Hello frens! We have a lot of news so we’ll be breaking this post up into sections.

🧡 OrangeFren Forum

We’re excited to announce the launch of the 🧡 OrangeFren Forum 🥳. A new bulletin board style forum for the cypherpunks in Bitcoin and Monero.

The forum already has threads by:

The last ones even offer a 5% discount on order made by OrangeFren Forum users 🏷️

If you run a service that caters to the cypherpunk community, or are looking for a forum for persistent, long, discussion then join the OrangeFren Forum 😎

🎟️ MoneroKon ticket giveway

Thanks to eXch we’ll be giving away 4 MoneroKon tickets for 🆓FREE🆓

To be added to the giveaway, just leave a comment in this thread on the OrangeFren Forum

The winners will be selected on Monday the 13th of May at 4:00 PM UTC

🇨🇭🇮🇹 Lugano meetup sponsored by eXch

Thanks to eXch.cx (Tor) OrangeFren.com is organising a meet-up in Lugano, Switzerland 🇨🇭, in two weeks on Sunday the 26th of May.

Where? Impact Hub Ticino, Via Antonio Ciseri 3, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland 🇨🇭
When? From 15:00 on Sunday the 26th of May

👉 Sign up here 👈

🆕 Updates to OrangeFren.com

We have recently added tabs to find providers for swaps between fiat and crypto 💱

We currently list offers from Bisq and AgoraDesk 💔.

If you’d like to get a prepaid card 💳, without KYC, that you can add to your Google Pay or Apple Pay wallet and use around the World, then we also added those.

Want to sell more than 10k USD in crypto in exchange for physical cash 💸? Without KYC 🥸? We’ve got you covered. We recently added contact info to a trusted broker to the website. You’ll find it under the name “OrangeFren Broker Partner” when searching for offers to sell crypto

(Please remember in many jurisdictions trading P2P is legal, but you have to declare selling this much Monero, Bitcoin, or any other crypto for cash. 👮‍♂️)

🤝 OrangeFren Affiliate Programme

Lastly, we’re excited to announce the OrangeFren Affiliate Programme 🤝

The programme works by you providing us with your existing ref links to any of the services we list on the website. Then, when a user visits OrangeFren.com using your link, we’ll replace our ref links with yours for all the services that you provided us your link for.

This means, your profit share is 100%! And we never hold custody of your affiliate earnings.

You’ll find the link to join the footer of OrangeFren.com

  • silverpill@mitra.social
    3·
    6 months ago

    @OrangeFren @monero Why make a non-federated forum? You can run a Lemmy or a Discourse instance, and let people from monero.town and beyond participate in discussions. Otherwise there won’t be much activity

    • OrangeFren@monero.townOP
      2·
      6 months ago

      This is a great question and it was a difficult choice. If it doesn’t work out in this paradigm then we’ll experiment with a federated one.

      We looked into the stats of various federated forums (lemmy, nostr) and found that they are all dying. Slowly, but seemingly irreversibly. Furthermore, the forums that actually bring us, and our partners, the most profit are all centralized. Bitcointalk, BestChange, and of course Dread, Reddit and Twitter although those are general-purpose platforms.

      edit: Just to add to that comment. Companies we work with, ourselves as well, spend tens of thousands of USD per month on advertising on these non-federated platforms and forums. They do so, because it pays off. I have yet to see a single such effort on a federated platform. If someone else tests it and finds it to be a viable investment, we’ll of course follow suit

      • silverpill@mitra.social
        2·
        6 months ago

        @OrangeFren @monero Activity in Lemmy network might have subsided since the Reddit Migration, but it is certainly not dying. Today there are 768 instances with the largest one having 18469 MAUs.
        The important thing about federation is that there is no downside. You get a regular forum with all benefits of a self-hosting, but now people don’t have to register on it in order to participate. For example, monero.town currently has 83 MAUs, and you can access that audience for free simply by using a different software.
        I previously mentioned Discourse, which has a federation plugin, but it is not the only forum engine to choose from. NodeBB is working on federation (almost finished), and Flarum too. These engines will be fully interoperable with Lemmy, and partially with micro-blogging apps like Mastodon and Threads.
        So, yeah, you’re right about this being an uncharted territory, but I see a lot of potential here

      • Sir Alecks Gates@activitypub.agates.io
        2·
        6 months ago

        @OrangeFren

        You don’t need to be on Lemmy to follow it. I don’t have a Lemmy account. The Fediverse is far from dying, even if specific software is not in the headlines.

        Regardless, please consider an open standard. Centralization within the privacy coin space has always confused me.

        Don’t waste energy on Nostr. That has never been organic and only exists because of some VC crap, which is drying up this year anyway.

        @silverpill

    • OrangeFren@monero.townOP
      2·
      6 months ago

      We’re working on loading all the fonts locally so Google will be no more. However, we’re keeping CF on the clearnet version. We get to many DDoSes to disable CF. Our Tor and I2P mirrors are free of CF stuff, but also go offline sometimes when the attacks are too powerful