PIP Review [2023] | Social Crypto Payments | Fees, Pros, Cons

About PIP

PIP is a web application launched in August 2021 that adds Web3 functionality onto traditional Web2 properties such as Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, and Medium, enabling users to buy and sell crypto assets directly on these platforms. Take, for instance, a blogger on the Medium website; they could use PIP to set up paywalls and accepts payment in SOL, PIP, SRM, USDC, RAY, and FIDA tokens directly without using an intermediary. The crypto payments service promises to disrupt the current online payments landscape dominated by companies such as PayPal and Stripe and increase economic freedom globally by empowering individuals. To enable self-custody and autonomous payment processing, PIP works with self-hosted wallets such as Phantom or Slope wallets, two of the leading Solana-based crypto wallets. As a result, PIP can process transactions for token and NFT (non-fungible token) transfers in a peer-to-peer fashion.

Why do people use PIP? PIP appeals to its prospective and current users because of the following reasons: Innovative features – PIP offers its users multiple products and services necessary to enable seamless and straightforward Web3 payments on traditional Web2 platforms; Convenience – PIP currently does not have a direct competitor, but it rivals a few other more prominent traditional solutions, including PayPal and Stripe. The two products are not only expensive to use, but also less convenient as they are highly regulated and must adhere to various jurisdictional restrictions. PIP, on the other hand, is open to everyone across the world, it is cheap to use, and transactions are settled almost instantaneously; Peer-to-peer – there is no intermediary to process transactions on the PIP network as the product is designed to get rid of exploitative intermediaries. This, in effect, makes transactions much faster and cheaper; Cost-effective – PIP faces little direct competition within the cryptocurrency space but compared to other Web2 solutions, the application is fast and cheap. The project is created on top of the nascent Solana ecosystem, a highly scalable layer-1 blockchain network with support for smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). The network is able to process transactions at a rate of 1,500-2,500 transactions every second but, theoretically, can process as many as 700,000+ TPS. The fast speeds contribute toward lowering the network fees since users do not have to outcompete one another in price bids for validators to verify their transactions; Novel innovation – PIP introduces a novel idea in which anyone can make and receive crypto payments on their content or content they consume on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch. The idea is simple and interesting enough to attract a large user base to make the business viable.