Cryptocurrency. Ask anyone what they think about them and you will get mixed feelings. For some it is the best discovery of the 21st century. For others it is a financial nightmare.
Why do the latter feel this way? Oh I don't know.. maybe the events from the Mt Gox $460 million disaster in 2014 to CoinCheck losing $534 million to hackers in January 2018(you would think by now these exchanges will be secure).
But you can just meet up face to face right? In 2017, a man was robbed at gunpoint in Brooklyn. The robber made him transfer $1100 worth of bitcoin. So do we blame the seller for not being careful enough? Is it now a bad thing to try to have faith in people?
I have to point out that these were all Bitcoin hacks.
So now you're thinking "That's why we have Ethereum for smart contracts and enhanced security. Everything is safe." Right? Right?

Wrong.

In June 2016, Ethereum's DAO was hacked and 3.6 million ether was drained from its contracts. This proves that while the blockchain is immutable and unhackable due to the sheer ridiculous hashing power it would take to do a 51% attack, the softwares used to communicate with it are not. It's only a matter of time before a hacker finds a buggy code to exploit or figures out your probably weak password to gain access into your exchange account to transfer your coins with a click of a button. Coding for the blockchain is a relatively new field, so we are not to be too surprised when mistakes are made. No exchange is safe... or so we thought.

Introducing STREAMITY

What is Streamity?

Streamity is a Singapore based company that has created a powerful Decentralized App called StreamDesk. What is StreamDesk? It is a peer-to-peer platform that utilises a decisive combination of security protocols to ensure safe and trustless trade.

Let's watch their introduction video.

What does StreamDesk Offer?

We've seen that exchanges can be hacked. And codes exploited. Streamity has now brought the genius idea to let buyer and seller meet, trade and both walk away with their new goods(coins and fiat). "Walk away" I say? Yes. You see unlike conventional exchanges where people sign up, transfer crypto in, trade one coin for another, and have their new coins in the exchange, StreamDesk allows you to trade right from your bank account and external wallet!
So in the unlikely case that Mr Hacker should guess your password he will simply be disappointed to see nothing to steal. The buyer coins will be in his external wallet, and the seller will have received his money in his bank account.

• Unconventional Trade Pairs
  While most exchanges have "benchmark coins" or "standards of exchange" which other coins are traded against (e.g BTC, Ethereum), StreamDesk allows you to locate and initiate trade straight from your fiat to the desired coin without involving the "benchmark coin".

• Price Control and cheaper fees
  StreamDesk gathers and utilizes market cap and price data from major exchanges to ensure that both buyer and seller are aware of current values of the cryptocurrency they wish to trade. This is an added advantage over the normal exchanges who are fragmented and thus allows greedy sellers to manipulate price and charge exhorbitant amounts.

Streamity will be extracting price data from sites like Coinmarketcap

• Automated Trading and Easier User Experience.
  The entire exchange is handled by smart contracts and so makes the use of StreamDesk easy even for the most novice user.

User Case Scenario

Alice is an american newbie in the crypto world. She learns about a new coin (XXY) on the internet. She wants to buy some of it. She logs into StreamDesk and sees a sell order of XXY with the user requesting payment in dollars(instead of Bitcoin). Alice simply clicks on the sell order and trades for some XXY. A smart contract takes over and collects the amount of dollars matching Alice's desired amount of XXY. Both parties receive coins and fiat at the same time and trade is concluded.

But what did Alice gain by using StreamDesk for this trade?

Let's see

1. She didn't have to risk trusting the site with her money as she traded straight from her bank account. Saving her transfer charges to the site.
2. She exchanged $ directly for XXY(Instead of $ -> BTC |BTC -> XXY) further saving costs.
3. She received her XXY coins at an external wallet (and not on the exchange then having to transfer outside). Saving costs again.
4. Alice didn't have to be an American to have $$ as she could just as well have paid using her PayPal account. This sets Streamity apart from competitors like Localbitcoin who only allow trade with people in the same country.
5. This trade was done in real time/instantly. Leaving no chance for a hijack or hack.
6. StreamDesk is also mobile compactible so this entire trade was done in seconds with a few clicks on her phone!

You might also be asking, how did the dollars get transferred from Alice's account?

Simple, by using a KYC policy (to defer fraudsters), users can link their bank accounts as well as external wallets for their trades on StreamDesk. The smart contract automatically initiates the payment with the buyers consent and deposits in the sellers account. The API of the payment system is integrated with the smart contract, (the smart contract receives a signal from the API of a payment system as one account receives fiat money from another account).

Interested in a practical session?
Streamity has released an alpha version of StreamDesk for interested investors to test out. Streamity plans to later integrate AI technology into the ecosystem.

Partnerships

Taking on all these diverse transactions is a big task and Streamity has made some strategic partnerships to ensure flawless execution. A collaboration with NEM and EOS will ensure cleanly coded and swift-executing smart contracts.
As for fiat payments, Streamity is partnering with PayPal and Civic to verify users to checkmate fraud.

Streamity has also taken the extra step to align with IT Test, which will carry out periodic cycles of testing to discover and fix any bugs or exploitable loopholes in the project.

Powering Trades with SMT Token

The Streamity/StreamDesk platform is powered by the custom SMT token which will allow users connect and trade. This SMT token will be used to generate and activate smart contracts. The STM tokens will be openly traded on major cryptocurrency exchanges that will make them available to the new users and let investors sell them instantly. The crowdsale launched today 25 June, 2018 and you can be a part of it

Team and Roadmap

StreamDesk is developed by diverse coalition of investment and software professionals who have the common goal of next-level trading security. Their roadmap is highlighted below.

To learn more about this project, you can visit their website or read their Whitepaper here. They also released a one pager if you want the non-technical explanation.

The team is always willing to answer questions and you can reach them on any of their social media accounts.

Facebook | Twitter | Medium | YouTube | Instagram | Reddit |
Telegram | LinkedIn | VK | Bitcointalk.

This is an entry for the @originalworks writing contest here
All images were adapted from the whitepaper.

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