Bitcoin Forum

Just had an idea for a bitcoin tipping app.  It is super simple and super scalable.  It would be just ios and droid apps for the moment but could work with any other app that's out there.

It would be called BitTip or BitRain or something.  It has an fund address that you load up with some spare Btc.  You can either directly enter the website to tip or use it as a "share" action.  So you are browsing a blog/comic/news site on your phone and want to tip the writer.  You go to share the page and choose BitTip as the app to use.  You decide the size of tip and hit Send.  The app works its magic and sends the money from your tipping fund directly to the websites address.  There is also probably a screen with the status of all your tip transactions plus funds in and out. 

I also envisage the setting of the tip size either from a menu or by making that "make it rain" gesture on your phone.  The more swipes, the bigger the amount.  :)

The special sauce is how the app talks to the website to get its Btc address.  It is super easy for the site owners.  You could probably add in individual authors as well.  All completely decentralized, expandable and instant. 

Who or what would you want to tip? How much?  A couple of cents to a couple of dollars?  1% commission ok?  Are there javascript libraries for sending Btc?

So basically you're thinking of a wallet that can only be used to send tips to websites, instead of a wallet that can be used to send coins to any address?

I would like to have an app for sending small tips if it's off-chain and operated by a trusted party (for instance an exchange or online casino). Small tips aren't worth paying transaction fees, and an off-chain solution would be nice. LN could work, but for small amounts I'm fine trusting a third party too.

Thinking about it, it's more like a protocol for knowing where to send the money to. What you are talking about is essentially an exchange where you can just shuffle money between different peoples accounts. They would probably have to pay to withdraw their money or you send it.

You can batch the tips up and send several in one transaction.  We want to encourage people to to use the coins, not just save them.

If we can get it down to three clicks, then people might start using it.

I'm curious about whether a tipping eco-system could live largely on a Lightning Network system. Because like you said, it's largely going to be just shuffling money between diff accounts and might not need to be on-chain for small tips like this.

This will obviously have to be done with the help of a Lightning Network wallet provider, because the Lightning Network was designed for cheap micro transactions.

So the way that I would do this, would be to create a App with a built-in QR scanner and when people provide the QR code for their Bitcoin address on their site, people can simply fire up the APP, scan the address from within the APP and then say how much they want to tip and click send.  ;)

Yeah, cos the Lightning Network is going to be safe and usable any time soon.  Problems with the underlying infrastructure?  Just build another layer of complexity on top.

My idea is this
Every website has a file called "crypto.json" in its root folder (http://example.com/crypto.json).  This is available to the public and is perfectly safe as only the website owner should be able to edit it.  it contains a data structure that has the name of the web site, and a list of coin addresses.  One for each type of coin accepted.  It can optionally have a list of children where the data structure is repeated.  This would be for employees. writers, etc.  the file can be static or it can be generated dynamically.  It can have any sort of coin in it.  You could probably even embed it in a web page to make it local to that page.

It is then a piece of cake to come along, read the file and know where to send the tip to.  It takes a whole step out of the tip sending as you know where to send it to.


An example crypto.json

{
  "entity": {
    "identifiers": [
      "example.com",
      "example1.com"
    ],
    "addresses": {
      "bitcoin": "address_1",
      "ethereum": "address_2"
    },
    "children": [
      {
        "entity1": {
          "identifiers": [
            "fred bloggs",
            "fred@example.com"
          ],
          "addresses": {
            "bitcoin": "address_3",
            "ethereum": "address_4"
          },
          "children":[]
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

There are dozen of bitcoin tipping bots available in the market. Likecoin implemented a enhanced one previous year. Even reddit tip bot is a good example. I will suggest you to look at some bots and then get ideas where you can enhance your.

Mine isn't a tipping BOT, it is a tipping protocol/software.  A reddit bot and lightning network are essentially the same thing.  You pay coins into a third party, "off chain" system and the balance gets moved around between users.  You still have to pay to claim it back "on chain".  The lightning network is slightly more inconvenient as you need to raise an invoice to get your tip.  What % of tips actually go unclaimed on these systems?  Also they are closed environments.  You can't tip Facebook or WordPress with a reddit bot.

My idea is a straight address to address payment.  High transaction fees is always going to be a problem (until btc is back in the $100s range).

I think not only app but from the very first firefox addon would be great too but I have different version. I think it will be very hard to push website owners to accept your btc tip method but as I see a lot of them have paypal donation buttons. With addon, it will be grest if users are able to pay 1$ or any amount with bitcoin and then you automatically donate it in usd but now as I realize my idea is hard and probably worse because of paypal tos. But addon would be great.

That would be very hard and legally tricky.

So basically its a tipping app for btc. Nice idea ofc, but imo, bitcoin is not good for tipping -- fees eats up most of it. You thought of any measure to prevent this? If you do, that could really go somewhere. ;)

True. You probably can't just jump onto something like building (so hard and) secure Firefox or Chrome addons directly without any funding. Start with what you're thinking to build (talking about the protocol, the easy part). Once you're ready with it, keep improving it with the funding you receive in the shape of little commissions. Ultimately, you'll be able to build such add-ons for the protocol with the funding of total commissions.

Literally, "a lot of" crypto startups have become successful by following this path (starting with nothing, becoming everything). "Blockfolio" (mobile application) is an example of such success. IMO, crypto-industry is still lacking basic stuff, and start-ups (like the one you're planning) have so much potential!


Maybe you should consider reading the first few posts of this thread?

Funding.  As if every idea costs a couple of million in venture capital to get off the ground.  The things with this idea is that The protocol part would be free.  Webmasters just put the file on their websites.  I could build  the tipping app in a couple of weeks.  Someone else could build the Chrome add on and another person the FF add on.  It is open and extendable and could only encourage the spending of btc.  the tricky part would be gettin people to know about it and use it.

As soon as you start saying "off chain", convert to USD, or anything like that, you are talking lots of money with little chance of actually doing anything.  

This is the same principle as clicking a link in an email to something on Amazon and it opening the Amazon app at that item.  Amazon has a file with the id of its app sitting on its website.  When you click the link, the phone checks the website and only if that app is installed, will it open the link with it.

Your idea looks good and helpful for users. I just found one Tipping site, (https://www.tipestry.com/) which has an active chrome add-on. They were running ICO which was successfully completed, according to thread. You should check their service first. They have not only BTC, they have other coins too like DOGE.

Your idea seems a bit different from them. You can and should start your project. The above site is just for example don't lose hope when you see already similar sites are available in the market. (most people do). You should start the project if your idea has something different than others.

As no one seems to have actually read and commented on what i'm actually saying, I will ignore any further comments.

This is pretty much the concept of the Brave browser, is it not? Where you are tipping based on content you like and such? Just with Bitcoin instead. Or how are the two different, in your eyes?

Just adding myself to this thread.

I have started work on this idea.