Stellar Fox - We ain't know nuttin'.

What is Stellar Fox?

It is a self-banking platform for an everyday user. It aims to abstract away complex concepts and enable an average user to confidently and securely exchange digital assets without necessarily being aware of the underlying tachnology. Without decent security, ease of use is not enough when it comes to exchanging digital scarcity. Therefore, we are also in the process of designing secure solution that could protect assets of individual users in a manner similar to cryptocurrency hardware wallets where no secret keys could ever be extracted.

Changes since 6th SBC entry

Our previous post for 6th SBC Entry on galactic talk.

There have been plenty of features added and ideas adopted from some of the fellow projects submitted so far for SBC. Please also note that all items in the list below have already been implemented as a fully functional solution.

Signup/Account Opening has been simplified and consists now only of two steps in order to register for the platform.

Platform Login visual design has been altered slightly and now includes live network switch for explorer mode only. Ledger login and username/password login act as two ways of accessing user's account.

Account Profile now includes a signed identities concept, which cryptographically proves the ownership of the account. Each signed identity then acts as a proof of a verified account when sending digital assets to. All changes to account data have to be signed and approved by the owner of the account.

Native Currency Payments now include an address book fuzzy search by contact name, federation address or account number. This feature virtually eliminates erroneous destinations as the chosen contact's account is verified for digital signature and authenticity. Payee's currency of choice is reflected on the paycheck and final amount that the payee will receive is calculated in the currency of choice. If the user has specified the default memo for the account and signed it then it is also reflected in the paycheck and cannot be changed by the payer. The underlying asset in this case is of course XLM so given the nature of its volatility it would not perhaps be the best choice for large sums of money and long term off-boarding of final payment.

Custom Assets is an option that uses trusted custom assets issued either by us or by 3rd parties and Anchors. Custom assets are usually pegged to some real currency or commodity and are therefore stable. When the asset issuer follows the SEP-0001 protocol then the asset is displayed as verified. We are currently working on 3rd party custom assets UI for the user to send and verify their validity as well as obtain some relevant asset information. As each asset trustline increases minimum balance, the current required minimum balance of the account is displayed for the user.

Custom Asset Payments include the familiar payee search component. This is a recent addition so it still needs some UX/UI work but it is fully functional at the moment.

Contact Book allows for convenient storage and reuse of payment contacts. You simply send assets to your contact's name or any other attribute for that matter. If you know/remember any other attribute about the contact (email / federation address or the Stellar public key) then simply type it into the search contact component and the relevant list of contacts will be found.

Internal and Federated contacts. We differentiate two contact types: Internal and Federated. Internal contacts represent users that have been registered with our platform, which automatically enables extra account features for such contact. When a payment is made to internal contact that has cryptographically signed the account then this attribute is reflected while making payment to such contact. Internal contacts can only be added or deleted. Contact's personal information is controlled by the user representing the contact. This screenshot shows the management modal for Internal contact. Federated contact is a contact that has registered with a 3rd party federation service provider. The user is free to modify/assign meta information to such federated contact.

Adding New Contacts feature allows for search of a new contact with either email address, federation address or Stellar public key. If the contact being added has already registered on our platform then it is found either by email and added, pending approval. Searching with federation address or Stellar public key either adds internal or federated contact type. Internal contacts always have to approve the contact requests before they can be added to someone's contact book.

Account Funding allows for user's funds being onboarded to the platform. We are currently experimenting and testing different payment processors, which in turn provide different options of deposits. The goal is to make the onboarding as painless and least expensive for the end user. Needless to say, the user can of course immediately participate by depositing XLM directly to their account.

What comes next?

Third party asset management. Users will be able to add/delete trustlines to searchable and rated third party assets.
Anchor management. Offboarding of user funds is probably the most complex not only from the legal point but also user security. User will be able to choose and trust Anchors that will offboard the funds to the bank that they work with.
Different onboarding options. As stated earlier, we are currently testing different payment processors and the solutions they have for integration into our platform that will allow the user to safely onboard their funds onto the platform.
Path payments and exchanging one currency for another.
Deeper exploration of P2P wallet idea.

Part of our work is focused at the moment on the development of a secure, web-technologies-based software key ring that will store the secret key in a manner similar to secure element storage used in today's hardware cryptocurrency wallets. This will also be available as NPM package.

Integration of components

One of our goals is to provide enclosed, open source, reusable components that can be used across different projects and available via NPM. We have recently released our Redshift NPM, which is now utilized in this very useful tool, which helps create/restore Ledger-compatible mnemonics along with Stellar account key pairs.

Your feedback/bug report is, as always, highly appreciated!
Thank you and cheers!
Igor & Mat.