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Jasper Voorendonk - AgnostiPay for AgnostiPay

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Monthly Report #1 - AgnostiPay

Project Introduction

Hi, there! This is our first project update after the first month of the Financial Service Research Grant from the Interledger Foundation. Because it’s our first time here on the forum we would like to briefly introduce our project and then directly jump into the progress on our objectives in relation to our technical, community and business aspects and the things we will do next.

The goal of AgnostiPay is to directly connect everyone with everyone and exchange any kind of value or currency between them without the need for a commercial third party. This will allow us to not only communicate and share information with anyone in the world directly - as we were able to unlock in the last 15 years - but also exchange value directly. A free and open-source technology stack that can make this happen can potentially change the form, speed and scale of our transactions and interactions - and can help us to collaborate on a global scale in a direct way.

How do we do this? By creating an open-source technology repository that allows any developer to add their own local financial service provider and simultaneously allows the end-user to operate these providers directly using their own credentials. We are convinced that the ILP protocol can fulfill an important role in our technology ecosystem, because it was designed as an open-source protocol to execute transaction sequences between any ledger in a decentralized way. Over the next 6 months we plan to demonstrate technical and practical feasibility, and grow our community of developers, both locally and globally to create localized integrations with local financial service providers.

However to reach the goal we can only do it by truly contributing and collaborating together. Do you want to be part of this movement and community? Reach out and jump in! Mail: connect@agnostipay.io.
Discord: https://discord.gg/E9bgHuRn

Progress on objectives

Every month we try to update the ILP community with our progress. Hopefully this public sharing helps us to connect with like minded individuals across the globe to make our shared vision reality. Because together is the only way we can make this happen. So if you would like more information, or think you can help us at the points we are currently at, don't hesitate to reach out to us directly via email to set up an introduction call.

Technical Feasibility Update
We investigated the possibilities around ILP for Agnostipay. These include setting up our own node, connecting to existing nodes, and researching possibilities to create an Agnostipay provider for Rafiki. For now, our main focus will be on the latter. This means we will be following the Rafiki process and will try to create a client based on the reference implementation (when both we and Rafiki are ready).

Moreover, we have worked on different possible architectures (varying in complexity, scale, and decentrality). These have been mapped in a global manner and we will be choosing what designs we will choose in which manner.

On the application side, we have started creating templates for both transaction playbooks and provider manifests. In the coming weeks we will be working on finishing v0.1 and be building a first playbook and provider to test the feasibility.

Developer & Community Engagement
Over the last month we had some great first introduction calls with many of the other ILP cohort members. Besides hearing the ambitious and inspiring ideas they are building we were excited by the positive initial interest we got for AgnostiPay. From founders and developers in Latin America to Africa they saw potential use-cases of AgnostiPay as an open-source middleware within their services, and the value it could add for their own end-users. Even more touching was that some of them directly saw the potential and added value of introducing the AgnostiPay idea within their own local developer communities to help build the truly localized financial service providers integrations in the shared open-source repository - while outlining the value that it could bring both locally and globally in tandem.

During this month we also reconnected in an informal way with local community leaders and members within The Netherlands and got a lot of positive feedback and interest to support Agnostipay. More developments will follow in the coming months.

Next month we are looking forward to the ILP conference in New Orleans and our follow-up conversations with the developers, founders and communities, both locally in The Netherlands and in the world.

Business Engagement
Via informal connections in our local Dutch network we are getting introduced to local online business within the Netherlands. Although our current main focus in this research grant is to prove the technical feasibility of our solution, we will also use this time to find a potential fit with Online businesses that want to take back control over their own payments. We are looking to interact with as many companies as possible to select the most promising use-cases that can serve as pilots for AgnostiPay during our next phase.

What’s Next: Planning

We are happy about the results and positive feedback we gathered and learned from in our kick-off month. In the coming months we are looking forward to sharing our Vision Paper and later our more technical Whitepaper on AgnostiPay. Simultaneously while we will be keeping the technical feasibility as our highest priority, we will continue being open to listen to the ways the open-source code can help developers, online apps and businesses, ILP cohort members and the people that want to spin up Tier 1 ILP nodes along the way. And last but not least: if you are looking to set up a Tier 1 node in Europe, please reach out! We are looking forward to team up and help with our local legal knowledge, network and open-source code to make this a success.

Follow our socials here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/agnostipay
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/agnostipay
Discord: https://discord.gg/E9bgHuRn

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