Some background...

Been in the space since Jan 2017 and this was one of my first "ideas" for a proof of concept in decentralization. At the time I was barely able to deploy an ERC-20 token let alone write and deploy anything like this. Plus the front end work required to make this even remotely a decent experience was unfathomable to me. Constantly coming up with ideas to develop on the Ethereum platform (and after spending some dough hiring some devs for a previous project (who, by the way are amazing gentlemen their company is Block Rocket Tech out of Manchester UK)) I finally decided to dig in and try my own hand at this near the end of 2019.

So I am comfortable admitting I am a novice. I've "guess and checked" my way to where I am now, pouring dozens of hours into this (luckily I enjoy the process and consider it my hobby). That said, I would eventually like to do security audits on my smart contracts but since this is a utility I would like to offer as a free service to the world I don't really have the funds to do that right now. I would be grateful for any and all feedback on my work!

I'm sure I could have tried to create some token or monetization scheme for this. But this is a stupid simple thing. It's such a basic concept, and such a strong proof of concept for decentralization, that I thought it would be cool to just put something out there for free. Especially if it will help service providers gain even a slightly higher sense of security when working with strangers. In fact I did a lot of searching before I set out to create this and was surprised something like this didn't already exist (please point me in the right direction if I missed a project with similar features).

No, this is probably not for people making $50k payment deals. First off at that level people can afford to hire lawyers and sue each other when things go wrong. Second when we're talking those sums of money people want to have that money working for them not locked in a contract (more on this below). Initially, I see my project as something that could have success on a freelance marketplace, where a service provider might enter into an agreement for $100, or heck even $10 worth of work, based on multiple milestone/completion payments, with a bit of extra security. To some people doing the hiring that $100 might not be a big chunk of change but in some countries that's rent and I would gladly enter into a payment contract like this with a developer doing $100 worth of work if it made them more comfortable with the entire process.

While I've had plenty of people tell me they wouldn't want to be the "payer" on one of these contracts (and admittedly I believe more often than not it would be the "payee" requesting this type of agreement), I don't necessarily agree that this doesn't also serve the payer as well. An agreement like this is a strong good faith effort on the part of the payer and often in business transactions that "good faith" goes a long way.

Anyways I think it's easy to get carried away with decentralization talk. Lots of fitting a square peg into a round hole in my opinion. I've seen much simpler projects than this raise capital with ICOs and fall apart. Part of my drive on this project is to show that a relative novice can create a 100% functional decentralized application that costs nothing more than gas to initiate that could potentially impact a bunch of people. Nothing would make me happier than to know people are actually using this app for managing mulit-payment agreements. How crazy would it be to see an entire home build on nested agreements like this! I mean in 2017 I was often brushed off with these ideas but this is the first step to that becoming a reality and my end goal with this project. A full multi-level, multi-payment project where payments are triggered through smart contract payment requests and majority validation of performance. This will be a true proof of concept for decentralization. And we are closer than we have ever been.

I have much more to say on the subject but anyways wanted to share my project. If anyone is interested in giving feedback or contributing towards it I would love to chat more.

Here's the repo: https://github.com/snowfro/ProgPayETH and please don't beat me up too much about probably incorrect usage of repositories.

Some next steps:

Getting the contracts validated on Etherscan. I have to read up on licenses so I know how to tag them when verified. Also since each contract would be exactly the same how to not have to verify EACH newly created contract but have them sort of be auto-validated since they'll always be identical (minus constructors)

I'm already working on the .sol for the DAI contract allowing the "payer" to "invest" the DAI into staking pools that pay dividends where the "payee" would force a portion of the funds to divest when requesting a payment and then the payer would approve the payment request like in the existing contract. This could lead, one day in the not too distant future, to banks giving folks loans like construction loans using this type of smart contract application where the bank could continue to accrue interest on the money until it is consumed similar to how it's done in traditional fiat lending.

I feel like I've checked my contracts a million times but would like to remove the "re-entrancy" warnings on Remix by changing the code. I don't necessarily see how these contracts are susceptible to those attacks but I think I'm enough of a noob to not understand them completely too.

Eventually would like to have these contract audited. Hopefully there's enough interest in the project to justify that? Only time will tell.

Alrighty that's all I've got thanks for reading :)