Hello! BitcartCC (https://bitcartcc.com) is my project I wanted to share with HN for a long time. It is an opensource self-hosted all-in-one (as we call it) solution for cryptocurrencies.
Why did we call it so? Because we target different audiencies and try to provide each of them the right tools.
For merchants we provide ready admin panel where they can manage their products, invoices, checkout settings and postprocessing rules. The admin panel contains a checkout page which can be loaded from another site via iframe.
The checkout page from admin is used by external integration plugins for woocommerce, whmcs and others (to don't reinvent the wheel each time).
But if merchants don't have any coding skills they can (and by default it is included) enable ready store, which is a bit basic, but displays products added in admin panel and contains each own checkout page.
I think it can be used even in offline store when i.e. installed on a tablet (as a PWA app)
For developers we provide some useful tools in building their apps. We provide python SDK and Merchants API.
But first let me show how it all works.
You can check the structure here: https://docs.bitcartcc.com/development/architecture
Basically the whole app consists of "layers", where the lower level is, the harder it is to use it, but the more features it can allow. Upper layers build on lower ones and specialize on some specific things.
At the core of the whole ecosystem are BitcartCC core daemons: those are wrappers around electrum wallet's daemon extending it with new features like wallet loading on the fly, better exception messages and new commands, as well as support
for different methods of delivering event notifications (used to track payments): polling and websockets.
Those daemons expose all CLI commands electrum provides plus the event system via JSON-RPC 2.0 interface. Those daemons can be accessed via any language (sending HTTP POST request via json-rpc), or via python SDK which basically implements all the features required for ease of use (like in case of exception, it looks up exception code from the daemon exception spec and dynamically creates needed exception object).
So SDK and daemons are considered to be used for any type of apps, as you can send, receive payments, watch for address, get transaction info, connect to lightning network nodes and so on.
Then there is Merchants API, which is designed to be used in any kind of store. It implements all CRUD editing of objects like stores, products, wallets, invoices, discounts, and so on. Also it implements the actual watch for payments system. Background worker connects via websocket to all enabled coin daemons, and listens for certain events, updating invoice statuses in database when needed. It's use case is for custom integrations in complex stores, or for basically any merchant-like programmatic usage.
And in the end, admin panel and store just calls Merchants API.
The whole approach is using like at maximum 2 gb of disk space, not using a full node. But it is still considered secure because of electrum wallet's networking model-it uses Simple Payment Verification, connecting to many servers and validating the right state of the blockchain.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 21.4 ms ] threadWhy did we call it so? Because we target different audiencies and try to provide each of them the right tools. For merchants we provide ready admin panel where they can manage their products, invoices, checkout settings and postprocessing rules. The admin panel contains a checkout page which can be loaded from another site via iframe. The checkout page from admin is used by external integration plugins for woocommerce, whmcs and others (to don't reinvent the wheel each time). But if merchants don't have any coding skills they can (and by default it is included) enable ready store, which is a bit basic, but displays products added in admin panel and contains each own checkout page. I think it can be used even in offline store when i.e. installed on a tablet (as a PWA app)
For developers we provide some useful tools in building their apps. We provide python SDK and Merchants API. But first let me show how it all works. You can check the structure here: https://docs.bitcartcc.com/development/architecture Basically the whole app consists of "layers", where the lower level is, the harder it is to use it, but the more features it can allow. Upper layers build on lower ones and specialize on some specific things. At the core of the whole ecosystem are BitcartCC core daemons: those are wrappers around electrum wallet's daemon extending it with new features like wallet loading on the fly, better exception messages and new commands, as well as support for different methods of delivering event notifications (used to track payments): polling and websockets.
Those daemons expose all CLI commands electrum provides plus the event system via JSON-RPC 2.0 interface. Those daemons can be accessed via any language (sending HTTP POST request via json-rpc), or via python SDK which basically implements all the features required for ease of use (like in case of exception, it looks up exception code from the daemon exception spec and dynamically creates needed exception object).
So SDK and daemons are considered to be used for any type of apps, as you can send, receive payments, watch for address, get transaction info, connect to lightning network nodes and so on.
Then there is Merchants API, which is designed to be used in any kind of store. It implements all CRUD editing of objects like stores, products, wallets, invoices, discounts, and so on. Also it implements the actual watch for payments system. Background worker connects via websocket to all enabled coin daemons, and listens for certain events, updating invoice statuses in database when needed. It's use case is for custom integrations in complex stores, or for basically any merchant-like programmatic usage. And in the end, admin panel and store just calls Merchants API.
The whole approach is using like at maximum 2 gb of disk space, not using a full node. But it is still considered secure because of electrum wallet's networking model-it uses Simple Payment Verification, connecting to many servers and validating the right state of the blockchain.
And a very important step-deployment. You can see demo versions of components deployed at our server, but we recommend all users to self-host their instance. Admin panel: https://admin.bitcartcc.com Store: https://store.bitcartcc.com Merchants API: https://api.bitcartcc.com SDK docs: https://sdk.bitcartcc.com
We use docke...