Buy Amp in Canada

Cryptocurrencies are a great tool for transferring stores of value between two wallets. One major problem, however, is that some blockchain transactions can take several hours to go through — or even days during peak congestion periods. That’s because each transaction has to be confirmed multiple times by blockchain validators before it is added to the blockchain — a huge decentralized ledger powered by a vast network of anonymous computers.

So if a shop wanted to accept Bitcoin, it would have to contend with the reality that a transaction usually takes several minutes to process. In other words, the payment will probably clear long after the customer has left the shop. And because Bitcoin can be so volatile, its price might have changed by the time the vendor wants to convert it into cash.

People aren’t likely to buy things with crypto if they have to wait around for their purchases to go through. And while decentralization and multiple transaction confirmations make blockchains secure and reliable, it makes life difficult for vendors who want to accept cryptocurrencies but don’t want to deal with volatile prices and slow transaction times.

Amp (also known by its capitalized ticker, AMP), is a token that aims to decentralize the risk inherent to buying things with crypto, making it more convenient for vendors and buyers. How? By offering up its own token, Amp, as collateral for transactions. The Amp token is used to power the Flexa network, a payments network that shops can use to accept crypto.

To mitigate the risk that the transaction for some reason fails, or that the price of that Bitcoin should swing wildly while it is being confirmed by the Bitcoin blockchain, a buyer stakes Amp as collateral. The vendor can receive cash straight away, and the buyer receives their Amp back once the transaction has settled.

Amp thus serves as a huge assurance fund that compensates for how blockchains take an age to settle transactions, without sacrificing any of the security advantages that blockchains offer. The Amp protocol aims to become a universal clearing layer for crypto transfers, one which allows you to efficiently buy things with assets housed on a transaction layer that requires multiple confirmations.

The Amp token brings two major innovations that make this process seamless. The first is collateral managers — kind of like customizable, programmable escrow accounts. The second is token partitions, where collateral managers can enforce different rules on tokens.

Here’s how the system might work: imagine that you’re buying a big bar of chocolate through the Flexa network. For the transaction to go through, the buyer sends crypto equivalent to the value of the transaction — say, $10 in bitcoin — plus $10 in Amp tokens, provided by a pool within the Flexa Network. The AMP is locked up by the collateral manager, who can instruct the seller to release the bar of chocolate to the buyer. Once the payment of $10 in bitcoin goes through a while later, the Flexa network releases Amp tokens back into its network. If the transaction fails, the Flexa network liquidates the collateral from the pool, and the cost of the failed transaction is distributed across everyone who has staked Amp within the respective collateral pool.

Right now, Gemini Pay taps the Flexa network to let you pay with crypto in retail stores across the U.S. Flexa has also built an API that allows vendors to integrate their point of sale systems with crypto assets. But the applications are, potentially, even broader than real-time settlements. DeFi platforms could integrate Amp to increase the quality of collateral, and individuals could stake Amp to collateralize asset transfers in order to cut down on transfer settlement time.

Amp is built on Ethereum and is an ERC-20 compatible token. That means that any Ethereum-based DeFi protocol can use the token. A previous version of the AMP token was known as Flexacoin (FXC). Flexa is the company that created Amp together with ConsenSys.