TOTC is a place to leave a message to the world using just an Ether transfer, with no registration needed.
My goal for 2018 is to learn about crypto and the blockchain - this is my first experiment towards that.
It's built using the Coinbase API on top of a Laravel backend.
Perhaps not the next million dollar homepage, but fun regardless! 🙌
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Joe TannorellaMaker@joetannorella · Developer & Marketer
Hey PH,
I wanted to learn more about crypto and the Coinbase API, so I just started building and ended up with this. It's all just a bit of fun.
Most of the transactions you see on there at the moment are clearly test transactions created by me (using actual Ether transfers). I couldn't get the Coinbase webhook to work properly for a couple of days, but then it worked for every previous transaction, and what you see on the site was the result (every test transaction being published!) 👊
The main thing I learned from building this is that Bitcoin has high transaction fees. Initially I was going to make this for Bitcoin, not Ether, but every Bitcoin transaction at the moment basically costs around $10 to be done in any reasonable timeframe. Ethereum is around $0.30. My experience is limited to Coinbase in this regard, so feel free to correct me.
Another huge challenge was the fact that Coinbase doesn't have a sandbox to test transactions. This caused a headache for me because you can't transfer from your own address to your own address - I had to use a familymember's Coinbase account (which triggered 2FA every time I wanted to develop this!). Another big challenge was getting the webhook working - the only way to truly test is in live, which obviously isn't ideal.
What could I add to this to make it a killer side project?! Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Joe
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Andrey Petrov@shazow · Creator, self
Very cute, would be nice if URLs were actually linked. I'd be tempted to promote our related product (https://www.producthunt.com/post...). ;)
On second look, this is actually very close to the leaderboard on https://merrymerkle.com/, pretty neat!
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Joe TannorellaMaker@joetannorella · Developer & Marketer
@shazow I did consider adding in a WYSIWYG editor for the text, but it just didn't make it to my MVP. I'll consider it though! The URL in the message also didn't get passed the Twitter API for some reason, which sucks. Had to write that Tweet manually, ha.
your product looks awesome btw. Super glad to see someone has done it, and I think your implementation is great! Feel free to take over the top spot! ;)
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Andrey Petrov@shazow · Creator, self
@joetannorella I don't mean a WYSIWYG; I mean links (e.g. https://.../) should get ...'d. For example, the top message right now should have coinhive.com as a clickable link (same way it would on Twitter).
Just from an ad value perspective, clickable links are way higher value than just text.
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Joe TannorellaMaker@joetannorella · Developer & Marketer
@shazow Good shout. Thanks mate. I've just pushed a fix in for this. Appreciate the help! All the best with your project, I'll be following closely! :-)
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Jules Dourlens@jdourlens · Co-Founder @ kumabits.com
Hey!
Nice work but wonder why this has that much upvote...
It actually did not use Ethereum's smart contract or having anything decentralized. Just using coinbase API: you could have done the same thing with Paypal or Stripe? (an would have been able to debug correctly)
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Muhamed-Kanapiya@muhamed_zhaksylik · Digital Entrepreneur - kanapiya.ru
It just kind of using eth for post message?
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Joe TannorellaMaker@joetannorella · Developer & Marketer
@muhamed_zhaksylik That is correct. That's all you can do. Ideally I'd like people to get competitive and want to keep the top spot, and therefore pay more Ether to do so. Currently the top spot can be had for like 0.0013 Ether, which is something like a dollar. Any ideas how it could be improved?
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Neil Cocker@neilcocker · Founder - Ramptshirts.com
Nice fun project! My only comment is that it's not immediately clear *why* I should pay to be on the top spot. Million Dollar Homepage had the obvious visual benefit but (especially as the existing messages don't seem to be self promotional) there's nothing that tells my why I'd benefit from giving you my hard-mined-crypto. (Note - I don't have any crypto).
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Joe TannorellaMaker@joetannorella · Developer & Marketer
Thanks @neilcocker! Ha that is definitely a good point. I kinda took this for granted, I think. The ideal view is that if I can build up enough views to it, and get some press releases out and onto some tech blogs, then there will be some FOMO from people wanting to just be a part of something. Equally, if there really are a lot of eyeballs on this, then a relatively small Ether message could actually result in some very effective advertising. E.g. a $10 transfer to hold the top spot for a few hours after a Techcrunch feature, for example, could actually be quite appealing potentially. That's the ideal view... the reality is sadly that no one other than PH will see it, ha.
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Neil Cocker@neilcocker · Founder - Ramptshirts.com
@joetannorella @joetannorella Ha ha, well I hope it's a success. But for me, the benefit to me as a "purchaser" needs to be clearer and more explicit.
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