// the find
zonelessdev/zoneless
Open-source Stripe Connect alternative. ~$0.002 payout fees. Identical API to Stripe. Instant global USDC payouts. Self-hosted.
Zoneless is a self-hosted payout backend that replaces Stripe Connect's seller payout flow with USDC on Solana. It exposes a Stripe-compatible REST API so migrating existing integrations is mostly a find-and-replace on the client import. Aimed at marketplace operators who are paying real money in Stripe fees on high-volume small payouts.
The fee model is genuinely compelling for microtransaction platforms — $0.002 vs $0.25+ per payout is a 100x difference that changes unit economics. The Stripe API compatibility is done properly: same object shapes, same webhook event names, same SDK patterns, not just a loose approximation. It ships with a sanctions screening module and idempotency middleware out of the box, which are the two things you'd need to build yourself if they weren't there. The PromptBase production data (2,200 sellers, 1,400+ payouts) is a real signal that this isn't vaporware.
Your sellers now need a Solana wallet and must off-ramp USDC themselves — this is a real UX cliff for non-crypto users, and 'connect a Phantom wallet' is not equivalent to 'enter your bank account number.' MongoDB as the data store is an unusual choice for financial transaction records where relational integrity matters; there's no obvious answer for what happens if a payout hits the chain but the DB write fails. The backend is a single Express.js monolith with no queue or worker architecture, which means payout retries and webhook delivery are tightly coupled to the HTTP request cycle. At 306 stars and one production customer (the founders' own marketplace), the project's long-term maintenance trajectory is uncertain if PromptBase's needs diverge from the community's.