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

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:

1. Adding AccessiBe tool to make Kult's platform more accessible.
2. Refining and finalizing the DW technical document in terms of partnerships, user flow, language and context.
3. Hosting a Community Call to explain our DW papers and user flow.
4. Sharing our web3 business plan in the community by March.
5. 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/