Hi, we're the founders of Hexel (<a href="https://www.onhexel.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.onhexel.com</a>), in the current YC batch. Our product lets anyone create a cryptocurrency (an ERC20 token on Ethereum). You don't sell it or do an ICO, you just create it and start using it right away. It's supposed to be fun!<p>Cryptocurrency is still in a very experimental phase, but most cryptocurrencies out there seem aimed at a serious, large-scale technical problem (not to mention the get-rich-quick schemes). We're helping people create currencies for interesting things they actually want to try using now.<p>So far, we've seen some cool use cases. To name a few:
A gaming streamer is rewarding his most loyal viewers with tokens they can redeem for shoutouts or merchandise.
A hip hop website is giving tokens to content curators and using them for giveaways.
A few Discord channels have created tokens to use as a form of upvotes in their communities (and we think this could be cool for subreddits too).<p>We also provide tools for managing and tracking the token you make. This is free, but we plan to make money by charging for advanced features in the future. Right now on Hexel, you can do the following:<p>1.) Mint tokens and airdrop them to anyone with an Ethereum address<p>2.) Share a public page for your token, with information and a UI for sending that token to others<p>3.) Explore other tokens created on Hexel, subscribe to the ones you like, and request tokens from the creator<p>4.) Message your token's subscribers with updates or info about things you're doing with your token<p>5.) View a feed of payments made using your token<p>Although the ICO bandwagon and hype have left many people feeling cynical about cryptocurrencies (we feel that way ourselves), we're optimistic that there are many more potential applications and cool use cases out there. Our goal is to widen the space, make it interesting again, and make other use cases easy to explore. We'd love for anyone to poke holes in the use cases you see on the site, and even better would be feedback on use cases were you think this could be really useful. Thanks so much for any ideas you have!<p>Thanks!
John & Marcus
Everything you want to do can be done on a simple database. You can mint tokens / share it / explore other tokens / message people / view feed. It isn't clear why you want to forcibly put this on Ethereum blockchain and pay a fee to do every transfer (The transaction charge currently is ~ USD 0.5-1 per transaction)
I'm somewhat of a blockchain sceptic (or rather, unconvinced at this stage), but this sounds really interesting.<p>Meta: This is also a very well written announcement post, IMO, and I suggest anyone looking to launch something learn from it. It starts off with the most important soundbites up front, including the rather weird sounding "it's supposed to be fun". Then it gives a bit of backstory, but most importantly, provides interesting examples that back up the weird "fun" assertion.<p>It ends with a pretty clear explanation of what this costs and what the business model is.<p>All in all, great job. Good luck!
Hey I offered this exact service with:<p>www.dotcomco.in<p>Some of the in-house community cryptocoins I made as a portfolio of examples include:<p>www.ycco.in - distributed karma for HN community (still up)<p>www.instagramco.in and www.facebookco.in - distributed likes<p>Of course I didn’t make it to front page of HN and got no traction. As I have more than a few cryptocoin/blockchain themed domains I began tozenizing the domain ownership rights to try to sell with the pre-made community cryptocoin, my experience is there seems to be more interest in these domains than the community coins.
Trying to actually use this reminds me of how frustrating and slow it is to actually use cryptocurrencies. Endless hoops, lots of waiting for confirmations, and that's me doing things the 'easy' way with Coinbase and MetaMask.<p>Edit:<p>> We've submitted your transaction to the network. This usually takes about 2 minutes to confirm.<p>30 minutes later...<p>Edit 2:<p>One email to the Hexel support team later and lo, my token is live: <a href="https://www.onhexel.com/token/e4a37f4f-3a26-4ae3-a8b2-c932aaed7d8f" rel="nofollow">https://www.onhexel.com/token/e4a37f4f-3a26-4ae3-a8b2-c932aa...</a><p>5/7 would recommend
My favorite coin so far is the TallCoin: "I will issue 1 coin to any person who is taller than me (I'm 6'7")".<p><a href="https://www.onhexel.com/token/bb571299-e19a-4671-9036-7b3e736eb154" rel="nofollow">https://www.onhexel.com/token/bb571299-e19a-4671-9036-7b3e73...</a>
You say that you're not focusing on trading and that you want to do things right. But isn't the sole point of crypto <i>currencies</i> that they can be traded? What uses are there other than trading?
What value are you guys actually providing? Everything you listed is incredibly easy to do without your site. How are you planning on making money? A static site could do the majority of this.
All the use cases you mention could be more easily implemented on top of a more mature distributed ledger such as Datomic.<p>1. What's to stop a competitor from copying your app feature for feature and implementing their own features faster than you can keep up because they're using established distributed ledger technologies instead of blockchain?<p>2. Are there any features you have planned that make use of the one thing that differentiates blockchains from distributed ledgers (decentralization)?
Hi,<p>How long have both of you been working on this project?<p>What was your traction before getting into YC?<p>I'm most interested in the traction part since there's this misconception that YC does not accept early stage companies. It looks there are a whole lot of companies in the very early stage and I personally take that as a positive sign.
Congratulations. Couple of questions, hopefully I haven’t missed you.<p>1. Recent SEC activity: is this a threat to you? I see you have been careful to avoid fundraising in your examples, but other people here have come up with that as a use case in brainstorming.<p>2. Did you look at Stellar? It has none of the disadvantages of Ethereum (ie instant confirms and de minimus fees) and was in part purpose built for your kind of project. I know you both have Ethereum backgrounds but was wondering if you’d considered and ruled out alternatives.<p>Good luck! I’m keen to see a healthy online micropayments ecosystem so I’m supportive of your project, which could become part of that.
Would anybody be interested for the same thing but for regular currencies? I'm making a new one at <a href="https://pointsproject.org" rel="nofollow">https://pointsproject.org</a> and could make local ones
I created a Hacker News token. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send you some (for free!). Either request on Hexel or comment with your Ethereum address.<p><a href="https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e748d28f" rel="nofollow">https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e7...</a>
Oh shit, this might be perfect for a fun idea I had for something I wanted to do for my friends but without charging them money.<p>But if it’s an ERC20 token, don’t we need to pay gas to use it? Or does the token run on a chain that you guys control instead of on the Ethereum blockchain?
Hi, just a general question for tokens that you might be able to answer: let's say I create a token and I want to programmatically give those tokens to people as a reward. Think of it something like "kudos" so let's say I'm at work and I want to give my coworker a thank you and for that, as a token of my gratitude, I want to send them one of my tokens. Is this do-able at all or am I just thinking of this the wrong way?<p>One more question: since these tokens are created on ETH, does this mean for each transaction related to a token, I will need to pay gas each time I want to transact?
Created a coin! We've been toying around with the idea of crowd-sourcing a lot of mapping (for augmented reality) and could use the ETH network as the basic infrastructure to make it happen.<p>The details around pricing + scarcity mechanics connecting to physical spaces still need to be worked out, but the idea is promising. This would be a nice abstraction once there is an API where we could hook into!<p><a href="https://www.onhexel.com/token/aab493ef-dbef-4d78-bb3a-9b79273c8ed6" rel="nofollow">https://www.onhexel.com/token/aab493ef-dbef-4d78-bb3a-9b7927...</a>
Hi i'm founder of <a href="https://bitbank.nz" rel="nofollow">https://bitbank.nz</a> a cryptocurrency forecasting platform, pre ICO.<p>I think more things supporting ICO's would be great e.g. like how waves has a decentralized exchange so that when you create a token on waves you can immediately monetize it.<p>I suppose theres a decentralised exchange for ERC20 tokens somewhere, but something that smoothes the entire end to end ICO process would be amazing.
I like the idea of ease of use for creating a token . But, if I sign up for your service what do you anticipate the cost of it will be per month / year for this?<p>Also, what are the smart contracts you use or security features that you have and can it be audited or is it a trade secret ?<p>Have you looked at other private ledger technologies and what do you think of those ?
My favorite is the HN Coin.<p>> I created a Hacker News token. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send you some (for free!).<p><a href="https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e748d28f" rel="nofollow">https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e7...</a>
Congratulations on your launch! Could you please compare your project to OST? For example, I just used their new kit to launch an ERC20 based token: <a href="https://kit.ost.com/" rel="nofollow">https://kit.ost.com/</a><p>Thanks!
Browsing to that page I notice my browser is pinging mainnet.infura.io over and over. Is infura.io the same company as hexel, do you have a formal partnership with them, or are you just piggy-backing their API without proxying it?
Sounds like a great project.<p>I notice that the pricing model currently only features a free option. Wondering if you might be able to tell us more about the business model long term?<p>Many thanks
neat! this is such a great idea. I think there was someone else trying this as well but your setup is a lot more streamlined for non-techies out there.
Given that your goal is to make toys, the tradeoffs of cryptocurrencies are unacceptable. The whole architecture of cryptocurrencies is based around extreme security and trust. Who needs that level of security for a toy? Why would I tolerate high fees, slow transactions, and a clunky user experience if the token isn't worth anything? Why would I use a globally-distributed power-guzzling network of thousands of GPUs to make something as silly as TallCoin? This has all the downside of cryptocurrencies with none of the upside.<p>Databases aren't trendy, but they'd solve the same problem better with less waste.