However, what is interesting to note is that the same story isn’t always true across
the various types of providers. The responses of online, physical and combination
stores highlighted diverging priorities for each merchant type. Segregated across
store types, there are some different conclusions as can be seen in the above
diagrams.
From the numbers above, it is clear that merchants who have both online and
physical presence are seeing potential benefits transcending both platforms and
focused on the benefits of cryptocurrency in terms of being seen as innovators, and
benefiting from loyalty programs and cryptocurrency integration leading an
increase in customer demand.
As for online merchants, they believe that cryptocurrency payments can lead to an
increase in customers, as well as higher payment amounts and faster
decision-making times (which generally leads to higher volumes of sales). This is in
fairly strong contrast to merchants with physical locations only, who are not so
swayed by the argument that cryptocurrency payments will lead to greater demand
for them, but are conscious of being seen as innovators and are interested in
lowering transaction fees.
Online merchants were concerned with transaction fees being reduced (or not) and
the fluctuation of cryptocurrency causing potential problems, or indeed barriers in
uptake. The situation was slightly different for brick-and-mortar merchants, who
were far more concerned with integration into existing Point of Sale systems, as
well as transaction times at the cash register and who pays fees. These differences
appear to be quite self-explanatory and consistent with the nature of the issues
that confront an online store versus a physical one.
For those merchants who have both physical and online stores, interestingly, their
concerns almost mirrored those of online merchants. While they were also
concerned with Point of Sale integration like those who owned physical stores, they
were more concerned with crypto fluctuation and less concerned with fee direction.
The GRAFT Mobile Wallet mobile wallet is ready, for both iOS and Android.
GRAFT Multi-currency Mobile Wallet for iOS
GRAFT Multi-currency Mobile Wallet for Android
GRAFT CryptoFind allows users to find locations that accept crypto! This application allows merchants to update their status as well as for users to find those stores.
GRAFT CryptoFind for iOS
GRAFT CryptoFind for Android
GRAFT Mobile POS App
GRAFT Mobile POS allows merchants to accept cryptocurrencies. With this application, merchants can use their iOS/Android mobile device to accept payments!
GRAFT Mobile POS for iOS
GRAFT Mobile POS for Android
In order to truly integrate cryptocurrencies into the modern economy, the acceptance of cryptocurrency payment must come in a form that existing businesses are already familiar with. The integration also has to be easy, and free.
GRAFT has been able to integrate on both Verifone and Ingenico payment terminals. That means existing store-owners can install a free application onto their terminal and start accepting payment in crypto!
Below are demo videos show casing both of the terminals:
GRAFT does not charge the customer, as the fees are paid for by the merchant. These fees are a fraction of what average credit companies charge.
Transaction Fees
This means that GRAFT costs the merchant about half of what credit cards are charging them!
In order to make payment processing feasible, the first critical step is to make transactions as close to instant as possible. Customers can't pay for a product and wait 30 minutes for a confirmation.
GRAFT's RTA ensures that payments will be authorized and processed in near real-time and that the buyer can pay in the currency of their choice while the merchants receive settlement in their preferred currency. Additionally, with RTA various transaction types such as authorizations and holds also become a possibility, providing point of sale systems with familiar processes and interfaces.
GRAFT's RTA will work by implementing a two layer network with supernodes (randomly selected based on stake tiers) confirming and validating transactions and exchanges in real time.
This is an extremely important development in the payment processing space. Real time transactions will enable retailers to continue with their business practice unchanged, while adding support for cryptocurrencies. All of this while continuing to use their existing payment terminals! GRAFT will closely resemble what the modern day credit card system does, both for merchants as well as customers!
GRAFT's goal with implementing RTA technology is to enable merchants to operate exactly the same way as they always did. No new equipment, no surprises. Just seamless integration which provides them with an added ability to accept crypto payments.
For more information watch this short introduction:
GRAFT is a global, open-sourced, blockchain-based, decentralized payment gateway and processing platform. Any buyer and merchant can use Graft in a completely decentralized and inexpensive way. Graft ecosystem is open, so anyone can participate by maintaining Graft blockchain and implementing network services. Graft employs payment processing protocols and flows similar to traditional electronic payment systems such as credit cards, which are already trusted by millions of buyers and merchants.
Cryptocurrency is becoming a widely accepted form of storing value. One of the biggest challenges is making that value easier to spend for day to day items. Stores already have POS machines, but have a hard time adapting their businesses to accept cryptocurrencies.
GRAFT has long finished their ICO, and has a functioning MainNet. GRAFT allows businesses, small and large to start accepting cryptocurrency payments without any hassle.
How do merchant service providers, pay-out brokers, application developers, authorization Supernode owners all fit together on the GRAFT Network? How the network is scaled, regionalized, and managed? Find out!
GRAFT Network requires and invites participation from many parties in order to be fully functional on a global level. These network participants are represented both functionally and geographically, as a whole creating a network capable of executing any type of a cashless transaction anywhere, at a minimum cost to the merchant!
These groups are free to establish their own ground rules and processes and their own business models. One such model can be represented by a membership dues organization that certifies and shares best practices among its members, facilitating merchant adoption and providing a support system for the merchant providers.
Graft Foundation is a not-for-profit dev team working to launch a point-of-sale network which promises lower fees, faster processing and wider crypto coin acceptance using a debit card to process transactions in real time. The inherent limit to current coins, especially Bitcoin, is the lack of scalability, slow transactions times, growing transactions costs and lack of mechanism for micropayments. The Graft Foundation thinks it has found a way to overcome these limitations with a secure network built on the Cryptonight blockchain technology which is used on Monero and several other privacy based coins.
At the Point-of-Sale (POS) is not the time to determine the customer does not have the correct cryptocoin, fiat currency, or credit/debit card to purchase a good or service. Graft hopes to overcome this using a unique back-end and server build to allow real-time authorizations and exchange between fiat and various cryptocoins on the Graft Network. It hopes to add many of the largest coins such as Monero (XMR), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), NEM (XEM), Bitcoin (BTC) and its own unique coin known as the GRAFT coin.
“All the Graft software is under an open source license. Graft Foundation is a non-for-profit entity and we intend to operate as such unless we’re forced to change status by the governing laws of the land.” From the Graft Whitepaper.
The Graft network is already in testnet mode with prototype wallets and POS devices with the MainNet and Wallet set to go online Q1 2018. The initial launch will be followed by broker integration and a Graft compatible debit card to launch later in 2018. Both are important to the project as they provide the back end structure to make the network work. Brokers provide the exchange between various coins allowing the merchant to determine the desired settlement coin and the customer to pay with a desired form of payment. This allows the network to work anywhere in the world seamlessly for any coin accepted on the network.
Transactions occur on the blockchain are recorded by miners similar to how Monero and other Cryptonight coins are mined currently. To overcome the delay from transaction to mining and recording transactions, Graft will use a unique Supernode set-up of powerful servers to perform real-time authorizations. The Supernodes will keep all real-time authorizations to prevent double spending prior to the final confirmation of a transaction on the blockchain. This is important for coins like Bitcoin which can take hours to days to settle. Even faster coins with Lightning network can take 30 seconds to several minutes which makes use as a POS impractical. Graft hopes its network can overcome this limitation.
Service Brokers provide several functions including coin exchange, pay-in and out, settlement, authentication and authorization for transactions. They are rewarded through fees and set-up like an exchange with offers for buy, sell and exchange between coins. They are set-up to make the best offer at time of transaction to create rapid movements of various coins on the Graft Network and are vital to the success of the project.
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The Graft ICO is set to launch January 18, 2018 and is limited to $10 million equivalent of GRAFT coins. The ICO will make up 5% of the total coins which eventually end up in circulation with the majority created through mining to draw computing and server power to the network.
The dev team and founders are keeping a respectable 8% with 27% kept in reserve for maintenance of the Graft network and other associated costs. As with most ICOs there is a discount for early purchasers of the coin. Details can be found at the ICO page here. Details can be found at the ICO page here.Details can be found at the ICO page here.
Graft is currently in closed testing of the POS and wallets while test mining on a closed network. The network plans to go live early 2018 and with the integration of many coins with wide application at POS the network could grow very rapidly among crypto enthusiasts. For broader growth they plan to integrate accepting all credit cards and debit cards which would exchange fiat to coins allowing merchants to accept any form of payment on the graft network. This allows one POS terminal for all electronic payments for merchants allowing legacy and crypto payments. This could be huge.
As it is built on the Cryptonight blockchain technology there are elements of privacy which should make @officialMcAfee happy but also both customers and merchants. Follow the team here at their blog, check out the white paper and check out the ICO details before considering investing as all investments comes with risks.
GRAFT is a technological solution, a decentralized open source payment gateway based on blockchain that can be used by merchants and crypto-coin users.
The catalyst for the creation of GRAFT was the realization that modern payment systems are no longer enough for the fast-paced digital world. Traders and those who want to keep themselves informed about the evolution of technology have to take into account the growing interest in crypto-coins. Just in the last year, the search volume for "payment acceptance with Bitcoin" increased by 400%. This is a sign that crypto-coins are generating a lot of interest in the payment environment. The GRAFT platform bridges current fiat-based systems with the crypto-coin world.
To negotiate and operate services on the platform, users and merchants must own and use GRF tokens.
Using the platform, both marketers and regular users will enjoy benefits such as:
• The platform is compatible with all major payment methods;
• Merchants can choose their preferred payment method to receive their winnings;
• Merchants and users can carry out payment transactions in several convertible Crypto-coins, along with local fixed currencies, in the form of a credit / debit card.
To buy GRAFT tokens during your pre-order at ICO , you need to complete and submit a form . After submitting the form, you will receive the number of tokens purchased in your wallet NEM. Once the platform is operational, all users will be able to toggle the GRF tokens.
After the 30% discount, a token costs 0.001834 BTC, 0.028 ETH, 28.063 XEM or 0.0735 XMR. The minimum number of tokens that can be purchased is 10. However, to run a Supernode, which allows mining, transaction validation and other fee-generating services to the network, the minimum required value is 500 GRF.
I like the ideas behind this project, and the efforts that have gone into it by the founders, and their credentials too (if you look at the team page and google their names). However, I have the following doubts:
(1) The name GRAFT is terrible, because in the US this is a colloquial term referring to insider embezzlement or corruption. A glance at Merriam Webster will reveal this, or a search of headlines with the term 'graft' in the New York Times - the vast majority of the articles that come up have to do with corruption. It strikes me that the founders of this coin are not native American English speakers (the term does not have this meaning in British English, where it means 'hard work', the opposite) and simply did not know this. But for wide acceptance, there is no denying that the name is a major blunder.
(2) The supernode system for fast approval of payments sounds like a good solution (and a solution is certainly needed) but how is it protected from hacking and defrauding? Payments are approved outside the blockchain, which is the only mechanism guaranteed to be fraud-proof (the whole point of its existence). So how is payment security outside the blockchain going to be implemented? There is no information about this that I can find in the white paper or on the website.
(3) I don't understand the business model going forward for point-of-sale. Either the idea is (a) to partner with existing POS providers, such as Visa and Mastercard, or (b) create a new POS network. Option (a) is a non-starter; existing providers will not partner with Graft for obvious reasons. First of all, the whole idea of the coin is to subvert the existing system, and existing providers will obviously regard it as a direct threat to their existence. Second, there is the whole privacy and untraceability aspect; while we as consumers may like and want this, existing POS providers will not accept a payments system where they can garner no information about payee identities, amounts, track payments, etc. Apart from security and money laundering issues, it goes counter to the whole direction of their business model, which is to track users and predict their spending habits, etc. This leaves (b), which means founding a whole new POS network, with new hardware, and getting businesses to accept this. This requires a MAJOR investment and planning, and is a HUGE undertaking. Is there any evidence that the Graft team is prepared for this, and/or is capable of it? Apart from requiring huge investment up front in terms of the network hardware, it also requires getting merchants to sign on the dotted line, and the only way to do this (initially) would be to offer them the terminals for free, which implies even more investment. How much is this all going to cost? What is the plan? Is there even a chance that any merchants would sign up?
(4) Even if (3) can be surmounted, there is the regulatory issue. Given that merchants would need to sign up to this, how can Graft be guaranteed to be consistent with local regulations in the areas in which it is proposed to operate? Especially given the money laundering issues having to do with choosing a blockchain whose major feature is obfuscation of transactions and fungibility? I can see major problems here.
Until there is some sort of answer from the team on all of the above points, I won't be investing in this.
the Graft name is wonderful who cares if you don't like it ? they explain it in the Dubai conference video by the second guy in charge Idkis something (sorry I know I am butchering his name) and they explain it in the white paper.. get over the name. now here's the meat of the matter and why I am writing this: adoption for something like this is a HUGE deal you're right !! so knowing what I think I know about payment processing I believe the trick lies in the MSO's which are the middle men or marketing and sales organizations. They drive adoption by getting merchants to accept new ideas and technology (BIGGEST question is what is their incentive) ?
although I am a huge fan of a Crypto POS gateway for the masses (like Pundix in Asia) I wonder how the specifics might work or what will drive some of the small chains (because that's who they would go after initially) to adopt a free crypto terminal that claims to be a Universal Payment Processing Network ? yo have to go after the smaller chains because SMO's can't afford to go after mom & Pop at first and they can't convince burger king either for a long while.. so how will this work ? Pundi pundi has a nice high tech terminal without an MCR I think it uses NFC to communicate to their card. They raised their ICO goal without much struggle but they promoted nicely with some Youtubers like Ian Malina and such (which cost them a bunch I am sure).
so although I am a big believer in the tech and can see how consumers will be alright by slowly accepting crypto as a medium (unfortunately VISA is needed for most to begin with) HOW will they or WE get the merchants to adopt and learn something more complicated ? free terminals is not enough.. online merchants have a huge advantage and would probably be first adopters of a new crypto payment processor like GRAFT but they will also take Litecoin and others so please explain to me or give me the plan of action for driving Merchants to sign up ?
For pre-sale membership instructions, as well as additional details and a bonus program, follow the link to the GRAFT pre-sale page: https://www.graft.network/pre-ico/
For details on ICO's pre-sales, please visit: https://www.graft.network/pre-ico/
Learn more about Graft at: https://www.graft.network/
Graft on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/graftnetwork/
Follow Graft on twitter: https://twitter.com/graftnetwork
Join the Graft channel on the telegram: https://t.me/GraftNet
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Graft/
Bitcointalk - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2115188
Dear GRAFT Community,
We would like to take this opportunity to clarify the promise we made to the ICO participants to do an airdrop if the price doesn’t recover to the ICO level within nine months.
Example 1 ; September 20 GRFT price is 0.0000262 BTC or higher – no airdrop will take place
Example 2 : October 10 GRFT price is 0.0000262 BTC or higher – no airdrop will take place
Example 3 : November 10-18 GRFT price avg 0.0000131 BTC (and the price hasn’t crossed 0.0000262 BTC before then), each ICO purchase of 1 GRFT will receive ONE additional GRFT via airdrop.
As you probably know, most exchanges recently took offline all CryptoNote wallets (including Monero) due to Double Counting Bug. We tried to reproduce an exploit of the double counting bug with GRAFT master (current GRAFT version) to prove that GRAFT is not affected. In order to do that, we have prepared a special testing branch with the exploit: https://github.com/graft-project/GraftNetwork/tree/double-accounting-exploit, where we duplicated the “add_tx_pub_key_to_extra” call inside “construct_tx_and_get_tx_key(…)” method in cryptonote_core/cryptonote_tx_utils.cpp. The destination wallet with the bug was supposed to show the wrong (doubled) balance after the transfer from the exploited source wallet.
The destination wallet (GRAFT master, private testnet) before the test transfer shows 20 GRFT balance:
Now, we are transferring 10 GRFT from the exploited source wallet (private testnet), trying to “trick” the destination wallet:
The destination wallet after the transfer shows the correct amount (30 GRFT):
Here is the destination wallet log:
So this case is already handled in current Graft version (1.2.1), which is based on Monero v11, and the bug seems to be introduced in Monero v12, where subaddress functionality was implemented.
Therefore, current GRAFT wallets are safe for all users including exchanges.
Let’s start from implementation of full supernode, which is essentially an implementation of real-time authorizations (RTA). Although we are close to the finish line, we do not release it yet to public alpha. We need more time for optimization, fine-tuning, and QA testing. One of the main reasons for the delay is an issue with communication. Unlike other two-layer cryptocurrency networks which use a separate mechanism for communication between their second-layer nodes, we reuse the existing peer-to-peer network as a basic transport. Our original algorithm finds the shortest and fastest routes between the supernonodes by maintaining a set of P2P tunnels through the network of cryptonodes. The main difference and greatest benefit of using the same communication base for two layers (both cryptonode and supernode networks) is not exposing the authorization sample’s supernodes – because in our design they are not required to have a public IP. Such design is the major difference and significant improvement comparing to other layer two implementations such as Dash masternodes.
Remember that one of GRAFT’s key differentiators and goals is absolute privacy initially provided by underlying CryptoNote blockchain protocol, which is the first layer of GRAFT platform. The fact that the auth sample supernode does not require a public IP attached to it makes GRAFT even more private and decentralized, because the supernodes are less dependant on regulated hosting providers. Without public IP the supernodes are “hidden” behind the large, distributed, and complex P2P network, which makes them less vulnerable to DDOS attacks. At the same time, the hosting and maintenance are less complicated and less expensive for supernode owners. (Note that wallet/POS proxy supernodes, which typically belong to service providers and large merchants, still require public IP address in order to be able to serve wallets and POS/payment apps).
However, such great benefits do not come for free. Along the way we found several issues in existing CryptoNote/Monero P2P communication implementation, which we are fixing in order to make it more efficient, stable, and suitable transport for our purposes. With that said, we anticipate the public alpha of supernode with RTA to be released by the end of July. Meanwhile, we will start a private alpha release for testing in a coupe of weeks, so if you are interested in helping us with preliminary testing please contact us at [email protected].
While working hard on RTA implementation and getting ready to its production launch, we realized that hosting a supernode, either full (authorization) or proxy/gateway, requires a special DevOps skill set, so we are working through making arrangements and building relationships to provide turnkey solutions to supernode owners and merchant service providers.
We are continuously working on improving the Verifone terminal app so it will be fully polished for production by the time RTA is released. As Verifone have written on their merchant marketplace website, where GRAFT app is listed as the Featured Apps Partner, “Our app partners are working around the clock to help empower our merchants with applications that enrich the customer experience and provide business productivity.” This is absolutely true statement, there is not much to add. Since the Verifone certification was achieved last month, we have done several improvements such as UI redesign (in both terminal app and our wallet), enhanced configuration utility for merchants, integration with CoinMarketCap for real-time exchange rates, and some bug fixes. Also, we are working on Ingenico terminal app integration into their marketplace.
One of important and promising features we are planning to develop is using NFC (Near Field Communication) for initial engagement between the mobile wallet and terminal app, so instead of scanning QR code displayed on payment terminal the buyer will just wave the phone (the same technology is used by contactless payment cards and Apple Pay). Implementation of such a feature will help improve both buyer and merchant user experiences and reduce the overall transaction time. We will keep you posted about our progress in this area.
We just finished design and now are ready to start implementation of the payment gateway which will facilitate GRAFT payments on online shopping platforms. Once implemented, integration with GRAFT payment gateway, among other features, will bring to online merchants and buyers a unique combination of absolute privacy and instant transaction confirmations (using RTA) – something they have never seen before. Plus, after we finish RTA and move to accept broker implementation, they will be able to accept various cryptocurrencies, while keeping the same benefits of privacy and transaction speed.
We finally redesigned the app downloads page on our website, so now it’s easier to find all our apps, including wallets, and their releases for various mobile and desktop operating systems: iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In recent wallet releases, we fixed some bugs and added new configuration options. The upcoming wallet release will support purchases with real time authorizations using full supernodes (currently it supports a limited version of RTA on testnet only).
As our app for discovering and listing crypto-friendly merchants is gaining more popularity among crypto enthusiasts, we periodically release new features and bug fixes. In recent CryptoFind version, in addition to bug fixes, we added a possibility to take a picture of the GRAFT sticker on the merchant’s window so the users can earn better bonuses.
Happy Grafting!
@orignalworks
@graft2018