moai

A bit about Moai. By now we have been building Moai for about 5 months. We started with a question, where do we spend time and what's missing. In our crypto circles, many like us spend time on Telegram. So we wanted to bring onchain activity and fun to where the time is being spent.

A bit about Moai. By now we have been building Moai for about 5 months. We started with a question, where do we spend time and what's missing. In our crypto circles, many like us spend time on Telegram. So we wanted to bring onchain activity and fun to where the time is being spent. https://t.me/moaicash_bot

Living /moai ideals. Learning about web3, building in web3. Also founded 500px long time ago. FID #1482

There are couple of issues with onchain in general and payments in particular today. 

First, it requires coordination. People use lots of different wallets, chains, etc, so before sending any tokens, one needs to ask at least several questions — what's your wallet, can you accept XYZ, can you accept on this chain?

Second, it requires additional resources, mainly gas. For example, I received DEGEN to a new wallet, but can't send or spend it, since it requires native token (ETH on Base) to pay the fee. If I simply want to transact in one currency, such as USDC, wallets ask me to also separately purchase native gas token.

And third, sending tokens is often time consuming. Due to security or the way many crypto people interact, from using secure computers to ledgers, it makes crypto cumbersome to use, often 10 or even 100 times slower than using tap-to-pay on a phone. Instead of a second, sending crypto might take 3-5 minutes, inserting ledger, entering password, reviewing or confirming transaction, and so on.

So to make it better, we had to fix these three things:

1 - Problem of coordination
2 - Requirement for additional resources
3 - Time consuming

Telegram is a breakthrough app in many countries. It is obviously popular in Russia (#1) and Ukraine (#1), but also popular in Brazil (#1), India (#2), Malaysia (#1), Indonesia (#2), Turkey (#1), Nigeria (#1), Egypt (#2), Vietnam (#1) and so on. 

(Ranking from SensorTower)

In addition to being popular everywhere, Telegram also has mini apps platform, which launched just last year, in 2023. Mini apps allow to access some parts of Telegram, and allows to build on top, basically using Telegram as a distribution platform.

This allowed us to solve the first issue

1 - Problem of coordination

By using Moai you only need to know the contact on Telegram. You don't need to know what wallet they have, which country they are in, what they can or cannot accept, and so on. Simply send tokens with Moai to another Telegram contact. This opens up instant coordination for 1 billion monthly active users on Telegram, so overall, it creates 1 quadrillion connections (1 billion billion).

Now, the second issue

2 - Requirement for additional resources

Sponsorship of gas transaction became possible after ERC-4337 account abstraction upgrade, which happened in spring 2023 and builders introduced consumer-ready solutions in mid- and late 2023. With that, Moai sponsors every token transfer, so you never need to get additional gas token to complete transaction. This makes the process effortless just like it should be.

Ok, now onto the last issue 

3 - Time consuming

This we aimed to solve more with the approach to security and casual use. Moai is not aimed to store all your wealth (but it could), rather it's like a Starbucks card that you load with $200 and it gets you some rewards (free transactions, feature unlocks, better rates, etc). Using smart account architecture and making it non-custodial, the wallets are secured in the same principle as "industry grade" multi-sig Safe accounts. By making it casual, your Telegram account is tied to Moai for effortless use, just like tap-to-pay on the phone.

Yoink!

So as you can see, all these developments are very recent. We combined them all in Moai to allow any onchain activity to happen on Telegram, from simple transfers, to playing /yoink, to swapping tokens, to... anything else that community desires.

While we started with USDC (most compliant stablecoin) and @base (biggest EVM compatible L2), we recognize that the world is ever-changing. Moai is becoming multi-chain today, adding @polygonchain, @optimism and @arbitrum. It opens up the world of tipping and sharing for a myriad of new tokens, from Bonsai to Bonk and everything in between.

After going multi-chain, obviously it is going to be easier to add new chains going forward, so if you got a favorite you absolutely need to use, drop us a suggestion in the bot. And if you are planning to build on Telegram, talk to us, as our stack can help you get online with your project 10x faster.

In this last sentence is the core path of where we are headed. We believe more and more companies and developers will be exploring mini apps for their growth, and we have been building APIs to enable pretty much seamless onchain experiences on Telegram. Prediction markets? Community tipping? Your imagination is the limit here.

The way we wanted to approach these issues is to go where we are, where our friends and contacts are. Some of us use Facebook or Instagram, but obviously there's no "add-ons" allowed. Some of us use Twitter or Farcaster, but they are very niche. However in crypto circles and beyond, many use Telegram.