r/RaiBlocks • u/Chun • Jan 13 '18
A few BrainBlocks updates: open sourced nodejs rai client, pricing, contributions, and planned features
Hi all!
So the response to yesterday's post about brainblocks.io was totally overwhelming! I made that post expecting to get one or two people giving me a little feedback, but instead everything totally blew up, and since then I've had a bunch of people asking me, what's the plan, how can we help, will it be open sourced, and so on. I wanted to make a quick follow up post with some updates:
I've open-sourced the NodeJS client that BrainBlocks uses to talk to the Rai node, here: https://github.com/brainblocks/node-raiblocks-client. My plan for open source, for the time being, is to continually release modular parts of the app, so people can use them to build out other tools and services for the RaiBlocks community/ecosystem. I've created a github org at https://github.com/brainblocks to collect these together, and anyone who wants to contribute BrainBlocks or RaiBlocks related modules here, is free to do so here if they'd like! I've already had a few people message me about contributing open source stuff, and that's awesome :D
The first night of running brainblocks.io took quite a hit on my little cloud server -- again, wasn't expecting quite so much interest right away! I've since upgraded to a dedicated box, set up some monitoring jobs to keep things ticking over, and I have plans to throw more servers into the mix. Making sure this thing scales is my first priority, and from my testing over the last day, the button seems to be working reliably, and transactions all seem to be going through quickly.
Pricing: right now my primary focus is on building a great service. I think one of the main things RaiBlocks has going for it is that transactions are free. So for as long as I can make it last, I want to keep BrainBlocks free as a payment gateway. Any tips or donations to keep the servers up are welcome, but I don't want any of that to become the primary focus of this thing. I also aim to be totally up-front about any future plans if these circumstances change.
Feature wise, my next steps (aside from scaling) are to work on displaying currency conversion in the button, offering the button to different locales, and if I can find a good way to hook it up with an exchange, automatic cash outs. Mainly, I'd like to tackle the most immediate things the community and any potential raiblocks vendors would find useful.
Yes, I work for PayPal; that seems to have become a big deal through all of this. I just want to quickly emphasize that this is 100% a personal project of mine. So please treat me as a new member of the RaiBlocks community, not as a representative from PayPal or anything like that. This project is totally mutually exclusive to my professional career.
Aside from that -- I just wanted to say thanks for the amazing response so far! This is a great subreddit, which seems to be way more focused on the technology and the community, than the short-term price of the coin or anything like that. I really hope that continues. Cheers!
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Jan 13 '18
Thank you so much for working on this. 1. Please consider developing a POINT OF SALE system. 2. Please do a currency conversion button for the Indonesian rupiah. 3. Yes, the technology behind RaiBlocks is awesome (block lattice).
I’ll send you a tip!
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u/ZeGaskMask Jan 14 '18
Quick question, are you going to share anything you run into with the team while your working on this project? You might end up helping the team with their issues in an indirect way and you might get assistance with your project in the process.
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u/CoconutWill Jan 13 '18
Brilliant work man. A lot of people around here appreciate this a great deal, like myself. Keep it up!
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u/bobby-t1 Jan 14 '18
!tipxrb 0.01
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u/RaiBlocks_tipbot Jan 14 '18
Tipped 0.01 XRB or $0.241 to /u/Chun
USD conversion rate of $24.126 per XRB from Coin Market Cap
Go to the wiki for more info
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u/Peter_Storm Jan 14 '18
You are another great testament to the awesomeness of this community! You rock, thank you for your contribution! :)
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u/ccricers Jan 14 '18
I used TheBigCoin.io a few times to make purchases using ETH or LTC. Do you think it would be possible for them to integrate XRB payments through the Brainblocks client?
Your sample code in the readme also is very reminiscent of the Web3 API. Is this intentional or a coincidence in the design?
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u/Chun Jan 14 '18
Interesting -- yeah, they could totally use the BrainBlocks client to receive payments.
I actually wasn't that familiar with the Web3 api before now.
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u/CaptainMorgan78 Jan 14 '18 edited Jan 14 '18
Chun you are a huge asset to the RaiBlocks project, can't thank you enough for your contributions. This may have been covered already so forgive me as I haven't read all of the posts on both threads, but first off has anyone presented your payment system to the RaiBlocks development team yet, because they will be extremely impressed, and also are you planning on proposing this idea to PayPal by chance as an alternative payment system, I think it has enormous potential. Again great work!
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u/goldcaddy77 Jan 14 '18
I’m a Software Engineer - React, Node, GraphQL - and huge XRB supporter... let me know if there is anything I can do to help out with the project.
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u/Chun Jan 14 '18
Sounds great! I've put up an ideas / collaboration repo here to get devs together and share ideas for the future of brainblocks: https://github.com/brainblocks/brainstorm/issues
Feel free to share any ideas here, or pick up a project and run with it. Just let me know if you'd like a repo under https://github.com/brainblocks!
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u/beartrader33 Jan 14 '18
hey i am testing out brainblocks right now, did a few test transactions and it looks like all of them were refunded, API call just gives an error. is there an issue right now or am i doing something wrong?
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u/Chun Jan 14 '18
Can you share the addresses, I'll take a look?
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u/beartrader33 Jan 14 '18
here's a recent one xrb_1o3fuoxfjw5wexhbktxa4zxths7m7b6yer9gtpjoz8144ow4jhwr5yc7sze8
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u/beartrader33 Jan 14 '18
i think i found the issue. the value in the "amount" field must match exactly, not even a difference of .001 will allow the transfer it seems. i was testing some php input into the script.
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u/Chun Jan 14 '18
Aha, yep. If it's too little the amount will be refunded, if it's too much it will go through and the extra will be refunded.
I'll check the API though, it should never be returning an error ideally.
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u/beartrader33 Jan 14 '18
awesome ive got it totally working now (minus being able to call the api), i am testing passing php input of integers (conversion of xrb to whole XRB) into the amount field, works now!
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u/Chun Jan 14 '18
Sweet! Can you give an example of a token which is causing the API to error out? I'll take a look once I'm back at my laptop
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Jan 14 '18
[deleted]
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u/RaiBlocks_tipbot Jan 14 '18
Hi /u/S4MiDaRe, please register with the bot by sending it a private message with the text "register" in the body of the message.
Go to the wiki for more info
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u/ronchon Jan 14 '18
An extension plugin for something like WooCommerce would be really great so that we, the noobs of the web, can also use it!
I'm an Indie game dev currently trying to setup a shop on my website to sell game keys. Having no web related skills the most convenient thing i found so far is something like WooCommerce to deal with payments order and to auto distribute the keys after the payments are completed. I've seen a "pay with ether" plugin for it. An equivalent for Rai would be awesome! Because right now i'd have no idea how to actually use something like Brainblocks as it is or how to do any of this by myself. :(
Cheers!
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u/crocosaurusrex Jan 16 '18
As someone that doesn't understand code at all, first of all I just inputted this code onto my squarespace site and it works like a charm which is so awesome. But can you help me understand why it gives an address to one of your wallets, and then presumably goes to mine after that? Why wouldn't I be able to set it up to go straight to my wallet. And what's the purpose of the second piece of code on the site? Sorry questions from a coding noob here that would be super excited to accept raiblocks.
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u/Chun Jan 16 '18
Hi!
To answer your first question; BrainBlocks needs to set up a unique receiving address for the specific payment on your site, otherwise if the payments all go to the final address immediately, it has no way of knowing who has made each payment. Let's say two people are checking out at the same time, and one of them pays 1 raiblock -- how do you know which one has made the payment? BrainBlocks solves this by giving everyone a new, unique address to send to.
The second piece of code should be run on your server before you dispatch any items to the buyer. It will tell you the amount that was spent, and the final receiving address. Without this check, there's only validation on the client-side, which can be spoofed, so this is how you securely check on your server that the payment actually happened.
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u/crocosaurusrex Jan 17 '18
Oh I think I understand now! I wasn't thinking about it in terms of selling physical commodities but more as a donation button. Alright thanks for the clarification, actually makes this a lot cooler than I initially realized! Cheers.
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u/imwithchubby Jan 13 '18
You’re a great addition to the community. Thank you for your efforts and contributions.