Bitcoin Forum

I run http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/. We have no income from it but it takes a Amazon EC2 small instance and a bit of bandwidth to run it. We get the odd donation (thanks very much to those people) http://blockexplorer.com/address/13Tn1QkAcqnQvGA7kBiCBH7NbijNcr6GMs but as you can see a lot less than the few hundred dollars a year it costs to host.

Is there anyway we could add to peoples forum signatures a signed link that showed what they had donated too?

I think if blockexplorer.com added a new link that was /address/pubkey/forumname/signatureOfUrlUpToLastSlash, then it would check the signature and only display a page if the signature was correct.

We would then need some sort of register of donation address, so the page showed who they had donated too.

Might encourage people a bit during Bitcoins current voluntary phase.

Maybe someone has a better idea to help encourage innovation?

Bitcoin:  the cutting edge of begging technology.

You could ask for a small fee ($5-$10) to get access for 3-4 months to review detailed logs and history, and once a year release all the logs to public (to avoid withholding valuable information).

There is a lot of press going on on bitcoin lately, and they (will) need detailed information. You could profit from that while providing valuable information to the community.

I use the service and find it interesting.  I'll likely make a donation sometime today.  I very much like Eli's suggestion in principle.  If you (OP) can think of some ways it might be implemented that might help loosen my wallet.dat.

BTW, one thing I miss about the site would be an obvious place where you (OP) could put explanation for certain kinds of artifacts which appear on the charts.  I am sometimes left wondering if certain gaps, dips, and blips are for real, or a failure of your system.

I may have gone a little overboard with that:

https://i.imgur.com/7h11z.png

US Dollars: the cutting edge in theft technology.

I'd rather have people politely ask for voluntary donations than simply steal my money via inflation.

If only there was a third option...  What's that thing that's the opposite of shame? 

such as the link in my signature ?
follow the link in the image to ecdsa.org : the "comment" column of the table is where donators can leave a signed message

Nice!  I did the same.  for anyone that wants the code:


Also, I think the OWS General Assembly is a better donation target than Feed The Protest, which is just one unemployed writer that's up in Vermont or something.  He may be doing good work, but for the donation to get noticed, donations should be sent to the OWS General Assembly.

OK, I sent a few.  Think about putting your code on github and I may drop a few more.

oh I did not know about that other ows address.

btw, check here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47189.msg562079#msg562079
and here http://ecdsa.org/widgets for more fundraiser widgets

It might be a good idea to host elsewhere, and not on EC2, which is relatively expensive. You really don't need hosting that costs a few hundred dollar a year, for something like this.

In fact, it would probably be fairly easy to get free hosting for this from someone on the forums.

I was also offering a service with an EC2 small instance, until I discovered a solution which is 80% cheaper than that, and it was proven even better in performance. You can get a VPS (VM) in many places in Europe. I use Giga-International. The EC2 small instance equivalent is 10 EUR/month with practically unlimited bandwidth included, and excellent connectivity to the rest of the world.  I am sure there are many others as well.

In other words, I could consider donating as you offer useful information, but if you don't seem to care about costs, I feel that my donation would be wasted, if you see what I am saying.

Continuing on this, Cinfu.com offers VPSes in those price ranges with unmetered transfer, and they accept Bitcoin as well :)

Yeah, I think it would encourage donations. It's something better to brag about than your hashrate for sure. ;)


I didn't get how it would work? How does blockexplorer know which transaction is from whom? I guess I didn't get the signature part. Can you expand on this?


+1

I feel like a bit of a cheapskate now! Thanks for the donations!

I know EC2 is not the cheapest, but it is stable there now and I know I will waste $1000 of time moving it so I will leave it there.

It takes quite a lot of RAM  (1.2 gig) as there is a berkdb with all the IP's it has seen in the last month, and when I ran it with that not in RAM it came to a grinding halt! Also it has 80 peer connections so I also run a bitcoind on the same box to donate those back to the network.

You are right about putting the source somewhere, but is a bit of a mess! But will do some day.

Sorry about the occasional spikes the last disaster was when the berkdb corrupted. It has been stable for a week now so I am hopeful!


On my post, your signatures are great and will add it. But I was thinking of the other way round. i.e. people can put in their signature who they have donated too rather than received from. Would that work to?

Arh!! Tried to add image to signature but need 3 more posts before I am allowed to!

How about burning through another post by elaborating on the thought of putting the code in github?

Bitcoin, cutting edge of sarcasm technology.

I don't think he was being sarcastic.  In addition to begging, Bitcoin enthusiasts also enjoy sketching out crude prototypes of things and hoping someone else will show up and make them. 

You guys are both a little bit mixed up by the look of things.  It does not sound like it would be terribly productive to try to explain 'open source' to ya'all so I won't waste my breath.