The long term strategic objective is a full P2P build, with the paywithbitcoin.com name acting as an easy-to-remember and easy-to-market upper-funnel, to introduce and welcome bitcoiners and no-coiners into a garden of P2P flowerbeds.
An earlier tactical build-out is suggested because some of the P2P (below) are still in beta. For example:
- Holepunch-Pear are currently estimating a timeframe of 6-12 months before they’d recommend external teams start building with their tech. (at this point the libraries are insufficient)
- Pubky Ring (Ed25519 signer/authentication) already has stable iOS and Android apps; however the Pubky Homeserver is currently undergoing a rebuild.
A tactical rapid build-out of paywithbitcoin.com would rely on well supported open-source stacks running on centralised infrastructure. This quick-start would enable us to get a head-start acquiring users (i.e. buyers, sellers), setting-up affiliate relationships, moving limited low-cost inventory (such as stickers) etc. while also providing an opportunity to set-up many of the business elements, legal entity structure, funding programme.
Proposed stack – STRATEGIC
Pear and Holepunch
Pear and Holepunch refer to two related but different layers in the same P2P ecosystem. The projects are backed by Tether.
Holepunch
Holepunch is a peer-to-peer communication technology that enables parties behind firewalls to establish a direct connection, even if they are not directly reachable. It uses a third-party signaling server to facilitate the initial connection, exchanging IP addresses and port numbers, then establishes a direct UDP connection for direct data transfer between peers. It powers serverless applications such as Keet, a privacy-focused messaging app for end-to-end encrypted chats, calls, and file sharing without centralized servers or metadata collection.
Holepunch supports decentralized tools like Hypercore for distributed databases, and Hyperswarm for peer discovery via DHT.
Pear
Pear (often called Pear Runtime or “Pear by Holepunch”) is an open-source, higher‑level runtime, development, and deployment platform built on top of Holepunch’s P2P stack. It provides tools, APIs, and a live data protocol so developers can build, run, and share peer‑to‑peer applications. It can be used to create decentralized and secure applications that run without centralized servers, reducing infrastructure costs to near zero. Pear enables peer-to-peer apps where users have full control over their data, promoting privacy, and security… notwithstanding robust key management.
Ark
Ark is currently the best L2 to offer friction-minimised UX, and is particularly awesome for people receiving their first bitcoin.
Ark Labs are going to market with the strapline: ‘Programmable Money’. We think that plebs don’t want programmable money. They want hard, anti-fragile, uncensorable freedom money. Second Tech’s vision appears to be more aligned.
It would be possible to run our own Ark implementation, perhaps even built on Holepunch-Pear, although such a strategy would almost certainly result in increased regulatory exposure. Either way, through UX, we are able to define which Ark/s we funnel users toward. The same is true for layer-swap provision.
Pubky
Pubky is open source infrastucture for decentralized content and user profiles based on Ed25519. In contrast to Nostr which is over-reliant on a small number of relays and requires all data to be signed with non-rotatable keys, the Pubky project has combined a number of technologies to deliver a maximally useful ecosystem for decentralized non-runtime applications. It combines:
- Kademlia
- Holepunch
- Ed25519 keys (as resource pointer and well as a profile layer).
- Public Key Addressable Resource Records (PKARR)
- A simple lightweight ‘homeserver’ stack
In P2P commerce and resilient marketplace applications, Pubky will allow users to address marketplace stalls using a public key. It also allows to storage of data (i.e. product information, delivery address, successful trade tokens) on PKARR-addressed homeservers, as well as Mainline DHT.
The Pubky Ring app for Android/iOS allows for the creation and management of keypairs, and can act as a signing device for login authentication to a homeserver. Unlike Nostr, once a session is established, there is no requirement to sign every single activity.
Ed25519 is not quantum resistant, but the protocol will easily allow for rotation to PQR keys.
Proposed stack – TACTICAL
MedusaJS
MedusaJS as a feature-rich e-commerce stack, that can be used as a management console for resilient marketplaces.
Medusa is the most popular open source stack for commerce. Data are structured as JSONB for optimised indexing and searching.
MedusaJS appears to lack sovereignty-orientated bitcoin plugins. We propose a project to build and maintain a plug-in for Medusa called: “Perseus”. Basic functionality may include:
- feature for marketplace sellers to create an Ark address
- feature for customers to pay to an Ark address
- feature for customers to pay to a Bolt 12 address. NO BOLT 11 🙂
- feature for marketplace sellers to synch their inventory onto a Pubky Homeserver.
- feature for marketplace sellers to push their inventory onto Kademlia (mainline DHT).
- feature to request that product is indexed by paywithbitcoin.com
- feature to request that product is indexed by another indexer.
While MedusaJS natively runs on a conventional node.js webserver stack with a IP address / domain name end point, PubKy would theoretically allow marketplaces and indexers to reached by a Ed25519 Public Key (i.e. using PKARR to resolve the most recently updated server endpoint).
While MedusaJS is designed to run on conventional server stack, since all product data are in JSONB, it can likely be pushed/synched with Pear-Holepunch Hyperdrive or Pubky Homeserver, without reformatting.
Personal sovereign servers
While not yet widely adopted, out-of-the-box personal servers with friction-minimised UX (such as Umbrel, Start9 etc.) might present a good alternative for ‘Plebmarkt’ sellers preferring control of their infrastructure. Such operators could act as an ‘Uncle Jim’ for their friends, family, community etc. Retail units start at around $399. Hobbyists can build a viable Umbrel/Start9 set-up for $120.
Coupling such units to Meshtastic (up to 25Km range) or Wi-Fi HaLow 802.11ah (up to 1 Km range) could present a new paradigm for post apocalypse-resistant P2P mesh-marketplaces… as well as very cool tech to play with in remote locations.
e.g. The ‘Spec5 Spectre’ Android/3G/Meshtastic unit retailing at $145.
