My mom's been painting longer than I've been alive.
It was her hobby and she sold through local events, friendly galleries, word of mouth commissions. She was always opposed to pushing it online because of the "cold" lack of community.
Long story short, this summer I finally orange and purple pilled her. We decided to try something a little wild: sell her art for Bitcoin only, over Lightning, direct to her wallet and try to build a community on Nostr over time.
So I built her a simple site: https://mavilab.art.
All the descriptions and pictures are managed and created directly by her and we wired up a lightning wallet with Blink API so payments go straight to her wallet. Should the experiment go well, in the future it would be trivial to migrate fully self custodial running a LND instance for her, but for now I would say this setup is already great.
The site runs on a tiny 30 Euro thinclient at her house, we bought a couple years back to run Plex for self hosted movies and shows. It really doesn't take that much to run your own stuff and be self sovereign!
The next step would be great to build over time is the community. We spun up a Nostr profile for her and I'm teaching her the basics: picking a client, setting a clean bio, adding a Lightning address for zaps.
You can say Hi! here: https://jumble.social/users/nprofile1qqsz2659yhutgha8kll3sr95kzfascwunsq0znz30h4r2ysynwk339cpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsyf0pur
The vibe we're aiming for is personal and open, no "cold marketing," more "here's what I'm making and why" and personal connections. I do believe this is what decentralized community and payment systems allow for!
So in short, if you collect a piece from her, you're not just buying paint on canvas, you're participating in an experiment where an independent artist runs her own stack and gets paid instantly from anywhere in the world.
I've been lurking and learning from artists already doing it right on Nostr, IsolaBella is a great example who helped me see how this can work out.
Anyways, I'd love your advice and feedback/critics on the site or on the journey we have in mind! Thanks for reading.
Building small, sovereign things with your family is weirdly cool. We'll keep sharing what works and what breaks as we go.
pretty paintings that inspire a sense of calm! followed & shared =)
Complimenti vivissimi a tua madre per i suoi dipinti! Sono bellissimi e l'idea di venderli solo per Bitcoin è coraggiosa e affascinante, e so bene che non dev'essere stato facile.
Ma soprattutto: il sito web è fantastico. Pulito, essenziale, funzionale. Esattamente quello che serve. Niente fronzoli, solo arte e possibilità di acquistare direttamente. Perfetto!
Come hai fatto tecnicamente? Io vorrei qualcosa di simile - semplice, self-hosted (ho un nas synology dove però non gira docker, potrei usarlo?), pagamenti Lightning diretti e sarebbe bello anche Bitcoin on-chain. Hai usato qualche framework particolare o l'hai costruito da zero? E per l'integrazione con Blink API, è stato complesso? Il login con Nostr è un tocco di classe! 🎨 Mi aiuteresti col mio sito?
Grazie infinite per avermi citato come esempio, mi ha davvero toccato. 🫂Significa molto sapere che il mio percorso può essere d'ispirazione per altri artisti che vogliono costruire in modo sovrano su Nostr e Bitcoin.
In bocca al lupo a te e a tua madre per questo bellissimo progetto! 🎨🧡⚡
Wow, isolabella in persona! Che onore :)
Grazie per i complimenti per il sito!
Tecnicamente si tratta di node.js + react, niente docker... Il sito è stato costruito da zero e in questi giorni lo rilascio su Github!
Sinceramente non conosco bene NAS synology, però girerebbe veramente su qualsiasi cosa... Dal Raspberry pi 3 in su! Un alternativa interessante potrebbe essere un VPS (Oracle ha un VPS gratuito che performerebbe più che bene per far girare l'intero sito).
La documentazione API di Blink è molto easy da seguire, quindi è bastato costruire un sistema per generare i codici QR e controllare che il pagamento sia stato effettivamente efettuato.... Ma il codice che rilascierò prevede già l'integrazione con nodo LND self-hostato ... Ma come puoi capire non è qualcosa che posso già consigliare a mia madre, quindi ci facciamo bastare Blink !
Per aiuto con il tuo sito, certamente sarebbe un onore! Scrivimi pure in privato!
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Great. I almost oranged pilled mine but my father stopped her to go deeper into btc...
Muy bonito, ver cuando alguien mayor no se da por vendido, mi madre tiene 94 años, ya casi no ve pero cose a mano agarraderas para cocina, ella misma las vende y promociona, ahora que veo esta motivación voy a hacerle algo parecido,
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Nice
😍😍
Good
It could be inovative concept to revamption.
Tell her send some to Alamo Labs in San Antonio gathering a bunch of pleb art to decorate n have on display for sale if yall would be interested!?!
Congratulations to you and your mother for sharing this beautiful art with us all. I hope Bitcoin and life continue to inspire and strengthen you to pursue this wonderful project you've embarked on. Keep it up! ⚡💥
Wow! Really nicely done! The site looks straight and simple. And if your mom can handle it already without you it means it is beyond simple. Please make the code and instructions available when you feel you can do that.
Your mom is Maria. Are you from eastern Europe?
This is great experiment for elder people to move from traditional financial system to new global one. Whatever the place she'll sell her paintings on she always can get payment without annoying exchanging one currently for another. Take my congratulations, you successfully extending our ecosystem. At first slowly that sudden, this is how an adoption should look like. And when this sudden happens we should be ready.
We are from Italy!
Your point still stands, Bitcoin brings freedom and opportunities to everyone equally regardless of where they are from.
This is incredibly powerful!
Oh Italy, I read this later. Juventus, pizza, its form remind a boot, ... this is the end of the stereotype list of facts about Italy I know.
Good luck with your intention, hope you'll in a while share with us your successes
eheh, thanks for your support! And .... thank you for not mentioning other type of stereotypes 🙈
Absolutely amazing!! These are some very nice paintings
Thanks :) Excited for this adventure!
love to see it!
Thank you everybody for the support! And the many many comments! I am moved and touched!
That's fantastic! You should check in with velascommerce.com to see if they can be of any assistance. Erik and Hannah are wonderful people!
Thank you so much! I will have a look!
This is friggin awesome!!!
eheh thanks!
I'm curious about how u made that web to work on sats. Looks pretty interesting and guess I can use it for myself too. Any extra details about it (Blink API + thinclient)? Wich company u use for shipping worldwide?
I will opensource the project soon! Stay tuned!
Shipping company honestly speaking I do not know, as my mom handle that ... but some courier we have in Italy I guess ...
Code is opensourced now :
#1294064
Awesome. I hope she sells a bunch of them.
thanks! So far no sales, but I need to be more proactive, building a community takes some work!
This is the way! Great paintings, I look forward to buying one in the future!
Thanks for the nice words! Very encouraging!
Sick send some to alamo labs? 👀 we r building a pleb art display ✨️
That is a nice idea! How can we do it? Can you send some info
Excellent idea!
Hope the experiment and the business goes well.
I really like the website, I'm trying to build one for my dad to sell digital items, but not sure where to start.
Thanks 🙏
What do you mean by digital item? PDF? audio files?
Right now the site is built around paintings so info such as dimensions are critical that they stick when listing the products...
Theoretically it would be easy to adapt it so that one can post any item they have in mind.
The challenge UI / UX wise would be to have the user toggle on and off features without overwhelming them.
Once I wrap my head around it, I would publish the site source code
I'm thinking about ebooks. So, pdf or epubs files.
Code is opensourced now :
#1294064
Everything about this is awesome!
yay!! :)
Really cool and motivating.
Thanks, from a guy called Machiavelli this is even more motivating :)
Site is super neat, well done! Did you build it yourself or you used any prebuild script or cms?
It is built from scratch .... I started by hand with my knowledge of react, then I vibe coded a lot on top but I made sure to debug and know everything AI did on top.
Maybe in near future I can opensource it, as I see there is some interest
yes, it will be very interesting to have simple tool to create such website. if you need some help with testing or coding just let me know :-)
Open-source it only if:
yes, that is already achieved 🙌
Obviously the open sourced stack will be a empty store with no logo / name / sections all ready to be personalized
JUST DO IT
The more open source stuff we have, the better for everyone.
OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING
working on it. Right now the backend is strictly tailored to our need, so I need it to have more flexibility to be open sourced
👀
Code is opensourced now as promised:
#1294064
Beautiful work and you have created a beautiful site. I couldn't manage to log in with nostr. Any recommendations?
Thank you so much for your comment :)
I have to be honest here, I just use nos2x and it works ... But I might not be super up to date to best practices on how to sign through the browser.
The site integrates with this library: https://github.com/nostrband/nostr-login
I saw some issue on their github about NIP-07 not working ... I will have a look for alternatives, or if anybody have any recommendation would be great to know !
I am by no means an expert, but I couldn't get this to work for NIP-46 or NIP-07. The experts at SN like @ek might give you some ideas.
I really like your site and your mom's art. I'm at the beginning stages of setting up a bitcoin only merchant site myself (satwize.com), and I'm always looking at other sites for tips and ideas to steal 😀
Whoops, then nostr login is definetely broken ... I will have a better look 🙈🙈
Thanks for the feedback.
I visited your site, it looks cool and I will visit it again to check for tips as well! Aaand, nostr login worked flawlessly... My I ask what library are you using?
To be honest, I am most proud about the admin dashboard which only my Mom has access to and no user see. It needed to be stupid easy to understand and easy to use, yet provide all functions for managing orders / new products etc ...
I'm glad to hear it worked! For NIP-07 I just used a wp plug in. NIP-46 I still can't figure out.
Orange pill. Purple pill.
Bitcoin only. Lightning fast.
The art sold straight to her wallet no middleman. No gatekeeper.