23h ago

CrowdBucks is a new payment system for the Fediverse

CrowdBucks is a new payment system for the Fediverse - We Distribute

This was initially demoed at FediCon 2025, but CrowdBucks is an open source, self-hostable fundraising system that allows people to financially support one another. You use your existing Fediverse account to hold a fundraiser, and can also donate to other people's fundraisers as well. The form factor is kind of similar to Kickstarter or Patreon.

Fediverse @lemmy.ml

Sean Tilley @lemmy.ml

23h ago

CrowdBucks is a new payment system for the Fediverse

wedistribute.org /2025/08/introducing-crowdbucks/

23 comments

tl;dr: it uses stripe
- Support for other providers is coming. Bandwagon is in a similar situation. The overall goal is to support a multitude of options, so that no one payment solution has a monopoly.
- What is Stripe?
  
  The company that's involved with the payment disputes between Steam, MasterCard, banks, 18+ games and Collective Shout. Stripe is the one handling payments between Steam and MasterCard. It got blamed, blamed others in return and suddenly is known to a lot more people but not in a good way.
  
  Payment provider. Stripe.com
How does this compare to Liberapay? It's already opensource and quite good.
We really need to figure out the payment system for the fediverse.... Good to see someone trying things.
When I put Stripe integration into PieFed I had absolutely zero donations through there, meanwhile my Patreon and Librepay had dozens of dollars in donations. Dozens!
People really really didn't want to donate directly, for some reason. So I disabled the Stripe option.
Instead, Patreon takes 8% and their only payout method is Paypal so Paypal takes a percentage (5%?) and then when I transfer it to my bank from Paypal there's a currency conversion so they take another 5%? and then I pay tax on whatever remains...
I wish CrowdBucks better luck than I had.
- lemmy indicates clearly liberapay is preferred . and it does seem to have an effect because patreon donations went down at some point while liberapay donations went up.
  With that said liberapay fees are cited as being around 3.1% and maybe higher. some digital currencies are almost free (nano, ripple) and despite the hate you see i don't see a rational reason not to offer them as an option.
- On our donation page, we put a breakdown of how much each platform takes from the donation and I think that is why a lot of users chose to donate through the methods that have lower / no fees: https://fedecan.ca/en/donate
  I imagine as Crowdbucks develops, they will introduce more methods and improve user / platform choice. Dealing with payment platforms is annoying, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with over time
  
  It also helps that Canada has a non-fee option that only has the downside of being traceable.
  
  That's really nicely done, good work!
- So as much as I dislike crypto, it is basically built to be enshitification proof. And hence a good fit for the fediverse. But I wouldn't want to touch the crypto ecosystem with a ten foot pole, nevermind a lemmy/mastodon integration
  Which leaves us at the behest of traditional payment processors, and they are all faceless conglomerates who care not for anyone. Meaning we're fucked there too
  Maybe we should instead not bring transactions to the fediverse
  
  How much are the gas fees these days?
- People are lazy, that'd be my explaination for why they'd use Patreon
- Haven't PayPal just drastically cut the number of currencies they'll deal in? I haven't used Stripe. Are they similarly impaired?
  
  Stripe has an amazing amount of currencies for payouts and accepts all kinds of payment methods, really really comprehensive. Pretty low fees too. Simple API and great great docs. They're all good.
Why not GNU Taler?
- Actually, there's a pretty decent possibility of this happening! Ben from Bandwagon is currently looking into this for the underlying Emissary platform. If it proves easy enough to integrate, there's literally no reason not to.
  Proving it in one project might see adoption across similar efforts.
- Yeah, good question.
Just curious: would any of this be able to circumvent or prevent this unspeakable crime:
Gofundme cancels accounts of Palestinians: https://mastodon.social/@daliamohisen/115060399174567486
From their website
From people you know
CrowdBucks is created by individual people you know, and not a large face-less corporation
And yet, there are no people shown on the website. How do I do know if I know these people?
similar to Kickstarter or Patreon.

23 comments