Hosting costs the Vespiary $25 per month.
It's not much, but I don't particularly like paying it since I have a lot of other expenses building up with my other projects and I see this site as a public good instead of a entraprenerial effort; I certainly don't make any money from hosting this site.
We currently have 0.232 bitcoins for hosting, but I think I've came up with a good way to ensure continued donations as it runs out in the next 3 to 4 months (depending on what bitcoin does), which is to employ a dominate assurance contract, which will basically go like this:
At least 5 people need to donate $5 to The Vespiary to ensure it stays live per month (when current funds run out)
If less than 5 people donate less than $5, I will refund them & pay an additional $2.50 for their efforts. This means you get back $7.50.
> if it doesn't reach it's funding goals, you profit but the site goes down.
> if it does reach its funding goals, the site stays up and the money goes towards hosting, but you can opt to get your name green, and a site tag-line to signify that you donated and helped to support the site. Example of this is user Tsjanga - which you may be able to see his green name and "Donated!" when they are online. Also I will give your account profile 5/5 stars, which is generally reserved for users who post several hundred posts. I know it's arbitrary, but some people may enjoy the extra account bling.
For funders it is a win-win since they either get the public good (The Vespiary) or financial gain.
Do you think this idea is viable for future funding?
It seems like a fun experiment and I think I'll be trying it.
To ensure anonymity and simplicity I'd simply send the $7.50 to the same addresses that sent the $5... so if this is done it would be important to ensure you have the private key of the donating bitcoin address.
One draw back is that you'd have to trust me to give you the $7.50 or continue to host the site; but I've hosted the site since the end of 2008 which hopefully builds enough trust amongst strangers who like this site to risk $5. Eventually it'd be fun to use Mike Hearn's lighthouse software, and/or multisgnature transactions to ensure everyone acts out our agreements.
Hosting costs $0.83 per day.
Current Bitcoin Balance: 0.232
Current funds pay for ~3.5 months. :/
1VespJ7dUtwMmvz6oDsMFDzs18kML58UV
