Ink Pay Developer and Product Updates

Some updates for the community on Ink Pay’s roadmap and future planned product releases!

Hi everyone! It has been a little while since our beta launch, partnership with Coinbase Wallet, and partnership with MakerDAO, so we wanted to give an update on all the things we are working on for the Ink Pay app. Ink Pay has been the primary focus of the product team for some time now. While an app is never truly finished, the team has done a tremendous job getting it out the door and making sure it is fully functional from day one!

DApp Usability Improvements

The first major thing we noticed when demoing the app and doing user testing with buyers and sellers is that the usability could use a lot of work. The main issue is that the current version of Ink Pay is a DApp. DApps are awesome because they are so decentralized, but are generally are just very hard to use. First, you need to use a special browser or plugin such as Metamask or Coinbase Wallet. Then, you need to move your funds into that browser wallet to use them on the DApp. Lastly, you need to pay all the gas fees yourself and wait for Ethereum transactions to settle for every action you take.

DApps work well for a very tech savvy blockchain enthusiast, but beyond that, they are still extremely hard to use.

Our ultimate vision for Ink Pay is to create a super user-friendly marketplace app to help buyers and sellers transact in a trustworthy way, no matter what marketplace they are using. We don’t think the world is ready for mass DApp adoption just yet, but it’s a great start to get crypto enthusiasts on board and already works well for what it is.

No DApp Required for Buyers

The next version of Ink Pay (due out in the next few weeks) will allow buyers to make Ink Protocol transactions without ever touching the DApp. That means buyers won’t need to use a special browser, move their funds into a new wallet, pay gas fees, or execute any smart contracts.

Buyers will simply be able to pay a seller by sending XNK to a special purchase address that the seller generates. So, buyers can pay for transactions quickly and easily from their existing XNK wallet, from exchanges, and even directly from their Listia balance.

This removes a huge number of steps that have been causing friction for buyers, and will make adoption much smoother. After payment, the buyer will receive a link via email to leave Ink Protocol feedback and add to the seller’s reputation. Our internal Ink Pay smart contracts will take care of all the complexity involved in creating a legitimate Ink Protocol transaction.

Non-Cryptocurrency Payments

Once the buyer feature above is released, we will be moving on to what we think is the short-term killer app. After talking with dozens of sellers, the number one thing preventing adoption on a massive scale is simply the cryptocurrency payments piece. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking the typical online marketplace seller is ready to move completely to cryptocurrency.

Only a very tiny portion of current e-commerce is done using cryptocurrency, and while we firmly believe this is changing quickly… we also realize that this will take many years.

In the meantime, we will be creating a version of Ink Pay that is aimed squarely at a traditional consumer audience. Buyers and sellers will be able to transact on any marketplace they like, using regular currencies such as USD, while still having every single transaction and reputation score written to the Ethereum blockchain via Ink Protocol and XNK. Such a service will need to own enough XNK to support every transaction happening on the platform, and as more transactions happen, the service will need to own more and more XNK. We believe this is the best way to show the true power of blockchain tech on a massive scale, while hiding all the complexities from the end users. More details on this version will come soon!

In the end, you want buyers and sellers to change their existing behaviors as little as possible.

As consumers learn more and more about blockchain technology, we believe DApp like products will start to grow, but for now we need to make it as easy as possible for the end users if we hope to see any adoption in the short term. Ink Pay will proudly support all of these use cases (both centralized and decentralized), and we hope other developers build even better and easier to use apps on top of Ink Protocol as well!