Storehouse Gold to Stellar

[blissful bluff]

Storehouse Gold champions tokenization of real assets like gold for wealth preservation, payments, and global remittance. Originally on Polygon, now on Stellar, we've innovated MAXAu with Soroban, integrating Freighter wallets and a web portal for minting and purchases. After growing our wallet and partnering with Fireblocks for a wallet infrastructure that offers full-custody wallets, multiple vaults, minting on demand, and country-by-country transaction policy; we are now aiming to solve the problem of limited on-ramping availability directly with a multi-fiat stablecoin environment.

Our "Buoy" on-ramp concept ensures a rapid deploy fiat on ramp in any country while maintaining stability and accessibility, solving payroll challenges in Argentina and Benin which we expect to launch programs in each country this year. The "Buoy" would allow banks to custody fiat and Storehouse to tokenize that fiat as individuals choose other tokenized assets within their country...allowing both fiat and asset liquidity. This Stable Coin "Buoy" is a fully operational Exchange. This exchange would also provide an app for unified asset management and providing stellar based fiat stable coins AND tokenized asset interoperability in a country by country basis...anywhere.

Promo Video: https://youtu.be/nGcsvXDQi94
Explanation of the Project: https://youtu.be/94Vu2EGrPtM
Architecture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YigTczbRBwWjic-UX-3j1ppaGL6VfshP/view?usp=drive_link

Storehouse Gold offers secure gold-backed stability and now, with this submission, a parallel fiat onramp and exchange that can be used not only for Storehouse users, but for the broader stellar community and their assets around the world. As we plan deployments in Argentina and Benin; our goal is to grow to touch more lives around the world and provide additional tools to the entire Stellar community. This submission truly meets our mission:

Storehouse Gold
Secure. Gold. Anywhere.

https://storehouse.gold/

[blissful bluff]

SCF #29 Submission Overview

https://youtu.be/QRwohOY6-gM

SCF #29, Centralized Exchange Explanation:

https://youtu.be/wzmv3zKVdR4

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To see our full submission Document List for SCF #29, click here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p915xeyPkbDTAp5ZwWKPPSwL6MW83ryI/view?usp=sharing

[thick beacon]

Hi colleagues, I like the idea but I don't understand the approach to using a centralized exchange, I wonder why you don't use SDEX? ty

[real sequoia]

Hi,

did you consider using regulated assets? Then you could control who can own and trade the assets.

I have some questions:

• WIll users outside of your ecosystem be able to mint your gold/stable coin tokens?
• Will your users be able to interact with other users on the stellar network? i.e. send assets to addresses.

Is their a demo of your marketplace and platform?
I'm referring to this from the activation reward:

Convert Minting from Polygon to Stellar

- Currently our platform and marketplaces function using polygon.  we would like to convert to mint tokens in stellar

[blissful bluff]

For the actual tokens, we can use any exchange or even just wallet to wallet. The issue comes in because we have engaged different government entities which need to be able to control the regulatory oversight because of the nature of the use case. Specifically, in a country like Benin, because of the incredibly strict regulatory framework they need to ensure that they have the ability to oversee the assets allowed in the exchange in a closed environment.

Our use case grew to this because we were asked in both Africa and in South America to be able to use our native gold tokens to stabilize fiat fluctuations and be a form of barter, but we needed to provide an on-ramp direct from the local bank without involving other tokens. It needed to be a closed environment without the use of other tokens or having to have any sort of foreign exchange. So we presented the on-ramp and using exchanges, but only in a closed environment that could be geofences would meet the requests. So that’s why we partnered directly with an exchange that would be ideal and began the process for our VASP license. All was all strictly meet the requests and needs of our customers to be able to implement the storehouse tokens at scale as intended.

[blissful bluff]

Initially, our vision for the gold token was simpler, and we wanted to create the ability for anyone to access directly into our web marketplace and could mint on demand there. There were challenges with that because it forced us to use on-ramps and other stable coins…which is fine for most individuals who are savvy and understand how to move through a normal token or digital asset wallet.

The curve came when we began the process of launching a pilot program in argentina, and then was followed by a second program in Benin…both were different use cases but needed the same workflow and requirements.

In both cases, we were asked to create a workflow around the gold token that didn’t exist. The government entities needed to be able to use a local bank for their fiat, and we needed to be able to seamlessly move from that fiat in that bank into the gold tokenized asset (or any other approved tokenized asset). But the fiat liquidity needed to always be in that bank and couldn’t rely on other crypto for settlement.

That’s the foundation of the roadmap to the fiat stablecoin to pair with the tokenized gold asset. The need for the centralized exchange was the evolution of that request to be able to ensure token pairs in an environment that could be overseen, regulated, and geofenced.

So, with that as background, to answer the questions.

1. can users outside our ecosystem mint? No. At least not our MAXAU tokens. And at least not on the fly. It would be possible if someone else wanted to provide our tokens and we minted through our ecosystem. Because we HAVE to have the accountability that we are third party audited in real time. In general, the most trusted entity and vault network in the world is BRINKS. So, by being able to mint (purchase spot gold on demand) and burn (sell spot gold in demand), the bullion had to remain in a neutral facility that no party, not even us as a company, could go in and access the bullion supply.

[blissful bluff]

…continued reply….

That was really the driving factor of us growing into the fireblocks wallet infrastructure. We ended up having to invest a lot more, but we needed the ability to create vaults with asset wallets on a case by case environment. Fireblocks also allows us to manage with a transaction authorization policy that (to the first point) is a gateway to a regulated asset environment…which I’ll come back to…

But also by moving the minting of our tokens into fireblocks then we have a central point that interacts with all of the bullion assets and can be monitored in real time. In places like Benin, where they want to make sure they know exactly what fiat and RWA tokens are in their country, we couldn’t get away from those extra steps. So we had to ensure all minting and but ing was linked only to our regulated bullion reserves and the asset had a redundant and internationally regulated physical chain of custody that not us or anyone else would be able to violate.

Now, to the second question, can we interact with other users in the stellar network. The answer is yes. Right now, we can operate easily on wallets like freighter (which I used in the demo) because the asset can be added to a freighter wallet. Any wallet or user can theoretically interact or hold tokens, even out of our ecosystem, as long as the wallet acknowledged the asset and, of course, the wallet was able to manage soroban and stellar assets…which we had issues with because so many wallets are pushing people to EVM compatible tokens and we fundamentally are looking to stay strictly within stellar

[blissful bluff]

…continued reply 2….

So, with all that, and the direct request to provide a centralized exchange, it actually forced us on the regulatory roadmap of being a virtual asset service provider and token issuer. We began that process in the EU because it was more widely accepted. Redundantly, we are also in process in the Philippines as well for our next few projects we are planning in southern and Central Asia.

So your instinct about regulated assets is 100% spot on…which brings us back to using the exchange partner we chose because we can already meet all regulatory guideline needs and we are already able to provide the government pilot programs exactly what they need…they already integrate with our fireblocks ecosystem and the front end marketplace would move to our already joint implemented app. That app has the ability to link to the traditional payments platform for debit with the bank so that users can see their fiat assets and the exchange would make and manage the fiat-to-token pair under the government oversight. All tokens remain on stellar and there’s no need for any foreign settlement. (Except for one case, which is in a forced sale of bullion which would burn tokens, the bullion network would deposit the fiat directly into the general account then into the individual account…that’s the only foreign settlement but because the gold asset is always 100% asset liquid for the token holders…even if that asset is sent outside of our specific wallet.

[blissful bluff]

Our website based marketplace is still online, but we took the page off of our site and provided the marketplace through the exchange based on the customers needs. But yes, we had partnered with a group named Mini Orange initially when we were creating assets in polygon. We worked with them to customize their base product instead of recreating our own.

In polygon, we were mainly using NFTs because we were initially treating the asset as a complete asset and not with fractional ownership. (Starting with ERC-721 contracts) So something like 1 g of gold would be tokenized individually. Or 1 g of silver. When we realized the price point for assets was too high, we used the same mini orange platform but added the fractional ownership capabilities with ERC-1155 contracts.

But neither worked for general bullion because by nature we wouldn’t be able to create a general bullion store…so that’s where we went into customization into an ERC-20 compatible asset. But the limitations in polygon led us to stellar, so we had to rewrite it and that’s where we were at the end of the activation award. The workflow is different but the e process was the same. It was a traditional merchant transaction (but we had to accept stablecoins because we couldn’t risk fiat chargebacks since the asset is redeemable to the token holder. So all that went into the customization of that mini orange product.

The conversion to the exchange with Shift Markets altered that marketplace because the government pilots didn’t want stablecoins as they viewed them as cryptocurrency….and we couldn’t do anything to convince them otherwise. So we moved our marketplace to the exchange environment which is pretty established already between stellar and shift.

All that said, we can show both workflows working today. We are going to be putting an end to the initial marketplace and focusing on the exchange and app based marketplace moving forward though. It gives us a lot more ability to provide the solution

[real sequoia]

THanks for the detailed replies

[blissful bluff]

Any time. We love the opportunities to dig in. It also helps us because it’s a lot so your questions really help for us to define points of focus

[blissful bluff]

In response to questions and conversation with @balmy cypress, I wanted to explain just a simple architecture layout and an explanation about why we have a second stable coin in conjunction with the gold tokens.

At a very fundamental level, when we moved our platform to stellar our entire vision revolved around our tokens…which truthfully, weren’t complicated at all. We focused on two different ways to tokenize gold (or other precious metals). First, in unique pieces represented by an NFT, or in bullion where one token was equal to 1/10 g gold to be redeemable in both grams and Troy ounces. So our architecture really only had a few components, and it was our business use case that made us unique. But our components boiled down to

1. an a front end where users would be able to go through KYC as they purchased tokens.
2. our core platform where we would manage APIs. This would also include the ability to mint tokens on demand upon the integration and confirmation with:
3. our gold partner(s), all of which need API integration and a live spot price purchase and vaulting capability with real time bullion auditing and public account bullion balance at all times in all countries or vault locations simultaneously.
   And finally,
4. a wallet connection. Initially we began with integrated MetaMask and trust wallet, grew to also include freighter support, and then put in place a much more robust ecosystem with fireblocks to be able to manage multiple asset wallets in multiple vaults with transaction policies and in-wallet minting direct. In transparency, the wallet cost us muck more from a budget perspective but we wouldn’t have been able to build a product even remotely as complete if we had done it ourselves for the comparable budget.

All of this worked, and was easy. We were able to allow individuals to come to our website and initiate a merchant transaction directly, connect their own wallet, and purchased tokenized gold and claim the tokens.

[blissful bluff]

Reply to @balmy cypress continued…

But it was me use case of our customers that we are currently working with that forced us to add the components of the exchange, bank integration component for managing fiat directly from the wallet in a debit account, and app front end to manage the marketplace that brought us to the fiat “buoy” stablecoin.

Really, adding stablecoins is not something we really set out to do. Our business model will always revolve around the tokenized real world asset of gold or precious metals to stabilize fiat fluctuations. But when we began testing it in a real world environment, especially in one specific pilot program for about 2,000 users, we needed to be able to make an on-ramp direct from a local fiat account, and be able to have a direct fiat stablecoin that we could, in environment by environment have a local fiat stablecoin pair to the tokenized gold asset.

Really, we couldn’t get around it. It needed to be local and the fiat needed to remain in the bank and liquid.

It honestly was something we hadn’t considered, and we looked for alternatives, but in the end we worked to solve the problem for our customers and found that it was actually a unique workflow.

This is why we ever considered a paired fiat stablecoin with the tokenized gold.

What we realized though, was that if we could build this and launch it within a government framework, then we could turn over the entire buoy system to the stellar community so that other builders and businesses would have a way to onboard their community through a traditional bank.

And, since our business model doesn’t contemplate or need revenue from the fiat on-ramp, making it completely available to the community is a no-brainer. Especially because it would allow the banks to assist with the local regulatory framework and let users work directly with their local banks and authorities without having to explain settlements or teach new customers how to migrate from other stablecoins

[brave violet]

So there will be a fiat "buoy" stablecoin for each country ??

paired with gold ?

in a Centralized exchange ?

[blissful bluff]

Thanks @brave violet for the question.

There doesn’t need to be. Actually, the entire use case was never intended to need a paired fiat stablecoin to operate. Especially since gold, as an asset, can really pair with any other fiat or digital asset in the exchange in a swap. It becomes a little more complicated because if you were (theoretically) going to change another token (like XLM) for gold, you have to make sure you have the spot price and just calculate and present the gas fees you’d need to convert from XLM to fiat (through any means), then to gold…since gold typically needs to be purchased through fiat.

The reason we are launching the local fiat pair is because we have been asked by multiple customers that our pilot programs don’t involve another crypto asset. That severely limited the ability to use an on-ramp and tokens like USDC or EURC.

And, since we needed to maintain fiat liquidity in country, we were forced to find a solution for certain use cases where we would get government support and it wouldn’t just be a retail product.

But since our marketing plan moving forward is not based primarily on retail customer participation, we needed to ensure that we provided the governments the ability to ensure local liquidity as well as avoidance of the introduction to any other token like USDC, EURC, or anything that would inevitably require international settlements.

All that being said, because both the wallet and the exchange are already integrated with multiple on ramps, retail customers are able to participate with storehouse tokens however they want.

In the US, and in places like the far east, Europe, and the Middle East…this will be a more likely scenario and the local stablecoin won’t be as necessary because there isn’t such hesitation for other cryptos.

We are currently also undertaking both the latter scenarios as we are engaging our MTL licenses in a few states in the US as well as a crypto license in Dubai in the DMCC.

Continued reply to @brave violet,

We didn’t discuss the US strategy or the UAE/Saudi Arabia strategy because those rollouts on our roadmap don’t require the local fiat “buoy” stablecoin as we come to market.

And because in certain US states, as well as the UAE and KSA allow gold as legal tender (to different variations) our native MAXAU token stands up super well on its own just in a wallet environment accessing through our marketplace.

[blissful bluff]

Fiat use case reply for @brave violet,

But, unlike the US, UAE, Asia examples. Benin gives us a very odd use case because even though its sovereign, the CFA (or Central African franc) is actually controlled by France. And while the entire region has francophone country tried who are flirting with separation from France’s oversight, it created a very unique situation for us that just so happened to align with Argentina’s requests of us…but for totally different reasons.

So we had to both meet European digital asset regulatory requirements (hence our VASP process in the EU or EEA) as well as meet the central banking mandates that are currently going on with changes that are planning to be public in August for entities to tie to the central bank and provide access to digital assets under central bank oversight.

This has been something that hasn’t gotten a lot of traction outside of the country but a key component as to why we developed the stablecoin buoy concept.

But, unlike Benin, by Meridian we plan to be announcing some of the plans for the Democratic Republic of Congo…which, is also a francophone country…but doesn’t have the same level of regulation as Benin from the president down. Though there are obviously more complex reasons as to why that is, the general requirements fall to the same default as to wanting to leave the fiat in country to in ramp.

But in all cases, though the fiat asset has regulatory and oversight asks for us to be able to launch these pilots over the remainder of 2024, neutral depository sites for gold (such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and soon to be Neom) are accepted because the majority of the regions official gold trade goes through both the UAE and KSA anyway, and third party transport, smelting, vaulting, and even sale or tokenization already happens in a few spots on the Arabian peninsula

That’s why the African based pilot programs have been so important to us.

[echo light]

This is a full stack, Rust engineer. I have rich experience with building Dapps and I am very familiar with Soroban. do you need developer for your project?