
Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community - streulpita
Hi, we&#x27;re the founders of Hexel (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onhexel.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onhexel.com</a>), in the current YC batch. Our product lets anyone create a cryptocurrency (an ERC20 token on Ethereum). You don&#x27;t sell it or do an ICO, you just create it and start using it right away. It&#x27;s supposed to be fun!<p>Cryptocurrency is still in a very experimental phase, but most cryptocurrencies out there seem aimed at a serious, large-scale technical problem (not to mention the get-rich-quick schemes). We&#x27;re helping people create currencies for interesting things they actually want to try using now.<p>So far, we&#x27;ve seen some cool use cases. To name a few:
A gaming streamer is rewarding his most loyal viewers with tokens they can redeem for shoutouts or merchandise.
A hip hop website is giving tokens to content curators and using them for giveaways.
A few Discord channels have created tokens to use as a form of upvotes in their communities (and we think this could be cool for subreddits too).<p>We also provide tools for managing and tracking the token you make. This is free, but we plan to make money by charging for advanced features in the future. Right now on Hexel, you can do the following:<p>1.) Mint tokens and airdrop them to anyone with an Ethereum address<p>2.) Share a public page for your token, with information and a UI for sending that token to others<p>3.) Explore other tokens created on Hexel, subscribe to the ones you like, and request tokens from the creator<p>4.) Message your token&#x27;s subscribers with updates or info about things you&#x27;re doing with your token<p>5.) View a feed of payments made using your token<p>Although the ICO bandwagon and hype have left many people feeling cynical about cryptocurrencies (we feel that way ourselves), we&#x27;re optimistic that there are many more potential applications and cool use cases out there. Our goal is to widen the space, make it interesting again, and make other use cases easy to explore. We&#x27;d love for anyone to poke holes in the use cases you see on the site, and even better would be feedback on use cases were you think this could be really useful. Thanks so much for any ideas you have!<p>Thanks!
John &amp; Marcus
======
anilshanbhag
Everything you want to do can be done on a simple database. You can mint
tokens / share it / explore other tokens / message people / view feed. It
isn't clear why you want to forcibly put this on Ethereum blockchain and pay a
fee to do every transfer (The transaction charge currently is ~ USD 0.5-1 per
transaction)

~~~
woah
Simple answer, your centralized database can go away tomorrow, or be
arbitrarily modified. That can’t happen with the blockchain.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Does that happen to your databases a lot? That's just bad engineering.

~~~
edanm
That's not the troubling case.

The troubling case is the company hosting the DB shutting down, and therefore
the entire system becoming worthless. This is what prevents you as the
customer from trusting such a system.

~~~
beefield
_That_ is preventing you to trust a system where "a gaming streamer is
rewarding his most loyal viewers with tokens they store in their own database
and you can redeem for shoutouts or merchandise."?

I would somehow think that the database technology is quite secondary to the
creditworthiness of the gaming streamer when people decide whether to trust or
not a token system of a gaming streamer.

~~~
Maybestring
It's the streamer who's trust you need. Whether they have their patron's trust
is a separate issue.

------
edanm
I'm somewhat of a blockchain sceptic (or rather, unconvinced at this stage),
but this sounds really interesting.

Meta: This is also a very well written announcement post, IMO, and I suggest
anyone looking to launch something learn from it. It starts off with the most
important soundbites up front, including the rather weird sounding "it's
supposed to be fun". Then it gives a bit of backstory, but most importantly,
provides interesting examples that back up the weird "fun" assertion.

It ends with a pretty clear explanation of what this costs and what the
business model is.

All in all, great job. Good luck!

~~~
streulpita
Thank you, that's really nice of you.

------
will_brown
Hey I offered this exact service with:

www.dotcomco.in

Some of the in-house community cryptocoins I made as a portfolio of examples
include:

www.ycco.in - distributed karma for HN community (still up)

www.instagramco.in and www.facebookco.in - distributed likes

Of course I didn’t make it to front page of HN and got no traction. As I have
more than a few cryptocoin/blockchain themed domains I began tozenizing the
domain ownership rights to try to sell with the pre-made community cryptocoin,
my experience is there seems to be more interest in these domains than the
community coins.

~~~
it_learnses
You charge 10 bitcoin as your fee which is around 80,000 usd in today's value!

~~~
will_brown
That does sound outrageous, then again from the perspective of the cryptocoin
world the first purchase with bitcoin was two Papa Johns Pizzas for 10,000
bitcoin which is around $80,000,000 today.

When I launched bitcoin wasn’t worth what it is today...that said what would
you pay for your own community cryptocoin anyway?

~~~
kerkeslager
$0

~~~
hyprCoin
Then you are not the target audience. Every small business or community can be
tokenized, just like every small business can have a website. Tokenization
could encourage repeat visits, community virility and vested interest, not to
mention investment.

~~~
jasongill
"Every small business can be tokenized"

My parents own a gift shop (like a Hallmark). Can you give me an idea of how
their business could be "tokenized"?

~~~
hyprCoin
Off the top of my head:

* Distribute tokens to partners (product / gift manufacturers). Partners with vested interest in the success of a company could be much less likely to sever relations as it will hurt their investment.

* Distribute tokens to customers as a type of rebate. Like a loyalty program that encourages patronship.

* Use tokens to vote on what products should be sold. Many gift shops sell pipes and other drug related items. This decision would sink other family oriented shops. What would your customers like?

* Distribute tokens to the locals as an attempt to build virility and community around your shop.

* Distribute tokens to employees as a way to recognize accomplishments. Ever get a few bonus stock from your company for doing good work over the week? Me neither.

* Sell tokens to raise funds.

* Set budgets based on community votes.

The list is endless and these are rough ideas. Look for ways to align business
interests and customer interests.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Most of these (e.g. rewards, distributing to locals/employees, sell to raise
funds, etc.) rest on the idea that the token has value, which begs the
question.

Many also have existing solutions that are well-understood (e.g. loyalty
programs tied to phone numbers).

And, what happens when every business has its own tokens? Who wants to
track/manage all of that? Seems like a recipe for token fatigue.

> _Look for ways to align business interests and customer interests._

In general, seems like token advocates look for ways to wedge a token into an
interaction. Not saying there are no use cases, but there's a lot of "solution
looking for a problem" happening.

~~~
hyprCoin
The token will have value based on there being value in the company or asset
being tokenized. You can't start a coffee shop but can own some of the coffee
shop down the street.

What are we here for if not to share in the risk and success of the endeavours
we support?

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _The token will have value based on there being value in the company or
> asset being tokenized._

The token doesn't de facto inherit the value of the business. That would only
be true to the extent that the token represents a claim on assets or profits
or other tangible benefit; in other words when the token acts like a security,
in which case we have already solved that. There is also a co-op model that
exists and conveys some of this benefit.

I don't know what a token adds to these scenarios, and in fact are not even
legal in the US to act as securities unless the buyers are accredited (most
people are not). Sure, until recently, the token has made it easier to skirt
non-accredited investor status and other regulatory matters, but it doesn't
make it legal or a better solution and, in any case, the SEC is moving in on
that.

I appreciate the spirit of what you're saying, and want it to be true. It's
just not currently the case.

~~~
hyprCoin
Yes there are barriers and plenty of reasons why it wouldn't work. I agree
it's not currently the case, thanks for thinking about the possibilities, not
many do.

The tokens must be valuable but that will be shaped by the market forces. I'd
love to buy some of the potential profit in my local coffee shop but I won't
buy if it's backed by nothing.

------
boffinism
Trying to actually use this reminds me of how frustrating and slow it is to
actually use cryptocurrencies. Endless hoops, lots of waiting for
confirmations, and that's me doing things the 'easy' way with Coinbase and
MetaMask.

Edit:

> We've submitted your transaction to the network. This usually takes about 2
> minutes to confirm.

30 minutes later...

Edit 2:

One email to the Hexel support team later and lo, my token is live:
[https://www.onhexel.com/token/e4a37f4f-3a26-4ae3-a8b2-c932aa...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/e4a37f4f-3a26-4ae3-a8b2-c932aaed7d8f)

5/7 would recommend

~~~
marcusmolchany
Yeah you're right, the user experience with Dapps can be pretty painful. We're
trying to make this better.

Edit: transaction time depends on the gas price, email me at
support@onhexel.com and I can make sure that things go smoothly!

------
samcampbell
My favorite coin so far is the TallCoin: "I will issue 1 coin to any person
who is taller than me (I'm 6'7")".

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/bb571299-e19a-4671-9036-7b3e73...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/bb571299-e19a-4671-9036-7b3e736eb154)

~~~
kybernetikos
I like WednesdayCoin, a coin that can only be transferred on wednesdays.
[https://wednesdaycoin.io/](https://wednesdaycoin.io/)

(not a hexel coin, but another ERC20)

~~~
samcampbell
Agreed! Also one of my favorite coins. I was blessed to receive some a few
Wednesdays ago.

------
fwdpropaganda
You say that you're not focusing on trading and that you want to do things
right. But isn't the sole point of crypto _currencies_ that they can be
traded? What uses are there other than trading?

~~~
streulpita
Oh I do think the currencies should be used for exchanging things. I mostly
meant that they shouldn’t be viewed as an investment or a way to make money.
More as an actual currency.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
That already exists and is named complementary currency.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_currency)

There's no need for a blockchain, or distributed stuff, etc. The only thing
you need is to convince people to accept it. You might as well make an app
that transfers balance between rows on a database. And the reason why you
never heard of complementary currency before, is that it's something done
"just because you can" and has no real advantages.

I understand that none of the things I said are specific to you. But am I
wrong?

~~~
as300
But isn't there still a cost advantage? Rather than securing a centralized
database you simply create a coin secured by the Blockchain?

~~~
fwdpropaganda
I don't know. How much does it cost to run things on the blockchain. _Someone_
must be paying. How much does it cost you to spin up on MySQL instance,
replicated in all AWS datacenters?

~~~
unclebucknasty
Yeah, it's easy enough to spin up a DB on RDS, but using the blockchain does
offload the need to secure the database (and securing infrastructure in
general, at least where managing the token is concerned).

There's also no dependency or trust on hexel per se once the coin is created.
They can disappear, but the contract/token lives on.

Definitely upside for using Ether, but comes at a price in transaction time
and money.

------
deft
What value are you guys actually providing? Everything you listed is
incredibly easy to do without your site. How are you planning on making money?
A static site could do the majority of this.

~~~
streulpita
The most direct answer is that we’re providing ease of use and helpful tools.
I guess you could argue that it’s easy or hard depending on the person. We
plan on making money from paid features later on, like automated token
distribution hooked into API’s, and smart contracts that can easily be hooked
up to your token.

------
kerkeslager
All the use cases you mention could be more easily implemented on top of a
more mature distributed ledger such as Datomic.

1\. What's to stop a competitor from copying your app feature for feature and
implementing their own features faster than you can keep up because they're
using established distributed ledger technologies instead of blockchain?

2\. Are there any features you have planned that make use of the one thing
that differentiates blockchains from distributed ledgers (decentralization)?

~~~
marcusmolchany
To your first point, someone could implement something like Hexel using a
distributed ledger, but it would not have the trustless components of tokens
that exist on the blockchain.

The first immediate feature of using a blockchain is that token holders do not
need to worry about a private distributed ledger shutting down its service. A
future feature we have planned is a developer program where anyone can submit
smart contracts that do interesting things with tokens. For this to work with
a distributed ledger you would need to implement your own public API for
interacting with your ledger.

------
crypto_throw
Hi,

How long have both of you been working on this project?

What was your traction before getting into YC?

I'm most interested in the traction part since there's this misconception that
YC does not accept early stage companies. It looks there are a whole lot of
companies in the very early stage and I personally take that as a positive
sign.

~~~
streulpita
In total about 4 months. Before getting into YC we had a an Ethereum developer
tools project. It had pretty low traction at that time (a handful of dedicated
users, but now many). But we had built other Ethereum projects together
before. That developer tools project eventually transformed into Hexel, which
is now consumer facing.

------
scrumper
Congratulations. Couple of questions, hopefully I haven’t missed you.

1\. Recent SEC activity: is this a threat to you? I see you have been careful
to avoid fundraising in your examples, but other people here have come up with
that as a use case in brainstorming.

2\. Did you look at Stellar? It has none of the disadvantages of Ethereum (ie
instant confirms and de minimus fees) and was in part purpose built for your
kind of project. I know you both have Ethereum backgrounds but was wondering
if you’d considered and ruled out alternatives.

Good luck! I’m keen to see a healthy online micropayments ecosystem so I’m
supportive of your project, which could become part of that.

------
pryelluw
Given how the SEC is looking into crypto currency, how are you dealing with
the potential risk that brings to your business model?

------
dorianm
Would anybody be interested for the same thing but for regular currencies? I'm
making a new one at [https://pointsproject.org](https://pointsproject.org) and
could make local ones

------
jtoy
There area bunch of these services already, so is this YC doing a me too or is
there something inherently different?

~~~
streulpita
Yes, totally valid point. The difference I see is that we're focused on
functionality that goes beyond selling / trading. I know there are quite a few
options for "Do your own ICO" and stuff like that, which is not that
interesting. We're deliberately avoiding things like ICO's and trading right
now. Our focus is on making tokens usable today, and consistently improving
the ease of use for someone that wants to use a token for something real.

~~~
gus_massa
But you can't avoid trading with a ERC20 token, because they are designed to
be tradable. Any exchange can add the token to the supported list, and the
users can immediately send the tokens to the exchange and buy and sell them.

Unless these are not really tokens and the "user/owner" can send the tokens
without a centralized permission.

~~~
streulpita
Yes, the creator could go trade them on an exchange if they wanted to. But we
don’t help people do an ICO or encourage it. I do think tokens made on Hexel
could gain value, but that would come from making them useful, not starting
off with a scammy ICO.

~~~
nonamenoslogan
Altruistic attitude shall not save you from the idiocy of greed surrounding
coins/tokens.

------
samcampbell
I created a Hacker News token. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send
you some (for free!). Either request on Hexel or comment with your Ethereum
address.

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e7...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e748d28f)

------
bringtheaction
Oh shit, this might be perfect for a fun idea I had for something I wanted to
do for my friends but without charging them money.

But if it’s an ERC20 token, don’t we need to pay gas to use it? Or does the
token run on a chain that you guys control instead of on the Ethereum
blockchain?

~~~
streulpita
You do have to pay gas because it is on the main chain. We are working on a
way to make this free in the future.

~~~
bringtheaction
Speaking of ways to make transactions free for the user, is it possible to run
a full node that verifies transactions and have it look at the type of ERC20
token in addition to the amount of gas and choose to always verify those ERC20
tokens that were made with Hexel even though they pay 0 gas?

Rather, I mean, I think that the above would be possible, but would those
transactions be accepted by the rest of the network or do transactions need to
be verified by more than just the one or few couple of full nodes that you
run? I seem to recall something about the execution of every single smart
contracts happening on all full nodes in the network but that seems strange
(mainly because of how volatile any large scale network of distributed nodes
will be in terms of nodes passing in and out or temporarily losing
connectivity with the rest of the network) so I think I did not understand
correctly how the Ethereum network really works.

Furthermore, if a full node could be run in the fashion I mentioned above then
how many smart contract executions would it be able to facilitate per hour?
Currently Ethereum is Proof-of-Work, so it would depend on your hashing power
I guess. Perhaps the chance of finding a block is so small that you can’t
realistically run the kind of node that I mentioned? And how about after they
switch to Proof-of-Stake, will it be feasible then if not now? How much would
you have to stake in order to be able to put through the transactions you
wanted?

~~~
philipodonnell
\- I seem to recall something about the execution of every single smart
contracts happening on all full nodes in the network but that seems strange

Your understanding is correct. All code runs on all nodes. That's why it costs
$0.50 or so every time.

------
numbers
Hi, just a general question for tokens that you might be able to answer: let's
say I create a token and I want to programmatically give those tokens to
people as a reward. Think of it something like "kudos" so let's say I'm at
work and I want to give my coworker a thank you and for that, as a token of my
gratitude, I want to send them one of my tokens. Is this do-able at all or am
I just thinking of this the wrong way?

One more question: since these tokens are created on ETH, does this mean for
each transaction related to a token, I will need to pay gas each time I want
to transact?

~~~
pavlov
You could just make a Google Sheet called "My Friend Tokens", make two columns
"name" and "amount", and put each friend on a row. Then enter your rewards
there and share the sheet in read-only mode with everyone.

What's the actual difference between this and an Ethereum token? Except you
don't need to pay for the Google Sheet, of course.

~~~
cloudhead
This made me laugh. In case it’s a serious question: the excel sheet doesn’t
transfer ownership of the tokens to the friend. It would be like writing it
down in my notebook.

~~~
pavlov
What does ownership mean in this context? There’s nothing that the friend can
do with those tokens. Transferring them to someone else doesn’t make any sense
either.

So how is having a useless token balance recorded on Ethereum any different
from having one recorded on a Google Sheet?

~~~
DpdC
Zasssssssssssss! In his mouth. You Win.

And your opinion is my opinion. It's not a good idea because it is not free.

You could create anything worthless that would mean "the token", and that
would be enough.

You could use PGP keys if you want it to be private and to run.

------
pj_mukh
Created a coin! We've been toying around with the idea of crowd-sourcing a lot
of mapping (for augmented reality) and could use the ETH network as the basic
infrastructure to make it happen.

The details around pricing + scarcity mechanics connecting to physical spaces
still need to be worked out, but the idea is promising. This would be a nice
abstraction once there is an API where we could hook into!

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/aab493ef-
dbef-4d78-bb3a-9b7927...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/aab493ef-
dbef-4d78-bb3a-9b79273c8ed6)

------
tyrankh
This is very very rad. Good work folks! Less crypto scamming and more crypto
fun is great.

Jean

------
lee101
Hi i'm founder of [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) a cryptocurrency
forecasting platform, pre ICO.

I think more things supporting ICO's would be great e.g. like how waves has a
decentralized exchange so that when you create a token on waves you can
immediately monetize it.

I suppose theres a decentralised exchange for ERC20 tokens somewhere, but
something that smoothes the entire end to end ICO process would be amazing.

------
kerkeslager
Trying to check your app out, I got "Our security policy blocks MetaMask in
Firefox. Please try Chrome, Brave, or Opera."

~~~
streulpita
Yeah, it's pretty unfortunate. We have a CSP in place to keep our site secure,
but Firefox enforces it differently than other browsers, which prevents
MetaMask from working. To make it work we would have to relax our CSP to the
point where it wasn't really secure at all, so for now we don't support
FireFox. We put a bounty on Gitcoin for someone to fix it.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
If the user agent shows that the browser is Firefox, serve a relaxed csp
policy, and a large warning banner explaining what you just explained.

------
zitterbewegung
I like the idea of ease of use for creating a token . But, if I sign up for
your service what do you anticipate the cost of it will be per month / year
for this?

Also, what are the smart contracts you use or security features that you have
and can it be audited or is it a trade secret ?

Have you looked at other private ledger technologies and what do you think of
those ?

~~~
streulpita
There is no cost per month / year for the existing functionality, it’s all
free. The cost later on will be for opt-in features.

Right now we have a single token contract that has been audited. We also have
a few other smart contracts in the works, to be used with your token.

By private ledger, do you mean private blockchains? I’ve always been less
interested in those. Part of the fun in blockchains is the public nature of
them, and how they enable transparency and interaction between everyone. To
me, private blockchains seem like they should just be databases in most cases.
But I’m not an expert in that area by any means.

~~~
zitterbewegung
More like things like hyperledger
[https://www.hyperledger.org/](https://www.hyperledger.org/) . Maybe a better
term I should use is permissioned ledger.

------
justboxing
My favorite is the HN Coin.

> I created a Hacker News token. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send
> you some (for free!).

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e7...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e748d28f)

------
smartplaya2001
Hi John & Marcus. We are interested in this. Can the coins we make be traded
on an exchange?

~~~
streulpita
Hey, they are pretty standard ERC-20 tokens, so they technically can be traded
on an exchange. However, right now all of the coins have pretty low volume, so
most exchanges probably wouldn't list them. A decentralized exchange built on
0x would work though!

~~~
resolaibohp
It was my impression that any coin could be listed on certain exchanges if you
pay the fee to do so. Depending on the exchange it could range from 50k to 1
million USD just to be added.

~~~
streulpita
Yes, that's usually about right for most exchanges. But if your coin isn't
popular enough, they usually will not add it.

However, there is a protocol for decentralized exchanged called 0x. Any tokens
on Ethereum can be traded on this protocol, using websites like Radar Relay.

------
moflome
Congratulations on your launch! Could you please compare your project to OST?
For example, I just used their new kit to launch an ERC20 based token:
[https://kit.ost.com/](https://kit.ost.com/)

Thanks!

------
eterm
Browsing to that page I notice my browser is pinging mainnet.infura.io over
and over. Is infura.io the same company as hexel, do you have a formal
partnership with them, or are you just piggy-backing their API without
proxying it?

~~~
marcusmolchany
Infura is a service that allows you to make calls to the Ethereum blockchain.
We use it to get the current state of your token contract.

~~~
crispyporkbites
Why do you use infura and not your own node?

~~~
marcusmolchany
For now we're using Infura for speed of development. We plan to use our own
node in the near future.

------
montalbano
Sounds like a great project.

I notice that the pricing model currently only features a free option.
Wondering if you might be able to tell us more about the business model long
term?

Many thanks

~~~
streulpita
We're going to keep developing features that make tokens easier to use,
especially at a larger scale. We'll charge for premium features later down the
road, but those features aren't set in stone yet. We have a few things planned
already, things like automated token distribution (without needing MetaMask)
and smart contract integrations.

------
SandersAK
neat! this is such a great idea. I think there was someone else trying this as
well but your setup is a lot more streamlined for non-techies out there.

------
aggronn
This is an interesting take on the BaaS market. So this does something to
similar to, for example, Chain (chain.com), but for non-technical people?

~~~
streulpita
Kind of. I don't know that much about Chain, but it seems like they are
building private blockchain infrastructure for payments. Our tokens can
obviously be used for payments, but the angle right now is not that this is
faster and easier (because at this point in time, it's not). It's more that
this lets people explore new concepts with tokens, and we give non-technical
people the tools to try those concepts out. And also make it fun.

------
Ice_cream_suit
Scammers on HN now... To be expected I suppose.

Human greed is matched only by human gullibility.

------
Vosporos
But do we need that, though?

------
SirLJ
Pyramids for everyone!

------
codingandcoding
awesome! do you want hire another engineer?

------
arikalmen
great product!!!

------
zdfjkhiuj
Given that your goal is to make toys, the tradeoffs of cryptocurrencies are
unacceptable. The whole architecture of cryptocurrencies is based around
extreme security and trust. Who needs that level of security for a toy? Why
would I tolerate high fees, slow transactions, and a clunky user experience if
the token isn't worth anything? Why would I use a globally-distributed power-
guzzling network of thousands of GPUs to make something as silly as TallCoin?
This has all the downside of cryptocurrencies with none of the upside.

Databases aren't trendy, but they'd solve the same problem better with less
waste.

------
it_learnses
Once we create the token, do we have full control of the Ethereum wallet from
which it is issued?

~~~
marcusmolchany
You will have full control of the token contract from the ETH address that you
used to create the token.

------
chanfest22
This is super cool. Love your unique take on making crypto useful right now
and focusing on fun & community (rather than ICO hype).

