[ON HOLD - 300 BTC] Make a bitcointalk forum plugin to allow tipping via BTC

[SgtSpike]

Are there any other services that will host a wallet in a secure and safe fashion for you?

Am not sure how much I would trust any online wallet but I will say that the support from WalletBit is quite good (there you go Kris - something positive from me at last).

This looks better but still a little too much. The ideal situation would be a service where you would simply get json-rpc details to a hosted bitcoind instance where the third party ensures security for the hosting. Does that exist?

YES.  Jfreak was advertising exactly such a service earlier in the year.  I thought it was neat, but didn't have any use for it.  It sounded like he had it very secure (as much as a live bitcoind instance can be secured, anyway).  Contact him for more details though.

[Transisto]

This might be the greatest enabler of constructive discussion around bitcoin.

[phelix]

[...]
If this was made a bot, what would happen is the bot would have its own account on the forums which it logs into, and users could send commands via pm (for balance checking, depositing, withdrawing) and also tip people by posting +bitcointip <username> <amount> in a thread, like how the reddit bot works. The bot & wallet could be hosted elsewhere & could work without specifically needing permission from Theymos (unless he bans the account of course). This is how reddit tip works.
[...]

what happens if your account is not funded?
if you send to an unknown user?

imho the bot solution has issues.


What about something like the Good Post/Bad Post Mod backed by btc?

Theymos?


If one could set the tipping amount to 0 we would even get the "good post" feature for free 

[Tachikoma]

I've been thinking and prototyping over the last 24 hours with my business partner (I know stupid word) and I think we've come up with a plan that solves most of the issues concerns mentioned here on the forums. We want to make it public now to get some constructive feedback and see if we indeed covered all bases. I will try to not get into too much technical details.

The system would exist of two parts. On the one hand would be a website (service) with an API interface and on the other hand a plugin for SMF that talks to this API. The plan is to create both pieces of code so they can work neatly together.

As a forum member this is how tipping would work.



Each post has an unique 'tip link' that you can press to send a tip to author of the post, specifically for that post.

If you press the 'tip link' one of two things can happen.

• If you already tipped before: you will get a small modal with an input box that mentions your current balance and asks you how much want to tip.
• If you have not tipped before: you will instead receive a message your tipping account has been activated and you will be presented with a bitcoin address to fund your account.

Tipping will only be possible if your account is funded either by depositing money or by receiving tips.

If you send tips to an account which is not activated yet the system will simply hold the coins for you. Since you send the internal forum user id with each tip you can later redeem an account if you wish to active your own tipping account, the funds will be automatically in your account at that point.

Tipping yourself is not possible the tip link won't show on posts that are your own. And even if you try to bypass that we can do an extra check on the server side since we have the internal forum id.

Behind the scenes the forum software should do a query to the API service (on cron) to retrieve all tips made and save this in a local table to be used as cache so the tips can be shown on the forum. It will show a total amount received on the left side of the post where general user info is displayed. And the amount of tips received for that post will be displayed next to the date of the post since this is post specific information.

[thezerg]

seems good from a user's perspective.  4 suggestions:
put typical tip amounts in the dialog box so we don't have to type numbers in
refund if not claimed within a month
put the tip destination address in the box so we don't have to hold btc in your service if we don't want to.  So tipping direct is inconvenient but possible.
Limit the total tip amount to slow down thieves -- just an added protection alongside the fact that there should not be too many btc in your tipping act

[ingrownpocket]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=130551.0

[Nyhm]

Erik,

As a developer I'd recommend that you change the format a little for medium sized awards like 300 BTC.  Bounties are great for quick stuff like "get this to compile on Ubuntu".

Instead ask for proposals and then award the best one the opportunity to do the work.  Proposals should contain how the system will work, resumes, how bugs will be fixed, license, and a completion date.  If they miss their completion date you have the opportunity to extend or move the offer to someone else. 

Offering a coding bounty -- AKA a "race" -- is going to get you shoddy (as fast as possible!) work, people with enough time on their hands to out-race other coders, and who are willing to risk their work being wasted just because someone else was a little faster.  But there has never been a time essentially since computers were invented when top quality programmers were not in great demand, so what kind of programmer really wants to grab at this?

Cheers!

I think you're right about this.

Anyone have a problem with this format? I'll approve a proposal, and then if it's completed successfully I'll pay the bounty. But, you have to get my proposal sign off first. Any issues with this?

I agree with thezerg on this, as well. I'd tip him if there was such a feature.   Fast | Cheap | Correct : Choose two

[weex]

I think you're right about this.

Anyone have a problem with this format? I'll approve a proposal, and then if it's completed successfully I'll pay the bounty. But, you have to get my proposal sign off first. Any issues with this?

So do we submit proposals here or by PM?

[thezerg]

Erik,

As a developer I'd recommend that you change the format a little for medium sized awards like 300 BTC.  Bounties are great for quick stuff like "get this to compile on Ubuntu".

Instead ask for proposals and then award the best one the opportunity to do the work.  Proposals should contain how the system will work, resumes, how bugs will be fixed, license, and a completion date.  If they miss their completion date you have the opportunity to extend or move the offer to someone else. 

Offering a coding bounty -- AKA a "race" -- is going to get you shoddy (as fast as possible!) work, people with enough time on their hands to out-race other coders, and who are willing to risk their work being wasted just because someone else was a little faster.  But there has never been a time essentially since computers were invented when top quality programmers were not in great demand, so what kind of programmer really wants to grab at this?

Cheers!

I think you're right about this.

Anyone have a problem with this format? I'll approve a proposal, and then if it's completed successfully I'll pay the bounty. But, you have to get my proposal sign off first. Any issues with this?

I agree with thezerg on this, as well. I'd tip him if there was such a feature.   Fast | Cheap | Correct : Choose two

Thanks!  Half my day job is being a "coder-dad" -- I clean up all the junk my people leave behind  . 
WRT a tip its always appreciated but not necessary!  16ExHi8FZ848JDsDqrGAXgXbyyLWhdDMe9

Erik, I don't know yet if I have the time to propose, but if I don't (that is, you see nothing from me by whenever you decide to decide) then I'd be happy to do a technical review of the proposals.

[evoorhees]

If you send tips to an account which is not activated yet the system will simply hold the coins for you.

Could you elaborate on this part? I think it's necessary that the recipient of the tip gets a message alerting him that he has funds awaiting him.

[lulzplzkthx]

Is theymos willing to run a bitcoind instance on this server, or is there another e-wallet online which allows sending to addresses within the same service without a fee, and furthermore has a nice API?

If so, this should be relatively easy:

Like Tachikoma said, simply allow users to fund their account, and tip from their account. This makes it transparent as to who's tipping a user (hell, you can even mark as anonymous if you have over 100 posts, let's say), and keeps it easy and subtracts the whole fee required.

If these conditions are met, and what I just proposed works, I may try to make one of these real fast.

EDIT - Actually, you could just run this off of a random service, keep the "amount a user owns" in a database. That amount is accessible to them, but it doesn't need to actually move coins around the addresses.

[Tachikoma]

If you send tips to an account which is not activated yet the system will simply hold the coins for you.

Could you elaborate on this part? I think it's necessary that the recipient of the tip gets a message alerting him that he has funds awaiting him.

Sure. An "anonymous" user would be created in the service database. It would have a deposit address an forum_user_id key but no secret hash. The user would be send a message via PM that a tip has been send and he can then activate his account by either tipping somebody else or just send a signup message in pm. The service would recognise the forum_user_id of the user just activating his tipping and thus assign him the tips.   

[evoorhees]

If you send tips to an account which is not activated yet the system will simply hold the coins for you.

Could you elaborate on this part? I think it's necessary that the recipient of the tip gets a message alerting him that he has funds awaiting him.

Sure. An "anonymous" user would be created in the service database. It would have a deposit address an forum_user_id key but no secret hash. The user would be send a message via PM that a tip has been send and he can then activate his account by either tipping somebody else or just send a signup message in pm. The service would recognise the forum_user_id of the user just activating his tipping and thus assign him the tips.   

Excellent. Waiting to hear back from Theymos and we can move forward.

[theymos]

Sounds mostly good.

You need to give people the option of opting out of PMs when they receive donations. Otherwise some people will be annoyed, especially when they get PMs for very small tips.

I'd prefer all of the actual tipping stuff to be done on your site, not through JavaScript stuff on this site.

Tipping yourself is not possible the tip link won't show on posts that are your own. And even if you try to bypass that we can do an extra check on the server side since we have the internal forum id.

This alone won't prevent people from tipping themselves. Are you also going to take a fee?

[Tachikoma]

You need to give people the option of opting out of PMs when they receive donations. Otherwise some people will be annoyed, especially when they get PMs for very small tips.

This should be possible.

I'd prefer all of the actual tipping stuff to be done on your site, not through JavaScript stuff on this site.

Why is that? I think the user experience is a lot better if you don't have to visit an other site to tip. The javascript will be loaded from external servers and all the communication will happen client side directly to the API service. It doesn't have to go through the forum code at all.

This alone won't prevent people from tipping themselves. Are you also going to take a fee?

I can easily add in a fee, I did not account for tipping with puppets. Any opinions on what should be a fair fee?

[theymos]

Why is that? I think the user experience is a lot better if you don't have to visit an other site to tip. The javascript will be loaded from external servers and all the communication will happen client side directly to the API service. It doesn't have to go through the forum code at all.

So if you lose the bitcoins, people don't blame the forum.

Any opinions on what should be a fair fee?

1%, maybe.

[Logik]

Can anyone give a brief update about this?

[Tachikoma]

It did not seem like Theymos was keen on implementing this, so nothing is happening with it so far.

[weex]

Tachikoma, did you end up building anything then or just designs?

[Tachikoma]

I did start. I think I made initial progress on the javascript library/web-app that would hook up to the forum and the SMF plugin that would take care of stuff behind the scenes.