what to expect:
Cryptostaw is expected to launch later in the year. Join the Telegram community group for early access to the release version of the app. https://telegram.im/cryptostaw (Early access spots are limited)
Some of the features that will be implemented in the future are mentioned below:
- Meta transactions for depositing into Matic chain
- Using usernames instead of hex addresses
“With no prior knowledge of crypto or blockchains a user can use the platform for payment related use cases ” — Chetan
We believe this should be the DeFi call to arms!!
It shouldn’t feel like using crypto at all, it should just seamlessly gel into our existing app usage behavior with minimal overheads on understanding crypto apart from acquiring it!
Note: Matic in partnership with MakerDAO tries to identify, and help teams build scalable applications that can further blockchain adoption. We also help teams building such applications raise funds and support them by introducing them to the Stablefund — MakerDAO’s investment arm and other funds as well!
In case you are building a product or are interested to use Matic for your scaling needs please reach out to us on info(at)matic.network
Also you can reach out to chetan on — chetan(at)cryptostaw.com
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