💵 Explore fiat-denominated accounts

[reneaaron]

Feature description

More and more services are offering fiat denominated accounts via synthetic assets:

• kollider
• galoy

Those services often offer multiple balances to their users. In Kollider's case it's:

• Bitcoin
• synthetic USD
• synthetic EUR

We want to explore how this can be integrated into Alby by creating a connector for Kollider. (see WIP branch linked to this issue)

Context

When connecting a Kollider account () a user would need to choose which balance should be used within Alby, it's currently out of scope to support multiple balances.

A connector would need to signal the current currency to the extension.

Questions

• What changes are needed in order for Alby to work with fiat-denominated accounts?
  • Receive & send screens
  • Balance in Account selector
  • Fiat currency conversion in transaction lists
  • Fiat inputs

Useful links

• Kollider LNDHubx

Out of scope

• Having multiple balances in one account

ToDo

• [ ] Link to registration page (where the user gets the credentials)

[bumi]

In the first step what we imo need to look at is how we can let the connector decide what currency the return amounts have. E.g. when we show the account balance we have a hard coded "sats" there. this would need to be the currency of the connector. Same in the incoming invoices. I'd also say if the currency is not btc/sats then we do not show any other fiat amount (or we show the sats amount, whatever is easier)

in the outgoing payments list I'd still try to store sats amounts.

related code; https://github.com/getAlby/lightning-browser-extension/blob/master/src/app/components/AccountMenu/index.tsx#L92-L102

https://github.com/getAlby/lightning-browser-extension/blob/16dff6ac525ceaa83b224392d8fab38197c088e2/src/app/context/AccountContext.tsx#L84-L100

[lisabaut]

First Implementation

• [x] Create new connector "Kollider"
• [x] add new connector to Websites screen
• [x] when user creates Kollider => ask user to choose which account/currency to add "Which balance/account you want to add"
• [ ] ~either store this base currency in Settings (TBD)~
• [ ] ~and/or add method to connector "getBaseCurrency" (TBD)~
• [x] pass this currency value to the account data
• [ ] ~Decision: No convertion will happen at any place, just do not show fiat at all~
• [x] Do not render FiatValue in AccountMenu (=> see comment below)
• [x] Keep the rest of the app in sats (=> see comment below)

=> relevant PR https://github.com/getAlby/lightning-browser-extension/pull/1774

---

Updated according to @bumi comment below

[bumi]

just for completeness: Here is the code where I explored Kollider: https://github.com/getAlby/lightning-browser-extension/pull/1770

there does not need to be a special prompt, just like other connectors need some information this needs a "currency":

I would also call it just getCurrency - because those accounts will only have one currency I guess.

and in the first step I'd only do all this in the account menu thing. The outgoing payments are stored locally and are not per connector, there we only have the sats amounts (we don't even know the actual fiat amount that was paid from that account then)

And then we also can show the sats amount in the incoming invoices I guess.

All inputs an webln calls stay in sats.

[lisabaut]

UPDATE

Changed the Todos of the first implementation above according to the comments of Bumi here.