path_payments

README

Path Payments

Send or receive an asset that is different from the received or sent asset

With the concept of trustlines under our belt, let’s turn our attention to a new type of payment, the powerful path payment.

In a classic payment scenario, the asset sent is the same as the asset received.

In a path payment, the asset received is different than the asset sent. For example, you can send XLM and have the recipient receive USDC. How does this work, you ask? Well, rather than the operation transferring assets directly from one account to another, path payments cross through the DEX and/or liquidity pools before arriving at their final destination. For the path payment to succeed, there has to be a DEX offer or liquidity pool exchange path in existence. It can sometimes take several hops of conversion to succeed.

For example:

Account A sells XLM → [buy XLM / sell ETH → buy ETH / sell BTC → buy BTC / sell USDC] → Account B receives USDC

Path payments can fail if there are no viable exchange paths. However, this is still a convenient operation for currency conversions.

In this quest, your challenge is to successfully send a path payment from the Quest Account to another account on the Stellar test network using the pathPaymentStrictSend or pathPaymentStrictReceive operation.

Note: you may need to set up some offers using the Manage Buy Offer or Manage Sell Offer operations to execute a path payment successfully

Navigate to the Laboratory, and let’s get started.

1. Fill out the necessary fields, and select Path Payment Strict Send or Path Payment Strict Receive as the Operation Type. Let’s walk through what we see.

Path Payment Strict Send

Since path payments cross the order book, it’s important to set safety parameters around the amount sent and the amount received. For denoting a specific send amount, use this strict send operation.

Destination

The destination account’s public key

Sending Asset

The asset you’re sending

Send Amount

The strict amount of the Sending Asset

Intermediate Path

This is optional and specifies the assets you want the payment to path through. You can find usable paths via the /paths/strict-send endpoint.

Destination Asset

The asset the destination account will receive

Minimum Destination Amount

Since path payments travel through live open offers, there is no static standard “rate” for sending and receiving. To counter this variable, you can guard the value conversion with this field to ensure the Destination will at least receive this amount of the Destination Asset.

Source Account

The source account for the Sending Asset.

Path Payment Strict Receive

Statically sets the receive amount to ensure that the destination account receives a specified amount of the Destination Asset.

Destination

The destination account’s public key

Sending Asset

The asset you’re sending

Maximum Send Amount

As in the Minimum Destination Account above, this field specifies the maximum amount of the Sending Asset that the Source Account is willing to send.

Intermediate Path

This is optional and specifies the assets you want the payment to path through. You can find usable paths via the /paths/strict-receive endpoint.

Destination Asset

The asset the destination account will receive

Destination Amount

The static amount of the Destination Asset that the Destination will receive

Source Account

The source account for the Sending Asset

1. Once you complete the fields for your Path Payment Strict Send or Path Payment Strict Receive operation, sign and submit the transaction
2. If the transaction is successful, great! Hit the Verify button on the Stellar Quest Learn page and claim your final badge in the Payment Operations series!