
Show HN: GiveHongBao – Raise Ethereum for any cause, anywhere in the world - vincentchu
https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/support-jimmy-wales-of-wikipedia-and-net-neutrality-this-holiday-season
======
tree_of_item
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
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
So what does it mean actually?

~~~
faitswulff
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)

------
atrudeau
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
Unless I missed something, isn't that "fee" part just Ethereum transaction
fee?

~~~
atrudeau
"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.

~~~
vincentchu
Hi all. The contract that distributes donations also transfers a fixed fee to
my account. For instance, see:
[https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc27a96a1ed705b03604b91287d0e2cf76f...](https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc27a96a1ed705b03604b91287d0e2cf76fc8a463cfc2a07d7a3d0cd8138a988d)

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.

~~~
atrudeau
Please make the mechanics and fees clearer on the website. Linking to and
explaining the contract would be great for transparency. With that done, I
think your service can be useful.

------
germainelol
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.

------
hellbanner
[https://givehongbao.com/campaigns](https://givehongbao.com/campaigns) 404?

~~~
vincentchu
That page will 404 since there's no campaign (campaigns are at addresses like:
[https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/support-jimmy-wales-of-
wik...](https://givehongbao.com/campaigns/support-jimmy-wales-of-wikipedia-
and-net-neutrality-this-holiday-season)

If you want to create a campaign (free of charge) visit:
[https://givehongbao.com/create](https://givehongbao.com/create)

~~~
strictnein
[https://givehongbao.com/campaigns](https://givehongbao.com/campaigns) might
be a good place to list the campaigns that are currently live.

~~~
vincentchu
Indeed! That's a great suggestion ...

~~~
hellbanner
Yeah, when home page only has "Login" and "Create Campaign" and /campaigns
404s, it makes me skeptical the site is legit

------
phatle
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.

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

~~~
jaequery
@op How long did this take? Was it all just you?

~~~
vincentchu
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..)

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

------
Kiro
I'm curious about the name.

~~~
yen223
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
It’s odd because, for me, Red envelopes are associated with personal,
discretionary, Holiday gift, not charity, evergetic or common good.

