BCH tip bot for Fediverse

The goal of this fundraiser is writing an MVP of the bot, launch it and polish it over a short period. I've got this vision for the bot:The bot should have a transport-agnostic base with transport adapters for ActivityPub, Mastodon, Nostr, Matrix, etc.Identity of the users should be based on their private key. Thus the user can have control of the funds. And also the user could verify their identity if they switch instances or have accounts across different transports(like both Nostr and Mastodon).The bot should allow localization in different languages for both commands and messages. In future, this will be needed. And I'm sure many local communities will find it fun and cool if they could talk to the bot in their own language.The bot should be a regular client connecting to the network of let's say, ActivityPub. This is unlike the XMR tip bot where instance admins have to install it.Easy and instant onboarding is important. The users shouldn't need to manage their own keypair from the start.For the MVP, a working base is created and focus is on ActivityPub and English only. Also the private key won't be given to the user as there is no E2EE on AP. For the next versions, we'll need another medium like a web UI to exchange sensitive information with the user.FAQWhy Fediverse/ActivityPub is important? Why not focus on just Nostr?ActivityPub is a protocol for decentralized social networks. It has caveats. Nostr is advantaged in some ways. But...AP for sure is better than centralized ones like X and Instagram.AP has a more mature ecosystem as it is older.AP currently has a bigger general userbase. In the past years, many masses have fled from X to alternatives including Mastodon. See this and this.There are many major entities or organizations already on Mastodon like the EU commission, Harvad and MIT.Because of point 2, AP has a much better and more mature UI/UX.Why UI/UX matters so much?For many tech people, UI/UX doesn't matter much. And when recommending to other non tech people, they assume the same about their target audience. A tech one can simply go on with a bad UI. And they can also easily switch UIs without putting much mental effort. But for non technical users, the UI/UX is the most important thing about a software. As learning is much harder to them.That's why many products which are technically superior, don't get much attention from the public. People don't care about the technical stuff if they have to use 100% of their brain while using a platform, because of its UI.But aren't people on Mastodon anti-crypto?Yes they are. And that's another reason we need a presence there. People hate cryptos because they either have misunderstandings, or they are deceived by propaganda.See Tor, VPNs and proxies for instance. Many non tech people believe these are evil as criminals also use them. But we all laugh at such these arguments!For this, I want to register a domain like iscryptodestroyingtheplanet.com and answer to common misunderstandings about cryptocurrencies.We need exposure to the public. And to do this, we need to appear bold but nice in public spaces.Isn't the amount requested low?It is. But there are two major reasons for this:Thanks to the situation in here(Iran), I might deliver it late, like the same happened for the webring project. The full delivery was ~6 months after the campaign was funded.I estimate Fediverse is kinda unknown to the BCH community members. Thus a higher ask is less likely to be granted.Can people use the bot from other Fedi softwares like Lemmy?The bot is just a regular user on Fediverse except that it is automated. So as long as those softwares support interaction with the users, it's possible. For instance there is GotoSocial which works quite similar to Mastodon and it would be possible. And there is also WriteFreely which AFAIK doesn't support interaction with the users.Delivery timeI would start working on it 1-2 week(s) after the campaign is funded. Then it would take 6-8 weeks from me for the base work. From there, I will have to buy a VPS, launch an instance and launch the bot.When the bot is running, I guess it'll take 1-2 months of continuous small polishes and fixes. After that, we can think long run of the bot as well as the next versions.If things go sideways in me countryMany of me people think the the Iran's regime has given up on gaining control through Internet. And even if there was another Internet outage, there would be proxies around to buy like in the recent past one. But at the end, nothing is certain. If you contribute to this campaign, you should know that there is a chance, even seemingly small now, I won't be able to deliver it in time.Costs3000 USD is for the base work which is 3-4 weeks of full time work with Rust.600 USD is for the polish part which would take small bites 1-2 months when the bot is running20x6 = 120 USD for V2-SE-SSD VPS plan from Privex. The VPS is needed for both the bot and the bot's instance. An instance is required as most Mastodon instances don't allow bots, less which would allow a crypto bot. Actually I don't know of any.This comes to 3720 USD and adding 15% for the possible price change, it becomes 20.37 BCH.Policy on BCH price changeUpon funding of the campaign, if the amount is more than 3720 USD, I would try to contact the contributors to return the extra back to them. If I could not contact them or if they didn't want it, I would distribute it among FOSS groups and projects within Iran and encourage them on accepting BCH as donation.Past works and activitiesBCH relatedThe first flipstarter I had was for PersianBitcoinCash. A Persian blog dedicated to BCH. See archived here. As far as I know, this blog is the first one about cryptocurrency in Persian space, which is also not focused on only trading.The second one was for BCH Webring. A webring of BCH websites. So websites can receive backlinks from each other, helping each other their discovery. See archived here.Other FOSS worksI am an active FOSS contributor. I've contributed to a number of softwares and games with a decent level of popularity. Notable ones include:DeltaChat Desktop: Desktop version of Delta Chat IMDeltaChat loginbot for OAuth2JMA Capture the flag game based on the open source game engine, Luanti. BTW, we might see a multiplayer BCH game in future!chooj: A Matrix client for KaiOS. Discontinued now.Vitae theme for HugoChulga theme for Hugo: It is a fork of Bulma theme. I added support for Persian and analytics with GoatCounter to use for PersianBitcoinCash.ReferencesThe project discussed on BitcoinCashResearch: https://bitcoincashresearch.org/t/fediverse-nostr-tip-bot/1877/16