Imagine Kickstarter, but doubters get paid if the project flops
Details
- External ID
- 48315903
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Imagine Kickstarter, but doubters get paid if the project flops
- Website domain
- trypieces.com
- Launched
- May 28, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 6
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.3053311793214863
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Enrichment
- Theme
- indie hacker passion projects
- Vertical
- Retail & commerce
- Function
- Marketplace
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- crowdfunding with prediction betting
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Building a platform where users place financial bets against project success requires navigating strict financial derivatives regulations and complex oracle dispute systems.
What it would actually take: The product requires an exchange engine or automated market maker for binary outcome contracts, multi-signature or custodial escrow wallets, and a fraud-proof oracle system to verify project milestone failures. Crucially, launching this requires regulatory approval from agencies like the CFTC or relevant gambling commissions, plus extensive anti-collusion mechanisms to prevent founders from covertly shorting their own campaigns.
Discussion
10 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: BuyMeACoffee (for post-release tipping), Kickstarter (group-funding model), Patreon (creator monetization)
Concerns raised: Bonder commission structure - why should creators pay bonders if they're just making prediction bets?, Free-rider problem still not fully solved by dominant assurance contracts, AI-generated content quality and filtering (need to prove weighted rating system works), Who decides if funding goal is met?
Feature requests: Embedded preview images that update as funding progresses, showing unlock status across the web, Time-limited releases (e.g., artist has deadline to create/deliver after funding), Third-party recipient field to notify and involve other people in pieces, WordPress plugin or API integration for Pieces, Metadata/tagging system for music/video to enable tip-based monetization after release
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 59 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #48 of 60 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 194 days after the earliest competitor.
- ValidationLab · ph · 2026-09-30 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- A cemetery for failed side projects and what founders build next · hn · 2026-08-25 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- ai-sucks-butt · github · 2026-09-14 · 30 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Venture Trail · ph · 2026-09-11 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Would you pay? · ph · 2026-09-29 · 115 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Shark Tank but you pitch your idea to indie hackers · hn · 2026-07-01 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Your Expensive Lawyer Is Making Mistakes · hn · 2026-02-27 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Money vs Many · ph · 2026-09-09 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.37
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a marketplace tool for Horizontal yet.