It would be cool if Arké could remain a self-custodial bitcoin-only wallet, but be able to facilitate payments in all kinds of ways. That would make it a much better at its intended use case. I enter your phone number, bank account, or crypto address, pay a lightning invoice, and you receive whatever works for the account you have. It could look something like this.
Some services already exist to facilitate this type of payment:
Boltz announced bitcoin to stablecoin swaps
Blitz can pay phone numbers in Kenyan Shilling via Tando
Fedi can pay to India’s UPI via 256D
Each service has its own API or tech stack. Pave Protocol is meant to standardize this. That way, a wallet only has to implement the protocol once and it can be used with all current and future services in the same way.
And with the service handling the full conversion and delivery, there is no additional regulatory burden on the wallet (AFAICT, IANAL).
In the protocol, the user does not have an account with the service, so there is some trust there. Some users/countries would be OK with this, others wouldn’t be.
Here is the protocol spec. It’s just three simple endpoints.
And now for some disclaimers. This protocol came out of an AI brainstorm where I wanted to explore this idea of last mile fiat payment possibilities. At the end of the brainstorm, I asked it to write a spec. No one else has reviewed it. And I am not even a protocol developer. So this whole idea and protocol may be more of a conversation starter at this point than something to build on.
What do you think?
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.