Building a Decentralized Crypto Payment Gateway with Autonomi - Seeking Feedback

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Hey everyone,

I’m exploring an idea for a new crypto payment gateway and would love to get your thoughts on the concept.

The Problem

Current crypto payment solutions (Stripe, PayPal, BTCPay, Coinbase Commerce) all rely on traditional cloud infrastructure - AWS, Google Cloud, etc. This creates:

  • Single points of failure
  • Dependence on Big Tech
  • Centralized data storage risks
  • Potential censorship vulnerabilities

My Proposed Solution

Build a crypto payment gateway that uses Autonomi’s decentralized network for all data storage and processing instead of traditional cloud services.

How It Would Work

  • Merchants integrate via standard API (just like existing gateways)
  • Customers pay with cryptocurrency as usual
  • Backend handles conversion, confirmations, settlements
  • Key difference: All payment data, transaction records, merchant info, and system logs live on Autonomi’s distributed network instead of AWS/Google servers

The Value Proposition

  • True data sovereignty - no reliance on centralized cloud providers
  • Enhanced privacy - distributed storage across the network
  • Censorship resistance - no single entity can shut down the service
  • Eliminate Big Tech dependency - fully decentralized backend infrastructure

Technical Questions I’m Wrestling With

  1. Performance: Can Autonomi handle the throughput requirements for real-time payment processing?
  2. Consistency: How do we ensure data consistency across the distributed network for financial transactions?
  3. Compliance: How would this architecture handle regulatory requirements in different jurisdictions?
  4. Cost: Would network fees make this economically viable compared to traditional cloud costs?

What I’m Looking For

  • Technical feasibility feedback - Am I missing major technical hurdles?
  • Market interest - Would merchants actually want this over existing solutions?
  • Architecture insights - Anyone with experience building on Autonomi who can share lessons learned?
  • Regulatory concerns - What compliance challenges am I not seeing?

The core functionality would remain familiar to merchants - same API patterns, same user experience - but with a fundamentally different (and more decentralized) backend architecture.

What do you think? Is this solving a real problem or just “decentralization for decentralization’s sake”? Any major blind spots I should be considering?

I am just an ideas person not a devloper so if it is a good idea let me know and we can discuss in more detail.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Levi

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You might be a tad too early. There will be coming a transaction data type which will probably serve you better than the current data type records on the network

The network is in the very early stages and efficiency of storage and retrieval are improving resulting in these actions happening faster

The speed of doing one transaction will be slower than using a central mainframe infrastructure (faster) or a cloud provider (not so fast).

Where you can see a much faster transaction rate is in the fact that the transactions can be done highly parallel since the network is not only decentralised but also highly distributed.

But the decentralisation and distributed nature can make it tricky for a general financial transaction system. What i mean here is that the native token when introduced is not needing to interface with 3rd party systems, be it crypto, fiat, credit cards etc.

As to regulations, if it is autonomous then likely to not be such an issue since no one is running it. But if some entity is running it then that is the one they go after.

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This network does not have computation layer. So it is impossible to have truly decentralized exchange on it. For that, there would have to be some upper layer on top of autonomi.

I have seen a proposal for plugin system, where let say some % of node operators, or even maybe independent group decide to run some consensus group on computation tasks, and that consensus would be stored on autonomi and signed with multisig by that group. This in combination with already existing erc20 arbitrum chain would open endless possibilities of truly decentralized network.

Sooner or later someone will start his community service like that, consensus group could earn in Ants, where services would pay fees in ants for that.(Or in ETH directly).
They can do cross computing by using hashes of stored data on Autonomi and use those hashed in smart contracts on Arbitrum chain.

Basically, just pick any existing crypto project, what it does? It has its own consensus group doing some decisions and storing results of those decisions on blockchain. So what prevents them to do the same, but instead in blockchain store it on autonomi?

So I believe sooner or later we will have modified clones of them, using autonomi as storage layer and allowing infinite amount of combinations, since from that moment all those projects can intercommunicate using autonomi.

Just a simple example, imagine Chainlink storing their oracle data directly on autonomi. Bang, you have a decentralized trusted realtime data on autonomi with decentralized execution of computation.
Will Chainlink migrate to Autonomi? No. Can you fork it and migrate it? YES!

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Hey Herodotos, thanks for clarifying that.

Given Autonomi doesn’t have a computation layer, do you think it makes sense to build a SaaS orchestration layer on top of it that handles payment processing logic (signing transactions, confirmations, settlement coordination) while storing all the data and logs in Autonomi?

Basically, the idea would be to decentralise storage and transparency, but still have a lightweight SaaS backend to tie everything together. Do you see any issues with that approach, or any examples of projects doing something similar?

Also, curious if you think that SaaS layer could be packaged as a paid service, or whether it would make more sense as an open-source community tool.

Kind regards, Levi

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I have no idea:) There are many hybrid products that mix centralized service with decentralized data processing. Even autonomi core network software, which claims it is using decentralized architecture is actually using centralized Arbitrum server for erc20 transactions. Trusted, but centralized(they track IPs btw). The wallet software does not talk to the arbitrum network directly, but is using a shortcut by introducing central point of failure. The reason is speed and less complexity.

We are very far from easy user friendly solutions that are 100% decentralized. Autonomi is a good step forward, that can be used as a foundation for future 100% decentralized internet solutions.

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I like this line of thought - separating consensus from storage.

While these specialist nodes could be integrated tightly into Autonomi, it doesn’t need to be so. It may not even be desirable. A decoupled ‘layer 2’, which does arbitrary decentralised compute, but writes the results to Autonomi, could be very effective.

These layer 2 networks could have their own bidirectional communication, their own p2p communication networks, etc, but they would be bound together at the storage layer that Autonomi could provide.

Integrating directly into the Autonomi consensus system could also be possible, but I’d wonder if it was worth the effort? To become part of the fabric of the network would require a high bar of reliability and it would force these other services into the Autonomi communication straight-jacket. That may make sense in some cases, but probably overkill for all.

I understand this is just an example, but interestingly/tangentially, Autonomi would make a great pairing as a Chainlink data provider.

Right now, I gather they often depend on a handful of REST APIs hosted by data providers for any service (e.g. weather data, etc). Storing this data on Autonomi, in immutable form, would be a huge benefit for smart contracts that depend on oracles.

Chainlink have libraries to support HTTP calls already. Either integrating tightly with AntTP or directly with the client libraries would get us there. Probably not a big lift on their part, should they have the enthusiasm to do it.

As one of the big players, I’d hope that the team consider reaching out to the likes of Chainlink too, in due course.

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Thanks, Traktion, Neo and Herodotos, for your ideas and insight. I will see what I can come up with. Cheers

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