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Mike Hearns Hourglass on Lighthouse

Former Google engineer and BitcoinJ developer, Mike Hearn, has successfully completed a [crowdfunding campaign](https://www.vinumeris.com/projects/apps#hourglass-design) for his newest project Hourglass. In a divergence form the normal crowdfund process, Hearns target amount covers the cost of the design document for Hourglass.

Former Google engineer and BitcoinJ developer, Mike Hearn, has successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign for his newest project Hourglass. In a divergence form the normal crowdfund process, Hearns target amount covers the cost of the design document for Hourglass.

The interest level check campaign was hosted on Hearns own Lighthouse platform, raising a pledge total of $2,500. Lighthouse was originally created by Hearn as a decentralised crowdfunding platform, and was partially funded by Bitcoin Foundation board member Olivier Janssens.

Hearns new project, Hourglass, is software that will enable you to swiftly pay someone else on a rolling, per second basis – using Bitcoin micropayment channels.

“To use Hourglass, you send Bitcoins to an address given by the app, and then either click on an Hourglass link sent to you by someone else, or drag/drop your own link out of the app into an email or text chat. Once a payment channel is created and the per-second cost is agreed, you can just press the start button and begin sending/receiving money.”
— – Hourglass Pitch

Hourglass is proposed as a research project, with the Lighthouse documentation stating that it’s unique in its general application. Hearn will build Hourglass in the same style as Lighthouse – with Hierarchical Deterministic wallet support, simple and controllable threshold-signed online updates, and a modern User Interface – specifically tailored for pay per second use. The project would be cross platform; available on Windows, OSX, and Linux; and mobile applications would be developed.

In an interview with BNC, Hearn made it clear that the $2,500 pledged was for the initial prototyping design documents, and not the actual implementation of code. “The project that attracted enough promises is the design document only for Hourglass. Not the implementation.”

Hearn has launched a follow up campaign with a target goal of $25,000, for the developed prototype of Hourglass.

“This project involves implementing the Hourglass application design. Hourglass is a GUI app that makes using pay-per-second micropayment channels easy for everyone. Before this project can be funded, the design project must be completed first. Then a first, minimalist prototype version can be created. Until the design is finalised it’s difficult to know the precise cost: the listed cost is a pure estimate for a small amount of work that may not be fully decentralised or peer to peer.”
— – Hourglass Pitch

Hearn explained that Hourglass was driven by his personal desire to experiment with crowdfunding and Bitcoin projects. Hourglass is a potentially useful application that shows off the unique capabilities of bitcoin, and highlights the functionality of Lighthouse. Hearn also expressed an interest in embedding Hourglass as a feature within Lighthouse, rather than as a stand alone application.

Following suit with his previous projects, Hearn plans to be the sole developer working on the projects implementation. He claims that he is currently working full time on other projects, that take priority over the design documents, but provided assurance that work development time will set aside this summer. Hearn hopes to launch, and complete, the crowdfunding campaign in late 2015.

“I will now confirm with some of the bigger promises that they really do want to pledge the money. In the next couple of months I will be focusing on getting Lighthouse out of beta, launching BitcoinJ 0.13, and one or two other things that aren’t announced yet. I’ll probably do some prototyping and design work later in the summer, and once that’s done, do the crowdfund for real.”
— – Mike Hearn

Lighthouse, Hourglass, BitcoinJ 0.13, and two secret projects fill Hearns time at the moment, an all hands on deck situation. By using Lighthouse to support his other projects, Hearn continues to push the platform forward and demonstrate its utility.

If you’re interested in contributing or pledging to Hourglass, you can find the crowdfunding platform Lighthouse here, and view the Hourglass project file for further details.


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