ZECPayServer: A Payment Processor Dedicated to Zcash

Community Grants Applications
1

Hello Everyone,

My name is Asindu.

We, a team of two are currently working on ZECPayServer — A self-hosted payment processor for Zcash.

ZECPayServer is essentially a replication of BTCPay Server.

The reason for creating a Zcash focused payment processor is that BTCPayServer often provides priority during development to Bitcoin.

ZECPayServer intends to focus exclusively on Zcash i.e commitment to not even add support for other privacy coins.

The goal of this, is to make ZECPayServer the “go-to” self hosted payment processor for Zcash.

We intend to initially ship 4 core tools with ZECPayServer.

1. ZECPayServer Point Of Sale

This can best be thought of as Shopify for ZCash users and will provide a solution to people that want to manage inventory offline or run an e-commerce operation.

Screenshots of ZEC Pay Server Point Of Sale

2. ZECPayServer Payroll Processing Tool

This is a tool that can be used to make, record & disburse payments to contractors, employees etc that want to be paid in ZCash.

Screenshots of ZECPayServer Payroll Processing

3. ZECPayServer Crowd Funding Tool

A simple GoFundMe like tool that will make it easy for people to launch crowd funding initiatives for the Zcash community. Opens Source Projects, Hacker-thons and other Events or initiatives.

Screenshots for ZECPayServer Crowdfunding tool.

4. ZECPayServer Application Programming Interface

This is a self-hosted API solution that people wanting to build on Zcash can use to make custom applications or deeply integrate Zcash into an already existing software project.

There is an incomplete demo in progress hosted on my personal server at https://zec-pay-server.asindu.xyz/ — please click on “Point Of Sale”, “Payroll Processing” or “Crowd Funding” to view the live demo

Here is a link to my Zcash Grants Application

Thanks for reading.

5 Likes
2

Hi @asindu - Welcome to the forum, and thank you for submitting your grant proposal! We will review it in the upcoming weeks and reach out if we have any questions.

In the meantime, if you have any questions for us, you can post them to this thread or DM us at @ZcashGrants.

Zcash Community - We want to hear your feedback on this grant! You can post your comments to this thread or DM us at @ZcashGrants if you’d like to provide feedback in private.

Thanks!

1 Like
3

this looks real cool and useful for many things.

zgo does some of this already i think. but not all of it.

i really like the crowd funding tool.

1 Like
4

That is correct, ZGo is a point-of-sale application and we have an integration with WooCommerce for e-commerce.

3 Likes
5

@asindu Thank you for your submission. After consideration from @ZcashGrants and sufficient time for the community to provide feedback on the forum, the committee has decided to reject this proposal.

Currently, there is no demand for this product, but it could change later, so please keep in touch!

The committee appreciates your grant submission efforts and encourages you to continue as an active member of the Zcash community going forward, both here on the forum and in the below avenues as well:

6

Currently, there is no demand for this product, but it could change later, so please keep in touch!

I don’t agree with this. BTCPayServer for instance has about 185 websites with hundreds of thousands of dollars in transaction volume. Probably serving 10s of thousands of users

data source: Websites using BTCPay Server Historical

If Zcash wants to be the privacy preserving variant of Bitcoin.
It only makes sense that when people adopt Zcash, they will need infrastructure similar to BTCPayServer.

A self-hosted Zcash payment processor might be more important since alot of centralised payment processors might delist privacy coins.

Other sources of demand. That I listed in my original application.

Privacy focused products.

  • There is an privacy orientated eSim cellular service for example called Silent Link that supports Monero, Bitcoin & Ethereum. But not Zcash.

Yet I am sure they would be happy to integrate it such that it may attract Zcash holding customers and grow customers options. We would help them with this.

  • Other privacy focused tools like Proton Mail would also be happy to add a Zcash subscription option.

Zcash circular economy

One obvious demand for these tools would be the Zcash circular economy.

Crowd funding;
I have for example seen people in this very forum doing crowd funding campaigns, opened as topics here.

Why can’t there be a dedicated tool that they can use to organise crowd funding campaigns? For Hacker-thons, events, open source projects?

Point of Sale
Won’t it make sense to for people hosting paid privacy focused events to sell tickets using Zcash? Is there a ticketing tool for Zcash that can be integrated to existing ticketing services?

I, for example came up with this idea so I could build a merchant store for Zcash Branded products. Many other people might have a similar need.

It is true that Zcash is not a big as Bitcoin, so it may make sense to ignore infrastructure projects that seem to cater for the niche Zcash community.

What I think is that infrastructure must come before adoption.

It is not possible to wait for the adoption first and then build the infrastructure later.

We need to build infrastructure that will attract people to use the Zcash. That is what I think drives demand.

1 Like
7

fyi, zcash was integrated with btcpayserver 2 years ago.

1 Like
8

The fact that the BTCPayServer integration work did not come out anywhere in this proposal surprised me.

1 Like
9

is it still working?

10

it is on a branch so it should be working (with some minor adjustments for NU5) but it is far behind the upstream version.

1 Like
11

Two things to note.

  1. ZECPayServer is not a “BTCPayServer Integration”.

It is built from the ground up to exclusively support Zcash transactions. It is not a “fork” or a plugin of BTC Pay Server.

Something closer to it would be Z-Go ( https://zgo.cash/). Although we do intend to offer more features.

  1. I do mention in the proposal that Zcash’s dependence on BTC Pay Server is a bit problematic since.

a) BTC Pay Server devs are committed to Bitcoin not Zcash.

From their own website, adding Altcoins

Furthermore, BTCPay developers do not spend excessive time testing nor maintaining the altcoins. If you’re submitting a PR for a new coin, make sure that your image works. If the altcoin integration is not actively maintained it will be removed from BTCPay.

b) BTCPayServer may have dropped support for Zcash for arbitrary reasons.
Also from their website, Which coins does BTCPay Server support?

As you may notice, Zcash is absent.

Bitcoin is the only focus of the project and its core developers. However, opt in integrations are present for several altcoins:

BGold (BTG) (also known as Bitcoin Gold)
BPlus (XBC) (also known as Bitcoin Plus)
Bitcore (BTX)
Dash (DASH)
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Feathercoin (FTC)
Groestlcoin (GRS)
Htmlcoin (HTML) (also known as Althash)
Liquid Bitcoin (LBTC) (comes with Liquid Tether support USDt) (notes on deployment & usage)(opens new window)
Litecoin (LTC)
Monacoin (MONA)
Monero (XMR) (guide on deployment and usage)(opens new window)
Polis (POLIS)
Viacoin (VIA)
Altcoins are maintained by their respective communities and are listed here only for convenience. For support regarding Altcoin deployment, functionalities or issues, please contact the Altcoin maintainer or community directly.

Can an XYZ coin be added in BTCPay?
No. BTCPay developers don’t add alternative coins on request. Adding a new coin explicitly depends on the community and developers of those coins. Furthermore, BTCPay developers do not spend excessive time testing nor maintaining the altcoins. If you’re submitting a PR for a new coin, make sure that it works. If the altcoin integration is not actively maintained it will be removed from BTCPay

12

Hi, asindu. I understand your disappointment at the decision. While we won’t be reconsidering the application at this time, we do aim to support projects that demonstrably add value to the ecosystem. If you continue with this project and it does gain high traction, you may be eligible for a retroactive grant.