TechEndeavors

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PremiumGiftCards: Security Improvements and optimizations

Selling giftcards is a risky business. I actually purchase them with my own money and then put them up for sale. Once the codes are out of my hands, I can’t get them back. 

I designed the site to be as secure as possible. All inputs are validated to prevent SQL injection attacks, I don’t keep any Bitcoin private keys on the server, and my server is locked down so it only talks to Cloudflare. 

I still had a suggestion from a whitehat hacker named Mohammed Al-saggaf to double check my email SPF settings and my website headers. While they were pretty secure, improvements were able to be made. If you ever want a quick penetration test, I suggest sending him a message. He’s a very nice guy from Yemen.

I’ve added some more headers to all of my pages to tell your browsers what sites you should trust when it comes to embedded CSS or JavaScript on my site. I also added a header that will prevent my site from being embedded in another fake site that’s clicking on things for you. You can view the entire security report at SecurityHeaders.io

My email settings were set to make it so other servers would be wary of emails not sent by my server or this newsletter service, but I’ve tightened it up so now any emails from other sources will be marked as entirely untrustworthy. 

I also configured my backend connection to Cloudflare so they verify my server with a signed SSL cert and I verify the connection by demanding that their connection be signed too. 

For optimization, I’m using the newest branch of Nginx and I enabled HTTP2. Page load times should be quite a bit better now. I’ll work on other optimizations over the coming days. I’m also planning to start symmetrically encrypting the gift codes in inventory before they’re sold, and asymmetrically encrypting the codes and order information after they’ve been sold. 

Notice anything else I could do to make things better? Let me know!

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HandleCoin - Upcoming Service

We plan to crowdfund several of our future projects but we’ve been unhappy with the existing platforms available to users. 

This has caused us to decide to create HandleCoin.com to provide some basic Bitcoin transaction services that are lacking or only are available through scripts or API services. 

The first portion of HandleCoin will be a crowdfunding management platform. Businesses interested in public investments can create a project on HandleCoin and sell shares in the project. Investors can purchase shares. 

The business can then pay dividends directly to the investors.

This won’t be a stock trading platform with an open market, it’s just a way to purchase ownership of shares of future payments. 

Due to the design, the system won’t have to store any client or business funds so it won’t be another platform that gets hacked and loses everyone’s money. 

Most importantly, it’ll give businesses and investors the tools they need to have transparency into the history of the investments and dividends received. 

Other simple additions are planned, such as a simple address forwarding service as well as a transaction obfuscation service. 

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SteamPawn - Investor Proposal

SteamPawn is planning to launch in the upcoming months, but we’ll need a sizable war-chest of funds to loan out to customers. We’re raising these funds from investors and can give you a sizable return on your investment. 

We’re planning on issuing our first bond. The funds received from investors will be loaned out to SteamPawn clients and 75% of profits will be returned to bond-holders. The remaining 25% of profits will be allocated to Steam Pawn for purposes such as share buyback, operating costs, marketing, and development. 

When we need more operating capital to make more loans, we’ll put up another bond for sale and buy back the shares of the first bond in order to not dilute dividends. 

Users who wish to receive a loan will first log into the site through Steam OAUTH in order to get statistics about their account for fraud prevention and inventory purposes. The user can then select which items they wish to pawn.

We will price inventory items by determining the average value across several trading markets and offer users 40% of the resale value of their inventory. If any items are practically worthless, we won’t accept it in pawn but we will let them gift it to us in exchange for more favorable loan conditions or to extend the repayment deadline. 

Without gifted items or adjustments due to risk factors, the loan terms are expected to be 30 days at 18.95% interest. 

Users can also attach social media profiles and perform additional verification tasks to lower their interest rate. 

Users can also perform marketing activities such as tweeting about the site or sharing it on Facebook in order to receive extended loan deadlines. 

Users who do not pay back their loan in time forfeit their inventory items. We intend to hold the items for a few more days to let the user buy the items back for an additional cost, but within a week we’ll sell the items on various trading markets. 

Eventually we intend to have our own public marketplace where users can purchase games and items for a discounted, but still profitable price. 

Exact profit margins are difficult to calculate without knowing the percentage of borrowers that will pay back the loan or choose to let their inventory go. 

There are other risk factors, such as the fluctuation in the price of Bitcoin as well as the fluctuating prices of games and items. While we are planning for countering potential fraud, there is always the risk of users selling games purchased with illicit funds that get removed from inventory or users filing false reports of invalid trades. 

Despite the risk factors and unknowns, we believe that we will average a monthly return of at-least 20% to our investors. 

Of course, the standard disclaimers apply. An investor may get back less than the amount invested. Information on expected performance, where given, is not necessarily a guide to future performance. The investments and services offered by us may not be suitable for all investors. If you have any doubts as to the merits of an investment, you should seek advice from an independent financial adviser.

We are building an investment platform to enable this process. You will be able to purchase shares in the IPO. Once the IPO is closed, you’ll start receiving dividends on a regular basis. You will also have the ability to sell your shares back to SteamPawn or to other current investors if you choose to. 

Please sign up for our newsletter on our main webpage to be informed when we’re ready. 

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SteamPawn - Announcing upcoming development

I’m partnering with an expert within the Steam trading community to build an upcoming project, SteamPawn.com

We're in the process of building an exciting new platform that we know you'll enjoy.  

Any Steam user can temporarily trade in Steam games or items in their inventory as collateral and receive money they can spend right away!  

We keep your items safe using cutting-edge and industry-leading security measures. Pay back your loan on time and we'll send your stuff right back. You can earn more time to pay back your loan by tweeting or sharing information about our service with your friends. 

Sound good? Subscribe to our newsletter for updates.  We won't spam you with emails or share your information with anyone else.  We'll let you know about major updates, exciting new features, and of course our official launch date!

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FrugalMail: Announcing FrugalMail

My next project is simple but quite needed. FrugalMail will let you write a letter and/or upload a PDF, enter an address, and pay a fee to have it printed and mailed through the postal system. 

I intend to offer a nice editor for the typed messages, along with a good selection of fonts. 

Throughout the printing and mailing process, you can get optional updates on the progress of the letter. 

You can also pay an additional fee to send messages using certified mail. 

Hope the world finds this useful!

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Premium Gift Cards: 0-confirmation transactions coming back soon

0-confirmation bitcoin transactions are hard to do without risking losing money. Despite that, I know it’s important to my customers so I work hard to try to make it happen. 

There have been a lot of “Bitcoin Stresstests” lately that fill the mempool of miners with transactions that need to be confirmed. With that huge backlog, whenever a Premium Gift Cards customer sends a transaction with a low miners fee I risk the transaction not confirming. 

I’m working on re-enabling the 0-confirmation transaction system so it doesn’t just take into account the validity of the transaction (if it’s distributed to a majority of nodes as well as detecting double-spend attempts) but also to see if they included a miners fee large enough to ensure that it’s processed in a reasonable number of blocks. 

Until these changes are made, we’re back to 1-confirmation transactions.