"WayStation" for Anchors, Workflows, Smart Contracts, and Securities Settlements

MikeFair

Hi All!

I'm proud to announce the days of Stellar not directly moving fiat currency or any other asset that requires a "settlement workflow" are officially numbered.

For this SBC, I'm presenting "WayStation", a Proof-Of-Concept server developed, for now, to move USD between registered US bank accounts directly from on-ledger payment operations. This project is partly an Anchor, partly an Escrow provider, and partly a smart contract like workflow engine.

I developed the server as part of a "Fiat Escrow Service" for GIVE (https://galactictalk.org/d/1131-give-distributed-donation-routing-platform) and along the way it became capable of doing most anything else with a "workflow" in the middle of the asset delivery, especially registered securities traded on public exchanges.

Currently, "WayStation" USD processing uses the Dwolla ACH and callback API but I plan on most likely changing this out and working directly with OpenACH as the payments processor. The "WayStation" architecture itself makes the "clearing networks" or "workflow modules" available "pluggable".

The "WayStation" server sits between two networks (Stellar, and the other one) and uses callback webhooks from each network to handle the workflow processing. As such, most of the "WayStation" code is not a daemon, it's a website reacting to event submissions from each side to update the workflow's state. A processing server listening to each network posts events of interest via HTTP to the "WayStation" website.

USD Transfers start with a user sending their own issued asset (in this case [User/USD]) to a "WayStation Agent" account to start the workflow (transferring USD to the Anchor). When the user initially registered their bank account and associated Stellar Account with the Anchor, the Anchor opened a trustline to their [User/USD].

The payment operation triggers a "debit" ACH transaction from the User's US bank account to the Anchor's US bank account. The User no longer goes "off-ledger" for this (like to a website); they can initiate transfers of their USD to the Anchor directly from Stellar.

Sending a payment of their own account's [User/USD] asset to the Anchor causes the "WayStation" service to mirror that action on the ACH network. The presence of the User's USD Asset in the agent's Stellar Account signals an "in-process" transaction. When the event on the other network completes (successfully or not) the Agent sends back the User's token closing out the process.

A day or two after initiating the ACH workflow, the ACH transaction completes and the event posts to "WayStation" by the ACH events processing server.

The transfer has either succeeded or failed; in either case, the Agent sends the [User/USD] it received back with a success or failure memo attached.
If it succeeded, "WayStation" also sends the [Anchor/USD] to the user's account, which the user can now use.

Redeeming [Anchor/USD] works similarly but in reverse.
The User sends [Anchor/USD] to the agent which initiates an ACH "credit" from the Anchor's US bank account to the User's US bank account. This takes a couple days and results in the user either getting the USD delivered to their US Bank Account or getting their [Anchor/USD] asset back into their Stellar Account.

The "WayStation" is creating a type of generic, workflow based, event driven, Escrow Service for clearing assets.

Event submissions to the "WayStation" service are idempotent (multiple submissions of the same ledger event do not initiate multiple workflows; the posting servers retry events until confirmed as received or give up).

Using GraphQL (https://galactictalk.org/d/885-graphql-interface-for-core-and-horizon-databases), "WayStation" can search for ledger transactions by memo_text (for detecting event repeats).

The pattern is generalized enough to be adapted to any clearing network, including other BlockChains.

Currently, this project is targeting routing USD between registered Stellar Accounts over ACH straight from ledger payment transactions. The pattern should generalize to any publicly traded asset/security.

Thanks!
Mike

sacarlson

Sounds like there might be hope for this concept. But am I missing something? where is the example prototype website to register and such for this project? How do we test the prototype? Also as I might have told you before in my attempts to open Dwolla accounts to send AND receive funds failed. I'm not sure Dwolla is too keen on having anything to do with crypto currency. I just found Dwolla impossible to deal with as they didn't give any real reason for rejection. But for just a proof-of-concept this should be fine. As you said you were looking at OpenACH as an alternative to Dwolla that might still be possible at some point.

I'm also not totally sure about the user/USD asset side of the transaction to trigger the movement of funds from user bank to anchor asset. Would that really be needed? why not just login to the anchor website and do that part at that point? what need is there to perform the trigger event from stellar? Maybe added security? Maybe this would make for automated transactions? I'm not totally sure humans are going to catch onto this interface. You might at least add the option at the anchor website to perform the user bank to anchor asset on the site without that stellar transaction interface.

MikeFair

Sacarlson!! Thanks for writing!!

The "prototype interface" to demonstrate something you can see is the next two weeks. ?
It will allow you to create a fake bank account, associate it to a Stellar testnet Account, and ideally see the workflow happening (response codes/events from each side/the balances in the assets on the various accounts/etc).

At the moment it "can be made to work" however it's not yet to the point I need it to be for anything but an in-person demo. For example, I could give you some Stellar TestNet accounts to look at but what does that show? I can also manually copy/paste the Stellar operation id into the event posting URL, though it's not automated yet, and I can be logged in to the Dwolla simulator to click the "Initiate ACH Processing" button to move the money between the Anchor's account and user's bank accounts, but it makes for a very poor web demo at the moment.

Updates coming. ?
With a usable URL for a prototype.

I would have held off, however today is March 1st to announce for this SBC round. ?

As for the "why have the user initiate the transfer using their wallet instead of an external website"?
1) Better public auditing - we can all see that your account initiated that payment
2) I think that payment operation on the ledger can be legally elevated to the level of being a real electronic check
3) It moves the Stellar ledger closer to being seen/used as a "bus" or "backbone" for crossing data and assets between private networks ; a role I think Stellar is really well suited for.
4) It makes OpenACH/USD highly liquid because you can now automate the "deposit" and "redemption" operations in your own code. The Stellar Network can become a substitute for access to an ACH API.
5) Why leave your wallet? Keep the experience "sticky" to the Stellar Ledger.
6) The "pattern" can be reused for all "off-chain" assets; to bring an Anchor issued asset into your own account, send the Anchor your own Issued version of the asset_code; the Anchor will then do it's thing to validate/retrieve the asset and pull it and send you the Anchor issued version of the asset_code to your account. Your payment is the same thing as an instruction given via an external website.
7) The asset_code being sent is really being used more like a function call on the other account; the asset_code being USD in this case means "call the ACH debit process" and then a couple days later you get your return value.

There's more I'm sure but those are the ones off the top of my head.

Thanks!

bradburyn

Hi I am very interested in allowing configuration between corridors and selling one currency lets say usd to another currency , let's say thai bart.

As I am knew to stellar, it seems the concept of workstation allows the ability to map the transaction between the 2 assets directly via way of a middle engine (be it middleware or ach).

I am assuming we dont need to transact these assets in and out of lumen?

Thanks Neville