Cardstack, a blockchain-powered open-source protocol, today announced it will be integrating Chainlink into Card Pay — a consumer-facing crypto payment and reward platform. Cardstack will use Chainlink Price Feeds to establish accurate and tamper-proof exchange rates on the platform, beginning on the xDAI chain; but with a planned expansion to other blockchains and layer-2 solutions.
Most DeFi price feeds today are used for trading and financial product use-cases, focusing on the needs of investors, token holders, or market makers. Yet, as crypto gains more mainstream attention; especially due to the many scalability solutions being made possible by layer 2 and other blockchain innovations, payment use-cases are becoming increasingly important.
That is why Cardstack has developed a multi-party payment protocol. Card Pay is being built as part of the Cardstack suite of decentralized SaaS, supporting both prepaid cards and reward cards for making purchases and earning reward tokens in the network.
The Card Pay protocol taps into the composability of DeFi, including the use of stablecoins as a medium of exchange and web3 wallets as the interface for viewing balances and authorizing payments. Customers can use the dedicated mobile app to connect with merchants easily, simply by scanning a QR code (powered by WalletConnect) and confirming transactions via Face ID or Touch ID.
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Card Pay + Chainlink
Exchange rates are important in payment use-cases, as they ensure that customers and merchants are able to find a path from the token the customer holds to the currencies the merchant accepts. The Chainlink oracle network provides many types of exchange rates — from native tokens like ETH to stablecoins like DAI and fiat currencies like USD, as well as emerging community and governance tokens.
Used in conjunction with decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, Chainlink enables Cardstacl to provide seamless one-click payments from the customer’s wallet. The latest Chainlink price feed update will be used to calculate the right amount of tokens to transfer from the customer to the merchant, without requiring a separate step to swap before the payment can be processed.
Chainlink is the most-used decentralized oracle solution in DeFi and across blockchains, already securing billions of dollars in value. Chainlink Price Feeds provide a multitude of time-tested design features that not only ensure accurate exchange rates but provide robust protection against unexpected events.
Some of those features include:
- High-Quality Data — Chainlink Price Feeds source data from numerous premium data aggregators like BraveNewCoin and Kaiko, leading to price data aggregated from hundreds of exchanges, weighted by volume, and cleaned from outliers and wash trading. This generates accurate global market prices that are resistant to API downtime, flash crash outliers, and data manipulation attacks like flash loans.
- Secure Node Operators — Chainlink Price Feeds are secured by independent, security-reviewed, and Sybil-resistant oracle nodes run by leading blockchain DevOps teams, data providers, and traditional enterprises. Chainlink nodes have a strong track record for reliability, even during extreme network conditions.
- Decentralized Network — Chainlink Price Feeds are decentralized at the data source, oracle node, and oracle network levels, generating strong protections against downtime and tampering by either the data provider or oracle network.
- Transparent System — Chainlink provides a robust reputation framework and set of on-chain monitoring tools that allow users to independently verify the historical performance of node operators and oracle networks, as well as check the real-time prices being offered.
Cardstack aims to leverage Chainlink’s blockchain-agnostic capabilities to integrate its Price Feeds across multiple blockchains and smart-contract platforms. This allows customers and merchants to use the same exchange rates, even if they are selling and buying via two different networks or blockchains.
Combining that with layer-2 interoperability technology like state channels can provide a user experience for customer payments that’s as easy and user-friendly as those offered by centralized payment apps, such as Square’s Cash App, WeChat App, and Alipay.
“As the crypto ecosystem evolves, we expect to see even more types of tokens or assets, whether they are pegged to real-world currencies or tied to a community’s curated value. We look forward to continuing our work with Chainlink, tapping into its shared oracle infrastructure to bring the value of decentralized payments and commerce to the mass market using secure decentralized oracles.”
– Cardstack Founding Director, Chris Tse
