Flipstarter 500k is a success! Now the real work begins.

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Avatar for flipstarter
3 years ago

Invest in Utility: Results

Flipstarter set out a few months ago to enable trustless, engaging, voluntary funding, starting with EatBCH and Bitcoin Cash full nodes. We set ourselves a bar for success at $500k USD across all full nodes.

Starting with EatBCH who kindly supported us to run a limited test campaign, 17 members of the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem funded over 10,000 meals for one month in less than 12 hours.

The full node teams stepped up soon after and made proposals laying out their plans, accountability and specific funding needs. The campaigns went live and convinced the ecosystem to make 174 pledges worth a total of 2,073 BCH (roughly $520,000 USD) over the 3 week course of the campaigns. Because Flipstarter campaigns are "Assurance Contracts", only the campaigns that reached 100% of target paid out. The total result for completed campaigns was 164 pledges worth 2,039 BCH (roughly $510,000 USD).

What is next for EatBCH and Bitcoin Cash full nodes?

EatBCH continues to provide support for people in need in South Sudan and Venezuela, even through the dangers and difficulties of the oil crisis for Venezuela and COVID-19 everywhere. We send our deep thanks to them and hope you will continue to support them.

The full node teams now have the hard but exciting work to follow through on their commitments. We also send our deep thanks to all of the node teams who worked and the funders who invested to take this step forward for the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem.

What is next for Flipstarter?

Much of the situation we laid out 2 months ago in "But who will build the platform?" is still true. However after receiving a lot of constructive feedback from the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem, we have a clearer view of what needs to happen next.

This proposal is a starting point that is still under consideration by the Flipstarter volunteers. This is a description of priorities and is not scheduled or committed at this time.

1. Easy deployment

We set out to make Flipstarter available to everyone without needing to be gatekeepers or responsible as volunteers for the campaigns. We are close but not quite there yet. Making a Flipstarter campaign easy for any web developer to deploy is our next step and it will be one answer to the question "How can I run a Flipstarter campaign?". You are welcome to come develop with us on the Flipstarter repositories. There is some work on this underway already! Come join the flipstarter telegram if you would like to talk about it.

2. User experience (UX) improvements: low-hanging fruit

The number 1 feedback for UX was wanting to use regular wallets instead of the plugin. However that is hard and covered below. The number 2 feedback was that the minimum pledge at the beginning of campaigns was very high and inaccessible to a lot of people.

There was a good reason for this problem - the assurance transaction can only handle a limited number of pledges due to rules on the Bitcoin Cash network. However evidence during the campaign showed that:

  1. Pledge amounts were not evenly distributed.

  2. We did not use all the pledge slots to reach targets. The most pledges was BCHD with 77 out of the limit of 600.

Considering those facts, we thought up a few ways to enable a much lower starting minimum pledge without breaking the limitations of the assurance transaction. That will require resources to implement but it should be very limited compared to...

3. UX improvements: moving to smart contracts

By far, the biggest request and confusion was about why the complicated plugin process was necessary. To quickly review the answer to that question, the assurance transaction method requires special signatures that no current wallets are able to do. We could have done various custodial solutions to avoid the pain, but that has been done very well already by bitcoin.com and does not solve the problem of refunds at all. The solution we chose (Electron Cash + Plugin) had the important qualities of high security for large amounts, and ability to refund in a meaningful way (in case you are wondering, in general, refunding to the sending address is a bad idea - don't do it!).

One way of switching to smart contracts was covered by a member of the Flipstarter team and there are multiple other solutions, each with different pros and cons. Not only will the contracts need to be developed, but also infrastructure for supporting them. It will be a significant investment of resources to get there and we definitely think it should happen eventually.

No but really, who will build the platform?

emergent_reasons has been reaching out to potential candidates for running a sustainable funding platform based on Bitcoin Cash but no one has made a commitment yet. The Flipstarter assurance contract, source code and assets are all open source and anyone is welcome to use them. If anyone is interested, please come talk with us in the flipstarter telegram or contact us privately.

There are also some members of the Flipstarter team who might like to run campaigns for a limited scope of projects. The arrangements for this are under consideration.

Let's talk

We hope Flipstarter has sparked something good for the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. Please join us on telegram to talk or if you want to talk privately, please contact:

  • telegram @emergentreasons

  • keybase @emergent_reasons

Lead image by 272447 from Pixabay.

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Comments

Fantastic great job 👍👍

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3 years ago

Great! Very detailed and interesting.

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3 years ago

I am looking forward to listening to Wednesday's discussion with Emergent Reason during Tokyo virtual meetup. Flipstarter has me excited about the future.

$ 0.10
3 years ago

Fantastic! I am really glad to hear it.

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3 years ago

Thank you for the reply and upvoting my comment with some BCH. I appreciate it a lot. It is an encouragement for me to keep doing the good job.

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3 years ago

Honest, clear and usable.

$ 0.10
3 years ago

This campaign has been a truly inspiring example of voluntaryist principles in action. Congratulations and heartfelt thanks to all participants: Flipstarter, donors, EatBCH and node developers! You've done a great job.

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3 years ago

Wow, this is what the Flipstarter and EatBCH are all about. Great campaign. I don't know what is Flipstarter but because of sir @ralak he send the link of this article. To know better about BCH. Great Idea.!😇

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3 years ago

The flipstarter/ EatBCH synergy is a laudable one. Kudos to the brains behind this synergy.

$ 0.10
3 years ago

This is a truly humanitarian project worth supporting. I hope I can contribute towards achieving your goals in the near future.

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3 years ago

Great job! Congrats!

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3 years ago

This campaign has been a truly inspiring example of voluntaryist principles in action. Congratulations and heartfelt thanks to all participants: Flipstarter, donors, EatBCH and node developers!

$ 0.10
3 years ago

Wow what an amazing outcome! Thanks for keeping us informed on this project. And so many projects supported too!!!

$ 0.10
3 years ago

This is huge news and what wonderful success. Wish you well on the next phases and continued BCH community support! Such a clever setup to help great causes.

$ 0.10
3 years ago

Any prospect of solving the problem of donation minimums? I would be willing to contribute a few hundred US$ towards a solution. [Oops! I overlooked the discussion in your article of the minimum donation issue. My interest in contributing $ towards a solution still applies.]

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3 years ago

As you discovered, yes :D There are several solutions. Just needs some commitment and dedicated time.

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3 years ago

Great job

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3 years ago

I've already stated it; but the donation minimums imo was the ONLY issue with the campaign process .. i personally don't donate large, single amounts, but I do donate very often (all over the web) for small amounts (usually in the $5 - $10 range); that just wasn't possible here (although I did see a few small donations, not sure how they did that)..

I can't express in words how relived I am that BCHN got funded. Now, I hope we can all finally put all this IFP drama to rest. But it was also amazing to see so many members step up (big time, unselfishly) to get 4 out of 5 teams to their goal.. (I know ABC has done well with their own private funding, which I wish them continued success, and big shout out to @georgedonnelly for the amazing work that he's done over there)

I'm encouraged enough to divert my time today (I need a break anyway) to putting a proposal article together for a sustainable platform to further the growth of the community .. I've already discussed the idea with @emergent_reasons and @DavidRAllen, but I'd like to open up the discussion to the wider community. stay tuned!

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3 years ago

I know you weren't especially impressed with the UX but I really appreciate the support you have provided from the beginning. Looking forward to your thing!

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3 years ago