Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡)

Building tiny internet projects. Founder of @promptbase and @zonelessdev. Once bought 300 emoji domains from Kazakhstan.

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

First post in 4 years

I’ve been busy bootstrapping PromptBase to 450k+ users

But I was burning $9,400/mo in opaque Stripe fees for seller payouts

So today I’m launching Zoneless: an open-source clone of Stripe Connect using USDC

Identical API, except payouts cost $0.002

I’ve been dogfooding it on PromptBase for 3 months:

- 2,200+ sellers onboarded
- 1,400+ payouts completed
- $9.4k/mo in Stripe fees → ~$5/mo
- 73% of sellers chose Zoneless over Stripe

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

Experimented with adding an MCP server so you can search PromptBase in ChatGPT, Claude etc.

After 1 week:
🙋‍♀️ 60 users
🔎 1,300 searches

Pretty tiny but users who find it seem to use it a lot

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@xer0c yes, it got some ideas from the customer support agent who has access to emails etc.

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

A few nights ago I instructed an AI agent to ship one secret feature to PromptBase at 4am and deploy it whilst I was asleep - it just had to benefit the site in some way.

I wanted to see what this felt like - which sounds really weird - I know.

It decided to ship a feature that alerts users before their account is about to get timed out from too many declined submissions - a pretty useful idea based on a lot of emails from support.

It went well, and worked! - waking up and seeing it felt very cool. It was a bit like the AI equivalent of one of those trust experiments where you fall back and someone has to catch you (thankfully I was caught)

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

I completely missed the OpenClaw hype - I actually thought it looked kind of dumb at the time.

But the past week or so I've been quite enjoying using Grok Bot - which is very similar (and like OpenAI dots I guess).

I have a support bot that uses my Gmail to answer emails, an engineer bot that writes code, and a security bot that monitors my Cloudflare and server logs for suspicious things.

I’m super intrigued by this as a solo founder/developer as a way to run a "big" looking company from the outside as just one person.

[Zoneless @zonelessdev]

400 GitHub stars! ⭐

The payment rails are open and free now.

So why is the software built on top of them so closed?

Let's change that.

[Zoneless @zonelessdev]

Fee comparison: 1000 payouts/month, $50 each

‣ Stripe: $40,500/year
‣ PayPal: $19,500/year
‣ Zoneless: $26/year

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@b3nm4nn thank you Ben!

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@aviosm @AlexejKirillov £10 from Google Domains

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

Woke up to 100+ stars on the repo, thank you for the support! ⭐️

I've never built open-source before, so this is all pretty new

Back to building now 🫡

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

First post in 4 years

I’ve been busy bootstrapping PromptBase to 450k+ users

But I was burning $9,400/mo in opaque Stripe fees for seller payouts

So today I’m launching Zoneless: an open-source clone of Stripe Connect using USDC

Identical API, except payouts cost $0.002

I’ve been dogfooding it on PromptBase for 3 months:

- 2,200+ sellers onboarded
- 1,400+ payouts completed
- $9.4k/mo in Stripe fees → ~$5/mo
- 73% of sellers chose Zoneless over Stripe

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@EnchantedRobot thanks Robert!

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

First post in 4 years

I’ve been busy bootstrapping PromptBase to 450k+ users

But I was burning $9,400/mo in opaque Stripe fees for seller payouts

So today I’m launching Zoneless: an open-source clone of Stripe Connect using USDC

Identical API, except payouts cost $0.002

I’ve been dogfooding it on PromptBase for 3 months:

- 2,200+ sellers onboarded
- 1,400+ payouts completed
- $9.4k/mo in Stripe fees → ~$5/mo
- 73% of sellers chose Zoneless over Stripe

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@tommyjmarshall 💙

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@therook_ @promptbase mainly through great timing with the AI boom, SEO, and a few reddit hacks.

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@Kyriakos_Pelek 💙

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@theOmkarBirje yes, bit of a hiatus from posting!

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@bdlowery It was a surprising result! We are an AI marketplace so probably a big crossover AI x crypto users, but the main incentive was that sellers can get their sale funds faster - which is a big motivator to push through & use it.

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@deifosv No, it operates entirely on Solana / USDC as a replacement for Stripe Connect payouts.

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@ryanseanbadger Thanks Ryan! PromptBase might be a bit skewed as AI x Crypto has some crossover, but we've definitely found that sellers have a big interest in using it and will push through if it means faster access to funds + payouts.

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@rich_low Good to be back, Rich!

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@ybouane Thanks for the feedback Yassine, I 100% agree on the pay-in side its going to be a while before cards are not the #1 choice. Zoneless is just for the payout-side currently - you can definitely use it alongside Stripe! (we do this on PB)

[Ben Stokes (Tiny Projects 💡) @tinyprojectsdev]

@Dave_Geoghegan_ thanks David!