Guest post: Federated Blockchains and the Financecloud API, by Matthias Klees

Finance Cloud API develops a protocol to launch financial and crypto services, and is using Nextcloud for the cloud part. Discover the presentation of the Finance Cloud API Idea, by Matthias Klees!

Finance Cloud API, by Matthias Klees

Since last year, we have been developing the FINANCECLOUD API Idea (a protocol to launch financial and crypto services on), a fintech product accompanied by a cloud-device for the home network. In fact, the cloud device is the center of our concept.

We think, while decentralization is a good thing for services, “blockchain” is not always the right way. Functions are not well located in wallets, bound exclusively to any blockchain. Services shall be permissionless accessible for anyone and for any currency.

The cloud device runs the users cloud and gives access to services, via a simple app store, to enable easy crypto handling, trading and point-of-sales integration. It aims to make cryptocurrencies more accessible, easy and secure, whilst keeping the user in control. The app store is planned to act as a proxy between the user clouds and the service providers.

To make the functions accessible for any blockchain based currency, we are collaborating with the “Internet-of-Coins” team (see coinstorm.net), to use their just-finished hybrid protocol.

The device

Our Hardware Manager, Olaf Breuer is the ‘Makers Award’ winner 2017. He currently works at IBM Watson Lab in Germany. Our first prototype has been developed, to explain the idea to our potential investors. This “demo model” was based on a Raspberry PI. We are now about to finish the layout for our own circuit board, with hardware encryption chip inside. Our hardware development team is located in Portugal, where Olaf has his lab for electronic engineering and 3d-printing.

Cryptocurrencies turned into mainstream products

Very few cryptocurrency innovations have managed to transform into a mainstream product for non-crypto users. New users are always challenged to understand things like exchanges and payment processes. Even more confusing for them is, when it comes to understanding the environment as a whole and to identify good and trustworthy services or software. This is where we want to provide a pre-configured, hardware encrypted device for his home network. Users can plug it into their router and choose coins, exchanges and services from the app-store, and access all these innovations via one unified interface, without having to know about the technology behind it. You will be able to switch from « user mode » to « professional-mode » to do advanced operations.

Merchants can choose (via the app store) access to a pre-configured online-shop, that enables them, to accept over one hundred cryptocurrencies or they can bill directly via our payment gateway. We will perform the exchange for them if they want us to. The plan is that merchants adds our device as a “new credit card provider” while sticking with their system of choice.

For traders, it’s possible to see most exchanges under one single interface which they can choose from (via the app store). Traders will also find extended trade intelligence solutions and automation functions for cryptocurrencies, assets, and Forex via the “Expert Advisor Platform”, our first contractor, to be on the app store.

The cloud comes with a federation function. We would like to use this concept, to implement cloud-to-cloud federation, that enables businesses to connect their teams and to do financial collaboration on a project by project basis.

Though we have to extend some functionalities of the cloud system, we aim to stay 100% modular and compatible. Not only to provide our work to the Nextcloud community, but also to ensure freedom of choice for Financecloud Box users.

Benefits for the merchants

• One single device to accept any cryptocurrrency and handle them like a creditcardt payment in your chosen currency
• No interference: merchants can just stick with their Point-of-Sales system
• Merchants will generate additional sales if spending coins is easier

Benefits for users

• Easy crypto handling: users plug the box into their homenetwork and have all financial tasks under one single interface.
• New users don’t have to spend months, to find out about currencies, services and websites. They just add any service via the built-in app store
• The system can do universal transactions across different types of coins, a function that is not yet available anywhere else.
• Security: every service runs in an hardware encrypted container

If you want more info, you can learn more about the federated blockchains here!