repartix

Fixed, thanks! Also urls get hyperlinked now.

Backers who paid can now submit their email to get updates.

Does XSS in the description hurt? There's nothing to steal from the /project page and it's not displayed in /admin.

You have to put the link with HTML. Try

   <a href="theurl">the app name</a>

It checks every ~5 minutes. Ouch this looks like a bug. Looking into it.

edit: I think the amount you put in is less than the amount requested. You put in 0.01560016 LTC ($3.17 at $203 per LTC) and the project requested 0.0244 LTC ($5).

Thanks. I reframed the messaging to be about pay for small experiments. Let's see how it does now.

- You just described VCs.

- I don't think I'll be able to create something. I think someone else will be able to.

- Product > idea. A builder who describes a working product has skin in the game, and backers see they're backing something more tangible than an idea.

- You bring up a good point. A better angle might be "ask people to pay to fund the next feature in your project". Fund $1000 at a time.

I added the address in both /admin and /project. Thanks!

You can add HTML in the description field.

I'll check on adding channels. Thanks!

You do get something back, you prove the idea has legs. Someone might go build it. It might help to give something more to backers but it seemed too much to work on for the MVP. I mean, if this idea gets 0 users (again) there's no point in adding more stuff to it.

On refunds there are two options. The builder can either accept the $1000 or refund them.

I don't know what would work. The reason I put a hard-cap on $1000 is to not get in legal trouble during this launch. Getting more than $1000 might make a service classified as an MSB (money services business). For the same reason, I'm thinking of refunding all the money back after 30 days, and not letting the builder keep any of the money.

They can add HTML in the description field.

Yeah, pretty much. It's a way to see which ideas are good, not which founders would be best to build them. Ideas probably pick founders more than founders pick ideas. People have inclinations that make them best suited for only the ideas they'd be great at.

Imagine 10 earnest, formidable, unknown founders in one end and 10 bad-looking, good, unknown ideas on the other end. It'd be great if they could find each other.

Paying is a stronger signal than entering an email. Harvesting emails might work but it'd need some proof-of-work mechanism to vet people really are interested.

What Kickstarter doesn't provide is a way for backers to show things they want built that no-one stepped up to build yet. That's a bigger set. It's all of the ideas that are left!

Hello HN, I'm bad at picking startup ideas. I built a lot of stuff no one used. So I thought I'd build a site where people can pay for an idea before it's built.

You don't need to create some fancy landing page or something. Just describe the idea.

If people pay before an idea gets built, it's probably a big positive sign. It means the idea is big enough of a pain point. If not, this website will be a graveyard of ideas that didn't work.

If this doesn't work I'll take it down in a week.

Cape Privacy

How did you find your Bitcoins? Just as you setup a wallet for Bitcoin, you can can setup a wallet for Litecoin.

An easy wallet to try is Coinomi. It's an app that installs on your phone and has a built-in exchange. Here are some links to install it:

Coinomi on iOS https://apps.apple.com/us/app/coinomi-wallet/id1333588809

Coinomi on Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coinomi.wa...

If you're looking for a Litecoin wallet for the desktop, try Electrum-LTC https://electrum-ltc.org/. After you create a wallet, you can exchange some Bitcoins for Litecoins through https://swapspace.co/

I don't know much about lightning network channels. I'll look into it. Thanks!

On using a credit card, I built something similar that could take a credit card through Stripe. The problem there is people are a bit reluctant to type in their credit card number, in case the number gets stolen. Crypto is safer for this because the private key stays with the user on their phone or desktop wallet. Also, pasting the credit card, expiration, and your name takes longer than scanning a QR code with your phone.

+1

By show of hands, if I build it this weekend who's willing to pay and how much?

There's no "avg transaction fee". The transaction fee is derived from the deposit amount, and it's you who chooses the deposit amount (from ~$0.01 to $500) when creating a new rePOWCHA. The deposit amount isn't a fixed $5 that you see on the front page.

What you may be asking is, why is there any fee if there was no abuse. Maybe there shouldn't be. I'm open to removing it.

The practical cost right now is small, since the service just started 2 days ago and has few users. I don't know if the service will be sustainable at scale if there's no abuse. Maybe there will be enough abuse that the service will be sustainable from the 1% "abuse" fee. There would have to be some way for the service to pay for itself.

As a user, a bigger issue may be that the mere thought the user won't have 100% of their deposit refunded may deter them from using the service. I'm more inclined to remove the "no abuse" fee for this reason.

On the other hand, as a web app that integrates rePOWCHA and with a large userbase, the web app may want to monetize this user interaction.

So I don't know what will work best. There's probably a balance there.

Since the fee seemed rather expensive to you, what fee structure would you suggest for the "no abuse" case?

Single-page contact form where the sender must pay to prove they're serious about what they're asking.

Try flipping it around. Instead of you spending a lot to prove someone means nothing, have them spend a lot to prove they mean something. Check out my Show HN from yesterday.

I'd like to know what dang learned moderating HN.

Superimpressed!

It might help to make installation easier: run one script that does everything.

Yes, the key idea is to show skin in the game. Check out some usecases in https://repowcha.com/use_cases. It's nothing fancy, just simple tech that might work better.

Ordinary CAPTCHA tries to tell humans and bots apart, to stop bots from abusing a service. rePOWCHA does something different: it tries to tell if humans have good intentions using the oldest trick in the book. It asks the user to deposit some crypto as collateral. Honest users who don't abuse the service get their deposit refunded, and spammers don't.

Another difference is that it's not rePOWCHA who decides who gets back their deposit. It's the customer (you) who decides. Think of rePOWCHA as giving control back to humans instead of hoarding it for the bots. It's also free and you make money from the fees.

The big problem I see with CAPTCHA is that verifying if someone is human isn't enough to guarantee they won't abuse your service, like what happened with repl.it a couple of months back (https://replit.canny.io/feedback/p/add-captcha-to-new-post). The key insight is to make spam expensive enough that it's unprofitable, instead of merely less likely.

I want a similar way to stop spam for email. Crypto works better than a credit card for this since you can find the sender's address in the blockchain to refund their money, and also to reward them for sending good emails.

And then there's the world of online forums. Don't like getting downvoted on HN? Threads getting out of hand? Built a new online forum that requires paying to post, reply, and vote.

You can pay customer support for responding well or responding fast.

You can send rePOWCHA links to friends to pay you back lunch money.

Proof-of-work for the web is inevitable. This is a new mechanism.

I'll be hanging around in the comments this morning if you have questions or feedback. Feel free to reach out directly at repowcha@protonmail.com