Dec 20, 2018
SatoshiPay 2018 in Review
With 2018 coming to a close, we would love to share some of our highlights this year and talk about foundations we laid for an even more successful 2019.
SatoshiPay wallet and purchases accessible from any device
Our first product, the SatoshiPay web wallet is an interface that allows end users to interact with the Stellar network and pay fractional amounts for digital content with just one click. The wallet is stored in the user’s browser and is automatically accessible on any site that SatoshiPay is integrated in, without the user having to log-in or install any software.
While keeping the wallet’s secret key in the browser storage enables remarkably fast user on-boarding and frictionless payments, we wanted users to be able to use their wallet across many devices and browsers. Therefore we introduced the export/import feature in March, allowing users to create a wallet backup, take control of their secret key and import it on any device. Transferring the wallet from one device to another is done through a smooth process of simply scanning a QR code. This feature also allows convenient backup recovery, enabling users to restore their SatoshiPay wallet from a screenshot or printout on any device they own in seconds, with all its funds and purchases.
Advanced security measures
One of the most important challenges for any online payment systems is to stay ahead of all attempts of misusing it. This became even more important to us when we announced the first wave of our giveaway program in April, rewarding new users with free lumens for their SatoshiPay web wallets. We therefore implemented a well-designed set of security measures that, for example, entails making all user wallets “multi-signature”, meaning more than one party’s approval (“signature”) is required to execute a transaction. We use this feature in all our consumer wallets to make sure that lumens from consumer wallets can only be spent on websites that have integrated SatoshiPay.
This concept allows us to avoid enforcing a signup and verification on our consumers, and instead focus solely on publisher accounts; the only gateway out of the SatoshiPay ecosystem and into fiat currencies. Using a multi-tiered know-your-customer (KYC) registration process, a protected ecosystem consisting of verified publishers is created. We do this by subjecting registering publishers under a thorough verification and auditing process before approving them.
First big publishers begin using SatoshiPay
Whilst conversations with several major media houses are ongoing, we received our first recognition from two publishers launching pilot projects with us:
- The British Tech Magazine “The Register” integrates the paid content solution of SatoshiPay, and
- City A.M. trials an “ad-free pass” to ask ad-block users to contribute via SatoshiPay. A series of articles complement this cooperation in the new blockchain section of City A.M.
The SatoshiPay family grows
We welcomed many new team members over the course of the year, scaling from seven members in early 2018 to twenty by the end of October, with new hires spanning across all departments (tech, product, sales and operations). By November, we had outgrown our old offices and moved to Rent24, an awesome new office space right in the centre of Berlin Mitte.
Becoming a major player in the global Stellar ecosystem
Since switching to Stellar as our default blockchain ledger in December 2017, SatoshiPay developed into one of the most trusted and active entities in the global Stellar ecosystem. November heralds three major technological breakthroughs:
- SatoshiPay becomes the second most trusted entity in the Stellar network, surpassed only by the Stellar foundation itself.
- We launched three new Stellar network validator nodes, located in the US, Germany and Singapore. Our new nodes dramatically increase the reliability of the network, because they maintain a full Stellar transaction history, not just the current state of the ledger, as most nodes do. Our nodes are the only globally distributed setup in the whole Stellar network that also maintain publicly accessible history archives. Furthermore, operating the fastest Stellar API server (Horizon) available means we offer the smoothest user experience possible.
- During an internal hackathon, we implemented payment channels on Stellar in JavaScript, increasing transaction throughput to thousands of transactions per second. Look out for our upcoming blog post for this!
Additionally, we decide to take on responsibility for a German Stellar community cluster, which includes organising official Stellar Meetups in Berlin and other community events. We were happy to host, amongst others, Stellar.org developer Bartek Nowotarski at the first official meetup to give a detailed introduction into Stellar.
Preparing for organic growth and a fresh look
A blockchain startup aiming to revolutionise the payment industry deserves a brand image that’s fresh, modern and instantly recognisable. Our new corporate identity mirrors this aspiration. Our recently relaunched website, encompassing our new design principles, looks a lot friendlier (we think), highlights publisher features and gives quicker access to our offerings.
In the weeks before Christmas, we launched two major tools to boost adoption of our payment system:
- After first waves in April and May, we re-launched our giveaway program. SatoshiPay users can claim their first credits for free, but this time they require an invitation from one of our trusted publishers. This allows us to see the direct effect it has on publishers’ sales, and in turn we can incentivise new publishers to integrate SatoshiPay by allocating a contingent of invite codes when signing-up.
- This giveaway program is complemented by our brand-new referral program, allowing our publishers to be automatically rewarded when referring new SatoshiPay clients, without the hassles and overhead costs affiliate programs usually entail, thanks to the advantages of blockchain.
With these two unique tools, we confidently expect organic growth within the community of bloggers, influencers — the “long tail” segment of our target group.
2019 outlook: Awesome things to come!
The year ends even more excitingly than it started! We have so much in the product pipeline to launch in 2019, with early highlights being:
- Integration of a stable EUR-pegged token as the means of payments within the SatoshiPay ecosystem, replacing Stellar lumens as unit of account. This “Euro token” runs on the Stellar blockchain as well, but its value is pegged 1:1 to the Euro, therefore removing price fluctuations. Our publishers will thus be able to price their assets and receive their revenues in EUR values, whilst profiting from all the advantages of the blockchain,
- Lightning network style payment channels to be used for metered video streams (“pay-per-second”),
- Two-way payments that allow publishers to give back to their consumers within a loyalty scheme,
- A completely reworked dashboard for our publishers to manage their accounts and track sales, as well as affiliate referrals,
- Software development kits for mobile applications,
- And, last but not least, a real game changer for the entire Stellar ecosystem is upcoming! However, we can’t reveal any details yet, as this project is still in stealth mode…
So, that’s it. Thank you for your support, we are eagerly looking forward to another year full of exciting developments at SatoshiPay, and we hope you are, too! :)
The SatoshiPay team
