What is TipIOTA?
The Internet is full of great content but unfortunately most of its creators never get a dime for it. TipIOTA aims to break this limitation and empowers creators across all social media platforms to earn money for great work. TipIOTA Chrome browser extensions is currently in private beta but we are working hard to roll out integrations with as many social media platforms as possible. We have chosen Reddit as our test platform since it encapsulates a thriving and ever growing IOTA community. Once our plugin is widely tested, we aim to quickly extend our offering to all social media platforms beginning with Facebook, Twitter, Medium and YouTube. Now you can finally be rewarded for adding valuable content to any community. TipIOTA distinguishes itself from similar services by it’s ease of use and possible expansion over the entire internet.
What is IOTA?
We’re glad you asked. IOTA is a cryptocurrency and the back bone of our application. Amongst many other things, it handles our value transfers. To put it in perspective, IOTA foundation has the long answer for you.
“IOTA is a revolutionary new transactional settlement and data transfer layer for the Internet of Things. It’s based on a new distributed ledger, the Tangle, which overcomes the inefficiencies of current Blockchain designs and introduces a new way of reaching consensus in a decentralised peer-to-peer system. For the first time ever, through IOTA people can transfer money without any fees. This means that even infinitesimally small nanopayments can be made through IOTA.”
To find out more about IOTA you can check out their website.
We have chosen to base TipIOTA on IOTA primarily because of it’s robustness. We simply love it and strongly believe its success.
How does it work?
It all starts with the Chrome browser extensions which is at the core of the entire process.
Once you have installed the TipIOTA extension, all you have to do is to sign into your IOTA wallet. In case you already have a wallet, it’s happy days. Paste in your seed and you’re ready to rock & roll.
In case you’ve never purchased IOTA tokens (coins), it’s very likely that you are not going to have a wallet in the first place. Like with any other currency, you need either a wallet or an account to store your funds. The same applies to IOTA tokens.
We’ll provide you with a generator that automatically generates an 81 character seed. What’s a seed? A seed is like a private key/password combined. To access your online banking you would typically key in your name and account number. In case of IOTA wallet, you need to key in your seed to get going. It’s worth mentioning that the seed generator as well as your newly generated seed is always based on the client side, meaning, it’s safe and sound and runs only in your browser. Your private information never gets sent to our servers or, in that matter, anywhere else. With all of the security measures in place, we would still advise people to always make a designated wallet/seed that's specifically made only for tips. Treat it almost as a top-up wallet where you store an insignificant amount of coins. This will give you a piece of mind.
It’s paramount that you store your seed safely and don’t share it with anyone since it gives access to your wallet.
Once you’re logged into your IOTA wallet, you will start noticing “Tip IOTA” buttons in line with other social media post or video options in supported social media sites. That’s where you would typically find your “Like” and “Retweet” buttons etc.
Let’s say you’re on Reddit and found an article very inspiring. You learned something new from it and decided to reward the person who wrote it. All you have to do it to click the “Tip IOTA” button on the article. You would then be presented with a pop-up window promoting you to key in the value of the tip. You would key in the amount, click on the“Tip Now” button and that’s it! Honestly, reading about it makes it sounds like such a chore so we put together a video to illustrate just how simple it actually is.
The receiver of your tips will get a message from our profile containing withdrawal information. They do not require TipIOTA to withdraw their tips. Also, to prevent users having to withdraw small amounts many times, tips will be grouped and available to withdraw at once.
TipIOTA extension will soon be available for download from the Chrome web store.
Where do I get IOTA tokens?
IOTA tokens are available from multiple exchanges. Bitfinex (BTC, ETH; USD), Binance (BTC, ETH), CoinSpot (AUD) and bit520 (CNY).
We use mainly Bitfinex and never had any issues with it although it’s worth mentioning that they will stop IOTA withdrawals in the USA within this month so Binance is probably a better option.
Some might find purchasing crypto currency slightly daunting because of the processes and safety mechanisms that are put in place by exchanges and therefore we are constantly looking at new ways how to integrate an easy way of purchasing IOTA right into our Chrome extension. We believe that getting more tokens should be no more than a few clicks away.
Future vision
While in beta, we will only support Reddit so that we can test all of our automated processes and security features, however, when we launch the first version of TipIOTA, we will cover multiple popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Medium and YouTube. Our future vision is to empower creators by unlocking a brand new revenue stream as well as becoming a micropayment processor. We are exploring ways of creating payment walls so users can pay small fees in order to unlock articles or only the parts that they are interested in. Nowadays the market is dominated mainly by expensive solutions that, by their very nature, require high transaction fees. Furthermore, we want to develop a platform to bring together rich content by collecting the most tipped posts across the web. This way we can create a curated space that’s nominated by our users.
Technicalities
As mentioned before, TipIOTA extension requires your seed but it will never be sent over the internet. It will always stay in your browser and is stored safely. Due to the nature of tips and their typically small amounts, we are considering multiple ways how to monetise TipIOTA. We use the IOTA javascript library and we host our own nodes. Tips are safely transferred to unique holder accounts owned by TipIOTA. Every transaction generates a new hash (unique ID number) that allows tip receivers to withdraw their funds from within our website. Our automated systems safely validate received tips as well as inform users of incoming funds.
Summary
To sum it all up, we’re hard at work to bring you a new kind of tool that unlocks a brand new income stream for writers, designers, vloggers, bloggers and practically any other content creator. It allows you to appreciate other peoples work by tipping them. Tips, however big or small, have the potential to give people the ability to do what they truly love and that’s very powerful.
Check out our website. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Medium or join our Slack Channel to receive the latest updates.
We've added a user feedback form where you are welcome to recommend new ideas or upvote existing ones. Every idea matters to us.