Writing

Notes from the gateway

Long-form posts on payment privacy, on-chain accounting and the operational details of running a no-log gateway. Roughly one piece a month, no newsletter spam.

• GuidesMay 17, 2026·7 min read

  What to look for in a crypto payment gateway API

  A practical checklist for merchants comparing crypto payment gateway APIs: hosted checkout, webhooks, payout controls, wallet visibility and multi-currency support.

• CoinsMay 17, 2026·6 min read

  Solana payments for merchants: where they fit

  Why Solana is on the XMRgate roadmap, what merchants gain from low-fee settlement, and what has to be solved before SOL checkout is production-ready.

• CheckoutMay 17, 2026·6 min read

  Embeddable crypto checkout widgets: what good UX requires

  A buyer should never wonder who is processing the payment. Here is how XMRgate's hosted checkout and widget keep branding, status and wallet instructions clear.

• OperationsMay 17, 2026·8 min read

  Merchant wallets, platform balances and payout controls

  How XMRgate separates buyer deposits, platform fee accounting, merchant payout addresses and admin wallet visibility without exposing wallet secrets in dashboards.

• EngineeringMay 12, 2026·8 min read

  Subaddress accounting without a view key on the server

  How we reconcile incoming XMR per invoice using deterministic subaddress indexes — without ever holding the merchant's view key online.

• SecurityApr 28, 2026·6 min read

  The webhook replay attack nobody warns you about

  Signing payloads isn't enough. Here's the timing-window attack we found during an internal review and the two-line fix every integration should add.

• PolicyApr 04, 2026·5 min read

  What 'no-log' actually means in production

  The gap between a privacy policy and a Postgres schema. A walkthrough of every column we considered keeping and why we dropped it.

• OperationsMar 18, 2026·4 min read

  Why we still review every merchant by hand

  Open signup looks good in a pitch deck. In practice it pushes you toward KYC. We chose the other tradeoff — here's how we keep the review fast.

• EngineeringFeb 22, 2026·7 min read

  When Lightning is — and isn't — worth enabling

  Channel liquidity, routing failures, refund UX. A merchant-side breakdown of when Lightning actually beats on-chain BTC.