13 ms·

Show HN: GiveHongBao – Raise Ethereum for any cause, anywhere in the world

43 points by vincentchu 9y ago

hellbanner 9y ago
https://givehongbao.com/campaigns https://givehongbao.com/campaigns 404?
- vincentchu 9y ago
  That page will 404 since there's no campaign (campaigns are at addresses like: https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/support-jimmy-wales-of-wikipedia-and-net-neutrality-this-holiday-season https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/support-jimmy-wales-of-wik... If you want to create a campaign (free of charge) visit: https://givehongbao.com/create https://givehongbao.com/create
  - strictnein 9y ago
    https://givehongbao.com/campaigns https://givehongbao.com/campaigns might be a good place to list the campaigns that are currently live.
    - vincentchu 9y ago
      Indeed! That's a great suggestion ...
      - hellbanner 9y ago
        Yeah, when home page only has "Login" and "Create Campaign" and /campaigns 404s, it makes me skeptical the site is legit
tree_of_item 9y ago
You're raising money on behalf of other people and, presumably, pocketing some of it (even if you're say you're not, how do we know for sure?) Brave is doing this sort of thing too with their attention tokens and it strikes me as super shady. "I'll totally give it to them, honest!" doesn't seem good enough. You wouldn't get a fraction of the money you asked for if you didn't have the Wikipedia and EFF logos on that page.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  That's what Ethereum is for. It's completely public and can't be tampered with, so you can check exactly where the money is going. Btw. most people people who don't know Chinese will think "Hong Bao" is some guy. Bad branding for what it's trying to do. Gives the wrong impression that we're giving away money to some guy named "Hong Bao" who's promising to give it to Wikipedia and EFF
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    So what does it mean actually?
    - faitswulff 9y ago
      They're red envelopes of money that are handed out during Lunar New Year in some Asian countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - tree_of_item 9y ago
    > That's what Ethereum is for. It's completely public and can't be tampered with, so you can check exactly where the money is going. Except the page admits there will be a delay of a month before the proceeds go to the EFF, and that transaction is NOT on the blockchain, as the wallet is "sold" and the money is, perhaps, donated to the EFF. So you can't actually check.
- joelrunyon 9y ago
  Technically isn't this what adsense does? Sell ads + give some to creators? If they don't give it to creators...the creators won't promote them. They need the evangelists.
- vincentchu 9y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I didn't mean to be shady (honest)! The main problem is that the EFF doesn't have a publicly disclosed Eth address (they do accept BTC) so I just decided to support them by pledging to donate to them. Of course, nobody on the internet knows you're a dog, nor if you're honest ... :/
atrudeau 9y ago
This should be free and GiveHongBao should have their own donation page within the system. Charging a fee (even if flat) for donations doesn't feel right. They aren't offering enough value (they basically give you an HTML page) on top of Ethereum to justify a fee.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Unless I missed something, isn't that "fee" part just Ethereum transaction fee?
  - atrudeau 9y ago
    "We don't charge a percentage of what people give. Instead, we charge a flat amount for any amount donated. Keep more of what people give." I don't think is the Ethereum gas (transaction fee). I think they take a cut as well. Perhaps someone can check the transaction being generated and see the recipients/gas? This whole thing looks very shady and probably shouldn't be getting HN-like exposure.
    - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
      You're right. Just read it again and saw: > Each month I'll sell the wallet's contents and donate the proceeds to them, providing proof via my Twitter account. There are too many scammers out there, there's no reason to trust this person, regardless of what the intention was.
    - vincentchu 9y ago
      Hi all. The contract that distributes donations also transfers a fixed fee to my account. For instance, see: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc27a96a1ed705b03604b91287d0e2cf76fc8a463cfc2a07d7a3d0cd8138a988d https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc27a96a1ed705b03604b91287d0e2cf76f... The fee is flat and priced around a buck, mostly to help recoup some server costs, hosting costs, etc.. which I thnk is fair. My main motivation was to make a cheaper version of GoFundMe or Patreon. Both of those sites charge a percentage on top of whatever credit card fees.
Kiro 9y ago
I'm curious about the name.
- superquest 9y ago
  explanation: https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/red-envelop.htm https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/red-en... it's kind of like the Chinese equivalent of Christmas presents ...
- yen223 9y ago
  HongBao means "red envelope" in mandarin. It's usually filled with cash, and is something we give to other people as gifts in festive occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope
  - bertil 9y ago
    It’s odd because, for me, Red envelopes are associated with personal, discretionary, Holiday gift, not charity, evergetic or common good.
jaequery 9y ago
Refreshingly simple, this is one of the better display of what an MVP is. Congrats!
- jaequery 9y ago
  @op How long did this take? Was it all just you?
  - vincentchu 9y ago
    OP here. I started this project a few months ago, around early October. I wrote the meat of the solidity contract in a weekend or so, but the hardest part (of course) was writing all of the UI. That took another few weeks of intermittent nights and weekends. Since then, I've just mostly been putting polish on it (testing, more refinements) mostly around making the app more responsive. Happy to talk more about it-- it was a fun project that pulled together a lot of threads (Solidity, React, Web3, Infura, etc..)
phatle 9y ago
Great idea! I created this campaign https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/drink-beer https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/drink-beer and wait for a day that I can drink beers for the rest of life.
FrozenVoid 9y ago
Why people can't just send cryptocurrency from their wallet to any address they want to donate instantly?
germainelol 9y ago
I realise that you would probably won't do this, but it'd be awesome to see some of this open sourced. Despite being reasonably experienced, the idea of building an API that talks to a smart contract is completely alien to me. I also wouldn't have any idea on how to build up the actual smart contract "system" that your API talks to, so any insights on where or how you learnt all of this would be pretty awesome. Most of the examples I've seen are not that beginner friendly.

43 points by vincentchu 9y ago

hellbanner 9y ago

https://givehongbao.com/campaigns https://givehongbao.com/campaigns 404?

vincentchu 9y ago
That page will 404 since there's no campaign (campaigns are at addresses like: https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/support-jimmy-wales-of-wikipedia-and-net-neutrality-this-holiday-season https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/support-jimmy-wales-of-wik... If you want to create a campaign (free of charge) visit: https://givehongbao.com/create https://givehongbao.com/create
- strictnein 9y ago
  https://givehongbao.com/campaigns https://givehongbao.com/campaigns might be a good place to list the campaigns that are currently live.
  - vincentchu 9y ago
    Indeed! That's a great suggestion ...
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      Yeah, when home page only has "Login" and "Create Campaign" and /campaigns 404s, it makes me skeptical the site is legit

tree_of_item 9y ago

You're raising money on behalf of other people and, presumably, pocketing some of it (even if you're say you're not, how do we know for sure?) Brave is doing this sort of thing too with their attention tokens and it strikes me as super shady. "I'll totally give it to them, honest!" doesn't seem good enough. You wouldn't get a fraction of the money you asked for if you didn't have the Wikipedia and EFF logos on that page.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
That's what Ethereum is for. It's completely public and can't be tampered with, so you can check exactly where the money is going. Btw. most people people who don't know Chinese will think "Hong Bao" is some guy. Bad branding for what it's trying to do. Gives the wrong impression that we're giving away money to some guy named "Hong Bao" who's promising to give it to Wikipedia and EFF
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  So what does it mean actually?
  - faitswulff 9y ago
    They're red envelopes of money that are handed out during Lunar New Year in some Asian countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  > That's what Ethereum is for. It's completely public and can't be tampered with, so you can check exactly where the money is going. Except the page admits there will be a delay of a month before the proceeds go to the EFF, and that transaction is NOT on the blockchain, as the wallet is "sold" and the money is, perhaps, donated to the EFF. So you can't actually check.
joelrunyon 9y ago
Technically isn't this what adsense does? Sell ads + give some to creators? If they don't give it to creators...the creators won't promote them. They need the evangelists.
vincentchu 9y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I didn't mean to be shady (honest)! The main problem is that the EFF doesn't have a publicly disclosed Eth address (they do accept BTC) so I just decided to support them by pledging to donate to them. Of course, nobody on the internet knows you're a dog, nor if you're honest ... :/

atrudeau 9y ago

This should be free and GiveHongBao should have their own donation page within the system. Charging a fee (even if flat) for donations doesn't feel right. They aren't offering enough value (they basically give you an HTML page) on top of Ethereum to justify a fee.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Unless I missed something, isn't that "fee" part just Ethereum transaction fee?
- atrudeau 9y ago
  "We don't charge a percentage of what people give. Instead, we charge a flat amount for any amount donated. Keep more of what people give." I don't think is the Ethereum gas (transaction fee). I think they take a cut as well. Perhaps someone can check the transaction being generated and see the recipients/gas? This whole thing looks very shady and probably shouldn't be getting HN-like exposure.
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
    You're right. Just read it again and saw: > Each month I'll sell the wallet's contents and donate the proceeds to them, providing proof via my Twitter account. There are too many scammers out there, there's no reason to trust this person, regardless of what the intention was.
  - vincentchu 9y ago
    Hi all. The contract that distributes donations also transfers a fixed fee to my account. For instance, see: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc27a96a1ed705b03604b91287d0e2cf76fc8a463cfc2a07d7a3d0cd8138a988d https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc27a96a1ed705b03604b91287d0e2cf76f... The fee is flat and priced around a buck, mostly to help recoup some server costs, hosting costs, etc.. which I thnk is fair. My main motivation was to make a cheaper version of GoFundMe or Patreon. Both of those sites charge a percentage on top of whatever credit card fees.

Kiro 9y ago

I'm curious about the name.

superquest 9y ago
explanation: https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/red-envelop.htm https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/red-en... it's kind of like the Chinese equivalent of Christmas presents ...
yen223 9y ago
HongBao means "red envelope" in mandarin. It's usually filled with cash, and is something we give to other people as gifts in festive occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelope
- bertil 9y ago
  It’s odd because, for me, Red envelopes are associated with personal, discretionary, Holiday gift, not charity, evergetic or common good.

jaequery 9y ago

Refreshingly simple, this is one of the better display of what an MVP is. Congrats!

jaequery 9y ago
@op How long did this take? Was it all just you?
- vincentchu 9y ago
  OP here. I started this project a few months ago, around early October. I wrote the meat of the solidity contract in a weekend or so, but the hardest part (of course) was writing all of the UI. That took another few weeks of intermittent nights and weekends. Since then, I've just mostly been putting polish on it (testing, more refinements) mostly around making the app more responsive. Happy to talk more about it-- it was a fun project that pulled together a lot of threads (Solidity, React, Web3, Infura, etc..)

phatle 9y ago

Great idea! I created this campaign https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/drink-beer https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/drink-beer and wait for a day that I can drink beers for the rest of life.

FrozenVoid 9y ago

Why people can't just send cryptocurrency from their wallet to any address they want to donate instantly?

germainelol 9y ago

I realise that you would probably won't do this, but it'd be awesome to see some of this open sourced. Despite being reasonably experienced, the idea of building an API that talks to a smart contract is completely alien to me. I also wouldn't have any idea on how to build up the actual smart contract "system" that your API talks to, so any insights on where or how you learnt all of this would be pretty awesome. Most of the examples I've seen are not that beginner friendly.