Hi. As you may know, I’ve opened the instance about 12 days ago. Right now, the instance is ranked 6th out of hundreds of instances.
We’re now using 4 vCPU and 16GB RAM server for 38€ which is very cheap (Not that cheap anymore. We’re using dedicated 16 CPU, 48GB RAM server for 160€). But we need donations to continue uploading media or even to increase the limit and move to a better server against instant load. Also we transfered 5TB of media only in 12 days 🤷♂️ Thanks to Cloudflare, this didn’t cause much trouble to us.
If you want to donate, here’s donation platforms we use:
- GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/xaegreal
- Trocador.app (crypto)
Note: I removed old crypto payment methods and Patreon kicked us. We got $182 with old crypto payment methods and $80 from Patreon.
Hello, team at LemmyNSFW,
I’m delighted to see your instance growing and I completely support the idea of donating to ensure the longevity and quality of this platform. Your hard work in maintaining and developing this instance is very much appreciated.
However, I’d like to bring up the idea of financial transparency within our community. Have you considered using a platform like Open Collective for your donation system? It has been adopted by other instances, including Lemmy.world. You can see an example of how they use it here: https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld
In my opinion, Lemmy.world is a shining example of how a Lemmy instance should operate financially. They provide transparency about their finances, which has greatly contributed to building trust with their users and the platform as a whole.
Considering we’re part of an open-source, decentralized platform, I believe this level of transparency is paramount. It not only helps in building trust but also encourages more users to donate, knowing exactly how their contributions will be utilized.
Moreover, seeing big instances openly donating back to the source code developers could set a wonderful precedent. This act of giving back to those who helped create the foundation of our platform would be a tremendous demonstration of gratitude and community spirit.
Again, I am wholeheartedly in support of donating to this community, and I hope my suggestion will be taken into consideration. Keep up the fantastic work!
Going to have to agree that something like this would be good. Lets people see all in one place where we stand and what is needed.
Yes. And I’m genuinely ok with big staff spends. Spend it on hookers and cocaine for all I care. All is like to see is that some percentage is committed and shown to be given back to the source code developers.
Thank you for your opinion! I would like to do this too but we don’t use single payment method. Also does Open Collective approve payments or should we trust the admin for this? And do admins attach bills somewhere?
Open collective (of which I have zero affiliation) is working on taking cryptocurrency payments. Last I checked it was in beta.
You can give evidence where you feel it would be beneficial. But yeh. You could always find work arounds.
If it’s something you genuinely want to explore, I’m happy to volunteer some of my time to help you with implementing and managing that.
The key thing I’d like to see in all instances, not just yours, is transparency in income, plus some sort of transparency as to how much that may be given back to the community and the source code development.
Honestly. What’s done with the rest, I care very little.
Can you contact me from Matrix? my address is @xaeg:matrix.org
How big a proportion of potential supporters do you think would prefer to pay in crypto?
I’m in column A, but not column B. Just for “statistical purposes”.
If we were a non-NSFW instance, I wouldn’t add crypto but anonymity is important for some people (me included).
I definitely understand where you’re coming from, I was just attempting to debate cost/value.
Almost half of the supporters donating from crypto, so I don’t think its unnecessary.
Cool to know 🤘
I’d probably prefer pay in crypto. Also receive in crypto TBH. Just for anonymity’s sake.
Thank you so much for hosting this instance. I appreciate it and will help with a small contribution of a few dollars per month from now own. ❤️
Thank you! Every dollar is important and you can be sure that we will use every single dollar for this instance.
May I ask where the server is hosted?
Currently Ukraine. May change in the future.
Probably a really stupid and ignorant question, but how are you hosting in Ukraine when they are at war?
They need money now more than before. Why would they stop exporting stuff?
Oh nice. And what platform do you use?
I can’t say that for a while. I don’t want to doxx myself.
I don’t know how saying what platform is used to host the server will affect its security that much.
For example, the fact you are using cloudflare is public and doesn’t really harm you.
Yeah it doesn’t but its a shield in front of host itself. We’re not doing anything illegal here but still.
I mean, it would be trivial to find for anyone who cares to run a ping and do a Google search for the IP it resolves. You’re definitely not shielding yourself from any government agencies by keeping it secret.
The reason they won’t reveal is because Pornography is flat out banned in Ukraine, if we revealed this someone might report us and get the host taken away again, similar to what happened when the server used Hetzner.
Hey i got a 404 trying to access that image, are you sure it still exists?
which image?
uhhh my bot should not have run on this post… sorry about that i found the bug that caused it and have since fixed it.
which image indeed xD
It is done. Via github if that is okay.
Thank you! Github is the best among these options
I suggest you to use XRP, TRX and LTC for cheap transaction fees and speed, and check out a VPS provider called IONOS.
Edit: I suggest you BTW to open an OnlyFans and Fansly account for the instance and try to carry creators to the platform maybe you can make a special community for them and get some extra donations.
Done via GitHub, thanks for your work!
I set up a Patreon subscription. I am a DevOps Engineer. If you ever need to move to a more distributed setup let me know.
I support you my friend both monetarily and conceptually.
Would it be possible to set up Liberapay as a payment method? I don’t know their policy on NSFW-related projects, but I really enjoy it as a payment option since they don’t take anything off what’s donated, give many different donation options, and is run by a non-profit that made the site’s code open-source.
Just a headsup if you’re trying to get on Open Collective, it looks like that might be another patreon scenario:
Yeah I checked TOS too. I thought it’s about posts shared on campaign page. Also Open Collective Europe didn’t reject us. But you are right. I’ll contact about this to Open Collective and fiscal host.
I was really surprised to see that youre using a .com-domain. That alone must be costing you a small fortune per year.
Domains cost like $9 a year.
Yeah it’s 9.15 on Cloudflare right now. Costly thing in our infrastructure is going to be storage and server specifications. I’ll migrate to S3 as soon as Lemmy 0.18.1 releases.
Interesting. Ive never checked on things through Cloudflare. Godaddy and Google charge like 3000 USD for a com domain
Those are probably premium domains. A registrar buys that domain and resells it.
What domain are you looking at that costs 3k