The problem cafebabe solves

Problem 1: Accepting Crypto Payments as a Small Business

For many small businesses, setting up a system to accept cryptocurrency payments can be complex and intimidating. Although many customers use Coinbase wallets and want to pay with crypto, managing these payments securely while converting revenue into preferred currencies is a challenge. cafebabe solves this by providing a simple, quick setup process. When a coffee shop registers with cafebabe, it receives an on-chain address tied to smart contracts. These contracts facilitate payments in the shop’s preferred currency and integrate seamlessly with their loyalty program. The whole process takes just minutes, allowing businesses to start accepting crypto payments at the register right away.

Problem 2: Inconvenient Loyalty Schemes

Traditional loyalty schemes, like punch cards, are inconvenient and often forgotten. cafebabe solves this by merging payment with the loyalty program. With cafebabe’s crypto payments, there's no need to remember punch cards or track rewards—points update automatically, and rewards apply instantly simply by paying with your Coinbase wallet. Cafes can choose between two customizable loyalty schemes: either random free coffees with each purchase or a points system that grants a free coffee after a set number of purchases. In the future, we plan to offer a third option where customers earn ERC20 tokens with each purchase, redeemable for free coffee.

Problem 3: Few fiat onramps to crypto

We believe that more fiat on-ramps to crypto are needed. That's why cafebabe offers an easy way for users to purchase crypto if their wallet balance is insufficient for an order. cafebabe queries the blockchain for the customer's balance and updates the frontend to display either a 'Pay' or 'Buy Crypto' option based on the order total. If needed, users are redirected to Link for the fiat-to-crypto conversion, with the required amount automatically input.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into quite a few issues using wagmi and Onchainkit. The descriptions of these issues are detailed as issues that we filed linked below:

Wagmi Bugs:

• https://github.com/wevm/wagmi/issues/4077
• https://github.com/wevm/wagmi/issues/4078

Onchainkit Bugs:

• https://github.com/coinbase/onchainkit/issues/695

BOAT template Issues & PR:

• https://github.com/coinbase/build-onchain-apps/issues/520
• https://github.com/coinbase/build-onchain-apps/pull/521

We initially built off of the BOAT template https://github.com/coinbase/build-onchain-apps, but ended up ditching these efforts and starting from a fresh project. We felt that the project was difficult to navigate and filled with many miscellaneous features such that we could not get to the crux of how to integrate our project ideas quickly.