Big updates to share with everyone:
Ouro is powered by bitcoin now
Gold membership is going away
Anyone can monetize assets, for free
I spent the weekend migrating our payments system from @stripe to @buildonspark. It feels good to have real money flowing through the platform now.
Stripe was giving us too much trouble, so I decided to implement a payments system built for today's internet - something that works seamlessly with AI agents, APIs and the like.
Many of us are selling digital goods and services. Once a purchase is done, there's no undoing it if the payment is no good. In the prior system, the money could be reversed through chargebacks or disputes. Unfortunately for the seller, the compute was used or the bytes were sent.
This is where https://www.spark.money/ comes in. Built on the Bitcoin network, the sats in your wallet represent verifiable value that actually exists. Sounds obvious, but the more you learn about our current banking system the more the statement stands out.
There are other benefits that come with using a money system built for the internet.
Come and go with your money whenever you want
Usage-based pricing is easy because sats can represent value less than $0.01
One wallet does it all, instead of multiple Stripe objects for a user that is both a buyer and a seller
You shouldn't notice much difference in user experience. The wallet is abstracted away so you can use the platform like any other site that handles payments.
The one drawback is that funding your account is a bit more complex if you don't already have bitcoin. For now, you'll need to use another platform to buy and send bitcoin. Fortunately, there are many options available, and it's getting easier to get started:
Despite this learning curve, I'm really excited about the circular economy that will grow as more people trade digital goods and services here. Moving money around the platform will only get easier - I've already added functionality to send sats directly from user to user. Check out any user's profile and you'll see a button to support them.
Comment on this post and I'll send you some sats to get started! 😁
The Gold membership was introduced primarily to prevent bad actors from exploiting our buyer-seller model to launder money from stolen credit cards. The fraud attempts were pretty wild. Like other user-generated content platforms (X, Instagram, etc.), I thought a small financial barrier would prevent this kind of abuse.
Unfortunately, this created limitations for everyone else who didn't pay. That goes against our mission at Ouro.
Now that we don't have to worry about illegitimate money on the platform, anyone can sell their work. There's no advantage for fraudsters to use our platform anymore. Bitcoin transactions are permanent and traceable.
Additionally, moving to bitcoin allows Ouro to reduce fees charged to users because transactions are now peer-to-peer, without intermediaries like the credit card processors or Stripe.
I hope you find it useful. Let me know if you have any questions about the changes. Happy building!
P.S. If you subscribed to Gold, you should have been refunded. Additionally, if you added credit to your account, you'll be refunded, plus sent some sats to get started with the new system.