XMRChat

A lot of fluff here. Is this a retroactive funding request?

amount: 114
milestones:
  - name: Milestone 1 - MVP (minimum viable product) using LWS
    funds: 42
    done: 8/4/2024
    status: finished
  - name: Milestone 2 - video display of xmrchats with Streamyard and OBS, find creator page, private xmrchats, making repo open source
    funds: 32
    done: 11/20/2024
    status: finished
  - name: Milestone 3 - creator specific minimum tip amount, links to more creator content + new tab UI for that and other settings, audio tip received notification, How To section in FAQ, old xmrchats expiration, admin page, site monitoring.
    funds: 15
    done:
    status: unfinished
  - name: Milestone 4 - on screen special effects and notifications based on tip tier, moderator / cohost page, feature currently live streams, fee system
    funds: 25
    done:
    status: unfinished

Caught up on the conversation in Monero Community Workgroup, saw some questions on self hosted vs not, fees, and illegal streams.

We aim to be a 3rd party service provider, hosting an instance of XMRChat where many content creators can create tip pages. XMRChat software is also available for self hosting. The setup instructions in the readme are for both dev and prod environments.

We plan to introduce premium features at some point. Verified accounts, notification options for tip over certain amount, channel featured on main page when live, visual effects for higher tip tiers, etc. The project is fully open source, so these will be available for both our service, and self hosted.

There are two fees, both only for the service. We will not collect any fees from those that self host. The first fee is a small initial charge of .001 XMR for tip page creation. The purpose of that is only to to discourage people from squatting on many tip page URLs.

The second fee is what we hope will make the service sustainable. For users that pass a threshold of XMR earned, we plan to show a popup or email asking them to tip XMRChat. We'll show the amount of XMR earned last month and an option to tip XMRChat a portion of what they've received. Options will likely be 0%, 2%, 4%, remind me later. Those that tip 4% get get access to the premium features.

The XMRChat service will need to limit content to only legal content. We'll reserve the right to disable the tip page of any user we catch engaged in criminal activity.

Adding some more info on Milestone 3 items:

Creator specific minimum tip amount - allow each content creator to specify their own minimum amount of XMR they'd accept for an xmrchat. Range is as low as 0.0001 XMR (~$0.02) to as high as they'd like. Completed 11/23/2024. https://x.com/xmr_chat/status/1860292262527213689

Links to more creator content + new tab UI for that and other settings. On the tip page, under the content creator's name, clickable icons appear with links to X, a website, YouTube, Rumble, Twitch and Substack. Completed 12/6/2024. https://x.com/xmr_chat/status/1865139392223797687

Audio tip received notification - content creators can have xmrchats displayed on screen using Streamyard or OBS. For OBS, we give the option of playing a sound when a tip is received. Completed 11/30/2024. https://x.com/xmr_chat/status/1862962932188897676

How To section in FAQ - main site, https://xmrchat.com/, has a FAQ with answers for 3 questions. Plan to add a 4th that would explain how to use XMRChat from point of view of content creator and fan. Work on this feature has not yet started. Why tip with XMRChat? Why does XMRChat use Monero? Where to get Monero?

Old xmrchats expiration - We created a poll to get feedback from our followers on proposal to delete old xmrchats. We want to provide fans the fun experience of interacting with content creators, without creating a trove of data that could one day be abused. We're considering deleting old xmrchats for better privacy, less data = less problems. Based on results of the poll, we plan to offer creators the option of keeping xmrchats for 1yr, 180days, 90days, with the default being 90 days. https://x.com/xmr_chat/status/1863209170679296319 Work on this feature has not yet started.

Admin page - Create Admin Role. Admin role gets new Admin Page category in Sidebar. Admin page shows list of all tip pages. Shows 1) page slug 2) count of tips 3) xmr earned (actual, not entered) 4) All user entered fields 5) ability to make tip page not load, show not available message or something (in case content illegal). Work on this feature has not yet started.

Site monitoring - want to get emails to support address when CPU usage > 80%, when a payment expires after 30 minutes, and when automated recurring test tip fails. Work on this feature has not yet started.

Positive community support received so far:

Post on X, 19 reposts and 49 likes. https://x.com/xmr_chat/status/1867206910933344389

Post on monero.town 4 upvotes. https://monero.town/post/5242646

Updated 12/19/2024.

The below quote is from Doug in the linked Youtube video:

"I've been supplying some funds to Fiat[Demise] as needed and Fiat[Demise] has been supplying funds as well to pay the devs to help us build this [...] it's going to be [...] censorship resistant [...] we're trying to work down what a potential revenue stream might be but as of now yes, no fee [...] these [tools] can't just be charity cases right, we need these tools to be self sufficient, they need to be earning money"

Retroactive funding request for XMRchat.com (source @ https://github.com/sa8ab/xmrchat) + further funded work.
Creators sign up after paying an anti spam fee.
Primary address/secret view key are manually provided / created off site.
Each person signing up will receive a customised tips page @ XMRchat which looks like https://xmrchat.com/monerotalk - comments can be attached to donations and displayed here.
a twitch 0auth bot is ~~required~~ Optional. this bot will relay comments to a twitch stream. streamlabs will then take this comment and overlay it onto your stream. OBS source is also supported.

We'll show the amount of XMR earned last month and an option to tip XMRChat a portion of what they've received. Options will likely be 0%, 2%, 4%, remind me later. Those that tip 4% get get access to the premium features[..]: Verified accounts, notification options for tip over certain amount, channel featured on main page when live, visual effects for higher tip tiers, etc.

a Wikipedia 'remind me later' funding model. with extras as above^ like twitter.
Monero-lws integration. One of the main plus points imo.

TipXMR

instead of a 0auth twitch bot relaying comments to a twitch stream, TipXMR gives a browser-source which is "one of the most versatile sources available in OBS" and comments are displayed there.
no monero-lws integration. monero-wallet-rpc is used. this will not scale - and will only be useful for a site that scrapes fees directly from donations and forwards to creators addresses imo.
monero-ts / monero WASM wallet integration huge plus point for ux.
delayed by technical difficulties
Still not sure about monetisation / afraid of legal aspects.

Hey there, first up, we as the tipxmr dev team have to apologize to the monero community and most of all to those that originally funded our CCS proposal. We were young and naive and thought "how hard can it be to code this up" - harder than we thought it turned out. We had very high standards, trying to use WASM wallets on the client-side where no info is leaked to the hoster of the TipXMR service, but this lead to a high barrier - which in turn lead to us never shipping anything, which is a real shame. Then XMRchat came and is making the dream for streamers to fund their streams with XMR real. Not quite the same way we envisioned, but at least there is a start and something to build on.

As @plowsofff has stated, TipXMR wanted to have use a OBS browser source instead of a twitch plugin for having a more robust and censorship resistance method of funding streams. As well not "leaking" view keys to the hoster of the platform. But under the condition that XMRchat vows to pick up these goals, i.e. make it so that streamers only have to use OBS and no plugin and working towards minimizing the information a streamer has to share with the hoster of the platform, we are willing to step aside and let them take our already funded amount.

We wanted to make something for the Monero community, and did not succeed until now. There were spurts of effort and coding, but not for the past few months. To be realistic, we don't think we will finish our efforts any time soon. For that we apologize. Nevertheless, we learned a lot about coding, the web, and monero along the way.

Hopefully XMRchat will be everything that TipXMR aspired to be.

I speak for the entire team here: We are okay to deprecate the TipXMR CCS proposal and pass our collected funds on to this XMRChat proposal.

Godspeed to XMRchat, @DouglasTuman and @FiatDemise - you rock and we are so happy to see you doing the work !

I can only second the post of @AlexAnarcho. TipXMR was something special to me and I feel some kind of ashamed of how it turned out, but we learned so much. XMRChat is awesome, @DouglasTuman is awesome. It will only get better from now. Maybe some ideas of TipXMR can live in XMRChat some day

Thank you very much AlexAnarcho and hundehausen!

On OBS, XMRChat has this too. Content creators can choose between using Streamyard+Twitch or OBS to display xmrchats on screen. Every content creator automatically gets an OBS browser source page, it's the same as their tip page, but with /obs at the end. For example, tip page xmrchat.com/monerotalk also has xmrchat.com/monerotalk/obs. There's a settings section where the streamer can copy their OBS link, choose to play a sound when an xmrchat comes, and they can choose between having the message stay up or fade away after 30 seconds. I have attached a screenshot of the OBS portion of the settings sidebar. And here is a link to a video when tuxsudo was trying out OBS, relevant portion in minutes 1 to 3.

https://x.com/tuxpizza/status/1850703160677150821

On WASM wallets, I admit I don't know anything about those, but we could look into it. Or, if someone with experience wants to submit a pull request to add that, we'll review and test it out.

Thank you for the positive encouragement here and handing over of the torch @hundehausen @AlexAnarcho. You both have made contributions to the ecosystem that now far outweigh TipXMR (be it outreach work via presentations / organising meetups... the creation of many other valuable tools) and i commend you both for it.

Now that we have confirmed XMRchat does support the browser source for OBS i consider it fulfilling its promise of not being centralised and thus completing Milestone 3 - Finished product and launch of service (36 XMR) of TipXMR.

However @FiatDemise, Milestone 2 - Working Prototype with implemented WASM wallet and front-end mockups has not been achieved. This accounts for 48% of TipXMR's CCS and undoubtedly is/was an important feature for UX++.

Should the community agree to (rightfully so) award the 36 XMR for completion of Milestone 3, then i would have to contest the funds from Milestone 2 being released. This work can be implemented, and those funds can be used for it still.

Also, I would like Doug or yourself / and community members to address his comments, specifically:

these [tools] can't just be charity cases right, we need these tools to be self sufficient, they need to be earning money"

Perhaps this pushes people toward only wanting to support the self-hosted version this project. Or nobody cares, better to gauge consensus none the less.

I'll address Doug's comment. The whole project is open source. Any feature developed for the service will also be available in the self-hosted XMRChat. OBS, content links, search page, premium features too like notifications will be available for both. Our goal for the service is to collect enough XMR in tips to pay for ongoing costs of hosting, maintenance, and support. If a long time goes by where we don't see any progress towards that goal, then that would be an unexpected shame, and we'd eventually shut down the service. But even in that worst case scenario, the self-hosted XMRChat will remain. Hope that provides what you're looking for.

Looks like the reason to use a WASM wallet is to avoid the streamer having to give over their private view key. Is that right? Am I missing any other benefits the WASM wallet provides for the streamer or the tipping fan?

Forgot to @ @hundehausen and @AlexAnarcho for my WASM benefits question above, please take a look.

Also, in tipxmr, I see "Once the WASM wallet of the streamer sees the transaction on the network, it is displayed on the stream." Does the streamer run something on their machine that sends data to tipxmr service, so the message gets displayed on OBS? If so, what data is sent? How does tipxmr match up the message to be displayed from the tipping fan to the 0 conf payment?

This proposal will be brought up today at the meeting https://github.com/monero-project/meta/issues/1130

@FiatDemise yeah, you got it - we wanted to allow the streamer to keep their view secrets to themselves. So the idea was that the streamer will have a browser with their WASM wallet open, which will establish a websocket connection to the tipxmr server. When a streamer receives a donation, they would let the tipxmr server know about it, then tipxmr would update everything accordingly.

It's kinda convoluted... All for keeping view-only secrets private. Which can be pretty easily worked around if the streamer just creates a new wallet for their streaming purposes.

mentioned in merge request !530 (merged)

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XMRChat - a service for content creators to receive messages and tips in Monero.

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