ALCHEMY - The Global Convergence of Digital Payments
PREAMBLE
A storm has hit the investment market which we are not going to recover from. Crypto investment is that storm. With strict capital controls in place by most countries to control the flow of money and charge high taxes, cryptocurrency gained usage in circumventing capital controls and taxes, leading to an increase in demand. Cryptocurrency has been able to present an easy to use digital alternative to fiat currencies. Offering frictionless transactions and inflation control, investors have been prudent enough to add these currencies in their diversified portfolios as an asset, as the size of the market does not represent a systemic risk. Cryptocurrency employs the use of cryptography that assures high-security processes and verifies transactions personal to each user. Hence, counterfeiting and anonymous transactions are impossible to achieve.
While this revolution is gaining wide acceptance, Alchemy, a leading cryptocurrency payment solution and technology provider in Asia Pacific that powers online and offline merchants with fast, secure and convenient hybrid crypto-fiat payment systems and solutions has arrived.
"Cryptocurrency is a type of digital currency that uses cryptography for security and anti-counterfeiting measures. Public and private keys are often used to transfer cryptocurrency between individuals.
As a counter-culture movement that is often connected to cypherpunks, cryptocurrency is essentially a fiat currency. This means users must reach a consensus about cryptocurrency's value and use it as an exchange medium. However, because it is not tied to a particular country, its value is not controlled by a central bank. With bitcoin, the leading functioning example of cryptocurrency, value is determined by market supply and demand, meaning that it behaves much like precious metals, like silver and gold.
Cryptocurrency transactions are anonymous, untraceable and have created a niche for illegal transactions, like drug trafficking. Because the currency has no central repository, law enforcement and payment processors have no jurisdiction over bitcoin accounts. For cryptocurrency supporters, this anonymity is a primary strength of this technology, despite the potential for illegal abuse, as it enables a shift in power from institutions to individuals."
With that being said, the vision of Alchemy Global Payment Solutions Limited is to provide open source protocols and rapid product development platforms for the ecosystem partners to help them with fast, secure, convenient, flexible and fast-growing global payment solutions, based on the decentralization, smart contracts and consensus mechanisms from blockchain technology.
But before we go any further, please check out this video presentation to get even more acquainted
Now that I have your attention, let’s get right to it.
What exactly is ALCHEMY?
As depicted above and as indicated on the official website of Alchemy, Alchemy is a leading cryptocurrency payment solution and technology provider in Asia Pacific that powers online and offline merchants with fast, secure and convenient hybrid crypto-fiat payment systems and solutions.
In addition, The vision of Alchemy Global Payment Solutions Limited (Alchemy is the brand name of Alchemy Global Payment Solutions Limited while ACH is the Token issued by the Alchemy, and is used as the abbreviation below.) is to provide open source protocols and rapid product development platforms for the ecosystem partners to help them with fast, secure, convenient, flexible and fast-growing global payment solutions, based on the decentralization, smart contracts and consensus mechanisms from blockchain technology. Through the rich experiences of Alchemy and its eco-partners in mobile payment applications, the team is confident to lead the payment industry’s technology application in the blockchain era and to use the solutions where the traditional payment is popular with merchants.
The Vision
Alchemy envisions that backed by decentralization, smart contracts and consensus mechanism of blockchain, Alchemy would enable payment industry players to embrace the new era of payment technology by fully utilizing a series of open source protocols and open R&D platform to improve the efficiency of cross-border payments; to provide merchants and customers with a faster, more secure, more convenient, and more flexible global payment solution.
The Goal
The Goal of Alchemy is to design the payment protocol through community consensus, to build a decentralized, trust powered infrastructure, to expedite the penetration of cryptocurrency into our daily life; and most importantly to return the rights of payment to the merchants, the customer and the market
Alchemy applied the following technology and measures to achieve decentralization:
Decentralization of currencies
Decentralization of Technical Infrastructure
Decentralization of Operational Mechanism
The Impending Challenges
The Problems of Existing Electronic Payment The existing electronic payments are controlled b y centralized industry giants, causing numerous problems such as complicated and blurry rules, discretional right, inefficient dispute management and high fees, etc.
The traditional electronic payment ecosystem involves too many intermediate links and there are many problems. e.g:
Cross-border transactions are costly and inefficient
Items of expenses
A large number of transactions cannot be proceeded because there is no trust between the two parties, and the centralized giant does not provide guarantee services and payment channels
Opaque access rules for merchant/consumer
Serious security and privacy issues
Long processing of transaction disputes
Cumbersome process of reconciliation, settlement and clearing
Overall, the existing blockchain payment problems can be roughly classified into following categories:
Lack of basic payment functions for large-scale commercial applications
Lack of operational support systems needed by commercial applications
Infrastructure issues of blockchain technology
The Alchemy payment network solution for the payment scenario of transnational centralized collection is:
To facilitate this need, the transnational company opens Alchemy Hierarchy of accounts. The accounts are then set according to the company’s hierarchical architecture. Account of each level support sub accounts of various types (which are set according to the need of accounting subjects),for example to support the “payment-collection parallel” model (which is commonly used in financial management of a group) then separate accounts for collection and payment can be set up for companies at each level.
Hierarchy of accounts supports hierarchical authorization management models through which managers of the higher-level accounts could then set permissions for managers of lower-level accounts. For example, account permissions are limited to collection instead of payment, or to conducting restricted payments for designated accounts.
When accounts at all levels of Hierarchy of accounts activate proactive collection permissions, accounts of higher level can regularly conduct automatic collections to account for lower levels within valid durations. This explains how automatic concentration of assets are accomplished in a multi-level system.
Comparison of existing blockchain platforms
Payment is one of the popular application areas of the blockchain, and many innovative projects have emerged.
They can be roughly divided into the following categories:
X-border remittance by working with traditional financial institutions: Ripple, Stellar;
Wallet issuers: Circle, Bitpay;
Providers for daily micropayments: Request, Nano;
Cryptocurrency acquiring aggregators: Coingate, Coinpayments, Pundix;
Decentralization ecosystem for crypto currencies: COTI, Graft;
Payment solutions focusing on unique use cases: Pumapay, uTrust
The Technological Advantages
Alchemy payment consensus protocol can be deployed on various public blockchains, for example, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, EOS, Vite, etc., and at the same time, integrate Layer 2 payment solutions including Lightning Network, Raiden Network and State Channel Network.
Alchemy providesoffline cryptocurrecny acceptance solutions over smart POS and mobile devices, online cryptocurrency payment gateway, and fast access to various applications for online API, SDK and mainstream plugins, for example, wordpress, magento, zencart, etc.
Pioneering in PULLPAY protocol in the payment industry: Supporting blockchain to reauthorize two payment methods — PULLPAY and lightning network PULLPAY — to meet the needs of various scenarios in online and offline subscription.
Offering payment and settlement solutions from crypto to fiat and from fiat to crypto.
Providing an integrated solution for State Channel Network.
The table below refers to the comparisons between Alchemy Vs Existing Blockchain Payment Platforms. Alchemy focuses on providing payment protocols and open source development platforms that enable payment companies to adopt it with faster and reasonably priced services.
About The Ecosystem
Alchemy has an extensive online and offline ecosystem partner network covering payment companies, industry solution providers, developers, merchants, etc. We work with our ecosystem partners to build and run our business model.
In what way does Alchemy’s payment system represent a tokenized ecosystem?
Based on the Alchemy payment consensus protocol (Alchemy), partners can offer merchants a cryptocurrency bill payment solution, including SDK, Plugin, API and/or Gateway (one-stop rapid access).
The supply and demand strategy based on Alchemy’s quantitative transaction risk model, the real-time dynamic exchange rate, payment, currency conversion and network mobility manages the risk caused by the large fluctuations of the cryptocurrency.
Based on Alchemy, the two-layer network expansion schemes such as Lightning Network and Raiden Network are integrated and optimized to compete with fiat payment, accelerate payment and improve experience, and popularize cryptocurrency.
Based on Alchemy, make an offline solution decentralized for the interaction between fiat and cryptocurrency, and empower partners who possess business networks/resources.
Alchemy can reward its payment ecosystem participants by issuing and distributing tokens, which come from the transaction profit and the token reserve.
The experience of building Alchemy system is divided into three stages:
Stage 1: Technical shock
Stage 2: Unlimited possibilities
Stage 3: Focus and implementation
The Business Expansion
Alchemy is collaborating with ecosystem partners to softly launch the application in various scenarios, for example, online entertainment industry, cross-border payment, offline payment acceptance, etc., in order to test the business model of Alchemy and optimize the Alchemy crypto payment solutions.
About ACH Token
ACH is the token of whole Alchemy system. It has a total volume of 10 Billion and no secondary offerings. It is required for deposit of new merchant access and onchain governance. Meanwhile, merchants and payers collect ACH token bonus thru paying. Alchemy distribute most of the commission income to ACH holders. ACH holders have the right, and should to, take part in onchain governance activities.
About ACH Token Allocation
2.5 billion ACH token will be released at the start and 1.8 billion will be locked. 5.1 billion ACH tokens will be distributed to participants through the growing network and transaction mining. 6% of the total no. of tokens are locked in Alchemy payment network as lubrication to ensure flowability.
The Token Distribution goes as follows:
Alchemy Team: 18%
Private placement and IEO: 18%
Ecosystem Incentives: 5%
Consulting Fees: 2%
Network mobility: 6%
Mining (Payment rewards): 51%
Distribution
6%: Network Mobility
2%: Consulting Fees
5%: Ecosystem Incentives
18%: Alchemy Team
51%: Mining (Payment Rewards)
18%: Private Placement & IEO
Distribution of Funds
R&D:
Security: 5%
Policy : 10%
Operation: 10%
Marketing: 10%
Alchemy Fund: 25%
ROADMAP
Q1-Q3 2019
P1: Smart POS integration for accepting payments in cryptocurrency
P2: Payment acceptance on Lightning Network MVP
P3: PULLPAY MVP
S1: Offline payment acceptance solutions for cryptocurrency
S2: Merchant POC for offline payment acceptance
Q4 2019
P4: Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, Prestashop, Opencart, Zencart, etc. Shopping Cart Payment Plugin
P5: PULLPAY V0.5
P6: Bitcoin P2P Purchase APP v0.5
S3: Merchant POC for online payment
S4: Online digital entertainment solutions v1.0 is released
Q1 2020
P7: Alchemy Hub v0.5 is released ( support Raiden Network and State Channel)
P8: Alchemy Hub APP V0.5 is released ( support Raiden Network and State Channel)
P9: Bitcoin P2P Purchase APP v1.0
P10: PULLPAY V0.8
C1: Community working group of Alchemy consensus protocol is establishedC2: Alchemy Consensus Protocol v0.5 is released
Q2 2020
P11: Alchemy Hub v1.0 is released
P12: Alchemy Hub APP v0.5 is released ( support PULLPAY)
P13: PULLPAY V1.0
S5: Online digital entertainment subscription PULLPAY solution
S6: Merchant POC for online digital entertainment subscription PULLPAY solution
Q3 2020
P14: Alchemy Hub v1.5 is released
P15: Alchemy Hub APP V1.5 is released
P16: PULLPAY V1.5
S7: Multinational centralized payment acceptance solutions
Q4 2020
P17: Alchemy Hub v2.0 is released
P18: Alchemy Hub APP v2.0 is released
P19: PULLPAY V2.0
S7: Alchemy Consensus Protocol v1.0 is released
Q1 2021
Cooperate with business development, continue to iterate related products, solutions and Alchemy Consensus Protocol
Meet The Amazing Team
Patrick NGAN: CEO
Bin LIU: Partner / Project Management
Janet KIM: Partner/Strategy
Shawn SHI: Partner/Products
Lance XU: Partner/Operations
The Technical Team
Chuan LIANG: Director of Payment Technology
Huarong NIU: Director of Communication Technology
Kai WANG: Director of Blockchain Technology
KT SOH: Head of Singapore Technology Team
Ryan TIPONES: Head of Philippines Technology Team
Kim-Aun GAN: Head of Thailand Technology Team
The Business Team
Judy LI: Director of Strategy & Operations
Erica LAM: Director of Business Development
Angie LI: Head of North Asia
Glen LEONG: Head of SE Asia
John TAN: Head of Key Client Servicing
The Consultants & Investors
Dr. Justin ZHAN: Scientist of Big Data and Cryptography
Sean MOSS-PULTZ: Scientist of Blockchain Security
Yan MU: Well-known Entrepreneur
Seema Khinda JOHNSON: Scientist of Blockchain Security
Natasha LV: Senior Compliance Expert
Alan TIEN: Product Innovation Expert
Kai Yee GOH: Cross-border Remitttance Expert
Lin LI: Strategic Development Expert
Be a part of this incredible project. Download the whitepaper for the full scoop.
Till next time…
For more information, please visit:
WEBSITE: https://www.achpay.org/alchemy_english.html
WHITEPAPER: https://www.achpay.org/static/files/V3.8_WP-E_Alchemy_20190906.pdf
TELEGRAM: https://t.me/alchemy_official
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/AlchemyGPS/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Alchemygps
MEDIUM: https://medium.com/@alchemyGPS
Author: Cryptoholical
My Bitcointalk Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2487106
Disclaimer: This article was published in terms of the bounty campaign. I am not a project team member or its representative but a supporter of this incredible project.