Welcome

Welcome to Monerium developer documentation. This is the place to learn about our blockchain smart contracts, functionality and API.

The Monerium money-as-a-service platform lets developers securely manage and automate the flow of money on and off blockchains.

• Real money on blockchains that you can send to anyone, anywhere at anytime without intermediaries. The money is also standardized to support all major blockchain wallets and smart contracts.
• Monerium IBAN, a fiat gateway that enables you to seamlessly collect and send money between bank accounts and blockchain addresses.
• Payment API that services can manage accounts, get payment notification and trigger outgoing payments.
• Fully licensed. Monerium EMI is an electronic money institution, a European financial institution that is licensed to operate in the EEA. We take care of the regulatory burden, so you can focus on creating the best possible product.

In this section we'll give a short introduction for those who are new to blockchain technology. You can also skip right ahead to the getting started section if you are familiar with blockchains, wallets and smart contracts.

DeFi - Decentralized Finance

Today's decentralized finance, or DeFi, movement on blockchains is disrupting and revolutionizing traditional finance.

DeFi goes way beyond cryptocurrencies and payments. Issuance and trading of assets, financing, micro-economies, insurance, taxes, accounting are just a few examples.

Blockchains, smart contracts, tokens and money

Let's take a couple steps back. DeFi, which is built on blockchains such as Ethereum, cuts out human middlemen and paperwork, and replaces them with smart contracts. These are computer programs that run on decentralized blockchains, meaning they're near-impossible to stop or censor. If I borrowed money from someone via a smart contract, the terms built into the contract have to be obliged.

Tokens are smart contracts that are created with properties that make them similar to certain financial products and services. This is also referred to as tokenization.

Stablecoins are tokens that are important to the DeFi ecosystem. Some are under the impression that all cryptocurrency is volatile. However, stablecoins are tokens designed to hold a specific value and are typically pegged to fiat currency like the US dollar. For example, DAI is a stablecoin pegged to USD and backed by ether (ETH).

Monerium is an Electronic Money Institute, or EMI. Monerium tokens are electronic money, or e-money. Like stablecoins, it's 1:1 to the Euro, Sterling pound and Dollar. The difference is that e-money is regulated and has been recognized in the European Economic Area and the UK as a digital alternative to cash since 2000 and is 1:1 backed in fully segregated, unencumbered, high-quality liquid assets.

To make a long story short, stablecoins act like money while e-money is money.

Wallets, test networks and gas

You'll need a blockchain wallet before we start. Essentially, it is a piece of software that allows you to store your money and other assets, easily conduct transactions and check your balance whenever you need to. We recommend using MetaMask for the Ethereum blockchain.

Networks are different Ethereum environments you can access for development, testing, or production use cases. Your wallet will work across the different networks but your account balance and transaction history won't carry over from the main Ethereum network. For taking your first steps and testing purposes, it's useful to know which networks are available and how to get testnet ETH so you can play around with it.

Monerium has created a sandbox environment that is connected to the sepolia Ethereum test network. This allows you to play around with our money in a safe environment to understand how this fits into your application.

Sending money or other Ethereum-based tokens requires the sender to include “Gas”. Gas, in Ethereum, is the metric used to calculate how much ETH you’ll pay the miners to mine your transaction or program (smart contract). The wallet will take care of calculating and paying the gas, but you will need to make sure that there is enough ETH to complete the transaction. However, you do not need to keep an ETH balance to receive or to store money in your wallet. You can get test ETH for sepolia from the official faucet

OK, That was a lot! but don't worry! This sounds much more complicated than it actually is. Your wallet will do most of the work and we'll be using the same internet you know and love.