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Hub20 Documentation

Hub20 is an open source, self-hosted web application that provides a wrapper for Ethereum and Raiden Network client nodes. It hides all of the complexity from end-users so that they can make and receive payments in ETH and any ERC20-compliant token using always the fastest/cheapest possible route without ever needing to know any technical detail. It also provides a set of APIs that effectively turn any deployment into a payment gateway for Ethereum tokens.

In practice, one can think of each instance of Hub20 of a single "crypto bank" where users simply have access to their individual accounts and token balances, while the person running the deployment (hub operator or hub owner) is the one with actual access to the bank vault and funds.

This site acts as the central place for documentation and should be the first stop to learn, understand and troubleshoot any issues related to Hub20

Who is the audience of this site?

Hub20 deals with two types of user personas:

  • Hub Users are just accessing and interacting with the Hub as if it is a standard web application. They have access only about their own profile, see the balances of different tokens that are available to them, setup payment gateway stores and make/receive token transfers. No specific knowledge about how ethereum or different layer-2 methods work, they are not necessarily aware of the underlying costs of making transfers and might not even be familiar with web3 dapps.

  • Hub Operators are the ones responsible in managing the instance and can "check under the hood" of all the underlying machinery. A hub operator will have full access to system's database, can see information about other users, can make smart contracts calls directly and even change the records about value bookkeeping. The Operator is expected to know in deep detail about how ethereum works, should be able to understand how ethereum works and how the different layer-2 integrations work.

Needless to say, Users are assumed to trust the Operator and be fully aware that they do not have direct control over any funds deposited into the hub. It is also important to understand that operators might also be interested in being users - someone that running their own instance as a way to be in control of their own payment gateway.

How the documentation is organized

  • Tutorial pages give you a gentle step-by-step introduction for an operator to set up an instance of Hub20 and to be able to run it on their own servers. Start here if you want the fastest way to have your own instance running and want to use to receive payments.

  • Topic Guides dives a bit deeper into key concepts and help you make sense of how everything fits together, and can be useful if you are wondering if Hub20 is the appropriate solution for the use-case, or if you are a developer looking into contributing to developing new features.

  • Reference Guides is the source to look for technical details, APIs and specifications of how it works. It assumes that you are already familiar with the concepts described in the topic guides.

  • HOWTOs are a collection of recipes for developers and operators. They are supposed to work as straightforward guides to help you solve common use-cases and troubleshoot issues. They are more advanced than tutorials and assume some experience as an operator or developer.

  • Finally, the user manual contains instructions for those that have access to any instance of Hub20 and want an easy-to-use crypto wallet that can send and receive payments through the Ethereum blockchain.