Flexa is a pure-digital payments network that uses Amp as collateral to provide instant, fraud-proof digital asset payments for merchants worldwide. Anyone can use apps to spend via Flexa without knowing the existence of Amp, just as anyone can use a credit card without knowing how legacy payment networks function. People who choose to secure the Flexa network by staking Amp tokens. However, earn rewards for decentralizing payment risk. Flexa was built to enable any app to spend any digital currency at any merchant and is live across the US, Canada, and Latin America.
Last September, Flexa introduced Transformers for the Flexa network, providing merchants in El Salvador with a new way to easily accept bitcoin via the Lightning Network without needing to understand complex crypto infrastructure or set up their node. Thanks to this technology, merchants and financial institutions such as Bancoagricola, El Salvador’s largest bank, can instantly accept Lightning Network payments while receiving the asset of their choice.
This year, Flexa announced the rollout of additional Transformers to enable direct payments from even more blockchain networks. These Transformers power the new Flexa Payments products, enabling instant digital currency payments from every app for even more merchants around the globe.
Now, Amp stakers will have the option to stake their Amp as collateral to any of the 10+ fully integrated apps. Flexa recently announced as Developer Grant recipients or any of twelve new Transformers, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Celo, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Lightning, Litecoin, Polygon, Solana, Tezos, and Zcash. Additional transformers for other networks anticipate launching as demand for other networks grows.
With the addition of these new apps and Transformers, the role of Amp stakers in decentralizing payment risk is more crucial than ever before. Now, stakers can choose from even more collateral pools on Flexa. Given the fixed supply of Amp, this results in competition for collateral as payment volume grows. Flexa uses merchant fees from every successful payment to buy Amp from the open market and distribute it as a staking reward. It enables users of the platform to earn the entirety of value generated within the network via Amp.
With more choices for collateral pools to stake, each staker can decide where to allocate their collateral based on their research and determination of acceptable risk. The first choice stakers make is whether to stake a fully integrated app or a Transformer. Payments made by apps that integrate Flexa’s Spend SDK each have their collateral pool, helping to isolate risk to the individual app rather than the entire network. Staking to a collateral pool of a fully integrated app means the wallet itself would have to allow malicious transactions for collateral to be slashed. While this is possible — hence the need for collateral — it is not an optimal strategy for a bad actor, and thus a staker may decide to stake an individual app is more secure.
If a staker believes that more spenders will transact using a Transformer than via one specific wallet app, they may decide to collateralize the Transformer. In that case, the staker is securing payments made by any app that has not integrated the Spend SDK, since payments made from any fully integrated app automatically utilize the app’s collateral pool. However, since any app can use the Transformer, there may be more risk of malicious transactions and, thus, more risk of their collateral being slashed. The optimal strategy of which pools to stake differs for each person based on their determination of risk and the ever-shifting balance of collateral and transactions across pools.
With the launch of Flexa Payments, and the new Transformer and app pools in Flexa Capacity, Flexa is taking one more step toward its goal of enabling spending of any asset, from any app, anywhere in the world. To keep up-to-date on the latest developments in the Amp and Flexa communities, follow @amptoken and @FlexaHQ, subscribe to the community digest, and engage with the community in the official discord.
Source: https://medium.com/amptoken/
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