Hey @Robert_Petitto, @Jeff_Hager or any of the other wizards I’ve met here… anyone want to help figure out how to integrate crypto wallets with your apps and the data stored in sheets? For accepting payment in crypto. For having your apps recognize certain NFTs as assets owned by an app user.
Who wants to take this road with me and see where it leads… if anywhere? Lol.
Would love to. I actually investigated how to share my Coinbase wallet a few weeks ago when webview was announced.
I think this could be very relevant to the kind of stuff you’re doing because you’re gamifying and playing with in-game currency, and if we could figure out how to get glide to validate the ownership of digital assets outside of Glide for use in Glide we could do some amazing things from a blockchain/Gaming perspective. The key is a way for Glide (ie sheets really) to interpret the ownership/transfer of blockchain assets outside of Glide. And a way for Glide (sheets really) to make changes to a blockchain ledger. A way to interpret the blockchain and display those results in Glide and a way to send transactions to a blockchain.
I could imagine splitting those processes up a bit at first. Relying on Glide (Sheets) to somehow display blockchain data (I suppose it would need to match similar records in sheets)… and then maybe a companion Web3 site that is exclusively for changing blockchain records and their corresponding sheets match.
Hmm. I really think this could be a useful project for lots of folks here.
I doubt we’d be able to create a Web3 site that functioned correctly in WebView, though. Unless the site itself had its own custodial Wallets for every user. Any only assets in those custodial wallets are interpreted by Glide. And if at any time you want to transfer them to your own private wallet, you’d do that off app using a Web3 browser.
Hmm… that could work.
Hum 
… would you store your crypto keys somewhere in an unencrypted google sheet owned by you don’t know who + the risk to have this google sheet copied or deleted or … ?
Or maybe I haven’t well understood what you’d like to achieve here.
I agree with Christophe, Google sheets isn’t the place to be storing data like that. Use the Store part of Glide to allow them to purchase coins or in game currency and for the time being just have a notification that lets them know it can take up to ___ time to recieve in game currency. Set app to notify you of these transactions and make the changes in sheets or have the notification trigger a onChange or Onedit script to allot the in app funds, if needed set a vlookup to identify how they are given based on how much they bought so you won’t need to hassle with it.
No. I’m suggesting that the app has its own private wallet and while you are “playing the game” your assets would need to be transferred to that wallet. The assets I’m thinking would be NFTs that are exclusive to the game itself (meaning they are tokenized game assets that mean very little outside of the game). To play the game, your assets would need to be in the game’s custodial wallet, and this is the wallet I’m suggesting somehow integrating with Glide. Nothing private would be stored in a sheet. Public addresses at the most. And since the platform would control the custodial wallet, any blockchain transactions would be done proper outside of Glide of Sheets or any of that.
Now if a user ever wanted to transfer their digital assets to their own private wallet for storage or sale outside of the app, they wouldn’t do that in the app, they’d do that at a special site specifically meant for app users to transfer their assets being storied in the platform’s custodial wallet, into their own. While they are playing the game, the token is not in their wallet, it’s in the platform’s wallet, and if any time they want to transfer it to their own, they just push a button on a special site outside of the app, pay the gas fees associated with the transaction and a few minutes later, it’s in their own wallet which the platform has no control over. However, when they log into the app, their account no longer shows that asset, so they can’t “play” with it.
Of course, I use the word “play” because the obvious use case would be in blockchain gaming where someone would have NFTs for their Trading Cards/Battle Cars/etc. But you can use the same analogy for any app platform that uses its own in-app assets/currency, etc.
I’m not seeing the danger in storing public addresses (only associated with the game… ie custodial) in a google sheet. I’d never expect anyone to give the app any private keys much less store them. I’m suggesting two sites that work in tandem… one being an app the other being a proper Web3 site where actual blockchain transactions would occur… for the purchase of assets in crypto and transfer of NFTs into the game itself (which the app would only recognize once transferred into the game).
It’s actually very similar to what you are suggesting @Drearystate, only rather than selling our own non-crypto assets, the game is creating its own NFTs that you must transfer into the game (ie the game’s own wallet) before you can play with it. The same short wait time. But with the added benefit that once they are finished playing they can simply press a button in their account and the platform (likely code independent of the app) would send the asset back to their own private wallet… to list on an exchange, gift to another player, whatever.
Nothing private stored in sheets at all. Only data the game recognizes as associated with an NFT in the platform’s own private wallet.
I’m going to have to defer to your expertise in this one. I’ve dabbled in blockchain, but beyond the buying, selling and trading of cryptocurrency, it’s a bit out of my league. Regardless, I’m happy to do some research on the matter. Blockchain (it’s very nature) is a secure transaction and thus housing such information in Google sheets could be a safe way to send/receive payment if we can determine the proper gateway.
Let’s talk later this week!
Yeah blockchain has always been over my head, but I’m happy to watch the conversation and chime in if I can. Maybe I’ll learn something new.
Correct @Robert_Petitto. The transaction itself would be 100% blockchain. No sheets. Sheets would just store public information related to a transaction. And the Glide app would simply recognize that a user owns a certain asset on the blockchain. So from that perspective, it would be an extremely secure way to transact… and far more versatile as you could accept a variety of crypto. Just not sure if it could all be done in app. I feel like you’d need some kind of sister site for the signing of the transactions. And if the user is expected to cover gas fees for the purchase of in-app crypto-assets they’d need to use a browser that can access their own personal wallet. But if the platform covers gas, then it could likely all live in the app and people would just supply their public address and perhaps address where the funds are coming from… hmm. Not sure.
But yeah. Somehow integrating blockchain and Glide would be amazing for transaction security if we could figure out the right gateway. Let’s for sure keep discussing.
I’m really interested in this as well. I’ve played around with Distributed App development and have found it a lot of effort just to establish if a concept is viable. Despite some big strides made recently the usability of Web3 apps is a challenge.
As a proof of concept for a local Civic Tech group and to discover if ‘people will actually want to use this thing’ I was inspired by some of @Robert_Petitto and @Jeff_Hager’s concepts for in-app currency discussed elsewhere on the forum. I created an app called ‘Voluntokens’ (https://voluntokens.glideapp.io/ - work in progress) that lets people earn and redeem tokens for doing good deeds. I found a Google Sheets add-on called ‘Blockchain For Sheet’ that is designed to add Google Form submissions as transactions to a smart contract on the Ropsten Testnet. I tricked it into adding form submissions from the Voluntokens app instead. The app still handles the token balances, but at least the transactions themselves can be on chain. Current issues are that the add-on doesn’t seem to reliably trigger when new rows are added. The smart contract must be funded with a relay of some sort because it doesn’t charge gas fees to add the rows (I imagine when or if this goes to mainnet the developers of the add-on won’t be so generous). As well, I haven’t yet figured out how to stop people from spending more tokens than they have and going into a negative token balance, but that isn’t related to the blockchain part of it 
I have also built a site that sells collectible trading cards as NFTs for fiat currency, but there’s no wallet functionality built-in. It’s just a straight-up eCommerce site where people supply their ethereum wallet address at the time of checkout in lieu of a Shipping Address. It would be amazing to bring the process of browsing, purchasing and collecting together in a Glide App.
The only issue with storing anything in google sheets is how easily they are shared. If someone doesn’t know how to protect themselves correctly then the data is at risk. Google allows anyone on a shared pc to access google sheets. You login to a computer anywhere on google and if you don’t log out of the browser correctly it doesn’t do it for you by default. Most people using Glide are non coders or non tech savy individuals. If Glide stored them in the app itself it would be different. But you leave google drive open or even access it once on a foreign device once you authenticate if you do not go through the steps to ensure its logged out your data can be compromised.
Just did some “light reading” to learn about NFTs and whether they should be on or off blockchain and now my brain is fried and I need to go to bed.
But this is the case regardless of Blockchain. If people upload their personal data to an app I built, and I am not careful and forget to turn off public sharing, I could compromise the personal info of all my users. That’s not really a blockchain issue.
But since I’m not suggesting storing any private blockchain information in sheets (only info publicly avail that anyone can view from the blockchain ledger itself), I’m unclear how this would even be an issue.
… although, if we could integrate authentication/signing with sheets it would be awesome for me… selfishly, I suppose, because I’d love to leverage that with my own app, and I’m fairly knowledge with blockchain to be aware of some of the mistakes you outlined. Would it be dangerous for people who didn’t know what they were doing? Perhaps… but that’s the case with a lot of technical things in this world.
Right, but you have people buying these apps, reading these posts, following our advice. Can you guarantee that they won’t make those mistakes? People skim articles all the time and gather what they need and go. Of course that wouldn’t necessarily be your fault, but it opens up the door to a lot of possible mistakes and issues.
Haha! Yeah, I’ve been exploring NFTs and blockchain tech for a few years now. It’s a lot to take in. But it’s an exciting new world. Ask Ubisoft… which is planning a big push into blockchain/crypto-game assets.
Fair point.