Zebec Protocol: Streaming Payments on Solana
Flow Payment: A Brand New Payment MethodAuthor: Crescent/Lyric BlockBeats
In our understanding, buying and selling typically involves "paying money and receiving goods," an event that occurs at a specific point in time. However, all our trading activities are not as simple as the exchange of money for goods. If we specify "goods" here, it can refer to the videos purchased, music listened to, labor provided, returns on investments…
We will find that such "goods" have continuity and cannot be delivered all at once. So, since "goods" cannot be delivered in one go, is there a way to make "payment" also have such continuity?
At this point, a brand new payment method emerges: flow payment.
As the name suggests, flow payment allows money to flow like water, continuously transferring from one account to another. Such payment behavior occurs over a specific period rather than at a single point in time. The Zebec we are discussing today is such a flow payment protocol.
How to Use Zebec
Zebec Protocol is a continuous settlement protocol that allows parties to conduct instant financial transaction settlements directly through Zebec. In simple terms, it enables you to continuously pay other accounts according to the time and amount you set.
Its usage is also very simple, as shown in the image below:
After connecting your wallet, find the sending interface, enter the recipient's wallet address, select the token you want to pay (currently, this project only supports SOL, USDC, and USDT), input the amount, and choose the time period from start to end, with the time specified down to the minute. Click Send, and it will start flow payment according to the mode you set.
But why should we adopt flow payment? What benefits can flow payment bring us?
The Role of Flow Payment
For the cultural industry, flow payment not only protects users' rights but also facilitates the distribution of benefits for the output side.
Take watching a movie through an app as an example. The current payment scenario usually involves paying to watch. If a movie costs 10 yuan, as a user, I need to pay 10 yuan in advance to watch the movie. If I stop watching halfway, I have already paid for the entire movie.
However, flow payment can solve this problem. If I watch half of the movie, I only need to pay 5 yuan, meaning I only pay for the duration I watched, and the entire process is automated, ensuring that users do not spend extra money and protecting their interests.
For the output side, the revenue from a movie needs to be distributed among various stakeholders, such as investors, producers, and distributors. Flow payment can prevent uneven distribution of interests among parties. As mentioned earlier, if a user pays 10 yuan for watching the entire movie, this amount will gradually be distributed to each party's account according to the previously set proportions.
This applies not only to watching movies but also to listening to music, reading e-books, subscribing to memberships, renting, consulting, parking, and other continuous transactions. For users, flow payment has a very broad range of application scenarios, and when it comes to the payment of salaries, flow payment is also a good choice.
Typically, everyone has to wait several days or weeks to receive last month's salary. However, with flow payment, this problem can be easily solved, allowing people to receive their work compensation in real-time, saving on the time cost of using funds.
For investors, flow payment is even more useful. Investors do not have to provide all funds to the invested party at once; over time, the invested party will gradually receive funds for project development. Investors can also assess whether the project's progress aligns with their expectations, and if not, they can terminate the investment at any time.
All parties can use the high frequency, multi-directional, and fragmented characteristics of flow payment to protect their interests, addressing issues that the existing payment system struggles to solve, as exemplified by Zebec.
Application Scenarios of Zebec
Zebec is built on Solana, allowing people to achieve real-time, frictionless, and continuous payment flows through Zebec, enabling businesses, employees, and consumers to completely reimagine their payment methods, investment methods, and ways of purchasing products or services.
Zebec Pay, as a low-cost salary solution, is the first application of Zebec. Through it, the salary payment application scenario mentioned above can be executed.
For example, if A wants to spend 50 SOL to hire B for a 40-day job, they can use Zebec Pay to pay B every second. If A is dissatisfied with B's work, or vice versa, either party can cancel the flow payment at any time, and B can withdraw the received funds from Zebec.
Zebec can be used not only for remittances and receipts but also for users to utilize the native financial services of Zebec Pay, such as automated crypto investments and earning DeFi mining rewards. Specifically:
Automated Dollar-Cost Averaging Investment: Users can automatically convert a certain percentage of their salary into top cryptocurrencies in real-time, calculated per second. This is similar to real-time salary distribution, allowing users to invest in mainstream coins according to their set proportions.
Investment and Liquidity Mining: Users can invest in other preferred tokens through easily programmable smart contracts or engage in DeFi liquidity mining to earn rewards.
Crypto IRA and 401k Accounts: Users can allocate part of their salary to compliant crypto IRA and 401k accounts. (Note: IRA and 401k are retirement savings accounts that offer benefits such as tax deferral.)
Free Fiat Currency Entry and Exit: Users can exchange their cryptocurrencies for dollars without paying any fees and transfer funds to their regular bank accounts.
What kind of transformation will different payment methods bring to the internet financial ecosystem? This question has attracted the attention of many well-known investors.
Project Background
Following the announcement of a $5.5 million seed round financing on November 10, Zebec Protocol stated on February 23 that it had completed a $15 million private placement led by Solana Ventures and Distributed Global.
Moreover, many well-known investors participated, including Lightspeed, Alameda Research, Coinbase, OKX Ventures, Circle, Greenoaks, DST Global Partners, and Goldentree. The funds are aimed at expanding their products to support crypto adoption.
Below is their roadmap:
Zebec plans to conduct real-time aggregation, additional protocols, and hackathons in the second quarter of this year, and to decentralize authority, establish staking pools, communities, and DAOs in the third quarter.
Comparison and Summary
Zebec's vision is to replace the traditional financial system. Zebec's exploration of payment methods encourages different users to manage their assets more flexibly. The programmable nature of the protocol allows other projects to establish continuous connections with user balances for automated payments, investments, and transactions, enhancing its composability and creating more possibilities.
Similar flow payment protocols include Superfluid, Sablier, and Drips launched by Radicle.
Superfluid is currently only available on the xDai and Polygon networks and can be used with wallets like MetaMask. Its usage is almost identical to Zebec, both involving packaging and sending.
Sablier was established earlier and is deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, having developed a Dapp. Compared to the other two, it has advanced further. It currently supports a wide range of tokens, including DAI, Aave, 1inch, Aleph, SAI, USDC, cDAI, cUSDC, and more.
If the wallet does not have the desired token to send, it also supports direct redirection to channels for users to purchase. Using it for flow payment requires selecting a time period for direct payment, with time specified down to the hour, such as 5 hours or 1 year, 2 days, and 3 hours.
Drips, launched by Radicle, is also an Ethereum protocol that allows users to conduct flow payments. Creators and developers can issue and sell NFT memberships. However, compared to the previous protocols, its flow payment format is relatively fixed; while it can distribute to multiple accounts, it can only choose how much DAI to send each month, with time and token types being relatively fixed.
Overall, compared to other projects, Zebec offers flexibility in terms of time, format, and composability. It facilitates salary distribution for businesses, simplifies fund management for investors, and ensures that ordinary users can protect their interests while choosing diverse financial services. However, there is still room for growth in the number of supported tokens.
The composability of DeFi has created a prosperous on-chain environment. It remains to be seen what surprises will arise when the composability of payments is significantly enhanced.
