Hi everybody,
I read different posts about smart contracts. I also checked most wallets, so far I don't find an easy service to setup
a) a recurring payment (monthly e.g.) or
b) a escrow service (to secure the xlm amount in an account, while the buyer is waiting for the product to arrive)

I'm not talking about the technical realisation (several tutorials exist already), I'm looking for an free to use webservice for anyone. Does it exist? Should somebody implement it?

cheers, tim

Recurring payments are hard since crypto is push and not pull.

I can give you presigned transactions for N months ahead, but that means I can't use my account for anything else, since those transactions assume certain sequence numbers.

You can use channels to get around it, but then you get to the problem of funding -- There's no guarantee there's any funds left when your subscription wants it, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Ok, thanks, lets say
a) I create a new account for recurring payments
b) I presign all the transactions on that account,
c) then I still have to submit the transactions at the right time, maybe with a cronjob on a server?

is this a possible way?

I didn't do channels yet, it sounds it wouldn't work anyway as you described above.

    Hi Tim,

    I'm working on a web tool that does this for smart contracts, will be free/minimal fee (infrastructure costs money).

    The service will:
    1. Create a new account, revoke access to only those pub/priv keys assigned (multi-sig)
    2. Setup transactions for amounts in future based on contract requirements
    3. Distribute transactions for approval (if multi-party)

    Will also have a dashboard for managing these transactions, etc.

    Pushing for July TestNet release!

    tim

    That could work.

    It's a bit like post dated checks, but without any legal recourse when they bounce.

      Hi mainstay,

      that means the signed transaction have to be submitted by the signers, right?
      How does it work? Do the signers come back to your tool and then click on submit
      (lets say on first of month) or do they have to submit the transaction by themself
      on the stellar laboratory page?

      I'm aware it might be a legal issue of the stellar-wallet, promising to submit at a certain date, but then fails because of a downtime of the server or anything else. I'm asking in detail on the actual usability, as I think this is the main issue with using cryptos.

        tim Hey,

        Signed transaction must meet the signatory requirements setup based on the smart contract approval, etc... (thresholds, is the technical term).

        Yes, our web interface will allow contracting parties to sign the transaction, we'll pass it along to the next party to login and sign the transaction envelope. Once all signers have approved/disapproved we'll either render them that the contract has fallen apart/doesn't meet requirements/could have been a disagreement, or we'll submit it to the network based on it meeting the threshold rules.

        What I plan to do is route them and notify them over email that it's ready for signing. From my understanding as long as you have the XDR you can sign and pass around (still testing this theory) to the next party. I'll be making a blog post one of these days as I get into a bit more on transaction envelopes.

        Edit: we would store the XDR, not necessarily route it around, just notify user we're ready for them to come approve it

        • tim replied to this.
            24 days later

            Hi mainstay, the signing process is clear to me and it works as you described above.

            What I still looking out for: who is doing the final submitting of the transaction at the right time.
            As I said above this could be done by the wallet-server (which will be a centralized thing to begin with)

            To formulate the whole issue in a User Story: As a user I want to be able to set a payment at a certain time and
            I don't have to take care that this is actually done on time (e.g. 1st of next month). It would be annoying to check again or have to click somewhere. The whole point is to prepare it and it will executed.

            So far I don't see this functionality anywhere. Technical wise its not an issue, I can program it. I'm just wondering why this is not existing yet? Monthly payments are used in the normal banking system all the time.
            Any law issues?

            @Everybody: any ideas to that?

            7 days later

            Hi,

            regarding automated services I found https://www.autoxlm.com which provides a setup related with zapier.com.

            Looks like there is a technical solution. Nevertheless for me this is not userfriendly. Any ideas on that? Does anybody know if autoxlm is used somewhere with a userfriendly interface?

            Thanks for any informations on that.

            PS: I'm still investigating before I implement the service by myself.

            a year later

            mainstay as time passed by, did you go live with your idea? do you have a demo?

              7 days later
              a month later