From Mining in China to Self-Taught AI: The Story Behind MyZubster

My Journey

I never followed a traditional path. I learned everything on my own.

My journey started with exploring the web beyond the surface – on Tor and .onion sites – where I truly understood what privacy and digital freedom mean.

I dove into Artificial Intelligence, learning to master chatbots and language models as tools to create, not just to consume. I experimented, failed, and tried again. I realized that technology is a tool – and those who master it can change things.

But I don't live by code alone.

I practice two sports with discipline:

• 🥊 Thai Boxing – for power, resilience, and a fighter's mindset
• 🤸 Calisthenics – for body control, functional strength, and freedom of movement

And when I'm not training or coding, I listen to tekno music – I follow Spiral Tribe, a group that represents freedom, underground culture, and independence.

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The Idea Was Born in Sweden

The idea for MyZubster was born far from home.

I was in Sweden, working with developers scattered around the world, and managing remote mining operations in China. It was in that global context that I realized how complicated it was to accept Monero payments in a simple and private way.

Accepting Monero was unnecessarily complicated:

• ❌ Most payment processors don't support Monero
• ❌ Setting up subaddress generation required deep technical knowledge
• ❌ No ready-to-use marketplace solutions existed

So I started building my own solution.

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What I Built: MyZubster

MyZubster is a self-hosted Monero payment gateway and skills marketplace ecosystem – 100% open source.

Core Features

1. Subaddress Generation
Every order gets a unique Monero subaddress for privacy and tracking:

javascript
async function generateSubaddress(label) {
  const response = await fetch(`${MONERO_RPC_URL}/json_rpc`, {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      jsonrpc: '2.0',
      id: '0',
      method: 'create_address',
      params: { account_index: 0, label: label }
    })
  });
  const data = await response.json();
  return data.result.address;
}

Comments

[Luis Cruz]

I appreciated how you highlighted the complexities of accepting Monero payments, particularly the lack of support from most payment processors and the need for deep technical knowledge to set up subaddress generation. The code snippet you provided for generating a unique Monero subaddress for each order using the create_address method of the Monero RPC API is a great example of this. It's interesting to see how you've addressed these challenges with MyZubster, a self-hosted Monero payment gateway and skills marketplace ecosystem. What considerations did you have when deciding to make MyZubster 100% open source, and how do you envision the community contributing to its development?

[Daniel Ioni]

@luiscruz – thank you for your thoughtful comment and for taking the time to read the post. 🙌

You're absolutely right – accepting Monero payments has historically been a technical hurdle, and that's exactly why I built MyZubster. The create_address RPC method is powerful, but integrating it properly with order management, payment monitoring, and webhooks takes a lot of work. I wanted to package all of that into a ready‑to‑use, self‑hosted solution.

Why did I choose to make MyZubster 100% open source?

There are a few core reasons:

1. Transparency & Trust – When dealing with money and privacy, users need to trust the system. Open source allows anyone to audit the code, verify security, and ensure there are no backdoors.

2. Privacy by Design – A closed‑source payment gateway contradicts the very philosophy of Monero. Open source aligns with the values of decentralization, financial freedom, and user sovereignty.

3. Empowerment, Not Lock‑in – I believe that no one should be locked into a proprietary platform. With open source, anyone can fork MyZubster, customise it, run their own instance, and build their own business on top of it – without paying fees or asking for permission.

4. Community‑Driven Evolution – A project like this should not be built in isolation. The community brings diverse perspectives, new ideas, and real‑world use cases that I could never cover alone.

How do I envision the community contributing?

The possibilities are broad, and every contribution is valuable:

• 🧑‍💻 Code – Bug fixes, new features, performance improvements, or better error handling.
• 📖 Documentation – Tutorials, guides, translating READMEs into more languages.
• 🧪 Testing – QA, edge‑case testing, or setting up CI/CD pipelines.
• 🌍 Localization – Making the app and marketplace accessible to more users around the world.
• 💡 Ideas & Feedback – Suggesting new features, reporting issues, or sharing how you're using MyZubster.
• 🗣️ Community & Marketing – Writing blog posts, creating video tutorials, or sharing the project with your network.

I'm especially keen to hear from developers who have experience with Monero RPC, React Native, or peer‑to‑peer marketplaces. Collaboration is what makes open source thrive.

If you're interested, I've documented the contribution guidelines in the repositories, and I'm always open to discussions via issues or pull requests.

Thanks again for your interest – it means a lot. 🚀

MyZubster #Monero #OpenSource #Community