📱 MyZubster Mobile: NFC Payments and the Road to a Fully Decentralized App
A personal journey: from hiring a company to building everything myself – and why I'm sharing it all open‑source.
🧭 Where This Story Begins
I've always believed in the power of decentralization – not just for money, but for building things. MyZubster started as an idea: a marketplace where anyone could tokenize real‑world assets and trade them privately with Monero.
But like many projects, the road was not straightforward.
💸 The First Attempt – Hiring a Company
I wanted to move fast. I reached out to a company in Rimini (PianetaItalia) to build a mobile app for MyZubster. I had a vision, I had some budget, and I thought: "Let the professionals handle the app while I focus on the backend."
I paid for the development. I trusted the process.
But after the initial work, I realized:
The app was not aligned with my vision
The codebase was hard to maintain
The costs were adding up faster than the features
In the end, I couldn't afford to rebuild it with them. The budget was gone. The app was incomplete. The project stalled.
🔨 The Second Attempt – Doing It Myself
I took a step back. I looked at what I had built so far:
✅ A fully functional Node.js gateway
✅ Monero payments with subaddress generation
✅ Kali Linux + DeepSeek AI for security
✅ Tari integration for NFTs
✅ Escrow and AI dispute resolution
✅ A React frontend with login, marketplace, and token creation
The backend was solid. The frontend was working. But the mobile app – the piece that could bring MyZubster to the real world – was missing.
So I decided to build it myself.
📱 What I'm Building
I'm now working on a React Native mobile app for MyZubster. It will be:
Open‑source – anyone can fork it, customize it, and run their own marketplace
Private‑first – Monero payments with subaddresses, just like the web version
NFC‑ready – tap‑to‑pay with Monero for physical stores and events
Cross‑platform – iOS and Android from a single codebase
This is the first time I'm building a mobile app alone. I'm learning React Native, NFC integration, and mobile security as I go. It's slow. It's hard. But it's also exciting.
💳 The NFC Integration
One of the most exciting features I'm planning is NFC payments.
How It Will Work
The seller creates an order on MyZubster (via the web or mobile app).
The gateway generates a unique Monero subaddress for that order.
The mobile app writes the payment request (address + amount) to an NFC tag or emulates it via the phone's NFC chip.
The buyer taps their phone – their Monero wallet reads the request and prepares the transaction.
The buyer confirms the payment on their wallet.
The PaymentMonitor (already running on the gateway) detects the incoming transaction and completes the order.
This means you can pay with Monero just by tapping your phone. No QR codes. No manual address typing. Just tap and pay.
🧩 Why I'm Sharing This
I'm writing this post for three reasons:
- To Be Honest About the Journey
Building a decentralized marketplace is hard. Building an app on top of it is even harder. I've made mistakes, spent money I didn't have, and wasted time on dead ends. But I'm still here, still building, still learning.
- To Invite Collaboration
I can't do this alone forever. If you're a developer, designer, or privacy advocate, I'd love to collaborate. Fork the repo. Open a PR. Ask questions. Share ideas.
- To Show That This Is Possible
You don't need a company to build a mobile app. You don't need millions of dollars to launch a decentralized marketplace. With open‑source tools, a bit of patience, and a willingness to learn, you can build something that works.
🔮 The Future – A Marketplace for Everyone
My ultimate goal is not just to build MyZubster. It's to build a template that anyone can use to launch their own marketplace.
A backend that handles tokenization, payments, and security.
A frontend that works on web and mobile.
A payment system that accepts Monero with a tap.
An AI that resolves disputes automatically.
And all of it open‑source.
💬 What I Need
If you want to help, here's what I need most:
React Native developers – to help with the mobile app
Designers – to make the app beautiful and intuitive
Testers – to break things and tell me what doesn't work
Privacy advocates – to make sure we're doing it right
Even if you just share this post, that helps.
🔗 Links
Live Demo: https://myzubster.com
GitHub (Backend): DanielIoni-creator/MyZubsterGateway
GitHub (Frontend): DanielIoni-creator/MyZubsterWeb
🏷️ Tags
ReactNative #Monero #NFC #OpenSource #Decentralized #Marketplace #MyZubster #BuildInPublic #Privacy #MobileDevelopment #Blockchain #CryptoPayments
Built with ❤️ and a lot of coffee by the MyZubster team.
