Crypto's foundational ideas are designed to separate it from the traditional banking system however, several of them have not quite lived up to what was initially promised or thought of by users. Luckily as the space continues to mature and develop these shortcomings are being addressed and this can be seen with the innovative way that Tectum has taken with its product SoftNote. SoftNote takes an innovative approach to solving several of these and has carved out quite a place for itself in the crypto space. 

Last bull market a common theme I saw thrown around was how crypto was going to "bank the bankless". Overall though these efforts failed to come to fruition, especially on the scale that crypto advocates were proposing. Now there were various reasons for this but a recurring one was the technological shortfalls that existed across the globe. While crypto has far fewer barriers to entry compared to the traditional system it still does have some like both parties need to have compatible crypto wallets (think having a Bitcoin wallet but someone sending you Ethereum). SoftNote is also a further enhancement of L2, providing both instant and zero-commission payments. 

Addressing a Core Idea

SoftNote addresses this banking-the-bankless idea in a unique way that serves as almost a hybrid of crypto and the traditional finance system. How might you wonder? Well, sending crypto via SoftNote does not require the recipient of the crypto to have a crypto wallet! This is done leveraging a technology that over the last few years has become quite common, QR Codes! 

Say I am paying back my friend for something and he would like me to pay him back in BTC. Using SoftNote I would deposit the BTC I want to send into a SoftNote wallet and once this Note is full a QR Code is generated. This code serves much like an old-school "paper" crypto wallet and to transfer the funds your friend would scan the QR Code and bam the money (BTC) is transferred to him and he is able to either create and send it to a personal wallet or use it to pay someone else. Instead of this transfer of funds being labeled as a transfer the underlying tech facilitates this as a "handover" thus resulting in the block explorer only showing a balance change and not a verifiable transfer providing users with much-appreciated privacy!  

The way that SoftNote functions serves as a fantastic example of what a hybrid approach to the two financial systems could look like. It takes the best features of both systems and gets them to work together which is a huge technological advancement!

Advancing L2's

L2s over the last couple of years have taken center stage because of how well they address the largest issue that Ethereum ran into during the last bull run, transaction fees. I remember all of the memes that came about last bull run as a single transaction could cost you well over $100 and often people were just trying to move crypto that was worth much much less. Now L2s have done fantastic in addressing this but L2s still take time and still have a gas fee. SoftNote doesn't have either of these issues! 

Payments are instant and there are zero commissions. While this is great as the funds are getting from Point A to Point B efficiently the door that this opens is even more exciting as businesses stand to benefit even more! In the current financial system, retailers face credit card charges of up to 3.5% which are often passed along to buyers. In the SoftNote ecosystem, retailers are charged just a flat 1% which is significantly less saving both the business and the customer money. Businesses would likely prefer to deal directly with onboarding or offboarding funds onto the L2s like Optimism but when this is done those funds are locked up for multiple days. Delays like this are extremely hard for small to medium-sized businesses to handle since they often need to say liquid as much as possible. Leveraging SoftNote allows businesses to not have to deal with these delays and thus helps address their liquidity issue!

Final Thoughts

Tectum's SoftNote product addresses some critical issues that prevents increasing the usage of crypto in everyday life. With these technological shortcomings getting addressed and fixed in a way that leads to a win for all this only further bolsters the idea and hope of getting mass adoption to become a reality! SoftNote stands in a fantastic place to be able to help facilitate this and help businesses integrate crypto payments into their payment options!