Bitcoin Forum

Is there some bitcoin related bounty website out there? I mean a site where I can fund proposals by sending bitcoins.
If there is none, would anyone care to set up such a website?

Proposals where I would vote with my bitcoins:

1) Enable wallet encryption in the official client. It is in the code for some time, but I think it will not show up in some official client for some more ages using lame excuses.

2) Make bitcoin-qt the official client. From a users perspective it is way ahead of the current official bitcoin client.

3) Register a bitcoin: handler to be handled by the official bitcoin client. This should have been implemented since a few years. I can only guess that the developers haven heard about this new invention: clickable urls in web browsers </sarcasm>

4) Enable private key import. Eventually this would enable bitcoins "stored" on printed paper for savings. Code is in the repository since around February. Again I guess it will never show up.

5) Add a generate private key and import private key dialog to the official client. I mean not everyone knows how to use vanitygen or does even know what compile your own client means. With this I could create a private key that I just print on paper, send my savings to the related address and can later redeem it at any time by entering the private key. Would be a great yet simple system. Again I almost can hear some lame excuses.

As one can see, most of those would be more usability proposals than development proposals. I think we as a community have to "lead" our developers in those things, because, frankly, most of the times it feels that the (core) developers are living in there own world not understanding reality. Prime example wallet encryption. With this I am pretty sure allinvain would still have its 25000 bitcoins and could single handed pay a few full time developers.

The main point of such bounties would be, that as more people will join a certain proposal with there bitcoins, the "pressure" to the developers would increase to step aside lame excuses and just implement/enable things. And I am pretty sure that a lot of people would join, because some points have been asked for since ages.

Back to my questions, where do we have such a website?

That sounds like it would be http://bitpoll.dyndns.org/    - but it seems to be down at the moment.

Good points! I have tried floating this bounties idea on the mailing list, even proposed making a site for it, but it seems most there don't really like the idea :( So I kind of gave up.

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=27860505

In principle this could be set up very quickly and would encourage developers to do something for bitcoin.

bitcoin-qt supports "bitcoin:" URIs when Drag&Dropped to it. I have not implemented browser handlers because I have a bad feeling about javascripts being able to send data to the bitcoin client without user intervention.

Now at least you can make a button "drag this image to your bitcoin client and click send to pay"...

As long as your handler always opens up a dialog for sending bitcoins I think this is safe. Javascript cannot abuse mailto: torrent: and all the other gazillion registered protocol handlers, so why the bitcoin one? And most browsers open some "do you want to start..." dialog anyway. So I think, go ahead, register the handler. Dragging something around, while nice, is not a solution.

BTW, I follow your excellent development on bitcoin-qt. I constantly pull your changes and compile my client myself. But the average user cannot. Hence my point in making bitcoin-qt the official client.

Well the Bitcoin one has to do with payments. It is absolutely security critical. There is much more incentive to abuse it, than say, sending a mail or downloading a torrent... which is a fun spoof but not much more.

I've asked for assistance in building binaries multiple times. It is quite involved, and I insist on doing it in a secure way. Multiple people would have to build it in an exactly equal build environment, then give the SHA hash of the .exe (and dependent DLLs).  After, that it could be packaged and distributed using a https:// site.

But how to motivate people to help? I have tried posting topics in Project Dev or asking in my own thread, and hardly any replies. I hope you understand that I don't go developing and handing out bounties at the same time, there is a limit to the amount of energy I'm going to invest in this (Though I did donate to the Android client dev).

Tah-dah! Enter DeVCoin, whose official GUI client is devcoin-qt

Are you on the list of recipients Unthinkingbit set up for donations?

DeVCoin doesn't even require you to have a separate address for receiving DeVCoin, it uses your normal donation address so you can be receiving DeVCoin with which to eventually maybe motivate people (maybe mostly after exchanges have been set up so they can cash it in if they don't actually "believe" in it themselves).

-MarkM-

I agree, but making it clumsy (drag an image) instead of intuitive (click a link) is not a solution. Just add a big red warning dialog, or whatever fits you, in your handler. But add the handler. <sarcasm>We should disable clickable links in the web browser, because a http link could send you to a child porn site, so a clickable link could make you a criminal.</sarcasm>

To have done it in a really secure way, multiple developers have to review and compile this on their own, and then publish the hashes. Automatic compiled binaries wouldn't bring that much, because you could just commit some "send all coins to me" code and everyone pulling the code would still have the same hash.
On a side note, I for one, would like to compile it using VS. As far as I have tested, your code does not compile out of the box using VS. It does using the mingw, which is really great. But to be honest, compiling and debugging is way to slow using mingw.

I am in this list. However, doesn't DeVCoin involve an all-new block chain? I don't think it is practical to expect everyone to switch to a new chain just to pay the developers :(
 
You get it wrong. The problem here is not that I am distrusted (or the source code). Everyone can audit my code on github and see the history of every change (also, if I wanted to steal your money I'd be writing windows rootkits instead of trying to help a fledgling distributed currency)

The problem is that build environments might have viruses, trojans, and the .exe might be infected during upload/download. You can audit source not executables. Hence you need multiple people to buid it and arrive at the same answer.

Well then, fix it to build in VS (and contribute back the build scripts + instructions). I am not against that I just don't use it myself. I don't even use windows on most days, and if it is in a VM to test whether it still builds.

One of my friends is working on a similar project.

Bitcoin community needs a site similar to kickstarter.com, where people can propose or fund any creative project.

+1
We get a new block-chain ever other week. I suspect that most of those are just people that wants to be ultra early adopters, but got late on bitcoin. So the easy solution is start your own block chain.
 
I see. Good point.

Point taken. However, this was the reason me asking for a bounty site. I would probably spend a little on such point like this, and when others join with their bitcoins, it could make enough for some developer to say, hey I'll make this and take the bounty.

I am pretty sure that a trusted bounty site would be better than any new block chain.

Indeed, I agree a bounty site is a good idea.
Sign me up if you're going to build this, if needed I can do some python/django/js/web dev...

I already imagine the domains bitbounty.com or bitcoinbounty.com to be bought. Maybe even some .org/net ones.

Hello already done :) almost ready to open shortly we have a dozen or so really cool projects now  grant it we aren't a bounty site per say but we accept all bitcoin related projects!

Stay tune for more :)

I don't know if others are working on such a project, but I just registered btcbounty.net anyway. I'll do some hacking over the coming weekends and put the source on github.

Also, if I'm gonna step up and run this project then only free software projects will be eligible for bounty/payout, because I'm a dirty socialist like that ;)

@John Smith, I'm a Python hacker and FSF member. I've never done Python web dev (aside from writing my own webserver based on SimpleHTTPServer). Here's an example of my work in Python (http://canvnc.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=canvnc/canvnc;a=tree)

Interested in working together?

Sounds great. Will it also support smaller proposals like the above discussed "bitcoin:" handler or wallet encryption?
While I very appreciate all the hard work the developers put in, I sometimes don't understand their resistance to add elementary usability features like wallet encryption or an url handler. My idea was to break this resistance using a few bitcoins. Hmm, thinking of this, maybe the resistance is because they are just waiting for those bounties... ;)

We are resistance, bitcoin is not futile! ;)

-MarkM-

BitcoinStarter.com will entertain any kind of project even smaller ones - I agree elementary usability features would be very helpful to the community to have.  :)

Any time frame on when this will be ready?
Will it hold the pledged bitcoins in escrow?

Earliest this weekend ( this is my goal at least! ) and latest at the end of this month. The pledged Bitcoins will be held in escrow and released if project is successful. If not successful all Bitcoins are returned to their perspective pledgers.

Good question!

Just curious, who decides whether the project is successful or not?

Hi Drawoc - the Project Creator sets the time frame to be met so say it is - 10 Btc in say 15 days - if 15 days pass and 10 Btc is pledged to the project then the project is labeled a success and funding is released to the Project Creator.  Hopefully, this helps.  :)

Oh, so is this for funding projects before they've started? I initially got the impression that it was more for pledging money for a project, and after the project was finished, the person who completed the project receives a bounty.

It is pledging for a project before it is started with only a few differences in that it has to meet some requirements to do so. In this case, the amount needed in Bitcoins (10 BTC) and days (15 days) to reach it . Really, no different then the pledging you are mentioning above.

There is one other difference the Project Creator offer's ( optional ) incentives to pledge and in return the "pledger" gets the rewards mentioned for his/her pledge.  All in all it is basically the same.

Okay, that clears things up, thanks.

You're welcome. ;D

I agree; and nothing socialist about that: Either you fund for-profit projects and you get a share of the profit, or you fund free software and get the code.

The second is more useful for the bitcoin community right now. I really want to aim it at improving bitcoin-related open source projects.
Sure! Python for web is quite easy to learn, if you already know Python (especially advanced stuff like you did) that's the most important part.

My ideas:

• People can post a new bounty, or add to an existing one (all in escrow, of course, to make sure payouts happen).
• For each bounty there needs to be a (or more) "moderators" that decide if the bounty can be claimed, or that rework still needs to be done. Moderators should be developers, so that code quality is also looked at.
• A developer that has done some work on a bounty can post his initial work to prove that he is working on it; it might be that this still requires rework, but moderators can "lock" the bounty in his name so no one else can claim it in the meantime.
• Each bounty must have a "due date", by which the posters get back their escrowed money if there is no initial submission by then
• They system should have a (primitive) discussion thread on each bounty to discuss requirements etc.
• Registration / authentication simply using OpenID

Maybe we should ask for this topic to be moved to Project Development?

Yes but only for a short time, depending on the trustworthiness value of that developer. Maybe have milestones for larger projects.
We'll also have to watch out for scumbags submitting copyrighted code from other projects as their own and it being released under an incompatible license.

Yep, I'm thinking that each project has an address and we just post the funds back to the address that sent them, so there's no need for people to register accounts to donate. Completed projects would have new funds posted directly to the person who completed the task. Not sure about new funds, maybe new funds being added should re-open / extend a project, or maybe they're just posted back to the address that sent them.

I think the requirements should be set in stone when the project is created. We're dealing with donations from many people who are donating because they agree with the requirements. This is horribly bureaucratic but IMO the only way to do it fairly.

Absolutely, I hate sites that force me to sign up with a new password, almost as much as I hate having to store user passwords! :D

Thinking of security, would it be possible to write the platform in a way which prevents the site owners, moderators and any intruders from having access to the funds? For example we could encrypt the private key with a "project key" (owned by the site) and a "sponsor key" (one sponsor per donation address, potentially many per project). Once the site moderators agree that the requirements have been met, the project sponsors enter their key and the funds are released. Or maybe something is possible using scripting?

This would have the down-side of projects running forever and funds potentially being lost if the sponsors disappear, as we couldn't close a project without knowing the sponsor key. But it would IMO be a better option than running an escrow site given all the recent hackings!

Yep that would be good :)

A similar thread there started yesterday: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36361.0

You could generate a new address every time that a sponsor wants to sponsor a project. Then when payment arrives, generate one transaction for every possible outcome (one transaction that sends the bitcoins back to the sponsor, and one that sends it to the developer) but don't broadcast them. After that, you delete the address' private key. When the outcome is determined (bounty should be sent to developer or returned to sponsor), simply broadcast that transaction on the network.

This way, the most damage an attacker could do would be to choose whether the bounty went to the developer or the sponsor. The attacker could never send any of the coins to himself (unless he was the dev/sponsor).

This has a few downsides:

• If the sponsor sends coins to an address after its private key is destroyed, those coins are gone.
• You still keep the private key around until a payment is received.
• All developers must be known before the bounty is moved to escrow. Any developer that appears late in the game cannot collect bounties held in escrow before he started work on a project.

It would be nice if we could create transactions that said to forward all funds sent to one address, present and future, to another address. That would kill problems 1 and 2. (Also useful for ex. importing an untrusted address into one's wallet.) If this isn't possible currently w/ script, it sure would be nice to see implemented. (Bounty anyone?  :P Gotta love irony.)

1 and 2 is doable using the current system:
Upon receiving some funds you can create an temporary address/private key pair, send the funds to this new address, and use the generated private key to generate the two outgoing transactions. Now store both transactions and throw away the temporary private key.
That way the original address does not vanish and so no coins will be lost.

This idea rocks! Are there any escrow services that use this method? If not, there should be!

Nice, didn't think of that.


Agreed. Maybe we should contact Btcrow, and suggest it to them? (I don't think anyone's using it yet.)

I'm taking this proposal as an idea to possibly working on. The only thing pop me in mind is, Is this method won't be to hard for the average user ? I wanna keep every escrowed transactions easy for everyone.

Well, the idea is that this happens behind the scenes on the server side. The users might not even know you're doing it. The goal is that anyone who now hacks your server can't send the bitcoins to themself, only to one of the parties in the transaction. In other words, it becomes impossible for anyone to steal bitcoins off of the server, thus increasing security.

Any updates on the project yet? Yes, I know I am impatiently :)

WOW, after waiting almost a full year (without bitcoinstarter delivering anything) someone else finally made it:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87314.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87314.0)

A co-creation platform is already running a beta version. Crowdholding (https://www.crowdholding.com) is building a strong community, where you can earn crypto now only from BOUNTIES, but from general tasks as well.
And any ICO project can run their bounty on Crowdholding as well!

ANYONE can participate. It's similar to Quora (https://www.quora.com)
Join the community now :)

check out the BOUNTY here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2097228.0

Hi Everyone,

I want to start off with apologizing for not being an extremely active member on the site and offering a bounty program. This one is a little different as it is for an event. The crypto thought leaders speaking at this summit and I are putting together a bounty program and we wanted to gauge some initial interest in it.

The summit is virtual and will have around 15 speakers at it. Gil Penchina, Miko Matsumura, Cindicator, and many more will be speaking. The business model is a free live ticket for anyone interested with an upgraded $67 All Access Pass for those who want to keep all of the recorded sessions forever. It's a two day virtual event.

http://icovirtualsummit.com/

If you are interested in a bounty campaign for this, please reply as such in response to this thread. We are organizing this virtual summit from San Francisco, California and wanted to do it to welcome the international community and give people a place to hear about how the industry leaders want to shape the future of the ICO industry. We want to teach and network around how to make the entire industry better. Topics that will be covered are:

LEARNING FROM THE PAST:
Tons Of Money or Survival Bias

TOKEN ECONOMY PANEL:
Is It The Evolved Stock Market?

LEAN ICOS EXPLAINED:
Learning From Traditional Investor Wisdom

ESCROW:
Technology & Principles

ICO & Legal Compliance

KEYNOTE:
A Startup’s Secret Guide To ICO Success

BLOCKCHAIN STRUCTURED:
Maslow’s Heirarchy For Blockchain

PANEL:
Industries Most Likely To Become Blockchained

BLOCKCHAIN IN THE MEDIA:
Make or Break

PROFESSIONAL ICO INVESTOR PANEL:
Inside Investor’s Minds

CRYPTO COMMUNITY EVOLUTION:
A Look Into The (Realistic) Future

KEYNOTE:
Blockchain Without Borders: A Global Scope

Please let me know if you are interested in a bounty campaign and I'll post the details if enough people are.

How get btc from bounty?  ???

I am most interesting with bounty campaign always use only fill the form without have created website or connect our wallet with bounty account, how ever by using erc20 wallet more better and easy for doing task.

Really great, but very rare case. Less chances to avail these opportunities.