Bitcoin Forum

I'm considering starting a faucet (either purely Bitcoin or maybe a multicoin faucet), and my question is how best to handle payouts. I see two approaches:

The first is to not payout until an account reaches a certain threshold, which would have to be somewhat higher than the transaction fee for sending the transaction. That would mean a long time between payouts.

The second approach would be to batch payouts - ie, once a total threshold is met (ie,0.01 BTC or even 0.001), construct a batch transaction to send payouts to everybody that is due. On one hand, people would get paid a lot quicker, but on the other, many of those payments would be considered "dust"

Or there could be a combination of the two, send a single payout transaction in a single batch, but only including recipients who had reached a preset threshold.

Just looking to you guys for guidance. Faucets not up yet so I'm not advertising anything, but if this is the wrong place for such a question, feel free to move it to the correct location.

Thanks.

Just payout every week.

first i suggest you create a poll on this, this way you get better results (IMO)
and to answer your question i think the combination is better, pay the ones who reached the limit and pay them in batches thats what most sites do like moonbitcoin
https://blockchain.info/tx/3443e4dd7100e941e580429f068211b1115ec54dbac10ec5a08ba0ab27bbc3b9

but the most common way that faucets use is using Microwallet api you can check it out in its site

and btw i think dust is amounts below 5600 satoshi (not sure thou)

Most faucets will partner with an offchain wallet service like microwallet that will handle payments for you.

The setup would work so that you would deposit funds at microwallet, then whenever someone claims funds from your faucet the amount that was claimed would be transferred to their microwallet account. Then once the user has accumulated enough and requests a payout they will send payouts in batches.

Why don't you look how other good faucets do it and adopt the way you like?

Some faucets provide the option for the user to decide how to receive payment. Why don't you give the option for both? It'd boost the popularity of the site when there's customization!

Paying every week is very good and you can fix limit which is more better I use few faucets which are paying minimum 5500 weekly so you can do also like this its better

i like the second approach ,because the price of Bitcoin was instability,so the payment should be given in short time

here some faucet, hope can help..

He wasn't looking for faucets; he was asking about the payment processing aspect of a potential faucet of his own. Again, I think it'd be better for the user to be able to choose how they wanted it processed; I don't think it'd be too difficult to code, either.

Suggest that you choose the second method!

Set up a weekly payout with a minimum figure. If user doesn't reach that figure then carry forward for another week payout.

Thank you for the input, everybody.

I have zero desire to make another microwallet affiliated faucet; I think I'll just proceed and see what the balances look like on a daily or weekly basis and figure out the payout method based on that.

I know this is bitcoin talk, but I'd like to offer the choice of Bitcoin or a couple of alts. Primecoin, peercoin, what other ones are people interested in?

Litecoins are another semi-popular one currently, if I'm not mistaken.

Try Googling the more popular ones. An alternative strategy is to look at the more recent altcoins that are less popular, because there's an economic possibility that their value may increase/decrease substantially.

I agree.
Or you can use Microwallet.

Because there is always a way in which things work out better, unless you are a genius you want to copy and not innovate.

You really must use a service like mocrowallet if you want to run a faucet. The network will not accept any TX that only has outputs/inputs of less then 5500 satoshi, plus the cost from TX fees sending very small amounts would quickly add up to certainly make your faucet unprofitable.

If you do not use something like microwallet then users would not realistically ever earn enough to claim payment and would not use the faucet at all

That's what I was trying to find out. Rather than wait for each recipient to earn 5600 satoshis, how would the network react to a transaction with 0.01 BTC input and two hundred 500 satoshi outputs? 

I have no desire to make yet another microwallet based faucet, so I'm trying to think of a way to make sure that recipients get paid in alternative scenarios.

There are other services that work in similar ways that microwallet works but are competitors with microwallet (I believe one example is coinbox.me - however I cannot testify as to the trustworthyness of them nor of microwallet).

Anyone who would claim payments from a faucet that does not work with a microwallet like service is a sucker (then again so is anyone else that uses faucets) as they will likely need a very large amount of 'claims' - likely more then they would be interested in continuing to use faucets -  before they can receive a payout

The latest option people go for to prevent "dust" is to increase the withdraw limit to 25 000 Satoshi.

This in my opinion, is flawed. People need instant gratification these days and to wait about 2 weeks for a payout, will discourage people to use that faucet.

If they want to have such a high withdraw limit, they would have to increase their hourly payouts or decrease the time between the use.

The advertizers want value for their money, and you will have to constantly draw new people with higher payouts and also frequent withdraws. To increase site traffic and repeat returning customers.

The higher the adverticment income the higher the payouts. So keep your faucet users happy and you will be happy.

Freebitco.in and BitcoinZebra has it spot on, but 777Bitco.in has it wrong. {High withdraw limit with No payouts}

I think coinbox.me is broken. thats true, trusting your funds with a third party involves risk. Just do a batch transaction for those who reach a certain threshold, for example, when a batch of user reached 10k satoshi, send them all in one transaction.

With faucets, I think a higher minimum withdraw limit is good for faucet users and faucet owner in the long run. Less fees for both parties. But newbies wants to be paid dust to feel gratified. So let the users choose is the only work around.

This is technically correct, however you really do not need to have very much money on deposit with the off-chain wallet service as you would almost certainly be giving away very little on a daily basis. If you were to deposit even .0001 BTC with the off-chain wallet service then you would likely have enough to fund payouts for months.

The issue is that if you were to wait until users reach 10k satoshi then most users would never reach enough to get a payout. If for example you gave away 100 satoshi up to once per hour per user then each user would need to visit your faucet 100 times before they would have enough to get a payout, and the amount being paid out would be worth less then a penny and would cost more to spend in additional TX fees then it is worth now