This November the Solana community gathered in Lisbon for the Breakpoint 2022 conference. The setting and the timing made absolute sense. Lisbon has become a centre for digital nomads and blockchain developers over the past year. The timing? Well, the bear market has shifted focus away from token valuations in favour of real infrastructure development.
Alchemy Pay sent a team with the main aim of cementing relationships within the SOL community. Discussions with influential projects and figures, in general, centred around our On & Off Ramp Solution – a plugin hosted on dApps and platforms that allows users to directly purchase the appropriate tokens with local currency payments in order to participate.
The Headline Announcements
It was clear at Breakpoint that this solution is in high demand. It was also clear that the community is thriving, in spite of the so-called ‘crypto winter.’ There were, of course, some big announcements. The forthcoming Solana phone will securely store the private keys of crypto wallets and be powered by a Qualcomm chipset. The phone highlights Solana’s efforts to become a highly viable option for scalable consumer-facing products. The Solana App Store was also more deeply explained. The headline news, however, was that Google Cloud is soon to become a Solana node validator.
Solana Games Day & NFT Activity
Games Day was a particular highlight. Dozens of teams showcased their games in a direct way. Solana already boasts the second largest NFT ecosystem after Ethereum, but this event surprised some by showing that Solana is now just as serious about gaming.
The gaming and NFT communities in particular were brimming with new ideas and projects on the verge of release, as well as progress for network leaders, such as Star Atlas and Magic Eden.
Leading NFT marketplace, Magic Eden, hosted a vibrant event hidden in the backstreets of Lisbon’s cobbled walkways, while Games Day provided the most entertaining and interactive set up.
Blockchain gaming and NFTs, have the opportunity to crossover to the mainstream on the back of even just one successfully executed project. However, once mainstream attention has been established, how do we onboard new users, particularly crypto newcomers?
Alchemy Pay: the Fiat-Crypto Access Layer
The main issue Alchemy Pay seeks to solve is that of accessibility. You could see us as the ‘access layer’ infrastructure. Alchemy Pay Ramp Solution is a payment gateway that enables users (newcomers in particular) to pay with credit cards, debit cards, domestic transfers, and popular regional mobile wallets. If a first time user has no experience of crypto but they want to play a game their friend has recommended, then we don’t want to see that user frustrated by having to leave the platform to find out how to set up an account on a centralised exchange first.
Easily integrated as a customisable plugin, our Ramp allows users to stay on the game platform to make the crypto purchase. In most cases, the purchased crypto is sent directly to the user’s Web3 wallet ensuring that users have custody of their own crypto – a key tenet of the decentralised future. Think of us as a gateway that users pass funds through in order to cheaply and quickly convert fiat to crypto (onramp) or crypto to fiat (offramp).
Watch This Space
The Alchemy Pay team is excited and confident about the first upcoming collaborations with SOL developers, and we expect to build upon them in the coming year. The community is strong and, ultimately, we are able to offer support that is key to the success of these projects.
About Alchemy Pay
Founded in Singapore in 2018, Alchemy Pay is a payment solutions provider that seamlessly connects cryptocurrency and traditional fiat currency for consumers, merchants, and developers. It provides merchants with convenient crypto acceptance and makes crypto and Web3 services highly accessible. Alchemy Pay’s on and off ramp plugin is integrated with crypto platforms and dApps to provide an easy easy gateway payment from fiat to crypto and vice versa. Its crypto acceptance system has touchpoints with 2+ million online and in-store merchants in over 70 countries. Alchemy Pay’s network includes 300+ fiat payment channels, including popular e-wallets in emerging markets. ACH is Alchemy Pay’s utility token on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain.
