I Made a Ko-fi (And I'm a Bit Embarrassed About It)

There's something quietly awkward about asking people for money. I've been turning it over in my head for a while now – longer than I'd like to admit – and I kept talking myself out of it. Not because I don't think the work is worth something, but because the whole thing felt a bit... presumptuous? Like standing in a room and going "hey, actually, you could pay me for this."

But here we are.

I've set up a Ko-fi . And before you ask – no, there's no paywall. No membership tiers with exclusive content locked behind them. Nothing like that. It's just tips. One-off if you feel like it, or monthly if you're feeling particularly generous. That's genuinely all it is.

Why Not Do The Membership Thing?

My mum told me I should have released Malachite as paid software. And look, in purely practical terms, she's probably not wrong. People do that. It works for some folks.

But that's not really what any of this is for.

My work with AT Protocol – Malachite, the tooling, all of it – is meant to benefit everyone who wants to use it. The whole point of building on an open protocol is that it belongs to people, not just the ones who can afford a subscription. Locking any of it off would feel like a betrayal of the thing I actually care about. So I'm not doing that.

What I've ended up with instead is something much more low-key. You can drop something in the jar if you want to. Or you can not, and nothing changes. Genuinely.

The Specifics

If you do want to leave a tip, the suggested amounts are £5, £10, and £15, with a minimum of £2. There's also an optional monthly version if you'd rather set something up on a recurring basis and forget about it.

Worth noting: Ko-fi takes 5% on the free plan, so on a £15 tip that's 75p gone straight away – leaving £14.25. But I'm actually seeing around £13.22 land, which means there's roughly another pound quietly vanishing somewhere in the chain. My best guess is PayPal taking their own slice on top; they typically charge something like 2.9% plus a fixed fee per transaction, and the maths roughly tracks. So: Ko-fi takes their 5%, and then PayPal presumably wanders in and helps themselves to a bit more. It's a bit annoying, but I'm certainly not about to start processing card payments myself just to spite them.

The Bit I Wasn't Expecting

I put the Ko-fi up, posted about it, and within five minutes someone had already thrown in £15 a month. Monthly. Recurring. On purpose.

I genuinely didn't know what to do with that information for a second. I said "seriously???" out loud, at my screen, to nobody. I think that's fair.

It's a strange feeling, someone putting their money where their mouth is for something you built in your bedroom. I'm not sure I've fully processed it yet, honestly. But it was a very good reminder that the things you make – even the ones that feel small or niche or mainly useful to a handful of people in a particular corner of the internet – do actually matter to someone.

That's not nothing.

So, No Strings

To be clear about what this is and isn't: it's not a Patreon. It's not a subscription service. It doesn't unlock anything. You're not owed anything for tipping, and I don't owe you anything back (beyond the same work I was already doing anyway).

It's just a way to say "yeah, this is worth a fiver to me." And if that's how you feel, I appreciate it more than I'll probably manage to express properly.

If not – that's completely fine too.

The jar is here if you want it.