Detailed Plan
Introduction:
Imagine a world where you can go to your favorite coffee shop, open a wallet on your smart phone, scan a QR code and pay for your beverage without the need for a plastic debit card. Everything just works, you don't have to worry about the price of a crypto coin or asset, you don't have to worry about whether the store accepts any particular cryptocurrency, you just scan the QR code and walk out with your goods. A world where sending money to family or friends overseas or paying for something online doesn't cost you a large transfer fee or exchange rate conversions cut into your balance. The system just works fast and inexpensively, all from a mobile device.
What is proposed here in this outline is Infinity, a Financial Operating System (FOS) that runs alongside Cardano nodes and stake pools and works with mobile and desktop wallets. A solution to traditional point-of-sale technology, business payment products, banking and personal international money transfers and also micro-lending. What Infinity offers is a paradigm shift in everyday financial products and enables people to interact with each other and businesses, and builds on current defi infrastructure to enable the bootstrapping of the unbanked in to a world of fast and secure decentralized finance.
A Brief Technical Introduction:
Infinity is a Financial Operating System that can be seen as a set of packages that contain tools, it can be installed and its packages run alongside a layer-1 node and command line interfaces to deploy advanced smart contracts, listen to specific transactions, interact with decentralized identity solutions and provide a user interface. Infinity and its packages could be selectively offered as "extensions" to existing to mobile wallets and other lite clients to provide Point of Sale (PoS) payments systems for business owners using mobile devices, removing the need for plastic debit cards and proprietary hardware that communicates with centralized authorities.
Infinity is built upon layer-1 blockchain solutions, but not strictly a layer-2 solution. However, Infinity sits in between as a layer 1.5 piece of infrastructure and makes use of what is traditionally considered layer-2 scaling solutions like sidechains, payment channels and rollups and uses layer-1 core technologies to assure verifiable decentralized trust.
Outlined here in this plan is one primary example of a package build into Infinity and a use case that can prove the feasibility of Infinity; an integrated and verifiable Borderless Transfer System (BTS) that makes use of decentralized and/or centralized identity and KYC solutions and stable coin protocols to provide local currency or stable coin equivalent money transfers. BTS incorporates technologies and protocols such as:
- Djed a formally verified crypto-backed pegged algorithmic stablecoin.
- Decentralized identity providers or centralized verification such as traditional business entities like exchanges conforming to local regulation providing proof of identity for regulatory KYC and AML purposes.
- Selectable interaction with exchange based liquidity pools, decentralized exchanges or centralized exchanges that provide the currency and/or tokens involved in the transaction.
- tx\_key generator/verifier mechanism for auditor/arbitrator verification.
The development of the project at its inception will be to demonstrate BTS and the Infinity framework (Infinity core) that other packages can be developed on.
Initial Project Development:
The development of Infinity is broken down into a framework that packages are built upon, and then the packages themselves. This document describes Infinity and the BTS package as the first priorities of the project to demonstrate interaction with the Cardano blockchain and a use case (to show signs of life). Therefore the development timeline is as follows:
Infinity Core:
-> Build backend engine that reads and reacts to state on the blockchain.
-> Parse SPO requests and direct towards package.
-> Interact with DID platform.
-> Build specification and code to interact with centralized exchanges and DEX's.
-> Build backend standard functions and socket to interact bridge UX frontend with Infinity.BTS.
BTS package:
-> Stake Pool functions.
-> ID verification functions.
-> Auditor request functions.
-> Standard function to receive/send etc that talk to Infinity framework backend.
-> Implement Djed and/or a modified version of the protocol to interact with liquidity providers.
-> Read state of oracles for Djed peg.
Frontend:
-> Build a basic front end to display technical functionality of Infinity framework and the BTS package.
Please see the attached document "Infinity.pdf" for technical details.
Funding usage and KPI:
Grants or funding will be used to hire two fulltime backend software developers that will work on Infinity core and Infinity-BTS. Performance indicators of the teams progress will be a command line interface version of Infinity with the BTS package that can be used for review after 3 to 6 months. The team will develop Infinity and integrate it on the projects official stake pool that is currently registered: ticker INFTY.
At 6 to 9 months we will ask other stake pools (that the community has voted for) to integrate Infinity and test. Command line specifications and integration software will be peer reviewed and sent to full node and lite client developers for integration and use on Cardano at 12 months.
The Infinity project at this point will be demonstrated to be running alongside stake pools, interacting with liquidity pools and wallets. The business proposition of this project will mean stake pools and providers of the infinity infrastructure, backed by Cardano can receive fees from the packages that are running. At this point (12 months) front end development may require additional funding for which Catalyst may be approached. It would be great if the project had self funded at this point from exposure and community support however.
CA's and reviewers are encouraged to look in to the attached whitepaper for community based funding ideas, and audience of such a product (everyday users of financial transactions), and the initial technical overview.