You're raising money on behalf of other people and, presumably, pocketing some of it (even if you're say you're not, how do we know for sure?) Brave is doing this sort of thing too with their attention tokens and it strikes me as super shady. "I'll totally give it to them, honest!" doesn't seem good enough. You wouldn't get a fraction of the money you asked for if you didn't have the Wikipedia and EFF logos on that page.
It's completely public and can't be tampered with, so you can check exactly where the money is going.
Btw. most people people who don't know Chinese will think "Hong Bao" is some guy. Bad branding for what it's trying to do. Gives the wrong impression that we're giving away money to some guy named "Hong Bao" who's promising to give it to Wikipedia and EFF
> That's what Ethereum is for. It's completely public and can't be tampered with, so you can check exactly where the money is going.
Except the page admits there will be a delay of a month before the proceeds go to the EFF, and that transaction is NOT on the blockchain, as the wallet is "sold" and the money is, perhaps, donated to the EFF. So you can't actually check.
Thanks for the feedback. I didn't mean to be shady (honest)!
The main problem is that the EFF doesn't have a publicly disclosed Eth address (they do accept BTC) so I just decided to support them by pledging to donate to them. Of course, nobody on the internet knows you're a dog, nor if you're honest ... :/
Good news is that atomic cross-chain swaps[1] will soon be possible, although even today you could presumably use ShapeShift or Changelly to convert from ETH to BTC while we all wait for BTC-ETH Lightning atomic cross-chain swaps to mature.
This should be free and GiveHongBao should have their own donation page within the system. Charging a fee (even if flat) for donations doesn't feel right. They aren't offering enough value (they basically give you an HTML page) on top of Ethereum to justify a fee.
The fee does go towards hosting the campaign page. Also GiveHongBao doesn't charge for the deployment of the campaign contract--- that is paid out of my own account, so charging a small nominal fee felt fair to me.
I think an interesting point is to compare the fee to what GoFundMe and other similar sites are charging.
My motivation was mainly to make a competitive version that took advantage of Ethereum's native advantages:
- It's Global. You can use GiveHongBao anywhere in the world. You can't use GoFundMe unless you're in the western world
- It's direct. Your donations go straight into your wallet. You don't have to wait for a minimum donation size, nor do you have to wait for a certain time.
- It's cheaper. Ethereum transfers are a flat fee regardless of size (vs. credit card processing fees). I thought a fair thing to do would be to mirror this and charge only a flat fee (for hosting, etc..) then pass the savings on to campaign creators.
"We don't charge a percentage of what people give. Instead, we charge a flat amount for any amount donated. Keep more of what people give."
I don't think is the Ethereum gas (transaction fee). I think they take a cut as well. Perhaps someone can check the transaction being generated and see the recipients/gas? This whole thing looks very shady and probably shouldn't be getting HN-like exposure.
Please make the mechanics and fees clearer on the website. Linking to and explaining the contract would be great for transparency. With that done, I think your service can be useful.
I realise that you would probably won't do this, but it'd be awesome to see some of this open sourced. Despite being reasonably experienced, the idea of building an API that talks to a smart contract is completely alien to me.
I also wouldn't have any idea on how to build up the actual smart contract "system" that your API talks to, so any insights on where or how you learnt all of this would be pretty awesome.
Most of the examples I've seen are not that beginner friendly.
OP here. I started this project a few months ago, around early October. I wrote the meat of the solidity contract in a weekend or so, but the hardest part (of course) was writing all of the UI. That took another few weeks of intermittent nights and weekends.
Since then, I've just mostly been putting polish on it (testing, more refinements) mostly around making the app more responsive.
Happy to talk more about it-- it was a fun project that pulled together a lot of threads (Solidity, React, Web3, Infura, etc..)
It's completely public and can't be tampered with, so you can check exactly where the money is going.
Btw. most people people who don't know Chinese will think "Hong Bao" is some guy. Bad branding for what it's trying to do. Gives the wrong impression that we're giving away money to some guy named "Hong Bao" who's promising to give it to Wikipedia and EFF
Except the page admits there will be a delay of a month before the proceeds go to the EFF, and that transaction is NOT on the blockchain, as the wallet is "sold" and the money is, perhaps, donated to the EFF. So you can't actually check.
The main problem is that the EFF doesn't have a publicly disclosed Eth address (they do accept BTC) so I just decided to support them by pledging to donate to them. Of course, nobody on the internet knows you're a dog, nor if you're honest ... :/
[1] https://blog.altcoin.io/the-first-ethereum-bitcoin-atomic-sw...
If they don't give it to creators...the creators won't promote them.
They need the evangelists.
I think an interesting point is to compare the fee to what GoFundMe and other similar sites are charging.
My motivation was mainly to make a competitive version that took advantage of Ethereum's native advantages:
- It's Global. You can use GiveHongBao anywhere in the world. You can't use GoFundMe unless you're in the western world
- It's direct. Your donations go straight into your wallet. You don't have to wait for a minimum donation size, nor do you have to wait for a certain time.
- It's cheaper. Ethereum transfers are a flat fee regardless of size (vs. credit card processing fees). I thought a fair thing to do would be to mirror this and charge only a flat fee (for hosting, etc..) then pass the savings on to campaign creators.
I don't think is the Ethereum gas (transaction fee). I think they take a cut as well. Perhaps someone can check the transaction being generated and see the recipients/gas? This whole thing looks very shady and probably shouldn't be getting HN-like exposure.
> Each month I'll sell the wallet's contents and donate the proceeds to them, providing proof via my Twitter account.
There are too many scammers out there, there's no reason to trust this person, regardless of what the intention was.
The fee is flat and priced around a buck, mostly to help recoup some server costs, hosting costs, etc.. which I thnk is fair.
My main motivation was to make a cheaper version of GoFundMe or Patreon. Both of those sites charge a percentage on top of whatever credit card fees.
I also wouldn't have any idea on how to build up the actual smart contract "system" that your API talks to, so any insights on where or how you learnt all of this would be pretty awesome.
Most of the examples I've seen are not that beginner friendly.
If you want to create a campaign (free of charge) visit: https://givehongbao.com/create
Since then, I've just mostly been putting polish on it (testing, more refinements) mostly around making the app more responsive.
Happy to talk more about it-- it was a fun project that pulled together a lot of threads (Solidity, React, Web3, Infura, etc..)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope
it's kind of like the Chinese equivalent of Christmas presents ...