Introduction

When we started to work on delion:api back in mid of 2017, one of the first questions we asked ourselves was: “How can we allow people to exchange IOTA without using a wallet?”. This question arised especially after we experienced the bad start with one of the first official IOTA Wallets, which did not explicitly prevented users from using the same address multiple times. Although the new Trinity Wallet solves this issues and provides many advantages, we still think it not enough user friendly for mass adoption.

The idea was to increase both the user experience and comfort of early adopters of this technology by providing them with a way to send IOTA back and forth without exchanging cryptographic addresses prior to payments. Our first thoughts were “Why don’t we do it the PayPal way, where users only need to know the email address as the most used communication channel to send and receive IOTA?”. After doing some research in this field we were left behind with litte to no answers. Still, there are even no results on search engines when searching for “Send IOTA via Email”.

Finally, this is going to change and we hope that we can contribute to spread the word about IOTA, making cryptocurrency payments a breeze.

Send and receive IOTA by email is now possible

With the release of delion:api beta, delion users can now send IOTA via Email to other delion users. All it needs is to sign up for a delion account online. After that, the sender just writes the email of the recipient, selects the amount to transfer and optionally adds a message to that transaction. That’s it. Both the recipient and sender receive an email with the transferred amount, right after the transaction was confirmed on the Tangle main net.

Screenshot of payment form inside delion Management Console (Click to zoom)

We call this payment method “instant”, as it is easy to use and does not need the user to reattach and promote the transaction on the Tangle after it is submitted. The delion API provides a highly scalable backend to confirm transactions on the Tangle.

Screenshot of recent payments inside delion Management Console (Click to zoom)

Besides making IOTA payments via delions’ graphical user interface called delion management console, you can also easily integrate the delion payment feature into your own applications via API to trigger payments.

What can delion payments be used for?

Let’s imagine an online shop who integrated IOTA payments as a payment method.

The conventional way to receive payments is to publish a reception address for IOTA, where the buyer sends the funds to. As soon as the funds arrived and are moved from the reception address to non-public address, the public address for receptions needs to be changed.

Same procedure applies to IOTA donation addresses, where the IOTA funds can not be moved away from a reception address without generating and publishing the new address.

Especially in those both cases, delion offers a quite simple solution: Instead of generating and publishing new reception addresses when moving funds, delion allows to publish one unique mail address where IOTA can be sent to. The funds can now be moved independently without keeping an eye on generating and publishing new addresses.

That being said, basically delion:api now offers a way to easily build and offer pay per unit business models across various industries (A list of such business models in the appendix of this article).

Outlook: Introduction of express and stream payments

There are some use cases out there, which require IOTA payments in a very short time, independently from the Tangle performance. For this purpose we are actively working on “delion express payments”. We hereby use the account information to allow or refuse transactions based on the senders‘ account balance.

This payment method allows business models, where time is a very critical factor and tangle confirmation rates can be neglected.

A further method, we call it “delion stream payments”, is still in the conceptual works and targets some more specific use cases. More information about express and stream payments will be released as soon as we reach the testing phase.

Try it out

Our vision of making the use of IOTA quick and easy starts here. We give away in total 100 MIOTA to try out delion instant payments, so that you can start right away. Invite your family and friends to join the journey to easy IOTA payments. We will publish more information about the giveaway on our Twitter soon.

Last, but not least: Thank you!

We’d like to take the opportunity to say thanks to all testers of our alpha and the very valuable feedback from the community. It is great so see so much enthusiasm around IOTA and the progress being made on a daily basis.

If you find our contribution valuable and would like to support our efforts, we’d like to share our donation mail adress. If you are not a delion user yet and want to donate, you can also use our official donation address.

delion donation handle: info@delion.io

delion donation address: HMCHBKRHITLZXMAZGHGHHFHMNDI9IHSOLDLRYAXLHPPOUHFFABPLHU9XHYZUIMNEZVAUAHZJJYVYQDAOCUMCWKWSCY

Appendix:

Link to delion Management console

Link to delion API developer documentation

Link to delion website

Link to delion:api official Discord Server

List of business models Pay per unit

Link to ‘How IOTA addresses are generated’ by Eric Hop

Link to an illustraded introduction of the Tangle by Alon Gal

Link to IOTA Homepage

Disclaimer:

delion:api is not affiliated or part of the IOTA Foundation. We are focused on establishing a useful service for the IOTA community to increase IOTA’s adoption.