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About STORE

STORE is bringing Cloud 2.0 to the world with a zero-fee cryptocurrency and checks and balances governance.

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December 1, 2018

5 min read

STORE’s Creator Describes Route to Birth of Zero-Fee Payments System

In 2013–’14, I was convinced BTC would be used as an in-app, censorship-resistant, API-driven new currency.

I even tried to build a complex, API-based payment network for it. It didn’t work. Finally, I accepted Bitcoin’s limitations as “p2p e-cash.”

Then I met Vitalik Buterin, Anthony Di Orio and the Ethereum Foundation.

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Didn't quite understand how you could "print new money" on top of new, speculative money. I was a contrarian here as my SV "platform" friends ❤️'d it.
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

Instead of building on Ethereum, I took a bet and put some BTC into the pre-sale. Then, left the crypto space (out of frustration with Bitcoin).

Jumped back in when I realized zero-fee, in-app, API-based, and censorship resistant payments still was a problem needing a solution.
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

At the time, was building a newco:
HQ-to-Location chat for franchise and chain stores.

Saw two things:
1) Stores hated the 2.5%-3.5% transaction fee from traditional payment rails
2) The ~4% fee that locations pay HQ as part of the franchise agreement could be a smart contract
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

* that's ~4% of every single transaction at the cash register.

Studied the Ethereum dApp ecosystem. Realized that "gas" was an economic primitive for gamified banks -- not a world computer.

Bitcoin was on its way to becoming joule-backed digital gold.
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

As I went deeper into research, it was clear "the smart contract wars" were about to start.

Still didn't buy into new money being created on top of new, speculative money.

And there were no plausible zero-fee models for the merchant (or app developer).
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

After coming out of a 3-month research cave, realized that Inflationary rewards could incentivize a p2p consensus to not only validate transactions but secure, govern, and scale them as well.

Along the way, we spun out @storecoin as a new blockchain for franchise _ chain stores.
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

As our research evolved, we realized that we were solving a much larger problem than zero-fee payments for the franchise and chain store vertical.

We were building zero-fee, p2p, highly programmable payments infrastructure for the centralized internet (apps not dApps).
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

We're making progress 24/7 with a team spread around the world. Still early but we're shipping on the technology, security, community, treasury management, legal, and ecosystem fronts daily. https://t.co/8lB4cG21Bl
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

More on WebC -- or the zero-fee crypto-powered web https://t.co/IRfevUBBKC
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 27, 2018

Here's a look at the WebC Stack currently being researched and built @storecoin. pic.twitter.com/jyGBFhGv9E
— McCoy (@chrisamccoy) August 29, 2018

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