StellarHub is an online marketplace where users can transact in XLM within one of the most popular messaging applications, Facebook Messenger. With a user base of 3 billion and counting, Messenger is the perfect platform to facilitate the exchange of goods and services with a cryptocurrency payment layer. Once users have funded their wallet, transactions between users are made dead simple.
Browse items being listed for sale by other Hub users. Search for items by category, or simply state what you’re looking for. Once you found something you like, you can send the seller a message to continue communicating with them within StellarHub. And if you want to sell something, you can quickly create a listing - conversationally.
A forum-like Bounties area is also available for users to post questions or tasks to be completed for XLM. Want some quick research on a topic? Post a bounty. Wondering what other people think of the crypto space? Post a bounty. Need life advice? Post a bounty. This will be kept open-ended at first to see how users utilize this functionality.
Finally, send some XLM to your friends on Messenger. No need to copy / paste addresses. I’m excited about building this payment layer on Messenger. There’s a need to facilitate transactions and I think integrating cryptocurrency payments into a chat app will be what takes crypto mainstream (check out what Kik is doing with KIN: https://kinecosystem.org/)
If you want an idea of how this will work within Messenger, check out this ecommerce solution I previously developed called Celery
https://m.me/celeryai
The app is being developed using Ruby, Facebook’s Send API, and Stellar’s Ruby SDK. Currently in the works, I'll post here when it's ready for beta users.
Let me know your thoughts on using Stellar as a payment layer in messaging apps, or conversational interfaces in general. I know there's people on both sides of the debate on their usefulness, future potential etc.
Cheers
