Web3 Payments and Financial Management with Hashleap

All right, we're live. GM, GA, GE everybody. Welcome to what's going to be another great DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute window for builders to showcase something they are passionate about or have been working on in Web3. This could be an awesome project you've been working on, demonstrating unit testing best practices, automation goodies, smart contracts, how to structure a project, etc. Basically, if you've got a passion for something, this is your opportunity to share it with the community. And today, I'm ecstatic to introduce to you nas. You DD members, you might know nas, who's going to be giving us an overview of his project called HashLeap. Welcome, nas.

Thanks Narb, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Yeah, just a little background about myself. Should I just start or do you have anything else Narb?

Yeah, yeah, certainly, yeah, please. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Great. Okay. So yeah, of course my name is Nasir and I'm a software engineer with more than a decade and a half experience in the startups. Before HashLeap, I co-founded a company called Rodeo with two other co-founders to provide analytics to gig workers for which we raised about a million dollars in pre-seed. I architected and built the first MVP along with the initial engineering team I brought in. It is still going strong. Before Rodeo, I was engineering director at Wise, which many of you probably know. Previously it used to be called TransferWise, where I led the engineering teams spread across different time zones. I was also one of the first engineers at Deliveroo where I helped develop and scale the product and the engineering teams. I worked at a few other startups, one of which was acquired by TripAdvisor. So yeah, that's about me. Shall I jump in about the HashLeap, Narb, or do you have...?

I guess just before we get into that, that was quite, that's quite a background you've got and very impressive. How did you find yourself getting into Web3 and getting into Developer DAO?

Ah, okay. So let me cover Developer DAO, then I can cover the Web3 because I think that might just lead into the HashLeap story. So Developer DAO, actually it was Will Kempster who introduced me to Developer DAO. Will and I basically, just by chance, work from the same WeWork office in London. I mean, he's great. So and we started talking about things and I basically introduced him to HashLeap and then basically he said, okay, you know what, we have this initiative, Developer DAO, and this is what we do. And I think Developer DAO, when I heard about it, I think it's a great initiative to educate developers in Web3 and bring them together. So yeah, I joined Developer DAO. I think I have voted like on few proposals so far, which is great and I would love to be involved in more things. Yeah, and I think the few other things that I've seen recently, Developer DAO that is doing, like around Prestart and DD Fellowship and the Perks, the Get Perks platform. I think those things are pretty good in terms of, let's say, giving initial boost to people who want to build something in this field. So yeah, that's about Developer DAO.

So Web3, so often on I, I mean, we all and most of the engineers, like I think we have been dabbling here and there with, let's say, blockchain or let's say someone in our group is doing that. So I have not been very deeply involved until 2020. So around that time when I think Ethereum started to go for proof of stake, I think then around that time I started digging a bit deeper into it. And surprisingly around 20, beginning of 2022, I had end of 2021, beginning of 2022, yeah, I had some tokens lying around and I basically wanted to get rid of them, if possible, without incurring any taxes. So I looked around to either donate or maybe use them to buy something basically instead of going and selling them. But it was actually quite hard to find anything easily. So and which was quite frustrating considering crypto is such an efficient way to transfer value. So after doing a bit of research, I started to build a dApp for donations basically. And as it happens, you rarely end up with the same product or idea that you start with. So after getting some very useful feedback from some friends and initial users, I kind of moved HashLeap to what it is now basically. So that's kind of the background. Any questions on top of that?

No, well I mean, that's a perfect segue right into it, so but that's an awesome background story. But yeah, we'd love to get into HashLeap.

Cool, thanks. So I will basically jump into, I'll share my screen and I'll talk, I'll share like about few slides and talk about HashLeap and then basically I'll jump right into the demo basically. So let's see, sharing screen is always fun, so let me try that. Okay, share screen, screen, I think this is the one I want to share. Okay, let me first present. Okay, I don't want to do this. Okay. Is it, can you see my screen Narb?

Yes, yep, yep, we can.

Great. Okay, so yeah, so we are talking about HashLeap today and HashLeap is basically a Web3 payments and financial management platform. So what are we trying to do with HashLeap? So basically...

So if you think, the businesses who accept and pay in crypto have a hard time basically managing and reconciling their finances, leading to frustration, loss in productivity, and they spend a lot of time basically in keeping track of their finances. So we are trying to help in the management, at least in the beginning, to help people manage their crypto finances basically.

And how are we trying to do that? So especially we are targeting initially the small and Web3 small businesses and who are basically working in the, especially working in the Web3, and also related with that, the contractors and freelancers if you think. So a lot of people who work for DAOs and lot of other developers who work as freelancers or contractors for these Web3 companies. So and they get paid in crypto. So helping them manage their payments. And then also to the businesses who are doing those payments, so providing them off and on-chain tools to reconcile their and manage their payment workflows efficiently. And the main idea is basically to help save them their time and money by providing integrations and complementary products. We are underway to add some of those and quite a lot of that has already been done so far.

Let's go to the next screen. So so far we from the product point of view, we have a couple of things. So one is we have payment links. So we have two types of payment links. One is fixed payment link and the other is range payment link. Fixed is basically let's say you are arranging let's say a conference or you are and for which you want to charge some fixed amount tickets to people, then you can generate a payment link and then basically share that and collect those payments as crypto. And the range is basically it started with like donations. When I started building HashLeap initially I thought more from the charity point of view, but as I talked to more people then it basically evolved. But I kept the range feature because I think it is quite useful for people especially who want to collect let's say donations or just what do you call like buy me a coffee kind of thing for their projects. So that's payment links and then we have invoices. So invoices we have a one-time invoice and the recurring invoice. So recurring invoice is basically you can set it up with certain frequency and then the invoice will go to your clients and then the clients can pay basically. Yeah, so that's a very quick and brief overview of HashLeap. I don't know if there is any question in the chat or shall I just jump right into the demo?

No, we can jump right in. Crowd, if you have any questions for nas, please post them in the YouTube chat on the as you see and I will ask on your behalf.

Great. So I'm going to stop sharing this screen and have to share my another screen so that I can show the demo. Cool, cool. Present, share screen. I think this is the one, I think I can share this one. Just give me a minute, actually I'm going to open another window. Okay, great.

So basically you start with HashLeap.io. You can see my screen by the way, Narb? Just.

Yep, yep, we can.

Great, okay. So yeah, so you start with HashLeap.io. So when you go to HashLeap.io, then we have there... okay, hang on a minute. So we have the join private beta button there. So you click that and then basically you get into you come to this page.

So we initially started we kind of thought about whether we should have a wallet login to start with or not, but then we kind of we thought that okay connecting collecting email at this stage is more important for us than a wallet address because we have like some notification features as people pay or get paid basically. So we started with the email address and at some point we will add an option where people can login basically with the wallet as well. So I will skip through the I won't go through the sign up process because we don't have a sign up process. So you can just sign in and start using. The only thing is after signing in as a user or a merchant, you have to provide certain information about like about yourself because we also want to make sure that okay there's no fraud or anything happening.

So let's say I sign in using my email. And then I get an email basically, I go to my email and then I'm going to click on that.

Right, okay. So I'm going to refresh this page now. So we basically use Magic Link and we don't use password because it just makes everything very simple.

So I come to my dashboard. So right now on my dashboard I can see my payment link transaction and I can see my invoice transactions. So if I click on any of these rows basically it just shows me a little bit more detail and if I click on the transaction hash then basically... right, okay, it opened a new window so you can't see it, but let me just click here. So I come basically to Etherscan and then I can see my transaction. So you can see 1BA, it starts with 1BA and finishes with B66.

So that's what the transaction is and the same thing for the invoices. So we are redesigning the whole UI at this stage so it is going to look very, very different in the next few weeks but right now it's first version and it's pretty simple simple at this stage. So payment links, I'll quickly go there. So this is, so basically when you come to payment links you can see that your not activated payment links and the activated payment links. So when you initially create any payment link they are not activated because it's kind of a you could say precautionary step we have so that you don't accidentally just make a link available even when not everything is correct.

So let's say if I want to create a payment link, so basically I go here and let's say I say... I won't create at this stage because it might take me longer. So let's say Developer DAO demo, let's just say dd_demo and then I select a fixed or a range. So if I select fixed, so I have just the amount so I can let's just say four, but if I select let's say range then you can see it changes from and to. So I can just basically say let's say I'm just collecting some payment for my for the open source work that I'm doing. I could say okay I'm fine to accept anything from 1 to 100. So then I can get that and then I can select whether it is going to be USD, GBP or Euro and then I can specify the tax if I want to add anything and then specify what information I want to collect. And this is useful because in case I want to get in touch with any of those people.

So I'll just go there instead of creating. So now here I have some not activated payment links so if I click on one of those, this is a funny one, Colodge in Montenegro or... so so this is let's say if I click on this one which is a fixed one and I click so this is not activated. Once I activate it it will move from here to the bottom. So let's not activate this and I just want to see the preview. So this is how the payment link looks like. Right, so this is for the conference ticket and it's pretty simple and I can collect this. And since it is not activated then it says requires activation. So let me... oh actually you can't see it, sorry, it's a new window.

So this is how the payment link looks like. But it requires activation so let me pick one that doesn't require activation. Let's say a donation for open source work. And then it's again preview I click and then I bring it back here.

So you can see that this is my so these are a couple of information I'm collecting. And I can basically say that okay because we are saying that okay total due must be between 5 and 5,000. That's that's what so this is the view for the user who is paying basically. So I can say let's say five and then I just basically connect my wallet. So I think I have enough money in my Ethereum wallet let's see. Okay, Ethereum connected and then I select a token. So now at this stage on HashLeap you can use five chains and few stable coins to collect tokens. And those five chains are basically EVM chains. Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism and Arbitrum. We will add more chains as we go along and more tokens as well. But initially to start with we have to start somewhere and then these are the ones where we thought which are mostly used.

So that's what we have and then the it has the added security of because lot of times people end up sending money their tokens from one chain to the other chain without realizing and they tokens get lost. So in this case if you see that these are the tokens I as a merchant have specified that I can accept I will accept. And when let's say it is the when the user is about to pay then those are the only tokens that they will see basically in the UI what we are seeing now. So for example if you see and these are the tokens we are picking up from their wallets. So for example here if I go to let's say MetaMask so this is what we have like DAI you can say 3108 and then we are not showing Ethereum because you can't pay using Ethereum in this. So if I select let's say one of this then basically we convert that 5 GBP to however much DAI it is going to be live. So now it says that okay 6.23 DAI and then if I click on pay obviously you just connect with MetaMask and then right now I'm connected with MetaMask so that's what I'm going to be using and then I'll just pay using that. Let me reject that for now.

So yeah, that's pretty simple and the moment it you pay and then the the transaction appears in your dashboard basically up here. So this is payment links and obviously you can disable or enable payment links so right now it is active but if I want I can so this is already disabled so but this one is active so I can disable it and I can enable it again later on.

Let's go through the invoicing very quickly. Invoicing so we have as I mentioned earlier the recurring invoices and the and the one-time invoices. So recurring invoices are shown here and then these are the invoices that are awaiting payment and then we have and these are the invoices that I either cancel or some are paid basically. So this is cancel and this paid. I don't think Narb I have enough time to create an invoice so I'll probably just go through one that is already created actually.

But this is how basically it looks like if you want to create one. So you can select it's pretty usual stuff you select your usual due date when you by when you want to get your invoice paid. Title, your basic denomination, you can add the client here so I have like few clients up here. If you have existing one you just select one or you can just create one here and then you can add that. So if I go if I select a recurring invoice then basically I will select a frequency like how frequently I want to get get this invoice sent and then basically I will select and then based on that it will work out the next invoice date. And here we have like some notes we can add and then basically the invoice items the usual stuff so can I type anything? Okay let's say development work development work and then unit price let's say let's say it's 50 per hour so let's say two and then I have two and then tax zero. If I say discount so let's say it's 20 and then I can add and then basically I can create the invoice. And once you create the invoice then...

The other thing that you may have noticed that whenever I am creating the invoices or the payment links the there is a subdomain attached to that. So let's say tomorrow you sign in to HashLeap as Developer DAO then all of your URLs will start with Developer DAO. So for example let me open this invoice view invoice. So you can see here as Dogfooding Ltd. So we give a subdomain to every user or every merchant so that you can tell them that okay so that you can tell your clients that hey if you are receiving an invoice from us then yeah look at the URL. And also we follow certain algorithm for the invoice numbers so that if your clients know that then basically they will know that okay this invoice is actually coming from you. So it's hard to fish basically unless you totally miss that part.

So this is how invoice looks but this one since it is cancelled so I don't have the oh sorry I'm like totally on a different window. Okay come here. Yeah that's what I was saying that so it will be developerdao.hashleap.io. Now this invoice has been cancelled so obviously I can't pay for this. So let me go and pick one up that is not cancelled that I can pay for. And you can see here that I can send a reminder. If I send a reminder then basically because some customers they they basically asked us that you know what it it becomes really hassle that whenever we send invoice then we have to go and ask our customers or our clients that hey have you received the invoice? And then it's kind of painful for them also to reply that hey yes I've received it. So we added this send reminder feature. And to not and we also have like some protection over it so that people don't end up spamming their clients so you can only send like one reminder every 24 hours currently. So you send the reminder and then your client gets email and if they see it then you can see here that okay they have seen your invoice at this time.

So we are like totally fine with that. And then so obviously you can also see the PDF. So okay it has opened in a new window so let me just go back to that. So this is the PDF so you can see there's the PDF and once the invoice gets paid then the client and you both receive an email from HashLeap where you have the PDF for the invoice as well as the the receipt as PDF for the invoice for your records which basically you can go give to your accountants if you want to. Yeah so PDF I've gone through. And we also have added one more thing here called settle. Settling is basically in some cases people end up paying let's say from what do you call the exchanges or through some other means. So in that case we don't end up we don't mark the invoice as settled on HashLeap. Though in that case then you can just go to settle. In some cases people end up paying using fiat then even you could just mark it as fiat and then add a reference and then close it then your invoice gets settled or you can say crypto and then basically you select your chain and then add the transaction ID. Once you add the transaction ID we basically do some checks. Let me see what fails here now. So okay I can't do anything. So yeah since it didn't find anything on Polygon so we throw the error about that but if you add a transaction that exists on Polygon then we look at the value and then if the value matches then we mark it as complete basically.

So yeah, I think there are other things maybe, but I think we are adding like few other things we are overhauling the whole the whole UI and we are adding lot more things and in fact so that people can even add multiple wallets. Yeah, I think we have five minutes so I'll stop sharing my screen now and if you have any questions I would love to handle them.

Yeah man, this is really cool. Well done. How many other people are you working with? Is it just you or...?

Okay. So I started on my own and very quickly I basically took a technical advisor who was who basically worked with me at Wise. And then for when I say design part, so I'm not a frontend engineer. I'm basically all my life I worked on the backend. So I kind of did the frontend myself, but now we have someone who has worked at Nansen and Glassnode in the past, so he he's helping to redesign the whole the everything basically. So yeah, so if you think about the backend stuff, so that's me for now.

Excellent and yeah I share a very similar similar story there. I guess are there any plans to have a kind of a crypto-to-fiat off-ramp when somebody gets paid? So for example if I have one of these links and I set it up to get paid in Ethereum but I don't necessarily want to hold Ethereum when I get it, is there going to be a a feature where you guys will automatically convert that Ethereum to USD or or the British Pound and have that transferred into a bank account or something?

Yeah, so that's a very good question and quite a few other people have asked us but I kind of have a weird kind of reasoning behind this for not doing at least now. One is basically I firmly believe that if we use crypto as a basis for let's say exchanging value then it everything becomes much more efficient. And if we want to increase the crypto economy then if we allow people off-ramping then we won't be able to increase the crypto economy because we are converting it back to the fiat, right? So that's my weird reason but I think I also understand the the other aspect that okay yes people will people still have to pay for their rent and the other stuff. So we might end up doing that but there are like so many other things we can do before getting onto that because I think there are like plenty of other people also doing that so not on the near roadmap right now but yes if if lot of people ask us then yeah we'll think about it.

Yeah, yeah awesome. Yeah the only reason I ask is like there's still some traditional companies out there whose accountants don't like having crypto on the balance sheet. But yeah, yeah totally makes sense. Tell me about it yeah. Yeah, yeah. And another question I had was is it possible to embed those payment links in a webpage or or do you have like a little widget version of it that people can stick on their site kind of like a tip jar or something?

Yes we don't have that at this stage because we just got the private beta out I think a few months ago and not many people have asked us so much so we haven't prioritized that yet. But if enough people ask us for that then yes we'll prioritize it. And I don't think it will take much time yeah.

Gotcha, gotcha. Beauty. We only have about a minute left, so my final question is how can people keep track of HashLeap's progress, if they have questions, how can they reach out?

Yeah definitely, so it's my own Twitter handle which is basically @_nasj and then HashLeap on Twitter is basically just HashLeap. So please follow us on Twitter and yeah I think we kind of regularly update there even when we put something out on a blog post then we we basically communicate there. Yeah.

Awesome. And gang, all of that information will be in the description of this video below as well as the accompanying blog post that will be coming out shortly. But with that unfortunately we are at time. But thank you so much for coming on nas, really appreciate you taking the time to show us HashLeap and yeah really looking forward to it progressing and yeah.

Thank you so much for having me. But I'll end with just couple of points which is basically please use HashLeap for your invoices and payments and try us out and send me feedback and let us know if you have any use case that you want us to cover and we'll try to prioritize that.

Excellent, yeah, you heard it here folks. And with that I want to reveal the QR code for everybody here to scan to claim your Kudus for watching DevNTell in its entirety. So what you'll want to do is take a QR code scanner, a regular QR code scanner, not one from your crypto wallet, scan this code and claim your mint Kudus. So this link will be good for the next hour, so again take out your QR code scanner, your regular one, scan this and claim your Kudus. And nas I have a special link for you that I will share shortly.

Thank you. Thanks.

Yes no problem. And with that, want to wish everybody a very happy Friday, happy weekend and we'll see you back here next week. All right gang, all the best. Cheers.

Thank you.