PurelyPeer update: closing a loop in our purely peer-to-peer economy

Happy Bitcoin Cash BCH Day!

You may have come across our project that won the AllStars Prize at the recent CoinParty Hackathon 2021 (https://devpost.com/software/purelypeer) and wondered what we have been up to since then.

We are building a geolocation game and digital wallet with collectible tokens received when collecting local cashdrops in Bitcoin Cash BCH. These cashdrops are micro-advertisements from anyone who had created a PurelyPeer quest (e.g. stores, online businesses, content creators).

This closes one loop of our purely peer-to-peer economy by linking peers that interact with each other via BCH. Through the engaging geolocation game and extremely affordable advertising, we increase online exposure, merchant revenues, and merchant adoption of the decentralized Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency. We add important onboarding ramps to build the PurelyPeer economy. We answer common questions like:

How can I get some Bitcoin Cash? - Play the geolocation game!
Where can I spend it? - At your favorite local or online business!
What do I use it for? - Tips, coffee, whatever they offer!
What do they use it for? - More advertising that rewards!

(1) Team update

Kudos to original peers who worked on the hackathon - Chris and Daniel of PSF (Permissionless Software Foundation - https://psfoundation.cash) and FullStack.Cash (https://fullstack.cash), and Jerry of Bitcoin Bay (https://www.bitcoinbay.ca). They have their own commitments and projects and were unable to contribute to further, direct development of PurelyPeer. They are still helping PurelyPeer to grow indirectly and continue expanding our BCH ecosystem through their important projects. Thank you and all the best!

Hackathons are a great way to not only crystalize one's ideas but also to network and build lasting connections. Thus, I - architect / Erik - looked for goal overlaps and reached out to Joemar's team and their Paytaca wallet (https://devpost.com/software/paytaca). They also work on bringing BCH to masses and making it more user friendly. While the Paytaca team keeps focused on mobile wallets and a browser extension that will eventually facilitate offline transactions, we have partnered to keep the PurelyPeer development active. The focus of PurelyPeer remains on mobile wallets and a web wallet with components linking merchant directory, mapping, tokenization, gamification. We have assembled a new team of BCH experts that now includes:

• architect / Erik - overall PurelyPeer direction, UX/UI, gamification, backend math, business / finance, partnerships

• Joemar - technical staffing, full stack development, tokenization

• Jets - backend, frontend

• Archie - frontend

• Reamon - full stack development

We are testing our alpha version of a scalable app internally, catching bugs and improving UX/UI. We are excited and getting ready for beta testing and later MVP release, hopefully just weeks away.


(2) App update

We will soon be ready to share a refreshed UI but in the meantime we would like to introduce you to several key concepts and big ideas behind our UX improvements. Let us know what you think in comments!

• Utility First: A digital mobile wallet needs to help users connect with each other. Fiat-based charts are neat but often distract from more relevant questions to the PurelyPeer economy. Who and where accepts BCH? What do they do with it? Thus, the PurelyPeer logo and identity are embodied in a target composed of two letters P that help to mark a location on a map. Upon launching, our digital wallet will not offer you numbers or charts. We will show you instead your perspective within the PurelyPeer economy.

• PurelyPeer Tier: It is okay to be open to the PurelyPeer economy to a different degree. Perhaps first someone wants to just test it to advertise through PurelyPeer. Or they are open to receiving tips in BCH. Or even trade with BCH, understanding that some of it will need to be converted back to a local fiat or a stablecoin. Thus, we categorize our quest listings to 3 main groups:

Direct 💚 PurelyPeer - accepts BCH, keeps most of it in BCH
Indirect 🧡 PurelyPeer - accepts BCH, converts most of it
Upcoming 💙 PurelyPeer - does not accept BCH yet

• Physical Presence: Is the quest creator an establishment with physical presence? Or are they an online entity? Thus, we further categorize our quest listings to 2 subgroups:

🧱✔️ - has physical presence
🧱❌ - does not have physical presence

• Radius: Our listings are called Quests because they drop cash and the listing's details to relevant, hidden locations within a predefined radius. As a Quest creator, how far do I want to spread my message? We use urban planning scales to simplify the Quest creators' choices and filter them with OSM (Open Street Maps) tags to distinguish relevant locations from irrelevant that would be impossible to access (over 70% of our Earth is water). Thus, we further categorize our quest listings to 4 subgroups.

🕺♿💃 - roughly within 15min
🏙️ - urban
🛣️ - regional
🌐 - continental

• Cashdrops 💧: When creating a Quest, how many collectors do I want to reach? In order to incentivize BCH sharing, PurelyPeer incentivizes digital quests with the most physical impact. Quests with more Cashdrops 💧 in them have a better economy of scale (lower fees) and rate higher in our directory.
  

• Refresh Rate: A common challenge of listings and directories is their accuracy and refresh rate. For long-term accuracy, a listing database needs to incentivize a regular refresh rate of its listings. Blockchain is a chain of time-stamped digital signatures. Which signatures are the most recent and relevant to our preferences? Thus, each PurelyPeer Quest remains listed for a minimum of 13,000 Bitcoin Cash blocks ~ 3 months, or until someone collects the last Cashdrop 💧, whichever takes longer.
  

• Circular Loop: To sustain a purely peer-to-peer economy, we close one loop in a circular economy. We split the app interface of our digital wallet to 3 main modes:

Explore 📜 -  A map with Quest center locations and filters based on the Tier | Presence | Radius categories helps users to identify merchants who accept BCH. While there are Cashdrops 💧 to collect, each such Active Quest is colour-coded based on its Tier. After all Cashdrops 💧 are collected, the Quest becomes Inactive Quest, loses its colour highlight, and remains listed for the remainder of the Refresh Rate.

Cashdrop 💧 - A Quest form with required information (Tier | Presence | Radius) and optional extras (Phone Number, URL, Memo - Anything to note? Address? Hours? Specialty? Coupon?) generates a listing in the PurelyPeer database. As it is paid with Bitcoin Cash BCH, smart contract covenants are created, locking the BCH to specific, automatically generated random locations.

Collect 💰 - A map with only Active Quests and their respective radii indicates where users might be able to collect Cashdrops 💧. Based on the user's current location, a radar helps to navigate the user to a reachable Cashdrop 💧 that is roughly within 5min distance. Collecting it rewards the user with BCH from the Quest creator and an NFT (non-fungible token) that is linked to the Quest. The NFT can act as a coupon in case the Quest creator entered optional Memo information in such a way.

• Fun: Interacting in the PurelyPeer manner is fun! Thus, the collected NFTs are displayed under a 4th mode - Gallery 🖼️. Here the users check details of their collectible NFTs linked to Quests and battle their way to more NFTs. Or they keep track of other tokens built on BCH using the SLP (Simple Ledger Protocol), should they hold some. PurelyPeer is a digital wallet, after all! Even if a user might not be in the mood to interact with Quests in one of the 3 main modes, they might be in the mood to play a PurelyPeer game, thus getting exposed to other Quests and their NFTs. This retains users and informs them about various peers in our PurelyPeer economy.
  

We love that we can continue building on a permissionless, borderless blockchain that is committed to global adoption and low transaction fees. PurelyPeer believes that Bitcoin Cash BCH is not just a cryptocurrency worth advertising, it is the cryptocurrency of advertising!