FtC x EC Hackathon | Workshop: Stellar & Mobile Money Networks (Oct 2024)

um well let's go okay uh do you to get started um okay yeah cool um so hey everyone uh thank you so much for joining the uh the workshop basically we're going to go over how to get started in the uh Stellar ecosystem and also we're going to talk about mobile Money Networks uh a key focus of our bounties for the financial inclusion track at the uh fting the commons hackathon so yeah so thank you everyone um let's get started uh so first of all uh my name is Chris analio um I'm a developer advocate for the Stellar development foundation I have a pretty you know broad background so feel free to ask me like questions about anything really uh so just a quick overview um so what we're going to cover is we're going to do intro to rust rust is the programming language used to build smart contracts on the Stellar Network um you know the a lot of other ecosystems such as like salana Cosmos polka dot subra um also use rust um and then we're going to talk about the sorbon smart contract platform and some of the uh the dev tools and the ecosystem around it U we're going walk through how to use a stellar CLI and finally we're going walk through uh the concept of mobile Money Networks and how to integrate with uh the mobile money um open API specification so um yeah this is handson if uh you want to follow along please go ahead uh This was meant to be uh a Hands-On open laptop um Workshop but all the stuff is in the docs you know so so basically getting started Stellar first of all you know you go to the docs right developer. stellar.org docks right um and we have a getting started guide of course uh which you can find at the QR code listed above so if you go to the docs the first step is installing rest right so you just copy that command right open up your terminal type in curl you know pass in HTTPS as a protocol right you know standard stuff ensure TL 1.2 is used and then and then pass in um sh. r.

RS and then pipe that to Shell right and then just do the proceed with the standard installation by pressing one um so if if you are installed like that it might take a little while but why why why do we use rust right so rust is you get a lot of advantages of rest right so you get the speed of C you get the robustness and developer velocity and expressiveness of Python and the concurrency of go right so it's a language built for systems development right and systems development has like higher requirements usually than like than web apps you know uh if you remember the crowd strike outage that took took out millions of PCS that was because of a null pointer you know in in their C library you know so but M Management's tough and rust really helps you out with that um through its ownership system uh so you could confidently write fast you know uh current applications with confidence so after you install rest uh the next step is you want to add a Target um so yeah just go to the docks yeah copy down uh that command rust up Target add WM 32 unknown unknown um then yeah that will give you a Target so that we can U compile rust into web assembly so uh let's go over Sor Bond real quick so so basically um a main the main piece the center piece of your workflow is going to be the Stellar CI so basically the best way to get it is to install it uh from source using cargo the rust it's a like a package manager um so you can just take that command cargo install locked uh stellar uh features opt which gives you a optimized build um and yeah that will install the CLI for you um it's a really versatile gray tool for building on Stellar so yes so sban is built with performance sustainability and Security in mind you know so it helps you build like complex apps without performance bottle decks and it ensures that transactions never conflict it allows for True parallel execution significantly increasing increasing throughput um so after you get the CLI one thing you probably want to do is configure it for testet uh it'll save you a lot of boiler plate if you just pre-configure um um using this command Stellar Network ad Global testet RPC URL passing in the uh store Bond RPC node uh and then the static network path phrase this will save you from having to type that in every single time um it'll save you a lot of keystrokes so yeah just go to the docs um go to the section about configuring the CLI for tested and you should be good to go um so after you get your CLI all set up let's actually use this CLI uh so the first thing we probably want to do is um generate an identity right so let's generate a key pair uh using the command Stellar Keys generate double- Global uh whatever name you want uh Network testet right and then using ex Stellar Keys address uh whatever name you used that will give you uh the public key of of that identity that you just generated right so again just go to the docs check it out um run that command um and that's how you generate a key paer um next upep um so on that same page on the leftand side if you go to the hello world section we can actually go into how to bootstrap uh and create a new project so using the command Stellar contract and knit uh whatever you want your project to be named that will actually create a project skeleton for you you know so if you CD into the project you dive into it in the SRC folder you'll find a contract li. RS right so there yeah so just to review you know docs go to Hello World create a new project and just uh copy that Stellar contract and nit Command right so Stellar contract and knit whatever you want your project to be named it'll create the folder for you um and then yeah it'll give you a a very basic hello world smart contract and then you can use Stellar contract build and that will actually build your contract so next step so now that we generated a contract and we built it we're ready to actually deploy it to test n so yeah on the docks you know left hand side go to deployment uh and then useing command Stellar contract deploy uh deploy the test net using that key pair and identity you generated um and then passing in that Target regenerat as well and oh yeah so from the top yeah so the docs deploy the test it go to the deploy section copy that command Stellar contract deploy testet of course um your identity your Keir that you generated and the wasm Target that we set up right and then so after you deploy you get back the um the hash the address of that deployed contract on test d uh so there's like a lot of lot of stuff in the Stellar ecosystem for this hackathon you probably want to focus on uh just a couple key components of it so e a wallet of course right um and then we have sdks and whatever uh language you want to use all all the common languages you know python JavaScript typescript um and then we also have something called The Horizon API which gives you programmatic access to blockchain operations you know if you're not necessarily a web 3 native developer you could use Horizon API and just make some rest API calls to interact with the blockchain and then we're going to go over a couple uh Dev tools um such as okashi which is a um it's got like remix in the evm ecosystem it's like a in browser uh simple ID and yeah the CLI is going to be a core piece of your workflow uh so as far as wallets uh there's a couple different uh walls you can choose from uh the simplest probably is freighter freighter is a chrome plugin just like metamask um you can find it at Freer doapp you can scan that QR code um it's going to have a very familiar user interface um one great thing about stellar is there's no system of faucets uh built into Freer there's if you configure testet or you select the drop down for testet there will actually be a link or a button to click uh for a service called friendbot which will give you 10,000 test xlm um for your development needs so yeah no need to jump through hoops for faucets it's built right into the wallet and as I said before uh okashi can be found at okashi ddev and um it's not great for very complex projects but it's good for you know prototyping for you know doing a proof of concept if uh you want to figure out a piece of logic or a function and see what's going on you know in the memory you know you can do the full workflow of build uh deploy and invoking uh functions on a on a deployed smart contract so yeah it's really fast uh developing Loop for simple tasks but yeah you definitely want to use your IDE for complex uh contract development so if you want to participate in a a stellar uh Network Bounty you probably want to on board to the Stellar ecosystem right and leverage all of our resources we have a a really friendly Community a really helpful Community um everyone is focused on building um there's there's no talk about speculation or anything everyone's just focused on you know this being productive and building and uh you know advocating for the ecosystem so they you know the drill uh when you want to learn a new technology you dive into the docks you look at some videos um and you start writing some code right um we have lots of code samples we have lots of example contracts you know um like if you want to learn how to do build like a time lock contract for like doing escro we have all the standard contracts uh as examples in the docs um and after this hackathon if you want to keep going we actually have a program called the Stellar Community f fund that gives you up to 150k USD to build on the Stellar ecosystem and right it's a gameplay Loop so you build you write some code you learn and rinse and repeat and you get a little bit better every day so now let's dive into the concept of mobile Money Networks so this is like a core focus of our hackathon bounties so well why is it such a big deal so this actually surprised me to learn but there are 1.75 billion users using mobile Money Networks and the reason why is because they work on feature phones feature phones are like really simple like they're like imagine like an old Nokia phone from like the 2000s um then not a smartphone basically it allows you to uh transact do like P2P payments do vendor or Merchant payments using a very simple phone and a text interface um and and that's reality for um a quarter of the population of the planet right so when people talk about onboarding the next billion users to blockchain it's like here they are um they're on mobile Money Networks you know and they're transaction in like uh a trillion and a half you know a year and you know you can see his double digit growth across the board right um but yeah no don't take my word for it do your own research um gsma is um is a large uh organization it's uh sponsored by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation uh theyve Partnerships across Industries uh definitely look them up and look up the uh mobile money state of mobile money uh report uh linked at the bottom of this slide so so what's the main problem with mobile Money Networks is that they're fragmented sorry um basically each mobile money network is is is like an island it's it's like a regional closed off Network um and so you have all these people on these little Islands you know each using their own their own little like mobile Money Network you know so so they're mainly Regional um there's no interconnection uh between mobile Money Networks or between mobile money and the traditional Finance ecosystem and there's no uh con ction between um mobile Money Networks and the blockchain so they're kind of isolated and they're on their own so so basically there's a couple different ideas about how to solve this problem so there's you know there's like Regional consortiums of mobile Money Networks that that kind of group together um and form like a coalition um a a more holistic approach is this mobile money open API specification so so basically the idea is anyone that adheres to the specification is able to interact so if we're able to align the industry on this specification we'd be able to unite uh 1.75 billion people on all these networks uh not just with each other but also with the blockchain and uh traditional Finance potentially um so yeah so that that's kind of the um the idea behind our hackathons so so basically I if if that's something you're interested in um you could go to developer. Mobil money api.

um and pull down the uh open API uh specification um basically just as shown here uh you just go to that URL go to the um oas3 UI button and then down download that yaml file um which is the uh specification in yaml format so what do you do with uh this file um well one thing you can do is you get an app called Postman it's a very common app uh used for U interacting with rest apis um so pretty simple just go to post.com um select your OS and uh what's cool about Postman is if you as shown here if you click on import you just grab that gaml drop it in and uh you choose an open API 3.0 collection and click import it'll actually um they'll actually build out all of these uh endpoints for you um with yeah so it'll like uh convert that documentation into like actionable um into an actionable like rest client then you can execute these calls and then another great thing Postman does is so if you go to an actual um endpoint you can generate uh code um to to basically invoke um that endpoint you know so if you want to use like axio as no JS um it'll generate that code for you so um we have this hackathon guide which uh should walk you through pretty much everything about what it takes to be successful on hackathon uh it's located at this uh QR code uh but also um it's linked in our resources on on door hacks so so for anyone if anyone's new to hackathons uh hey here's like the basic workflow you know team formation our heon guide like walks through that you know the different skill sets you need uh project planning creating your mockup uh in your mockup UI and like your user flows you know creating your MVP documenting your MVP creating a detailed video with a compelling narrative and also a demo of your product and then working on a pitch you know so like a really great narrative goes a long way to you really highlighting and elevating your project so it's definitely worth the effort to invest so one thing the Stellar Network focuses on is real world impact um yeah for instance my my go-to example is that the un uh Refugee agency used Stellar Aid assist to distribute 4 million in Aid to displaced Ukrainian refugees um so a it's just really great to see blockchain you know having a real impact in the world um so yeah so let's talk about um our actual bounties our theme and our tracks right so our the theme is financial inclusion right um the global South historically has been left out of the Global Financial system so so how do we how do we create you know just basic Financial Services you know and expand access to these billions of people that don't have bank accounts that don't have access to credit or like anything they need um to to Really uplift themselves um and yeah they're stuck with cash um and yeah it's just a very difficult situation right um so so track one track one uh is more General it does not include uh mobile money um API integration if all if you just want to build a d app on S mod if you just want to write a smart C contract build a d app then you you want to do track one right so basically you want to create some type of financial D app leveraging Stellar's uh infrastructure um so one of the great things about Stellar is our very extensive um onramp and off-ramp um ecosystem uh we we call the system anchors so basically we have uh Partnerships with traditional Finance institutions like bunny gram so that you could actually go on chain to cash um an example of this would be for instance um a remote worker in a rural uh Colombian Village is a remote personal assistant for someone in New York so how do you how do you pay someone who operates on cash who lives in uh Columbia in in the country um well well um the way we've solved this is you you you do an onchain payment with usdc and then um the the person in Columbia could go to their local Money Gram agent um and they'll walk you through the process and that usdc can be converted into local currency and they could have cash in hand um so yeah so if if you do approach this track like you definitely want to think how to Leverage The Unique advantages of the Stellar Network um you you know such as our uh acre ecosystem um but yeah the the use cases you want to Target are yeah you know just seemingly simple things that like affect people in the global South like for instance a lot of a lot of countries in America have extremely high inflation so just getting access to stable coins on chain is is a huge game changer a lot of times you know just being able to have your savings in usdc um on chain and then being able to pull out local currency as needed is you know is game changer for a lot of people um in Latin America um so yeah I mean just you know they think about the basic services that people need you know micr lending uh for people that want to like you know uh build up their farm for instance you know so just create creating D apps that really um unlock Financial inclusion for historically um underserved regions of the world uh is kind of what this track is all about um if you do want to tackle the the mobile money open API uh track uh that would be track two right so basically you as we discussed before you want to use um one of our Technologies like the Horizon API or you know one of our sdks um to to one you know integrate with the mobile money open API specification um and then hook that into the Stellar ecosystem in a novel way um but we have a lot of example use cases uh shown in uh the resources we linked on dur hacks but they like imagine um initiating a payment on a mobile Money Network um that that ends in someone pulling cash out of money gram or it ends in a usdc stable coin payment so so basically the idea is to kind of brainstorm like how can we bring these fragmented mobile Money Networks into into the blockchain web 3 ecosystem right you know because if we unlock that that's 1.75 billion people you know that's yeah that's and it'll be a huge uplift for him um and then our third track is so of course anytime you have off offchain data uh if you want to bring that data onchain you need an oracle right so um if if you're very technical and um you want to tackle this track three this is basically um you you will take uh the mobile money open API specification and uh basically integrate it um and you take the data verify it you know but follow we have this uh um all these use cases and all these details flushed out in the resources on Dora hack but basically you know um you want to bring offchain data from these mobile Money Networks onchain you using an or a decentralized Oracle system right um cool uh yeah and so as I mentioned before if you want more information on these tracks uh dock.io hackathon FTC 2024 tracks pound Financial inclusion by Stell uh you can scan this QR code or just go to that URL or just search for um funding the commons uh Stellar dorah hacks and will pop up right um so this hecon is online primarily but there is an optional in-person event so if you're going to Devcon uh there there's going to be a an event on site um and yeah St Stellar is going to be there we're going to be there supporting Builders so uh if you're coming to Devcon if you're coming to Bangkok uh you should definitely come by uh this inperson event uh you can find it on Luma uh FDC Bangkok 2024 scan that QR code or just go to that URL listed on the slide and uh yeah that's about all I have um yeah you know there some of our there some of our ideals are building for impact you know having real world impact from onchain um you know building for innovation of course and interoperability you know cross trade future um so yeah thank you everyone um yeah again we have this hackathon Survival Guide which contains a lot of great resources you can scan this QR code to find it uh but let me know if anyone has any questions yes I saw there were some questions from Hunter in the chat I don't know if any are relevant at this point some of them are already answered but if you just quickly want to take a look at them and also if you'd be happy to share maybe about some of the the use cases of um you know maybe um Distributing uh funds I know we talked about it prior to the call quickly uh of um how star has been used for example to distribute humanitarian aim and maybe Inspire or like uh share maybe some of the solutions that you would like to see build during the haup down um sure yeah so so definitely like like in addition to you know granting giving people access uh to stable coins on chain um you know you could also build something that is yield bearing something that's essentially uh a savings account that leverages uh yield bearing um assets like tokenized uh treasury bills or or leverages defi yield um in a safe risk managed way um that kind of abstracts away the complexity of Defi and and makes it into a simple savings account um yeah just like things that normal people can use you know uh that's like really the focus like so so what do people need people need to be able to do P2P payments they need to be able to do uh payments to Merchants they need a savings account um ideally they want protection from inflation um if they live in the high inflation country um and ideally uh they would have access to some kind of yield bearing account so that they could grow um and uplift themselves over time um another great idea would be like a microloans platform a lot of people at the global South don't have access to any kind of financing uh so without financing like how do you buy new equipment for your your store or or your farm or that they what if um you know there's emergency you know and you don't have access to credit so yeah so so basically extending basic Financial Services is one one thing definitely but then um yeah I mean does that answer your question like I could give more use cases um yeah if if you'd like to share we're we still have some time and maybe that's going to also give uh some inspiration for for the questions um yeah can feel free to to either uh unmute yourself if you'd like to add directly or just Dr a question in the chat okay okay yeah let me go through chat okay J hello hello um I don't really understand what oh wait a rust evm wait yeah I'm not sure yeah Hunter I'm not sure what you mean by a rust evm contract could you give me more contacts there uh there is they like transpiled um stripe yeah yeah we definitely have a partnership with stripe uh let me double let me look up that resource yes I link you um the anchor Network any specific pain points with money gram uh from the developer perspective you do need a minimum number of users to get an API call so um you can't really access test that until you've already built out an application so you need to mock out the calls um let me see uh a way to charge their clients in crypto a way to pay Provider Services local currency a way to save money protect themselves from Hy hyperinflation yeah yeah those are all fantastic use cases that would definitely um fall under track one uh pter asked what about in the form of tokenized real world assets um yeah so we through Franklin Templeton there's um an asset called Benji which is a tokenized treasury bills I believe um and there's also a company called cell that U has a tokenized treasury called X USD I believe so yeah you do have access to tokenized uh Yi bearing assets um issued on Stellar uh hello can I ask a quick question yeah yeah absolutely please okay so you said something about like um you know changing the funds from being on the blockchain to actual real life currency right so so is that real life currency like for instance if somebody wanted to get like physical cash from uh what's it called you know Latin America like you said does it have to be specific to Latin America like can they get this money from any country uh yeah say so so money gr has like I think 300,000 locations worldwide um they all support every every country um I could link you the docks here but they do have a lot of brick and mortar locations around the world okay so it has to be money gr specifically right or it could be any type of um yeah so so we we do have a partnership with money gram specifically um yeah I yeah there's other FBS like Western Union um so yeah at this point yeah it needs it needs to be a money gr location to do uh to pull out cash from onade stable coin okay thanks yeah do we have any any further questions um see request also if you can share um your contact or maybe uh any way people can reach out to refer to questions because I know some of our Builders are going to watch the recording so um where can they reach you out um yeah yeah show so I'm on telegram or perfect thank you I guess last CHS to to ask questions seems like there's no further questions Chris do you have any maybe like final fin to action or any any final words um I mean I'm just really excited to see what people build uh we just had a haon in um in London um using the same track and yeah we we got some really cool D apps that people built um in terms like for for instance one was a it's like Fiverr so so it's a freelancing platform but uh completely onchain and integrated into uh these uh mobile money open API specifications so potentially you know giving people access to the gig economy to like Fiverr um that type of thing um giving people access to people on money on uh mobile Money Networks but people also on chain um yeah so just cool stuff like that just you know just creating Financial opportunity for you know people in need love to see that and yeah also excited uh what everyone's gonna build just reminder that the submission deadline is on November 7th and as Chris said we'll be having an optional inperson um session in Bangkok on November 6 and 7th so hoping to see some of you there as well awesome well thank you again Chris for running the session super great and we'll make sure to share the recording with those that were not able to make it yeah definitely thank you so much thank you bye