With their approach, Electroneum is effectively following the centralized model of Bitpay, Coinbase, Coingate, GoUrl.io, and many other centralized crypto payment processing gateways in that they issue an authorization immediately as the transaction enters the transaction pool, without waiting for confirmations on the network. There is little innovation in this approach which is well-known to the industry. With centralized entity in the middle, the buyer and the merchant must rely on trusted party just like with traditional plastic payment processing, which means compromise on privacy, security, and a single point of control.
Unlike Bitpay and other centralized payment gateways, Electroneum shifts the risk of transaction not getting confirmed onto the merchant rather than absorbing it themselves.
The vendor does not get the cryptocurrency instantly, but our system acts as a trusted 3rd party to ensure the ETN or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is sent (our patent covers ETN, Bitcoin and other cryptos). The vendor knows the payment is sent and will make its way to the blockchain, so they can allow instant checkout – and the customer can walk out of the store with their cup of coffee or checkout online etc.
https://electroneum.com/2018/06/12/announcing-instant-payment-beta-vendor-application/
This illustrates the fundamental difference in approach where GRAFT is decentralized and utilizes an independent authorization sample (selected from the distributed network of supernodes) to validate the transaction, and independent exchange brokers to handle off-network (alt currency) acceptance risks when handling real-time payments.
GRAFT’s approach not only minimizes the risk of real-time transaction processing, but distributes to remaining risk (and reward) to the right party. It also allows acceptance of alternative cryptocurrencies, where Electroneum’s current approach is limited to ETN currency.
Finally, but importantly, GRAFT builds a payment network eco-system as opposed to providing a single vendor solution, which is the essence of decentralization that’s at the very core of the blockchain-based cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
*** Note that our intent is not to pick on Electroneum with this article – we’re merely trying only to bring some clarity in what sets GRAFT apart from other payment solutions, using Electroneum as one of the better representatives of this class of centralized solutions.