Flipstarter FAQ

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4 years ago

The minimum pledge is quite high. Can I make a smaller one?

This is a limitation of the current technology + Bitcoin Cash protocol where a campaign can only accept a limited number of pledges. The minimum pledge will become smaller as larger pledges are made.


I want to create a campaign. Can I send the details to you?

Flipstarter team is not planning to accept campaigns after the initial Full Node campaigns. Please read the article "But who will build the platform?" for more details. In summary, Flipstarter is made so that anyone can run a campaign website by themselves. We also hope that a business will decide to create a full fledged funding platform built on Bitcoin Cash - they are welcome to use Flipstarter technology.


Is it complicated to use? Can you make it easier?

The first version of Flipstarter uses proven, low-risk technology of Electron Cash to make pledges. With this, people who want to pledge large amounts to a campaign can feel safe about their money. Unfortunately the need to use a plugin for the Anyone-Can-Pay technique does make it more complicated than usual transactions.

There are at least two ways it can be easier:

  1. The ecosystem develops a payment protocol that supports Anyone-Can-Pay transactions and also wallets implement that payment protocol. After both of those happen, wallets can read a QR code and handle everything for you, similar to the way Bitpay works.

  2. Flipstarter develops smart contract technology and infrastructure to accomplish the same result as Anyone-Can-Pay without the special transaction type. After that, wallets can read a QR code and handle everything for you. You can read about an example by one of our contributors.


Can I cancel my pledge? Will it cause a problem?

If you make a pledge and then the campaign completes, it will use your pledge and at that point you cannot cancel it.

However before that, you can cancel your pledge and the site will automatically remove it from the campaign. It will not cause a problem:

Using the built-in tool:

  1. Click on the toolbox at the top-right of the Flipstarter plugin.

  2. Click Cancel all pledges and follow the directions.

Cancelling manually:

  • Open the Electron Cash wallet that has your pledge.

  • Go to the Coins tab. You may need to enable it with View --> Show Coins.

  • Find the highlighted row with a comment that shows it is a pledge. The highlighting means that it is frozen.

  • Right-click the highlighted row--> Unfreeze coin

  • Right-click on the same coin --> Spend

  • Get a new receive address from the Receive tab.

  • Paste your receive address into the Send tab.

  • Click Max

  • Double check - what you want to do is spend the coin to yourself so that it cancels the pledge. Make sure you are sending this coin to yourself.

  • Click Send


After I pledge, do I need to leave Electron Cash running?

No. After you create the pledge in Electron Cash and submit it to the site, you are done. Flipstarter will be able to use the coin to complete the campaign and your Electron Cash does not need to stay running.


Should I unzip the plugin?

No. You should install it from Electron Cash.


Can I send from a private key, multi-sig or hardware wallet?

Unfortunately no, not yet. If the BCH that you want to pledge is on one of those wallets, you will first need to send the pledge amount to a standard wallet.


What happens if the campaign receives more BCH than it needs?

If someone submits a pledge that would result in more BCH than the campaign needs, the pledge will be rejected. This can happen, for example, if more than one person tries to pledge the last part of the campaign at the same time.


I got an unexpected error. What should I do?

There are some cases where Flipstarter might encounter unexpected errors. You can reload the website and try again, or contact us on t.me/flipstarter and report the error.


Lead image by qimono from Pixabay

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4 years ago

Comments

How can people see what campaigns are running at a given time? Is it there a directory or every campaign is running it's own marketing independently of the platform?

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3 years ago

Failed to sign pledge: sign() got an unexpected keyword argument 'use_cache'

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User's avatar m4
4 years ago

The last FAQ question/answer ("I got an unexpected error. What should I do?") is duplicated.

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User's avatar freetrader
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4 years ago

That was a pretty funny one to duplicate. Thanks!

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4 years ago

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Marketing pledge starts from 0.5bch? That's a bit high for a minimum.

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4 years ago

Q: The minimum pledge is quite high. Can I make a smaller one? "This is a limitation of the current technology + Bitcoin Cash protocol where a campaign can only accept a limited number of pledges. The minimum pledge will become smaller as larger pledges are made." -- Can I read more about why? Link to Github / other info please.

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4 years ago

Sorry to be so late with a reply. The algorithm now is roughly: minimumPledge = (targetBCH - pledgedBCH)/(allowedPledgeCount - currentPledgeCount)

This is not ideal but very safe and easy to reason about. It is described in more detail in the front end code gitlab.com/flipstarter/front-end

$ 0.06
4 years ago

It appears that the method to revise a pledge amount is to simply

cancel then recommit with the revised new amount ?

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4 years ago

doesnt work still same msg

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User's avatar m4
4 years ago

That is correct. Sorry to be late with this reply. Alternatively considering that we have enough space for more pledges, making an additional one would have been fine also.

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4 years ago

Excellent concept, well done. How to finetune the amount pledged ? Can we revise that inside electron cash, or is the amount nailed to the web-page number ?

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4 years ago

Everything is nailed and kept tight so that we get predictable and verifiable results for safety. One trick you can do is to right-click "inspect" the slider and increasing the resolution property.

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4 years ago

It appears that

the method to revise a pledge amount is to simply

cancel then recommit with the revised new amount ?


Is there any reputation software blowback from doing that ?

The risk of getting a metric tonne of flack

for cancelling the original pledge

simply to increase the amount

may inevitably trigger a social-distance tsunami....

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4 years ago

Some people will always whine. But it's your money and your decision what to do with it. If you are replacing it with more, I'm pretty sure nobody will complain. It happend in multiple campaigns, and I did it myself.

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4 years ago