Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

In an earlier post, I covered some major problems cryptocurrency (crypto) users face today, which are hurdles in the way of mass user adoption. We are introducing a new blockchain project, Tip, that solves the problems outlined, by making crypto more accessible to end-users and merchants.

Let’s talk about how exactly we do this.

Friendly usernames instead of cryptographic hashes for addresses

The first problem crypto users face is having to deal with cryptographic hashes for addresses. As mentioned in the earlier post, this might seem normal to crypto users, but there is nothing normal about having an address that looks like this: 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268. While the properties of cryptography and mathematics, which blockchain technology is built upon, mandates the need for cryptographically secure addresses, this is an implementation detail that end users should not have to deal with. The solution Tip proposes for this problem is, user-friendly usernames, instead of cryptographic addresses.

0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268 => johnW99

Tip maps the hashed address to a friendly username. This is done on the protocol level, and is not dependent on third party applications or naming services like DNS or ENS. The cryptographic hashed addresses still exist, but users do not have to worry about that when sending transactions. A good analogy to this is on social platforms like Twitter or Instagram. User information is stored in databases. Each user has a unique identifier in this database which is usually made up of numeric or alphanumeric characters. The user id is an implementation detail that is not exposed to users, because it is irrelevant to them. Tip is taking a similar approach with blockchain accounts. By abstracting this detail of cryptographic hashes away, we are opening up the use of cryptocurrency to the non-technical user, in a way that will make sending cryptocurrency transactions as easy as using familiar social networks.

Solutions for merchants

The second problem with crypto has to do with ease of use by businesses.

More and more businesses have started accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for payment. Whenever I see one of those “Bitcoin accepted here” stickers, I think of 2 things:

Cryptocurrency adoption is catching on. How hard it must be for these businesses to process these cryptocurrency payments.

Simply giving a business a cryptocurrency address with no services or features give little incentive to businesses to accept crypto payments due the the lack of convenience. For cryptocurrency use to go mainstream, businesses need to get on board in a big way.

Sticking with the “ease of use” theme, Tip makes it easy for businesses to accept cryptocurrency payments by providing a Tip point-of-sale system. This will be a desktop and tablet application that makes it easy for businesses to accept Tip tokens. This gives businesses the features and conveniences they are used to such as:

Order management

Customer management

Sales reporting and analytics

Third party integrations

Coupled with the username feature, users will be able to send payments to the businesses they shop at using a familiar name, instead of that unsightly crypto address. With this system in place, when customers place orders or make purchases, the point-of-sale system takes care of organizing and presenting the associated information in a way that makes it easy for merchant to manage, process and attribute payments to the right orders and customers. Integrations will also be provided with existing popular payment systems.

The point-of-sale system will be a huge plus to the Tip ecosystem, as it will help connect businesses to their customers on one crypto platform.

Contextual information with addresses and transactions

The third major problem cryptocurrency users face is the lack of contextual information around transactions. This is a little more abstract which can be clarified with an example.

Let’s say a business that accepts cryptocurrency payments receives 5 transactions from 5 customers. Which payment corresponds to which customer? This question is difficult to answer with current solutions. The Tip solution to this problem is to allow accounts and transactions to be marked with additional information or metadata. Users can attach arbitrary data to their accounts and pass data along with transactions. In the example of 5 customers making purchases, the Tip wallet is the application responsible for correctly attaching relevant information to transactions and sending them to the merchant’s account using the merchant username. Once the payment is received, the merchant POS system will be able to identify which customer, order and any other pertinent information this comes from, by reading and organizing the attached metadata.

Some other blockchain platforms already allow data storage and data passing. What makes Tip different is, this stored information is indexed and searchable, thus, discoverable by clients on the network.