Lighthouse, the Bitcoin crowdfunding application, has reached public beta. Download it today for Windows, Mac or Linux. Then create a project of your own, or pledge money to our charity fundraiser for Medic Mobile.
In the past four months there have been 18 updates since alpha – many bugs have been fixed, some new features were added, and a small community has grown along the way. Even so, beta means beta. You should not be surprised to encounter glitches or rough edges. If you find bugs, please let us know either via email or reporting on github.
I’d like to thank once again Olivier Janssens, who has delivered the last half of his $40,000 grant for development of a decentralised crowdfunding platform. It’s been good to work with him over the past eight months.
Medic Mobile
As part of the Lighthouse launch, Vinumeris is running a charity fundraiser via the BitGive Foundation. The foundation gathers charitable donations from the Bitcoin economy in support of public health and the environment worldwide. Their current project is raising funds for Medic Mobile, a non-profit that develops mobile healthcare apps for the developing world. In case you feel that sounds like a contradiction, check out their website, where you can learn about their sometimes radically low tech approach. For example, some of the apps they’ve developed are text-menu only SIM apps suitable for usage on ultra-cheap Nokia non-smartphones.
Galleries, servers, peers, oh my!
Lighthouse does not include a global project gallery or search feature. It focuses only on moving money around. This is deliberate – the web might not be as good at handling bitcoins as a true peer to peer app, but it’s a fantastic tool to find and share information.
Whilst projects that are large enough will probably just do marketing and awareness through their own websites, other projects will need someone to provide them with a temporary home. For this reason we hope that the community will step up and start building Lighthouse project galleries. These are just websites that bring together people looking for crowdfunding with people who want to fund. We think that web developers will be able to do a great job of providing social and community building features when freed from the hassle of securely managing money by Lighthouse.
Lighthouse projects don’t need a server, but it’s more convenient for backers if one will stay online and collect pledges for them. Servers and galleries are not the same thing: anyone can run a server without an accompanying website and vice-versa. At launch we have two public project servers available for use, one run by Vinumeris and another by OneTap Software. Learn more here.
Vinumeris Crypto Projects Gallery
For many, Lighthouse is a means to an end. We want to explore new ways of funding public infrastructure like the Bitcoin network itself. For this reason we are simultaneously launching the first Lighthouse project gallery, the Crypto Projects Gallery.
This is a collection of proposed project ideas related to Bitcoin, with descriptions and estimated costs. It’s a market research tool that allows developers around the world to discover what ideas resonate most with people and which are likely to attract the most crowdfunding. By clicking “Express interest” and promising to pledge in future the BTC equivalent of a dollar amount, you send market signals to Vinumeris about what to develop, either itself or via subcontracting.
The Crypto Projects Gallery is not open access – for a project to appear there it must be vetted and uploaded by us first. We do this to try and ensure projects make technical sense, are plausible, are not too large and have a reasonable estimated cost. The Bitcoin community has in the past suffered from crowdfunding efforts that were too ambitious and spent the raised money without delivering. So we’re looking for developers who are willing to work in small, bite size chunks with fundraising being done after development is done, to keep the risk for both project backers and developers low.
Although these are our current policies for the gallery, like Lighthouse itself, it’s one big experiment. These policies might change in future and are open to negotiation. For those who want a less conservative approach: anyone who knows some HTML can create a gallery with different policies. You can still use Lighthouse to get the benefits of decentralised money.
What next?
Lighthouse will exit Beta once we feel the product is well tested and stable. Beyond bug fixing, Vinumeris is not planning on any further major upgrades as the current feature set meets our needs. Further development of the app can be encouraged by supporting Lighthouse related projects in the apps section of the Crypto Project Gallery, or through open source contributions. If you’re a developer and would like to get involved, just jump on our discussion or development mailing lists.
Vinumeris 