Biconomy is a blockchain relayer infrastructure, which is a platform that links users to a blockchain without requiring advanced technical knowledge to be able to perform transactions.
Just a few weeks ago, many no-coiners would have shuddered at the thought of putting their hard-earned money into cryptocurrencies. While it may seem as if it is a risky investment, it has financial and technological promises of its own too. That, and the fact that the market has been booming almost all year round and is nearing it’s previous all-time high.
While the goal of increasing the adoption of digital assets and blockchain applications is a priority, the current set-up in achieving it seems a bit ineffective. When new individuals decide to dip their toes in the crypto market, they’d find that the process can be too long and intimidating. Biconomy’s goal is to solve that problem. With the primary objective of addressing the friction between users and blockchain-based applications, Biconomy came up with a new model to operate.
Table of Contents
Background
The team behind Biconomy looks at its creation as one of its milestone products in the field of Web3 developments. They created Biconomy with a single vision in mind: to make blockchain-based applications work seamlessly and conveniently for users, especially those who are new to the market.
Biconomy’s roadmap lays down their plan to build a partnership with more product providers, investors, and, hopefully, the entire crypto-community, in developing more Web3 tools that complement their model. With the goal of crypto adoption, Biconomy will introduce many products that aim to help ease newbies into the crypto space.
What is Biconomy?
Biconomy is a blockchain relayer infrastructure network and transaction platform. But in simpler terms, it is a platform that links users to a blockchain without requiring advanced technical knowledge to be able to perform transactions.
Their relayer network is a collection of software development kits (SDK) and APIs designed to make the blockchain more accessible and understandable for everyone, regardless of their knowledge and experience. Biconomy can also be integrated with dApps and digital wallets.
In fact, they can work seamlessly with any blockchain-based application without requiring much oversight on the part of operators. Apart from a sophisticated programming back-end, smart contracts also help make this set-up possible. The metric we can look to assess whether a platform is effective is just to look at how easy it has become for anyone to set-up or use dApps.
Through Biconomy, users do not even need to download digital wallets or buy cryptocurrencies from exchanges themselves. The platform has automated the whole process for its users.
One may ask, how does it handle the speed of transactions? After all, if anyone expresses their intent to buy or sell a token, aren’t gas fees something that users have to be able to directly decide upon to make sure that their transactions are not stuck in long queues?
Not anymore. Since Biconomy’s infrastructure handles gas optimization and transaction management as well. The parameter that the platform works with ensures that each transaction made in the platform is finalized as quickly as possible. They also factor in gas price fluctuations so users do not have to watch over them by themselves every single time.
How Does Biconomy Work?
Biconomy implements ‘meta transactions’ to help users perform tasks within the blockchain. This way, users can perform transactions without needing any single token on their accounts. On the user’s behalf, transaction fees can be temporarily shouldered by third parties as part of their user acquisition cost.
There are two ways to perform meta transactions: through contract based accounts and native meta transactions.
Contract Based Accounts
Through Contract Based Accounts, users are given an upgradeable contract wallet that functions as their proxy contract. Through this wallet, any transaction made by the user is routed to the blockchain. Users, however, have to first deposit tokens and funds in this wallet to be able to open a contract wallet.
Native Meta Transactions
Not all blockchain applications support native meta transactions. But for those that implement it in their infrastructure, they can easily perform transactions without the need to open contract wallets. Through Biconomy Relayers, transactions made by users are directly passed onto dApp contracts for finalization.
Integrating the Application on Your own Platform
Integrating applications is fairly easy. Biconomy’s SDK, the Mexa, can be easily integrated with dApp. They just need to register their dApp on the Mexa Dashboard first and then copy the API Key designated for their dApp.
Biconomy Dashboard
The Biconomy Dashboard enables a better and more effective user experience. It was created to make it easier for developers to register their dApps or smart contracts in enabling meta transactions and gas-free transactions.
To register a dApp, users just need to login at the Biconomy Dashboard. And from there, they can simply enter their dApp name and have it registered. Once they already have their dApp in the system, they’ll receive an API Key. This key is necessary for dApps in order to integrate Mexa on their interface.
After the registration, the dApp developer then needs to deploy smart contracts that will interact with Mexa. From the dashboard, developers can add smart contracts that enable meta transactions. They can add as many smart contracts as they want, especially if they have multiple projects that have to be linked to Mexa.
Biconomy also allows developers to create external wallet contracts. This way, even the process of storing digital assets is much easier too. Biconomy’s function is seen here as a relayer service. They link users to wallets conveniently. Furthermore, they do not require users to directly interact with wallet providers just to be able to store funds anymore.
Biconomy SDK
Mexa is the Biconomy SDK that makes meta transactions possible. Through Mexa, users can freely take advantage of their dApps and perform transactions without having to pay for additional fees. Also, it is the developer that pays the gas fees on the user’s behalf.
To make it easier and more accesible for users to manage their digital assets or perform seamless transactions, they can freely interact with the Web3 interface of Mexa as they see fit.
Moreover, Biconomy is blockchain-agnostic, which means that it can work almost anywhere, regardless of the platform where a dApp is based. But for now, it is only operational in Ethereum, xDai, and Matic Mainnet. There are plenty more blockchains to come, and users are encouraged to ask for network support from Biconomy if they feel the need to include more.
Conclusion
The psychological barrier that dampens the adoption of cryptocurrencies include the difficulty in accessing blockchain-based technologies. Overcoming that hurdle is not an easy task. This is why anchoring solutions based on that perceived problem is important. Recognizing the needs of potential users and their concerns for why it is difficult to on-board them is necessary. This is where we can see Biconomy stepping up.
Biconomy understands that one of the reasons why people do not invest in crypto altogether is the whole process that one has to undergo before they even get to keep a single digital token: from setting up an online wallet to purchasing and selling tokens whenever they want to, there is a lot of technical knowledge users assume they need. Biconomy eases everyone through each step of the way, making the goal of owning and managing crypto much more palatable to the general public. This makes Biconomy such an exciting development for the space.