Title:
Open Source Cash for Privacy and Simple Self-Custody on ZCash
Applicant name:
PhysiKey
Pitch: A one-liner elevator pitch version of your proposal
PhysiKey.xyz is building Open Source Cash to bring the privacy, affordability, and simple self-custody of traditional cash to Zcash
Total Request (USD):
$50,000.00 USD
Have you previously received a grant from Zcash Community Grants (formerly called ZOMG) or ZF?
No
Are you seeking or have you received funding from other sources for this proposed project?
Yes
Please provide details on funding amount, funding source, and any other relevant information.
$55K from Bufficorn Ventures (ETH Denver investment arm) and angel investors
Applicant background:
Kevin Ecke - Founder, Open Source Cash inventor, head of product. Two time founder, Master’s degree in technology design with a focus on cybersecurity, embedded systems, and user experience, and a certificate from MIT Sloan School of Business in Blockchain Innovation.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinecke/
Mark Lisanti - Co-founder, CTO, Former IBM engineer. Master’s degree in technology design with a focus on mobile app development, user experience, and web development.
Cory Cranford - Cybersecurity Consultant. Master’s in Cybersecurity, 5 years experience in penetration testing for mobile applications and embedded system medical devices.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/corycranford/
What our team has done:
Kevin previously developed an open source embedded system hardware oracle that ensures proper functioning of physical sensors to maximize data integrity for hardware oracles collecting data for blockchains.
Mark has developed several mobile applications and technological art projects, one of which is available to view here:
https://marklisanti.me/projects/triangle-trail-status
Both Kevin and Mark were involved in developing the mobile application payment card technology called “Regen Card” that used Base, smart accounts, NFC cards, Transak onboarding, and paymasters to simplify USDC payments for farmers market vendors.
A video demo is available here, and a testflight/Android demo is available upon request:
https://www.physikey.xyz/physikey-payment-card
Description of Problem or Opportunity:
Physical cash is a simple and private method of conducting transactions. Since blockchain ledgers are open and transparent, traditional privacy is threatened by this design paradigm.
Our technology brings the benefits of private in person transactions and simple self custody that traditional cash offers to the world of Zcash and Web 3.
Proposed Solution: Describe the solution at a high level.
Our Open Source Cash solution transforms open source, off-the-shelf, consumer-grade NFC tags into physical Zcash or other digital assets, effectively recreating the advantages of traditional cash for our digital future. This turns every mobile phone on the planet using our software into a digital asset ATM that can transform these simple pieces of hardware into physical representations of digital assets.
This will be a beneficial new privacy solution for retail ZEC users, and our open source code will be made available for Zcash wallet devs to build into their exchanges, wallets, and dapps in the ZEC ecosystem.
Solution Format: What is the exact form of the final deliverable you’re creating?
We are building a mobile application that will be available on Android and iOS, and an open source SDK for developers to use this technology in their mobile applications. If we receive the grant, these two offerings will include Zcash functionality and we will develop and publish documentation to provide support for projects integrating this code into Zcash projects.
Technical Approach: Dive into the how of your project. Describe your approaches, components, workflows, methodology, etc. Bullet points and diagrams are appreciated!
Our mobile application writes information to these NFC tags by tapping them on the phone, and uses this information along with other information on the tag to generate a wallet.
When the user wants to access this wallet they tap this tag on their mobile phone when prompted by our application.
They can then send digital assets to the wallet associated with the tag, and then by giving the tag to another person, they are performing a private, offline transaction of the digital assets associated with that tag.
Collaboration and Upstream Dependencies: Describe any dependencies or collaborations with other individuals, teams, or organizations that are required to successfully integrate, maintain, or upstream your changes.
The core dependency of this project is that Android and iOS continue to make the NFC read/write system on mobile phones available.
The best part of our hardware solution is that we are not reliant on a single manufacturer or distributer, effectively creating a decentralized issuance dynamic for these physical tags. Anyone can buy these tags on Walmart, Amazon, or a variety of other distributors.
Execution risks: What obstacles do you expect? What is most likely to go wrong? Which unknown factors could jeopardize success? Who would have to incorporate your work in order for it to be usable?
Global trade policy could affect the price of this open source hardware, however they are extremely affordable ($0.05-0.50) so unless China invades Taiwan and these cannot be manufactured at scale anymore, we expect this solution will remain affordable and viable.
We will publish our own version of this so there will be at least one application where this will be usable, however we hope other developers of exchanges, wallets, and dapps will recognize the value of this solution, and the biggest obstacle will be the sales and marketing to these teams to convince them that this is a valuable addition to their applications.
Unintended Consequences: What are the negative ramifications if your project is successful? Consider usability, stability, privacy, integrity, availability, decentralization, interoperability, maintainability, technical debt, requisite education, etc.
The vast majority of the outcomes of this technology should be positive, however something I could imagine that would be a negative ramification would be that developers agree this is a good solution, but they disagree about specific implementation, and so the interoperability of this technique would not be standardized and this would create a very fragmented user experience for most people and platforms that would frustrate everyone involved.
Evaluation plan: What metrics for success will you share with the community once you’re done? In addition to quantitative metrics, what qualitative metrics will you commit to report?
We agree to share adoption metrics for how many users we bring into the Zcash ecosystem using this technology.
Hardware/Software total budget:
$0 USD
Please provide justification for the total hardware/software budget:
N/A
Services total budget (cloud, hosting, etc.):
$12,500.00 USD
Please provide justification for the total services budget:
Mobile application security audit budget.
Compensation total budget:
$37,500.00 USD
Please provide justification for the total compensation budget:
$30,000 - Mobile Application software development budget
$5,000 - Open Source SDK software development budget
$2,500 - Documentation development and maintenance
Do you require startup funding?
Yes
Start up funding - detailed explanation:
Our company’s initial offering was a payment card application that we launched in August of 2024. We had additional funding lined up once some traction had been acquired, and we had secured a LOI and a pilot for our application. However the Tornado Cash lawsuit has threatened to change the definition of what is considered a Money Transmitter by the DOJ, and because our application could fall under that new definition, we decided to pivot to this open source solution.
This pivot came at a point where we only had a month or two of final runway, and our concern is that our team may need to take other jobs in the next month or two, which would mean they could not work on this project anymore.
So we are requesting $10,000 up front to pay two months of expenses for our developers to ensure they do not need to take other jobs that would interfere with our ability to deliver the milestones of this grant on the timeline detailed below.
If this is not granted, we should still be able to deliver the project, but we may request amendments to our proposed milestone dates if that is the case.
Start up funding - USD value of payout upon approval of grant:
$10,000
Milestone 1 - estimated completion date:
02/01/2025
Milestone 1 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:
$7,500
Deliverable 1.1
Open Source SDK with Zcash functionality included published and documentation included on our website.
Milestone 2 - estimated completion date:
03/01/2025
Milestone 2 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:
$20,000
Deliverable 2.1
Beta version of the mobile application completed and ready for testing
Milestone 3 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:
$12,500
Milestone 3 - estimated completion date:
05/01/2025
Deliverable 3.1
Mobile application cybersecurity audit performed and published
Milestone 4 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:
$10,000
Milestone 4 - estimated completion date:
07/01/2025
Deliverable 4.1
Android and iOS application launched and live on mainnet
Total proposed USD value of grant:
$50,000.00 USD
How was the project timeline determined?
This timeline assumes we receive the funds at some point in December or early January, and that we receive the $10,000 startup funding to get started. If we do not receive the startup funding, we may need to adjust the dates if our team has to pursue other opportunities.
Application submission date:
11/20/2024