The Interledger Community 🌱: Helena Tude

Helena Tude & Patrick Rahy.— ILP Summit Reflections 2023

Helena Tude — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 18:33:20 +0000

Introduction

Hi everyone! I'm Helena Tude and together with Patrick Rahy, we are the co-founders of Kult and ILP grantees since 2021. We are both from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, based in Porto, Portugal – where our startup is also based. Therefore, Kult is directed to the entire Portuguese-speaking community, focusing on the Brazilian market first, due to its massive potential.

Kult is a social platform (app/website) for culture & entertainment lovers to share and discover movies, TV shows, podcasts, songs, and books with a passionate community. We are interested in disruptive possibilities for monetization through digital payments on the Internet and more specifically on social media – which nowadays is concentrated on the attention economy and big tech's invasive and centralized advertising model.

The peer-to-peer model is attractive to us and, as Brazilians, we have seen the revolution caused by PIX in our country – which is transforming financial inclusion in Brazil. Created and operated by Brazil's Central Bank, PIX allows for seamless, interoperable, and instant payments between people and is extremely beneficial for small business owners and creators/artists on the web.

By being part of the ILP Summit 2023 in Costa Rica, we hoped to (i) learn more about other case studies from countries around the globe, (ii) deepen our knowledge about the Interledger Protocol and how it aims to transform financial inclusion globally, and last but not least, (iii) present our view on PIX's impact in Brazil.

Key highlights about your participation at the Summit

As ILP Financial Services Grantees for Phase 1, we had our stand during the kick-off & welcome drinks on Thursday. It was an amazing night where we could present our project of building a digital wallet that connects ILP with PIX, through P2P instant and seamless payments made globally and received in Brazilian currency, using Rafiki under the hood. We were positively impressed by the interest and reception of the public. We were also super happy to connect with new & old friends.

On day 1, we had the opportunity to present a Lightning Talk entitled "How PIX is revolutionizing financial inclusion in Brazil and what ILP has to do with it". We introduced PIX to the public, with its main properties, impressive numbers, effects on financial inclusion in Brazil, and key takeaways for the Interledger community.

You can check the entire presentation and reference links here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cwpWURSTnqquu5g8x1bXB8kn8KrBGMNgI_jQgJnYp6o/edit#slide=id.g29351f3d3f6_0_14

We also met other Brazilians during the summit who enlightened our overview of Brazil's payment infrastructure even more (shoutout to Nicolo Zingales & Bruna Cataldo, Larissa Magalhães and Smriti Parsheera on their awesome panel about "Standardized Payment Interfaces as Digital Public Infrastructures: Learning from India and Brazil; to Andrey Torres from Pipe Web Monetization; and Rafael from TigerBeetle). The connections there sparked so many new insights that we invited Andrey to collaborate with us for Phase 2.

It was a pleasure to connect once again with the Interledger team (and for the first time for Helena :D). We want to thank Chris, Julaire, Ayesha, Ginny, Vineel, Anna, and Chiara for the warm reception and awesome event management. We also want to thank the Interledger tech team (shoutout to Alex, Max, and Benny) for exchanging valuable insights on how we can make our project work even better together.

I (Helena) was also super proud to talk about Kult's micro-internship with HBCU students on Day 1, during the panel "Engaging HBCU Students in Open Communities". We would like to thank Andrew for the always hilarious engagement and inspiring feedback and the students who participated with us (Felicia, Anthony, and Jakerya).

Finally, on Day 3 we had the pleasure of participating in the Grantee Workshop which also sparked ideas and connections with other fellow grantees following parallel paths. It was super nice to see how the foundation is leveraging so many different initiatives reunited by a similar vision.

Key takeaways from the Summit

To be completely honest, it was mindblowing to participate in the summit this year. Apart from meeting so many ingenious and extremely creative people, we were positively impressed by the diversity of the event (which kind of sucks in a way as well because it shows how far behind we still are in closing the gaps of diversity & inclusion in [fin]tech spaces). Being part of a community that is working together with a similar vision of equity & financial inclusion is very inspiring.

It was also very exciting to see the advances in terms of technical infrastructure for the Interledger Protocol, highlighted by Rafiki's development – crucial to our project as well. We look forward to following more updates!

Overall it was a wonderful opportunity and we are very happy to be a part of it. See you next year!

Cheers,
Helena and Patrick

Kult + Bowie State [Micro-internship]

Helena Tude — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 15:58:44 +0000

Hi Interledger community! I'm Helena, Kult’s co-founder :)
For over a month I have been working directly with 3 students from Bowie State University (Felicia, Jakerya and Anthony) for our summer micro-internship. Now I want to share with you some of our key learnings and insights.

Context

It has been a huge pleasure to conduct weekly sessions where we discussed the following topics:

how to build, foster and engage an online community around common interests
product management & innovation tools
how to encourage users in an online community to support each other’s work financially, through an Interledger-based digital wallet that allows peer-to-peer payments in the form of (i) recurring donations, (ii) one-time tipping and (iii) access to exclusive/premium content
product benchmarking on other platforms that explore similar peer-to-peer payment methods. Two strong examples that came up were Twitch (twitch.tv) and Fable (fable.co), not only for their visual interfaces and usability, but the language style used to communicate and encourage the community to support each other.

Twitch is the popular live-streaming social platform, where you can support the streamers with BITS. You can be a SUB (subscriber), a GIVER or a CHEERER. Twitch has a diversified business model, with varied revenue streams.

Fable is a book club app that allows for anyone to create their own club and be monetized for that. They have a freemium model.

Process

We created a Google Drive folder to gather different references and build our case. We also created a Slack channel for group communication. During our 4 weekly sessions, that happened every Thursday, I passed on Kult’s vision as a platform and as part of a larger community which is Interledger, and we brainstormed together strategies in the three main pillars of product innovation – design, business and technology – focusing on the product (app), while identifying marketing strategies as the bridge to guarantee the intersection between these areas.

These are some of the frameworks I presented to them which I learned from direct experience and also innovation courses I participated. There is one specifically that I would even like to recommend which brought me a lot of insight – it’s called Business Design for Sustainable Growth and Innovation, from the Service Design College.

Outcomes

I was very happy to see the dedication and interest from the students, and here are some screenshots of the documents we created.

Felicia's presentation slides with an overview of the entire process:

Felicia’s doc on Marketing & Monetization strategies for Kult with a UX/UI approach
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u9LLZWFWLJyN1M8Sv378duGXx4NGiJd9/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108955680908136115188&rtpof=true&sd=true

Our Miro board with brainstorming sessions:

If you are interested, feel free to check out in more details our Google Drive folder here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hJ9Uih43HoMAIEMFeUIn1UVAQJwXmgis?usp=sharing

Feedbacks
I asked the students to provide feedback of the experience for us. As soon as I receive it I will post in the comment section :)

Conclusion

I feel we got to the surface of everything, with a big picture of the entire process. It would be great to keep going deeper into each idea/strategy!

Thanks for reading!

Kult's ILP Open-Source Digital Wallet — Grant Report #1

Helena Tude — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 19:38:35 +0000

Project Update

[SPOILER ALERT > TLDR] Please find our digital wallet technical document, split into 3 parts, plus user flowchart, in this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BOIBYm77jpP78M4wqJQrB5dB2kp_RvTP?usp=sharing]

Hi everyone! We are glad to share with you the latest developments on Kult.

Our main goal is to develop an open-source digital wallet that integrates ILP with Brazilian PIX.

PIX is an instant and free 24/7 money transfer method offered by the Central Bank of Brazil to individuals and legal entities. PIX has a free API created by the Central Bank of Brazil, which allows for integration (see https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/estabilidadefinanceira/pix/API-DICT.html).

With such a technology, it will be possible to pay using debit/credit card and receive money through PIX (available in Brazilian territory only), instantly. Compared to the current Web Monetization solution, our digital wallet aims to eliminate several UX barriers users have right now, making the payment through ILP a smooth experience within the platform.

Naturally, the digital wallet we are developing will be accessible to any developer, meaning that anyone will be able to implement such a solution in their platforms, probably having to adapt a few local partners. Below we recapitulate the steps for the entire process of implementing this digital wallet:

1) Research & Development
Understand what is needed to create such a digital wallet to integrate ILP with PIX (user flow, regulation aspects, costs and partners required, etc). This is the phase we have currently finished. Next steps will be to refine the technical document, including English language revision as well as offer more context to Brazil's regulatory requirements, pointing out which steps are universal and which are adaptable to each country. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BOIBYm77jpP78M4wqJQrB5dB2kp_RvTP?usp=sharing

2) Prototyping
Developing the first prototype to test the payment via credit/debit card and receiving it via PIX in Brazilian territory, using Kult as the test-platform. We will allow people to charge for exclusive content galleries, as well as send donations and tips (which is already possible on Kult using Coil extension). This constitutes the second phase of the project, after the technical document is refined and finalized.

Disclaimer: With the recent news of Coil ceasing operations, this digital wallet serves as an even more essential element to our platform, reinforcing the need for a native technology.

3) Open-source code
After finalizing the technical document and testing the prototype to identify possible re-adjustments, we will be publishing the digital wallet code so that any platform can replicate the technology, while adapting to each country needs.

Kult's platform
While working on the digital wallet technical document and flowchart, we also managed to deliver a new content feed on Kult's platform. Following our user's feedbacks, the new content feed has a horizontal carousel (see image below for desktop version), allowing users to see multiple contents from the same gallery at once, plus a "Trending" carousel on the top of the screen.

We also did major improvements in our content research system, which was a recurring complaint among Kult users. Our objective is that content research results become more fast and assertive (see image below for example).

Progress on objectives

As set in our Grantee application, it is time for us to deliver "a thorough technical document explaining: (i) how we will implement the ILP-based digital wallet, (ii) how we will integrate it with PIX, and (iii) how it will become an important node in the ILP network". Our main goal is to integrate the ILP technology with Brazilian PIX by creating a digital wallet that demands users the minimum friction as possible.

For the past months we have been working with a dedicated team on the R&D phase to build such technology, and the result is in the following link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BOIBYm77jpP78M4wqJQrB5dB2kp_RvTP?usp=sharing

The technical document is divided into 3 parts, plus 1 flowchart:

Part 1: project scope, which explains the implementation steps and PIX integration.

Part 2: deliverables and general information regarding the technological implementation of the digital wallet prototype.

Part 3: compliance with regulation aspects in Brazil, required partnerships, and costs.

Flowchart: visual details of how the digital wallet will work for users on Kult, with a general overview and 4 specific workflows (opening a simple consumer account; monetizing a content creator/gallery; opening a content creator account; transactional flow)

It is important to highlight:

Kult is the "test-platform" to validate the digital wallet prototype. Our goal is to create an open-source digital wallet that can be implemented by any platform.
The costs of implementation are under negotiation with the development partners.
The Interledger community will be important to provide us with feedback and insights regarding the implementation. We recently had a another follow-up meeting with the AgnostiPay team to further investigate how we could eventually integrate our technologies. Rafiki and Fynbos may also be important partners in the future.

There is one deliverable though that was not finished yet: implementing Accessibe.com solution to improve accessibility on Kult. We guarantee we'll have it done by the next report.

Also, in the next report, we will share Kult's business plan to monetize a community of culture lovers using the ILP digital wallet. This is an important milestone, as we intend to position our platform into the web3 creator environment, leveraging the power of community to build a collaborative social platform that can base its business model into these values.

Key activities

As said above, this is the link where you can find the document explaining how we intend to develop a ILP-based digital wallet, as well as the current required partners, costs, and so on:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BOIBYm77jpP78M4wqJQrB5dB2kp_RvTP?usp=sharing

The image below shows the general flowchart containing an overview of how the user can choose to send money to a content creator inside Kult via ILP, receiving via PIX in the Brazilian territory.

There are 2 partners involved in this process – currently Uphold to send money via ILP (other partners can fill this space as well) and Coinekt.me to receive money via PIX.

We believe we found an easy way to pay using credit/debit card and receive it via PIX, and our technical papers describe that. With our solution, users can pay and receive money via ILP/PIX, without needing to fulfill so many steps like it is today. For instance, to access a monetized gallery on Kult right now, one must 1) create a Coil account, 2) add a credit card, 3) pay 5 USD/month, 4) download Coil desktop browser. And to receive the money, users must go through a lot of other steps, which involve creating a wallet on Uphold.

With our solution, all these steps will be done within Kult, without needing to access multiple platforms and accomplishing so many different processes. It will be much easier, faster, and accessible.

However, we know that there are a few hurdles to overcome, like lowering costs and making it easy for developers to implement the DW to any website. With the help of ILP Community, we know we can get there!

Communications and marketing

We are mainly using our Instagram and Linkedin accounts to communicate about the latest developments. To be honest, we have been less active in our online communication, due to in-depth research and development work and we are slowly increasing our public communication frequency as new developments begin to unfold. Also, we have not contemplated marketing in our budget for this phase.

What’s next?

There is still important work to be done:

Adding AccessiBe tool to make Kult's platform more accessible.
Refining and finalizing the DW technical document in terms of partnerships, user flow, language and context.
Hosting a Community Call to explain our DW papers and user flow.
Sharing our web3 business plan in the community by March.
Delivering a final document consolidating the technological, business, and design deliverables, with a detailed roadmap for the prototyping phase.

What community support would benefit your project?

As mentioned before, feedback from the community is paramount. If you can take a look at our papers and share feedbacks/critics/questions, please do!
This is the link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BOIBYm77jpP78M4wqJQrB5dB2kp_RvTP?usp=sharing

It is important to reinforce that our technical document is contextualized into Brazilian territory financial regulatory requirements and uses the PIX payment system as its use case for the receiver's end. We would benefit from feedback regarding how to make our document more accessible to other contexts.

Additional comments

On an extra note, we would like to share an excellent publication we found online regarding the so-called 'creator economy' that might benefit and inspire other projects in the Interledger community as well. It is entitled "After the Creator Economy" and was edited and published by Metalabel (one of its founders is the former CEO of Kickstarter).

The report aims to re-signify the term creator economy, opening up discussion for alternative business models that contemplate the entire creativity supply chain, or ecosystem, with a wider benefit of the whole system, as opposed to solely individualistic profit goals. Its values are based on collaboration, co-ownership, distributed governance, interoperability, and so forth. With the advent of new social platforms and the boom of content creators (in the digital world, every type of creation becomes "content"!), it is necessary to become more intentional on the values we define as foundations for our digital behavior.

Check out the link to download the report here: https://collect.metalabel.xyz/files/After-The-Creator-Economy.pdf

Some interesting prints of the publication:

That's all folks! Thanks for reading until here :) Feel free to share your support and feedback, it is very appreciated. Obrigada!

Relevant links/resources (optional)

Digital wallet technical document:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BOIBYm77jpP78M4wqJQrB5dB2kp_RvTP?usp=sharing

Reach out directly to us:
support@kult.pt

Website:
www.kult.com.br

Social links:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/kultsocial/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kult_app/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/kult_app/