We’re very proud of Groundhog. And we’re excited to share it with you. But what we’re most excited about is how this will affect the crypto ecosystem. Groundhog is the missing link for what’s next in crypto e-commerce. We’re opening up a fundamental type of transaction and type of revenue stream for the entire ecosystem. Crypto companies can now bootstrap themselves through recurring revenue. Non-crypto companies can accept crypto subscription payments easily and convert to fiat. No banks, no credit card networks required. This is going to change the face of e-commerce forever.

How does it work?

Customers sign up or check out on a merchant web site just like they normally would, and click Pay with Groundhog. They are then prompted to use the Groundhog iOS app, the Groundhog Web app, or another supported crypto wallet like MetaMask to approve the subscription.

For every customer and every merchant, our platform automatically deploys a Groundhog smart wallet that lives on the Ethereum blockchain. They are best-in-class, multi signature, non-custodial contract wallets. Customers can fund their Groundhog wallet from any other crypto wallet, or soon, their bank account.

Groundhog uses the latest technology pattern in Ethereum transactions, called meta-transactions, and periodically trustlessly relays the cryptographic commit signed by the customer to the Ethereum blockchain when the merchant calls the Groundhog API in order to trigger, for example, a monthly payment. If the logic in the customer’s wallet approves the payment, i.e. enough time has passed since the last payment, and the subscription is active and valid, funds are transferred to the merchant wallet. The customer can manage or cancel their subscriptions at any time through the Groundhog app of their choice.

Stablecoins

Stablecoins are a huge part of Groundhog. Stablecoins such as DAI allow merchants to mitigate downside volatility risk, and allow customers to have a predictable subscription price denominated in their local currency.

Currently, merchants can set prices in either ETH or USD. One really cool feature of Groundhog is that for a subscription denominated in USD, customers can pay with DAI, or they can choose to pay with the equivalent amount of ETH instead. Groundhog uses industry-leading oracles to determine the proper amount of ETH to transfer, at the moment the transaction is made —In this case, the amount of ETH paid will change every time the payment is processed (according to the value of ETH/USD) but they will always pay the same “value” in USD!

ERC-1337

Groundhog’s vision is that subscription payments between wallets and payment gateways should be interoperable. We believe that is the best case scenario for the entire crypto ecosystem. So as part of the 1337 Alliance, Groundhog co-developed ERC-1337, the new standard for recurring subscription payments on Ethereum. The result of this groundbreaking work is that any ERC-1337 compatible wallet can initiate subscriptions with any ERC-1337 compatible payment gateway.

Team

My co-founder Andrew and I couldn’t be more proud of our team that made this happen. I want to take a moment to personally thank them for their contributions, commitments of time, energy, great attitudes and late nights that they put in to make this launch a reality.

From left, Jeremy Sheehy, Rob Moore, Andrew Trudel, Karly Barker, Scott Burke, Dalton Lecky, Yashar Asheri, Jason Barnett, and Andrew Redden

Our platform is in alpha. There will likely be some hiccups to work out. We don’t expect things will be perfect. But nobody has ever done this before. We really appreciate your feedback on every aspect of the experience in order to make the best possible product we can. Our team is on fire with momentum and just like we’re so impressed with how much ground they’ve covered engineering Groundhog, We’re incredibly excited at how quickly we’ll be iterating the product over the coming weeks and months. This launch is just the beginning. Get involved and let’s change e-commerce forever.

Merchants wanted

Get that recurring revenue feeling! We’re now onboarding merchants. You can visit groundhog.network and click Get Groundhog to get started. You can sign up in 60 seconds. If you have any questions or you’d like to learn more, let us know at hello@groundhog.network, or send us a tweet @GroundhogPay!

Thanks for reading, and Happy Groundhog Day from all of us at Groundhog!