e-Transfer

The premise is simple: instant, free, unrestricted money transfers to anybody in the country. This was main dream of crypto. But a man doesn't have to dream - this is a reality today, but the millions of Canadians using Interac e-Transfer (like a Canadian Zelle) aren't putting in wallet addresses.

Instead, the 371.4 million transfers sent in 2018 were sent with email addresses. A familiar tool that's the closest you'll get to something everyone has and uses on a common basis.

It's not perfect, though. Payment systems like e-Transfer and Zelle only work in the country. And worse, systems of this caliber are usually only found in wealthy, developed countries, leaving those living in areas without financial stability even more in the dust.

That's why I sought out to create e-Transfer, but on the blockchain. "ETH"-Transfer, as one could call it, is a payment system on the scale of marvels like Zelle, but fully autonomous (and created by one guy in 36 hours!).

Send stablecoins (USDC) to any e-mail address. Skip all of crypto's UX issues. "ETH"-Transfer is the tool that will onboard the next billion users onto Web3, and represents a vast improvement in the ways people, especially in developing countries, will send and hold money. No longer will the less fortunate have to worry about extreme fees, transfers that take a day or more, banks withholding their money, out of control inflation and more.

There are so many ways e-Transfer improves on traditional Web3 UX. Since the other party has to manually accept the transfer, it is impossible to send money to a dead address by accident, as you can just cancel the transfer and refund the money. The UI uses Privy, which is a wallet onboarding app that allows users to use e-Transfer with only an email, no crypto wallet required. Transfers expire automatically after 30 days, and that's not all - every decision along the way was made to improve UX while still keeping in mind decentralization and security.

Oh - did I mention that every new user has transaction fees for their first few transfers fully covered? Plus, each wallet comes pre-funded with $5 USD of stablecoins to let the user jump right into sending!

e-Transfer is built on React, Google Cloud (Firebase), Solidity, Hardhat, and uses a Node.js server for non-decentralization critical functions like sending a notification email.

e-Transfer is fully trustless, using a two-party system. It requires a signature from the user to link their e-mail to the blockchain, and a verification step from the server to prevent users from spoofing their emails.

It works by having an on-chain mapping of hashed email addresses (for privacy!) linked to crypto accounts behind the scenes. Transfers are sent fully on-chain, with the user sending coin to the e-Transfer smart contract, which then looks up the proper recipient and only allows them to claim the transfer. An e-mail is sent to the recipient. This is functionally identical to the real Interac e-Transfer network that processes hundreds of millions of transactions per year.

There are also many more bells and whistles for UX and convince, such as private storage of names (to know who sent you money), and Autodeposit, which automatically deposits transfers sent to the user with their initial consent, turning the two-step process into one.