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

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

#111

Post by banachtarski »

streulpita wrote: post #106
anilshanbhag wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two parts: - Is the idea interesting ? Yes possibly. The idea of making it easy to create tokens is interesting. I can see twitch streamers giving away tokens to their subscribers / viewers. - Does it need to be on blockchain ? For all the use cases described, the answer according to me is no. It is easier to simply have a frontend through which users can interact vs maintaining a wallet, installing metamas…

It’s harder now but it’s going to get there! You gotta believe! We’re chasing something interesting and hoping we can keep making it easier and more useful. Right now, we do know it’s harder and people are still choosing to try it for fun! I agree with all your feedback above though and it’s actually really helpful to keep those realities in mind.

Everything about the way ETH and all this other drivel gets evangelized reeks of some sort of baseless fanaticism.

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

#113

Post by unclebucknasty »

hyprCoin wrote: post #96
jasongill wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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"?

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…

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.

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

#114

Post by unclebucknasty »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #79
as300 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

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.

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

#115

Post by bjelkeman-again »

kristianov wrote: post #109
streulpita wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can offer a few reasons, but they might not convince you. Tokens are provably scarce, meaning the supply is limited and can't be changed by the creator of the currency. They're easily exchangeable, which means they can move between platforms and communities. Finally, they can interact with smart contracts, meaning people can enforce the way the token behaves. I'm actually interested if you can think of a reason too…

If you think your users are smart enough to figure out all you've mentioned, then they are smart enough to use databases for their usecases.

I think there are lots of people out there that can come up with interesting use cases, without being software developers and not wanting to learn about databases. If something like this can make it easier for more people to be inventive, then I think that is a good thing.

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

#116

Post by spookthesunset »

berberous wrote: post #100
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)

I think it's interesting to standardize these things as ERC20 tokens. It's still very early days, but that allows you to leverage the entire ETH econsystem which is still growing. For example, I could store those ERC20 tokens on my hardware wallet, or phone wallet, send them to others without using a platform's website, etc. Also, your comment reminds me somewhat of the infamous Hacker News comment when Dropbox poste…

“Bitcoin / blockchain is still young”. No it isn’t it is more than 10 years old. An eternity in the tech world.

“Let me compare bitcoin / blockchain doubters to all doubters of some successful technology“. The fact that there were naysayers for some successful tech does not prove that there being naysayers for bitcoin/blockchain means that it will be a success.

Your reply is identical to every scammer and crooked shyster in the crypto space. YCombinator is damaging it’s brand associating with scams.

The sooner this blockchain nonsense crashes, the better...

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

#117

Post by hyprCoin »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #113
hyprCoin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 a…

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?

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

#118

Post by hyprCoin »

xur17 wrote: post #102
hyprCoin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gift cards are very limited. The tech behind gift card usage is extremely insufficient. Things like checking balance is often not even possible with a public API layer.

This would also enable seamless gift card exchanges. Currently secondary markets exist for gift cards, but they take ~10% margin to account for the high fraud risk, holding time, etc.

Combined with an api to transfer funds, it would serve as a virtual currency.

Why not just skip all that nonsense and build a token? It's an easier abstraction and does not involve asking permission or trusting a third party.

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

#119

Post by hbk »

streulpita wrote: post #106
anilshanbhag wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two parts: - Is the idea interesting ? Yes possibly. The idea of making it easy to create tokens is interesting. I can see twitch streamers giving away tokens to their subscribers / viewers. - Does it need to be on blockchain ? For all the use cases described, the answer according to me is no. It is easier to simply have a frontend through which users can interact vs maintaining a wallet, installing metamas…

It’s harder now but it’s going to get there! You gotta believe! We’re chasing something interesting and hoping we can keep making it easier and more useful. Right now, we do know it’s harder and people are still choosing to try it for fun! I agree with all your feedback above though and it’s actually really helpful to keep those realities in mind.

Is this Carlos from Bitconnect?

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

#120

Post by bringtheaction »

streulpita wrote: post #86
bringtheaction wrote: post #85

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?

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.

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?

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