Project
Astrify - https://astrify.com
Summary
The Astrify public beta provides a user interface to set organization metadata, link stellar accounts, define assets, and publish the result as a SEP 0001 compliant stellar.toml file.
This is valuable for the stellar ecosystem because it reduces the friction involved in issuing custom assets on the network.
Description
The asset discussion on the stellar network typically revolves around high-value/high-quantity assets. Things like large token offerings or commodity futures.
However, the speed of the network combined with the low cost of issuing and transferring custom assets makes stellar an ideal platform for low-value/low-quantity assets as well. Things like coupons for a local business, event tickets for a small venue, or groupon style pre-paid vouchers could all be issued, transferred, and redeemed on the network with ease.
However, to make the network practical for low-value/low-quantity assets requires a streamlined user interface. In the future I would like to develop Astrify into an end-to-end asset management platform. The goal would be to enable non-technical users to issue low-value/low-quantity assets and handle their redemptions in a straightforward manner.
To give better context allow me to define two scenarios:
Scenario 1
A local gelato shop owner could use the stellar network to issue an asset redeemable for a small scoop of gelato; valid through the end of a holiday weekend. They could then distribute the asset as part of a promotional offering to try and increase business.
This would cost basically nothing to do on the stellar network and would enable the shop owner to revoke all outstanding tokens once the expiration date has passed. The shop owner would have assurance that any coupons redeemed are legitimate.
The consumer would benefit as well as they would have the flexibility to use the wallet of their choice to hold the asset instead of being required to install a proprietary app. Additionally if they couldn’t make it to the shop before the coupon expired they could transfer the asset to a friend who lived near by.
Scenario 2
A boutique VPN provider could issue assets redeemable for one month of VPN service and sell the assets wholesale to resellers. This would allow the provider to guarantee profits while reducing their marketing costs.
Again the consumer benefits as they would have peace of mind that the voucher they purchased is legitimate. Furthermore, if the VPN access was no longer needed the consumer could resell it on an exchange.
Goals
To achieve this I’ve laid out the following objectives:
Objective 1:
Provide a simple web interface allowing users to quickly create and host custom stellar.toml files.
Timeline
Objective 1 is complete and available as a public beta at astrify.com. I intend to spend the next month or so improving stability, writing additional tests, and developing a reliable dev-ops pipeline.
Objective 2:
Improve the existing user interface to ensure compliance with the SEP 0001 specifications. For example when adding a keybase account to an organization’s documentation table Astrify should alert the user if all of the organization's accounts have not been verified by the keybase account.
Additionally Astrify needs to provide better tooling for interacting with custom assets on the stellar network. Creating a friendly user interface around actions such as authorizing asset holders and revoking issued tokens will improve accessibility to the non technical user.
Timeline
With the groundwork laid Objective 1 I expect to have the features defined in Objective 2 in place by the end of 2019.
Objective 3:
Develop Astrify into an end-to-end asset management platform. The goal is to make it easy for non technical users, such as the aforementioned gelato shop owner, to issue simple assets on the stellar network and handle redemptions at the point of sale.
Timeline
Ongoing. An undertaking of this scale would largely depend on its commercial viability which would in turn drive the amount of resources I could dedicate to its development.
If the MVP defined in Objectives 1 and 2 gains enough traction to justify continued development I would expect to have the larger vision completed in a year or two.
Links
The public beta of the stellar.toml builder can be accessed today at astrify.com. Note that for the time being a GitHub account is required to authenticate. I intend to remove this restriction in the coming weeks once I have a chance to add better password management, email verification, and 2FA.
The code is open source and available at github.com/astrify/astrify. Please use the repository’s issue tracker to report any bugs or submit specific feature requests.
Anything else:
The current MVP is written as a Vue.js single page application backed by a Laravel API.
Although this stack has shortcomings when dealing with cryptocurrency it allowed me to rapidly prototype the current MVP in less than a month. It also has the benefit of making the code very accessible to web devs. If there is a feature you’d like to contribute then a pull request is certainly welcome.
If this project gets to the Objective 3 stage my intention would be to abstract critical infrastructure into microservices written in golang.
