Cryptocurrency support for Saidit.net

submitted by magnora7 from self.SaidIt

Saidit.net is paid for through the power of the community and crowdsourcing. We don't run advertisements, and the crowd is what drives the content, not the advertisers.

We've done our homework to make smart and economically sustainable choices for hosting and licensing, and currently as a result it only costs a lean $102/mo to run the site. We hope to continue this trend, in comparison to voat who transitioned to a .NET architecture and now pays thousands of dollars every month just in Azure licencing fees, and that's not including any server costs. A smart growth design will hopefully keep saidit up and running for years to come at minimal cost for the community.

If you'd like to help us with server costs for running SaidIt.net, we are proud to accept the cryptocurrencies listed below. Please be careful to use the correct address for the correct coin, as a mistake may cause the coins to be lost.

Bitcoin (BTC) Donation Address:

edit: Crypto addresses are being updated, please use patreon to donate in the meantime. Thank you!

We have a Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/SaidIt

Thank you for your support as we continue to improve the website.

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[–]leo 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Steem might be good too I know a lot of people have worthless amounts they would donate over hassling to cash it, including me.

[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ah thanks for the idea.

[–]happysmash27 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Can you look into accepting QRL, and other quantum resistant cryptoassets, like Snowblossom and Mochimo? Currently, all the current options would be able to have private keys cracked from public keys via Shor's algorithm if a sufficiently powerful quantum computer were to be developed. It could take some years for this to happen, though, so hopefully a migration to more secure keys will be possible in the future!

Also, if you would like some extra server space, I have a dual Xeon X5560 24g of RAM rig with over 1.5 TB of space left. Please contact if interested!

Since I am making suggestions: Can you look into making this site available on then[Hyperboria[(https://hyperboria.net/) and Yggdrasil? They are important mesh networks in the event that something happens with the clearnet.

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Sure, I will look in to those things. Thanks for bringing them up! Of all those, which do you think is the most important for saidit to have?

[–]happysmash27 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Sorry for the late response, but probably the meshnet access, as these networks are much less corporate controlled than others as well as more robust. Not many sites are on them yet, so it would be amazing to be able to access a site as good as this one from them!

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Hm interesting. Is putting the site up for availability a matter of setting up the hardware for it? The code of the site wouldn't have to be changed, right? It would just be another way for the server to communicate with another separate internet, in essence, right?

How much would it cost to get set up like that at a minimum but still doing it right? Also I assume the traffic would be tiny, but it might prove very useful if the internet went down. Can you rent meshnet server space just like regular server space? Because I assume you don't want the meshnet access to have to pull data through the internet to operate, then the meshnet node would go down if the internet went down and that's obviously not useful.

Sorry for all the questions, but this is a new thing for me and if we're going to to do it I have to have a good idea of how much time and money it will take to accomplish before I will begin. I am definitely intrigued by this idea though.

[–]happysmash27 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

The code could remain the same, yes. Setting up extra hardware could allow for more connections to the meshnets, but normal hardware should also work fine.

Idealy, all meshnet traffic would go directly between physical nodes, but due to the network effect, there are often very few in close proximity. For this reason, the meshnets are currently linked both physically and through the internet when a physical link is not possible. Even if a site is connected through the internet to the meshnet, however, it still has the advantage of being able to be connected to even if there is a localised internet outage or censorship in another location, provided that the meshnet infrastructure exists. Both mesh networks encrypt traffic at the transport layer as well, meaning that there is also additional security from going through them.

If you have access to a dedicated server, it could be set up for free if you do it over the clearnet. Setting it up with a physical link may be a bit more expensive, although how much more expensive depends on how far away the nearest node is. Wireless technology can get a signal accross several kilometers for a pretty reasonable price, though.

No meshnet hosting currently exists to my knowledge, but that does give me a business idea…

[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Thanks for all the information! I understand it better now. Your point about localized outages is interesting, I hadn't considered that.

Just so I'm clear, and maybe this is a dumb question, but you can request data from mesh nodes that you don't have physical access or line of sight with, right? As long as you can connect to the meshnet, you can connect to every server on the entire mesh network, right? Like you can hop 2 or 3 nodes away to fetch data, right?

Also how good is the coverage of the meshnet? If the internet goes out for the whole world, can I communicate across the US with it? Does it span across the whole world?

No meshnet hosting currently exists to my knowledge, but that does give me a business idea…

If that works out, I want free/cheap meshnet hosting for saidit for thinking of the idea please ;)

What's the cost for the antenna and signal booster and electronics needed to create a node? Like $1000? Is it doable for like $200? That'd be a price we could actually consider getting started on that right away.

[–]happysmash27 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I just remembered this response and have stopped procrastinating on answering it.

Just so I'm clear, and maybe this is a dumb question, but you can request data from mesh nodes that you don't have physical access or line of sight with, right? As long as you can connect to the meshnet, you can connect to every server on the entire mesh network, right? Like you can hop 2 or 3 nodes away to fetch data, right?

Yes.

Also how good is the coverage of the meshnet? If the internet goes out for the whole world, can I communicate across the US with it? Does it span across the whole world?

Pretty low, unfortunately, due to low traction. Having SaidIt on it might be able to provide more uses for it though, thereby attracting more users. I don't believe it spans across the whole world yet, or even the US, but Germany has pretty good coverage among other places. I may want to seastead in the future, so this might work well for relatively cheap intercontinental meshnet communication without relying on the internet.

What's the cost for the antenna and signal booster and electronics needed to create a node? Like $1000? Is it doable for like $200? That'd be a price we could actually consider getting started on that right away

I believe there are some materials around that price, although it also depends on how far the nearest node is. You may be able to find more information in /r/darknetplanhw.

If that works out, I want free/cheap meshnet hosting for saidit for thinking of the idea please ;)

I would be more than happy to help with hosting on both meshnet and clearnet! Server hosting is one of my most favourite things to do, especially when it helps others! I have a dedicated computer at home with 2 Xeon X5560s, 24GB of RAM, terabytes of hard disk space and a massive amount of room for expansion. I also have a VPS with 2GB of RAM I am struggling to pay $7/month for, since the service I run on it isn't quite profitable enough. The biggest bottlenecks of my home server is my 5Mb/s upload speed, fairly bad latency, internet and electricity that rarely goes out, and a computer that even more rarely goes out, but has before due to me accidentally using too much RAM, which is why I upgraded to 24GB in the first place. I usually have over 8GB free, and I have over a terabyte free on all my combined drives and can trivially free up around 500GB on one of them resulting in almost 1.5 free terabytes on one drive.

[–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the interesting offer, I'll mull it over and consider some more of the technicals of this before moving forward.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I could see a port to ZeroNet being possible, but it still requires an ISP and normal internet access.

https://zeronet.io

Maybe there's something else out there that would be a better fit. Some of the existing meshnet stuff is for static content only, but that'd be cool too.

[–][deleted]  (10 children)

[deleted]

    [–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (9 children)

    Good idea, I will work on adding a Monero address. I've heard a lot of buzz about Nano too, seems like an exciting currency since it has zero fees. Thanks for the ideas!

    [–]Drewski 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

    Monero address still coming?

    [–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

    I will do that soon if I can get a good wallet set up. I tried to set up the desktop windows wallet and it was a nightmare and did not work in the end. So I am still looking for a good monero wallet, probably at an online exchange, if I figure one out soon I'll post it here

    [–]Drewski 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

    I don't use it myself, but MyMonero is highly regarded by the community.

    [–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Ah thanks I'll give it a look. I am surprised at how difficult it has been to set up a monero wallet compared to the rest. I like Monero as a crypto so hopefully MyMonero suits our needs

    [–]mrh2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    I only ever have Monero working from the command-line. It's fine if I do that.

    [–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    Thanks for the idea, I was able to successfully create a wallet here. Monero donations can be sent here:

    EDIT: (REMOVED AS ADDRESS IS NO LONGER VALID)

    I'll add this to the main post. Thanks for the link.

    [–]mrh2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    • (not added yet). Please delete this comment when you get it added.

    [–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    I ended up taking it down because that wallet service was discontinued. I'll remove this donation link in the comments too as it's not valid anymore

    [–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    It's been restored

    [–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    Sweet, no ads!

    [–]necaremus 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    you could also think about adding an opt-in mining algo. (only as opt-in option, never ever by default!) this way all users could use some spare computing power to financially support the website. (or alter the algo to mine for themselves... which they could have done from the very beginning anyway... xD)

    the point about "environment-friendly" is a heavy one, thou. some cryptos are trying to get rid of the Proof Of Work concept, which is really resource heavy in most(all?) cases (you burn a lot of energy), towards a Proof Of Stake concept. I have no idea if an opt-in mining option/algo is possible with an underlying PoS structure.

    [–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Haha as a matter of fact this is almost exactly what I just spent the last several hours drawing a roadmap for, actually. Great minds think alike. We are developing a plan toward this end. We are talking about doing opt-in in-browser mining and developing our own crypto. I'm not sure if there is a way to make the CPU cycles burned more useful and serve some purpose, but perhaps not. I would love for it to do something useful too while it mines. We are researching this, if you have any additional info in this area let me know.

    [–]asterias 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Have you thought about Brave BAT currency?

    [–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    We already do that too :)

    [–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Are you still paying only $91/month? ;-)

    It would be cool if you kept a donations/total cost meter somewhere for us to look at.

    [–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Yes we are still paying $91/mo, we are keeping any excess donations that aren't spent immediately for future server costs because the upgrades get super expensive over the next few levels of upgrades. We will probably upgrade here in a month or two, we're definitely using up almost all of the level we're at.

    [–]bynarie2018 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

    You guys are on the right track, but u need to LOOK AT THE CODE. Do you not realize everything on here goes to reddit? And, out of allllllll of the places to have a server u pick linode... why..? I really admire the work, but this website REALLY needs work and your code needs cleaned up..... But whatver

    [–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

    Do you not realize everything on here goes to reddit?

    It doesn't though. There might be some service that accesses reddit, but we've been working on the code 6 months to eliminate these things. What are you talking about specifically, so we can fix it?

    What's wrong with linode?

    If you want the site to improve then show me where the problems are specifically and explain why, so we can fix it

    [–]bynarie2018 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    u should put a line in hosts file that reads reddit.com 127.1 that way reddit.com is blocked. I do like the idea of putting a mining script on the site.. I did some testing on the server directly(went around cloudflare) and it has some issues, specifically with the SSL cert. You have Lets Encrpyt and Comodo. theres an entry point. And with linode your probably renting a vps, linode will shut you down. I do honestly think u guys did a great job cloning reddit, but run kali and pen test it... youll see what im talking about.

    [–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Thanks for the feedback. I like your blocking reddit.com idea, we'll do that.

    How did you find the server ip? So Comodo certs are considered to be particularly insecure/compromised? One other user has brought that up too.

    Can you recommend a Linode alternative? We are ready to migrate hosts at any time if we need to.

    [–]bynarie2018 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Comodo is fine... But you have Lets encrypt installed directly on the actual server its showing me. 2 SSLs != good... I have messaged magnora, told him the IP, and everything. Dallas TX linode. Hostname... All that... Im not here to harm, here to help.

    [–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Thanks for the feedback, we'll have a look at this stuff now that you've pointed it out. /u/d3rr check this out

    [–]bynarie2018 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    Sorry, I wasnt trying to be rude... Oh, one more thing; make sure the php files cannot be downloaded unparsed.. Execute only mode.

    [–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    /u/d3rr also this

    [–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    this one I don't know about. we don't have any php that I'm aware of. I doubt we're serving any source code but I'll do some tests.

    [–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Yeah I didn't think we had any php either. The first one seems legit though

    [–]lastwords 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    +1 Please add: - Monero/XMR (privacy coin) - DigiByte/DGB (it's the only coin I know where we can make recurring payments with crypto)

    [–]Lord_Falklands 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    absolute n00b here. isn't there a more conventional way to cover the costs whenever anyone has some spare change ? i'm old enough to have PayPal

    [–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Sorry, crypto and patreon are all we can do for the moment. Thanks for thinking of us though

    [–]Trajan 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

    Have you considered SubscribeStar or done other Patreon alternative? I can’t in good conscience use them. Besides, I’d be surprised if they don’t boot you.

    [–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    We've looked at alternatives but none have really grabbed our attention. I don't think we'll get booted from patreon but it is a possibility that we're prepared for

    [–]Trajan 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    Thanks for the reply and for the site. I’ll have to get my head around cryptocurrency.

    [–]magnora7[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Crypto is really just an online fiat currency, where the money creation rate is governed by a math forumla rather than people, and the the ledger for all transactions is shared publicly (this ledger is what they call 'the blockchain'). Hope that helps

    [–]Trajan 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Cheers. I know the theory. I’ve just been procrastinating.

    [–]0111100001110110 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    I've got some Pirate Chain (ARRR) to donate.

    [–]bynarie2018 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    first of all you need to get rid of all the fucking reddit icons, all the 404 pages... and for fuck sakes, BLOCK REDDIT god damn....

    [–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    all the fucking reddit icons,

    Where? I haven't seen any in months.

    I see no 404 pages.

    I'm not blocking reddit.