Latch Labs

Payments between strangers, protected on both sides. Open-source escrow checkout on Solana — no protocol fees, no operator in the flow of funds. Devnet beta.

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

I built the thing I couldn't find: a way for two people in two different countries to pay each other with both sides protected, and no bank, platform, or court in the middle.

Live on Solana devnet, no wallet needed: https://t.co/nJK1bvRjIl

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

Thanks for the advice. I will definitely take it into consideration. There are some presets in the version alpha payments app.

In my opinion a true deadlock/freeze unless parties agree (absent court ordering) is appealing, but I maybe more risk tolerant than most potential users.

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

I built the thing I couldn't find: a way for two people in two different countries to pay each other with both sides protected, and no bank, platform, or court in the middle.

Live on Solana devnet, no wallet needed: https://t.co/nJK1bvRjIl

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

@SolanaSensei @SquadsLabs @solana or just use TailsOS and put the USB in a safe.

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

@AdevarLabs @SuperteamEarn @colosseum That is our number one priority! 🚢

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

Just submitted our project to the @AdevarLabs Security Sidetrack on @superteamearn for @Colosseum’s Crypto World’s Fair Hackathon

Excited for the chance to receive a full security Pre-Audit for Latch: payments where both sides are protected.

https://t.co/nJK1bvQLSN

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

@Sam39741 @AdevarLabs @SuperteamEarn @colosseum Thank you. One concern I have yet to reconcile is the modularity allows such a wide array of deal options, it is daunting trying to explain it all to users.

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

The timer functionality can be used in both cases. For example, it can be setup so funds release when the time runs out, but a dispute puts a hold on that timer. Additionally, there is the option to apply a "long sunset" to the entire deal. If a dispute holds the deal up more than 12 months, funds release.

If both parties come to an agreement at any time they can move things forward or deal for release/reversion.

The modulatory of the design allows enough combinations that it would be impossible to go through them all here!

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

What stands between this and mainnet is an independent audit. Unaudited custody of strangers' money would be the irresponsible version of "real." Applying for audit support this month; if you audit Solana programs, DMs are open.

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

For builders: the checkout is an npm package (@latch-labs/checkout). Apache-2.0, no fees in the protocol, no token. Verified reproducible build, 75 tests plus a fuzz harness.
https://t.co/LnpGaMfOJN

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

@HamzaLamoudni zoneless is open source srtripe, also Latch L =abs is creating an api for smart contract integrations without requiring users to pay with crypto.

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

@0xdasha why doesnt anyone push TailsOS more?

[Ira Bodnar @irabukht]

The most insane paid ads program in Silicon Valley, behind Wispr Flow's $0 to $2B run

1/ "10 really good creators can get you to $50M a year"
-> The model: brands recruit creators to film their ads and pay them a percent of the ad spend

2/ A year ago Wispr Flow stopped organic UGC completely and put everything into paid
-> 500 to 700 new UGC ads a month now, aiming for 1,000

3/ They took the paid ads playbook of killer ecom brands
-> SF finally figured out what the best DTC brands have been doing for years

4/ Their view: organic only works with real talent on the team, while paid works for anyone who can ship enough different ads
-> You don't need a genius to win on paid, you need lots of ads that each look and sound different and a system that keeps them coming

5/ Ecom brands pay creators a cut of each sale. SaaS brands pay a cut of the ad spend, since a software sale can take weeks to close

6/ Wispr pays 7% of ad spend, uncapped, paid out every 7 days

7/ New creators get a guaranteed minimum, which is how Wispr signed good ones before it had a track record
-> $1,000 for 20 to 25 videos a month. A creator who earns $500 in commissions gets the other $500, and once they earn more than $1,000 on their own the guarantee stops

8/ Each creator works on one customer segment
-> A customer no ad was speaking to, a format nobody could shoot, a country with nothing running. One creator per gap

9/ No two videos are allowed to look alike
-> Meta's Andromeda clusters videos that are 50 to 60% similar and suppresses them, so 1,000 talking heads get treated as one ad

10/ They recruit on Instagram with keyword search
-> Search "UGC creator", "tech", "SaaS", mine the followers and comments of every good creator, send 100 to 200 DMs in a week

11/ 50 creators accepted out of 5,000+ applications
-> $220k paid out so far, top creator makes $12k a month

12/ Creators get $100 for referring someone at their level or above
-> No beginners on the team

13/ They scaled 5 creators, then 10, then 20, then 40, and stopped at 40 to 60
-> The whole climb from 5 to 50 took four months

14/ Creators are run like a sales team
-> 30-minute onboarding each, a weekly call with the media buyer, 1:1s, creator coaches

15/ Creators see the ad account
-> Every Thursday the media buyer walks them through what's working, which customers to target next and what to test

16/ One media buyer runs all of it: 50 creators, 700 ads a month

17/ The same creator ads run on Meta, AppLovin and TikTok

18/ The group stays small on purpose
-> $100k paid to 20 creators looks better to creators than $200k paid to 1,000

19/ Creators see which ad is winning and start making their own version of it. Wispr stops this and pushes them to film something new instead
-> Meta treats the copy as the same ad as the original, so the copy never gets shown

20/ Why other creator programs fail: brands accept everyone who applies, nobody coaches the creators, and creators join without understanding they only get paid when their ads perform

21/ Meta charges more every year for the same amount of reach, and that cost is out of Wispr's hands. The one thing they control is how good and how different their ads are, so that's where the money goes
-> Last quarter Meta showed 14% more ads than the quarter before and still raised the price of each one by 12%

22/ The guy who built it joined Wispr Flow at 19, before the product existed, with a 2.5 GPA
-> 25 months later: $280M Series B at a $2B valuation

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

@0xINFRA Won’t the small caps be subject to the same or more short pressure with increased liquidity?

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

Should ignore it and people will find work arounds.

[Whale Insider @WhaleInsider]

JUST IN: 🇪🇺 EU crypto firms ordered to remove Tether's $USDT stablecoin by January 8, 2027.

[Latch Labs @LatchLabs]

Build update: the Solana Foundation shipped an escrow this week. Good news.

The Foundation open sourced DvP, a delivery versus payment program for
tokenized trades (MIT, audited by Cantina, J.P. Morgan gave input). I read
the whole repo today, because if a foundation backed escrow made Latch
pointless I wanted to know now, not during judging.

It doesn't. DvP is a two leg atomic swap: seller deposits the asset, buyer
deposits the cash, and a settlement authority (a bank or custodian) flips
both legs at once. Either side can pull its deposit back any time before
that. No agreement hash, no sign offs, no disputes, no recovery role. That
is fine for a securities trade, where nothing is performed off chain.

Latch is for the other kind of deal, where one side pays and the other has
to ship, build or deliver. Once a Latch deal is active neither party can
take the money out alone. It releases on sign offs, a timer, or a rule
fixed at signing, it holds if they disagree, and every step is on chain so
anyone can rebuild who agreed to what. DvP removes settlement risk between
institutions. Latch handles performance risk between strangers.

DvP does confirm the design posture: open source, immutable, PDA owned, no
admin key. Same as Latch. The honest gap is that DvP is audited and Latch
is not yet, which is what the grant application is for.

I plan to plug in rather than compete, both items now on the public
roadmap for after the audit. A Latch deal account can be the DvP
settlement authority, so a trade settles only when both parties have
signed off under their Latch agreement, no bank needed. And at the last
milestone of a cross border trade, the Latch vault can fund the cash leg of
a DvP against a tokenized bill of lading, so payment and documents move in
one transaction. If anyone at the Foundation works on DvP, I'd like to
compare notes.

Both videos are recorded and go into the submission this week. Still
Apache 2.0, no token, no Latch fee. https://t.co/vZZ8CsgEat