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Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#41

Post by streulpita »

dharness wrote: post #30
anilshanbhag wrote: post #27

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)

Can't win a free ETH if you use a simple database.

Haha, well actually we could do that regardless. The purpose of the giveaway is to source more ideas for what people actually want to do with cryptocurrencies, and to make sure our product can serve those use cases.

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#42

Post by streulpita »

gus_massa wrote: post #37
streulpita wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#43

Post by streulpita »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #39

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 ?

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.

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#44

Post by chris_wot »

streulpita wrote: post #41
dharness wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't win a free ETH if you use a simple database.

Haha, well actually we could do that regardless. The purpose of the giveaway is to source more ideas for what people actually want to do with cryptocurrencies, and to make sure our product can serve those use cases.

All of the examples you gave don’t need a decentralised cryptocurrency and I reckon could be done more easily with a regular database.

Unless you can give a reason why those examples require decentralisation then, as much as I respect your attempt at finding an actual use for decentralised Merkel trees, I ultimately think it’s doomed to failure.

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#45

Post by CryptoPunk »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #27

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)

An intermediary solution would be to use a DappChain, which acts as a free-to-use sidechain of Ethereum. Loom is going to be releasing an SDK for their own sidechain, DelegateCall, soon:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdlnBsw1iRAks1F2pD6...

A similar initiative is POA Network, which has US public notaries acting as trusted validators for an Ethereum sidechain:

https://poa.network

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#47

Post by fwdpropaganda »

streulpita wrote: post #35
fwdpropaganda wrote: post #28

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?

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.

That already exists and is named 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?

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#48

Post by zitterbewegung »

streulpita wrote: post #43
zitterbewegung wrote: post #39

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 ?

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 natu…

More like things like hyperledger https://www.hyperledger.org/ . Maybe a better term I should use is permissioned ledger.

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#49

Post by woah »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #27

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)

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

Re: Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community

#50

Post by woah »

will_brown wrote: post #8

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 doma…

Sounds like these guys have users, which is probably what makes the big difference.
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