The more globalized our markets become, the more we need a solution for transferring assets, currency and money in a fast, safe and efficient way. Fiat currencies, or traditional currencies, such as the Euro or US Dollar, enjoy plenty of options to be transferred around the globe.
You can choose money wiring or online banking via SWIFT, which usually takes a couple of days to go through. Or, you can choose services like PayPal and email your money in a matter of seconds.
However, a giant is beginning to wake up. In the past years, we have seen impressive growth and development within the blockchain industry, and as a result, cryptocurrencies have gained much popularity. So much that today there are more than 2000 cryptocurrencies with an impressive cumulated market cap of over US$133 billion as of writing.
With the widespread adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency, the demand for cryptocurrency exchanges have exploded, and the market did not disappoint. There are many cryptocurrency exchange platforms available today, most of them being free to join.
Unfortunately, with the demand for transferring cryptocurrency skyrocketing as well, the market has not created viable options to easily send and receive cryptocurrency. So, while trading can be both fun and lucrative, the general population uses one currency 99% of the time and only needs to be able to send and receive this currency for his daily routine.
Think of how many transactions, out of all the purchases you have made in the past month, were in another currency than the one you use daily. For most people that percentage is lower than 5%. In other words, the growing cryptocurrency market needed a PayPal-equivalent, not another exchange.
The problems
This brings us to the three main issues with cryptocurrency transactions users face every day. First and most important, human error. Human error is natural, and something as trivial as losing a password known in cryptocurrency as a key can happen quite easily. But because of how blockchain works, a private key cannot be reset, like you would do with a regular password.
When it comes to private keys, you cannot rely on the usual “forgot password” option that we all know so well. This means that your private key is irrecuperable and there is no support desk for blockchain. If you lose your private key, you lose access to your wallet and all the cryptocurrency in it, forever.
Second, blockchain is still a new and quite difficult technology to understand for many. Not surprisingly, there are people who pry on the naivety of uneducated users, resulting in cryptocurrency scams. Scam victims are either cheated into buying phoney tokens, giving their private keys or even paying fake transaction fees with the promise of getting access to other private keys themselves. One way or another, they are robbed of their money with no way of defence.
Third and most importantly, even if these issues wouldn’t exist, the process of transferring money on blockchain can be confusing. In order to send cryptocurrency, one must first know the public key of the receiver. This is a long and unique key, generated by a complicated algorithm that makes it impossible to memorize. So, when you have to spend 5 minutes just to make sure you are using the right account, it kind of feels like a step back, not forward. But, if we can’t ditch the public keys, what is there to do?
A group of technical and security experts saw these issues and took it upon themselves to find a solution. So after much brainstorming and hard work they created Blockbasis. Following the same strategy as PayPal, Blockbasis replaces the long and cryptic public keys with the users’ email addresses. So instead of using a 20-something characters password that you need to check 5 times, you send and receive crypto coins with your email account.
With this concept, the team strives to make cryptocurrency available for everyone, helping people join the blockchain community. But more importantly, they want to educate their users about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. So, to do that, they needed the right tools, which is where Wiredelta® comes in.
The solution
Blockbasis is built on Bitshares which was launched in the current form on October 2015. The BitShares blockchain and its dApps implements industrial-grade technology with an amazing open source ecosystem. Based on open-source MIT-licensed, Graphene technology and its blockchain comes with many benefits:
Speed: Super fast block confirmations. Transactions get written to the blockchain within 3 seconds, and on average in under 1.5 seconds!
Low Fees: Like other blockchains, to run on the Graphene blockchain there are fees, yet they are much lower than what you know from the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain.
Self-sustaining: The Graphene blockchain covers costs through an ecosystem of dApps which self-fund the core Bitshares token, BTS.
Security: The consensus mechanism used on Graphene is Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS), which is virtually impossible to hack, as it would involve taking out many active and backup, global, trusted delegates.
Beyond the Graphene blockchain, BitShares offer a variety of blockchain tokens and types of digital assets. There is not just the BTS (core token) but many other types of currency and assets. Hence, providing a service like Blockbasis the flexibility needed to transact and exchange virtually anything where there is a buyer and seller.
By using Bitshares, Blockbasis ensures to offer Blockbasis’ users a secure, flexible and efficient solution to store, send, receive and exchange digital money.
The Blockbasis platform is split into two parts, a promotional site with the homepage, support and more, as well as the application itself where users can send and receive cryptocurrency via email. So naturally, our team also divided the solution into an informative promotional website and the impressive web application.
Promotional website
Using WordPress for easy management, the home page is a simple yet practical scrolling page. It contains the most important information users may search for, such as Blockbasis’s services and supported cryptocurrencies. However, trust is a key factor for Blockbasis, so users can also see testimonials from others.
Along with the landing page, the website also features a blog section that keeps readers updated with any changes in the Blockbasis platform, and a support page.
The support page is full professionally written articles about cryptocurrency and blockchain for users to dive into.
However, understanding blockchain through just reading content is not possible. So, the more users interact with the platform, the more they learn, and the better they understand how this technology works. Naturally, the support page provides the perfect solution for Blockbasis users, a discussion section. Here the team is challenging users to start intriguing and captivating debates about everything blockchain related.
Web application
The Blockbasis web application is the result of an amazing collaboration between the technical experts at Blockbasis and our own frontend superheroes. The application is based on Blockbasis’ own API, built using NodeJS. In turn, our frontend developers brought it to life in a beautiful Angular 6 frame.
User journey
The signup/login process is done through the Firebase user authentication integration, that verifies every login. It’s safe, and all a user needs when creating an account, is a valid email or Facebook account.
The dashboard is clean and clear, ensuring a fast and easy learning process for any new user, as well as a smooth navigation for existing users.
On the front page, there is an overview of the account, recent activity, and the portfolio. The full portfolio of cryptocurrency can be seen on the Accounts page with all the transactions made within each wallet:
Accounts or wallets can be easily created by simply buying any cryptocurrency, and from there, the fun starts!
The exchange section allows users to buy or sell their coins at the market price, offering a smooth and fun experience. This feature is one of the key points of the platform, as most beginner users are overwhelmed by traditional trading platforms.
Instead, Blockbasis focuses on what users need, no charts, no impossible tables, no graphs. Just you and your crypto.
Finally, the superstar feature of Blockbasis, the cryptocurrency transfer feature. To understand this feature in 3 simple words, think about PayPal for blockchain. Just like with PayPal, Blockbasis allows users send and receive cryptocurrency using just an email address.
The receiver then gets an email notifying them about the transfer. If they already have a Blockbasis account connected to that email, they can see the transfer right away by logging in. If they don’t, all they need to do is go and create an account. It’s as simple as that!
However, simplicity is not the only reason why Blockbasis decided to use email for transfers. The other two reasons are security and GDPR regulations.
Security
Some of the most pressing issues Blockbasis set to solve, were users losing their private keys or getting scammed. With Blockbasis, the transfer process is secure because no one, not even the guys from Blockbasis, knows which email belongs to which key. At the same time, individual accounts are further secured by the Firebase integration.
GDPR compliant
According to GDPR regulations, every user has the right to ask for their private data to be either deleted or anonymized. Blockchain users cannot be deleted. But, because Blockbasis is semi-decentralized, all they have to do to anonymize a user is delete the email from the database. No email, no access to the already anonymized wallet.
Conclusion
Blockbasis has kept to their word and, with Wiredelta’s help, built an amazing platform for transferring cryptocurrency. Not only that, but users can also buy or sell crypto for a profit, taking their first steps towards professional trading. Together we created something truly unique, and we have also learned so much along the way.
As we know that blockchain is only getting started, we are more excited than ever to see what the future holds. Are you ready to become a part of progress? Tell us your incredible idea and together we can bring it to life. In the meantime, keep an eye out for other exciting posts.
And, remember that continuous maintenance is crucial. which is why, Blockbasis and Wiredelta are continuously working on maintaining and optimizing the website and provide the EGN users an excellent experience every single time.
