Summary of Proposal
Between rollups, stablecoins and account abstraction, Ethereum is ready for real-world usage competitive with traditional finance apps and systems.
So far, however, there has been a lack of dogfooding of Ethereum apps by Ethereum developers — we go to Ethereum conferences around the world and then split dinner bills using cash or Paypal. This has detrimental impact on the Ethereum application layer:
- USDT on Tron has become the de-facto choice for stablecoin users even though Ethereum L2s provide better UX and security now.
- Ethereum lacks neutral and shared standards for applications. See, for example, Solana Pay or the Tron (chain-specific) address standard: Comparable Ethereum standards today are either closed source and not aligned with Ethereum values, or lack meaningful adoption.
- The status quo of “Connect Wallet” hasn’t seen meaningful innovation. Signing confusing hex messages and using flaky connections between apps and wallets has become synonymous with Ethereum (and largely crypto) UX.
We propose a new payments experience with NFC tap comparable to Apple Pay, and one-click deeplinks that work cross-L2 and provide rich metadata for payments in-wallet.
With proposed activations at Devcon, we hope to demonstrate a promising future for payments on Ethereum, and drive more community effort for open and neutral Ethereum application layer standards.
EthPay
EthPay’s goal is to create a shared standard for payment requests on Ethereum. This supports a range of related use cases including online checkout, point-of-sale, and P2P payment requests.
Desired attributes:
- Deterministic. Affords great UX, without need for slow and approximate simulation.
- URL based. Users can request payment via plain link, popup window (like PayPal Checkout), QR, NFC, and so on. This makes the standard transport-agnostic.
- Neutral. Not tied to (and no preference for) any specific company, wallet or rollup.
- Open. Community governed, easy to implement in any wallet.
We propose EthPay, a community owned and open standard to this end. See our complete proposal at the link below:
EthPay Standard Working Draft
This is currently a working draft, we welcome and appreciate thoughts and feedback. Thanks to Austin Griffith for working with us on the initial draft and ideas.
We plan to finalize the specification soon with community feedback, and then set up community infrastructure and support for any wallet to support the standard. We’d love to provide technical guidance and support to any ecosystem teams and assembling a critical mass of adoption by Devcon.
EthPay at Devcon
At Devcon, we would like to use EthPay to demonstrate a promising future for payments on Ethereum. To that end, we have two broad ideas:
Real World Ethereum Point of Sale
The best real-world demonstration of Ethereum payments would be for merchants to accept payments from a global customer-base at no fees.
Additionally, with NFC tap to pay and EthPay, we can make Ethereum payments as smooth as Apple Pay for users, compatible with any Ethereum wallet, and get more attention for the standard we proposed above.
We imagine a few form factors for the point of sale could work well, depending on operational flexibility from the Devcon team:
- Make all breakfast or lunch meals paid for with stablecoins. Meals can be a small token amount (say, $1) and attendees can be reimbursed during check-in with the amount organizers expect them to spend.
- Designate an area as the Real World Ethereum cafe with a cafe and snacks set up. This can be a chill co-working / hangout spot for everyone, and Ethereum payments demonstration in a cafe setting.
- Set up local Thai tea and street food vendors in an open area at the venue to accept Ethereum payments with EthPay.
In all cases, we would set up the merchant with an iPad swivel setup, something like this:
They would be provided a web interface and detailed instructions and training on how to use the system.
We’re curious to learn more about which of these might be most interesting and operationally feasible from the Devcon team’s perspective.
Cypherpunk Speakeasy
Inspired by Austin Griffith’s Cypherpunk Speakeasy POS at ETH Denver, we propose running a designated speakeasy imagining the future from the perspective of Ethereum in 2050.
Some ideas:
- With ETH being deflationary over time vs other currencies being inflationary, it would be fun to price things cheap in ETH but high in dollars.
- We can offer thematic drinks and games at the speakeasy, like Vitalik’s infamous green tea concoction
- If there are plans for a cypherpunk community hub at Devcon, we can host the hub inside the speakeasy.
- Depending on the set up, we can host debates and round table discussions on Real World Ethereum.
If anyone has other ideas for setting up Ethereum payments during Devcon, we’d be more than happy to provide technical guidance and would love to see widespread adoption of the standard during Devcon.
Past Experience
We (Team Daimo) have past experience setting up crypto payments for events and running event activations ourselves.
- We did our initial launch with a rudimentary point of sale for Baklavas at Zuconnect in Istanbul last year.
- Then, at Edge City Denver we ran payments for the cafe with NFC tap to pay: x.com
- Separately, we have helped run two community events on the theme of Real World Ethereum: https://realworldeth.com
Daimo initially started with a grant from Ethereum Foundation PSE and Optimism RPGF, and has since raised a seed round from values-aligned folks in the Ethereum ecosystem: x.com
If this proposal is accepted, we would be very happy to run operational aspects of the activation and work with the Devcon team directly to make it a success. Branding will remain neutral: Ethereum/EthPay/Devcon only.
