Crypto's Fastest Payments App, Only Possible On Solana | Ted Livingston
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: Crypto’s Fastest Payments App, Only Possible On Solana | Ted Livingston
This 53-minute episode features Ted Livingston, founder and CEO of the newly rebranded Solana payments application, Flipkash (formerly Code). The discussion centers on the evolution of their project, the technical breakthroughs required to achieve near-instantaneous digital cash transfers, and the strategic shift from using the Kin token to stablecoins (USDC).
1. Focus Area
The primary focus is on Web3 Payments Infrastructure, specifically leveraging the Solana blockchain to create a user experience (UX) that mimics and improves upon physical cash. Key themes include digital cash emulation, seamless onboarding, self-custody, and overcoming the latency and fee issues inherent in traditional crypto transactions.
2. Key Technical Insights
- Solana as the Foundation: The team migrated to Solana early (2020) because its speed and low cost were the only viable infrastructure for their vision of instant, global payments.
- Custom Layer 2/Virtual Machine: To achieve true cash-like latency (microseconds) and guarantee transactions even during L1 outages, Flipkash built a custom Layer 2 virtual machine on top of Solana. This VM handles transaction queuing and guarantees settlement without relying on constant L1 interaction, while maintaining self-custody.
- On-Chain Account Costs Mitigation: As SOL price appreciation made standard Solana account rent fees (previously negligible) too high (around $0.31), the custom VM uses a structure akin to “compressed NFTs” for virtual accounts, keeping operational costs low while ensuring self-custody.
3. Market/Investment Angle
- The “Cash Replacement” Niche: Flipkash aims to compete not just with other crypto apps, but with mainstream apps like Venmo and Cash App by solving the specific pain points of physical cash (needing change, ATM trips) while offering superior speed and zero domestic fees.
- Stablecoin Utility: The shift to USDC solves past user confusion regarding volatile tokens (like Kin) and leverages the global acceptance of major stablecoins for easier on-ramping and off-ramping.
- Forced Onboarding Strategy: To solve the “empty wallet” problem common in crypto onboarding, Flipkash requires users to purchase a localized minimum balance (e.g., $20), immediately providing them with usable USDC and demonstrating the app’s utility instantly.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Ted Livingston: Founder/CEO, previously founded Kick Messenger; an early advocate and adopter of Solana infrastructure.
- Flipkash (formerly Code): The payments application being discussed, now focused on USDC and cash emulation.
- Solana (Anatoly Yakovenko): Mentioned as the critical infrastructure partner that made the speed requirements achievable.
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
While not a deep dive, the discussion touches on privacy and compliance. The team noted that while their previous app (Code) used complex mixing layers for privacy, Flipkash’s transactions are obfuscated within the custom virtual machine, offering good privacy by default. However, they voluntarily implement compliance measures (unlike purely anonymous cash) because they recognize the societal need to prevent illicit use, drawing on Ted’s past experience with Kick.
6. Future Implications
The conversation suggests the future of payments lies in abstracting away blockchain complexity entirely. Flipkash aims to deliver an experience so fast and seamless that users treat the underlying technology (Solana, USDC) as irrelevant infrastructure, focusing only on the utility of digital cash. The success of this model hinges on achieving mass adoption through superior UX that even traditional finance cannot match.
7. Target Audience
This episode is highly valuable for Crypto Developers, Blockchain Engineers, Product Managers in Fintech, and Solana Ecosystem Participants. It offers deep insight into advanced L2 architecture, UX design challenges in crypto payments, and strategic pivots in the stablecoin space.
🏢 Companies Mentioned
💬 Key Insights
"Maybe micropayments are too micro. Like you shouldn't be thinking about the 25 cents. You should be thinking about five bucks. And maybe some people will pay that"
"But when they ask me, create an account, put in your credit card. So I have now, I know I'm committing myself to a future of misery, where they're going to keep billing me. They're going to send me promo emails. I'm going to try to cancel. Oh, you want to cancel? You got to call in. You call in, like, you know, half an hour on the phone. They're like, so it's not just that you're paying the money. It's like you're creating a relationship with like a bad ex, basically."
"when you go to pay for things, it's not so much the cost, like obviously the cost matters. But when it comes to an article, like a huge part is the friction."
"We learned a ton from that. The biggest, so for one thing we learned is people would love to get US dollars instead of some free-floating cryptocurrency that they're trying to manage the FX on. So we solved that now."
"if they had micropayments, you know, tons of people would pay a dollar to read that article. It was a crazy article. So I think it's actually like a, and, you know, print media has terrible financial prospects right now, and it's very difficult to monetize."
"How do you make that self-custodial? How do I know to send your phone the money in a trustless way? And that's where this code actually has a signed key. So we're transferring a signed key out of band so that when you come to me, you're like, listen, I saw the code that your phone generated on device, and it's signed so that we Flipkash in between, we can't modify that."