Large Grant: Retroactive grant for Snap2Sale

[bustedware]

Introduction

Project Name: Snap2Sale

Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal: Bustedware LLC

Describe your project.

The Snap2Sale project is a web platform that enables photographers to upload, watermark, and sell their photos directly to buyers. Photos are uploaded directly to the Sia network from trusted sellers. For new or unverified sellers, images are temporarily stored in AWS S3 for moderation using OpenAI before being committed to Sia for permanent decentralized storage.

https://www.snap2sale.com

To simplify onboarding and increase trust, Snap2Sale supports secure oauth-based sign-ins with Google and Apple. This ensures quick access with reduced friction, especially on mobile devices, and reinforces strong authentication practices aligned with modern security standards. Alternatively, users can also create an account directly with the platform after verifying their email with a OTP sent to their email address.

Snap2Sale protects uploaded photos through a secure watermarking system that balances performance with strong content protection. When a user goes to upload images, Snap2Sale displays a preview immediately by overlaying watermarks on top of the images in the browser. This is purely for visual feedback during the upload process and no actual watermarking is done client-side. This protects the platform from non premium users watermarking their photos with custom images and saving the resulting preview image to their computers.

Once the image is uploaded, the backend generates and stores four versions of each image: the original full image, a thumbnail for quick loading, a watermarked thumbnail, and a full-size watermarked image. Watermarking is done server-side to ensure the watermark is embedded securely and can’t be removed unless bought and paid for. These processed watermarked versions are what users see in their albums and detail views.

The platform facilitates payments through PayPal and collects a 1.0% fee from each sale for the platform owner. Buyers and sellers can both use the platform for free. Sellers can upgrade to a premium tier to unlock more storage and features.

Architecture diagram:

Who benefits from your project?

Independent/professional photographers and digital artists benefit from Snap2Sale by gaining a secure, professional platform to showcase, protect, and sell their work directly to customers. Buyers also benefit by easily discovering and purchasing their content directly from the source.

How does the project serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?

Snap2Sale aligns with the Foundation’s mission by ensuring photographers retain full ownership and control over their images, sales, and data. While Snap2Sale facilitates image storage on the Sia network, users remain the ultimate owners of their content.

We cannot provide grants to residents of jurisdictions under increased FATF monitoring, those that have active OFAC sanctions, or those that fail our bank compliance tests. We also cannot provide grants if your payment bank account is located in those same locations. Please review the following list.

Are you a resident of any jurisdiction on that list? No

Will your payment bank account be located in any jurisdiction on that list? No

Grant Specifics

Amount of money requested and justification with a comprehensive breakdown of expenses: $115,000 for full time salary and ongoing infrastructure costs

Expense	Cost	Description
Frontend Development	$22,000	Responsive UI, album manager, photo viewer, buyer flow, and mobile optimization
Backend Development	$23,000	NodeJS, image watermarking, payments, session/auth, S3/SQS/SES/OpenAI integration
Database Design & Integration	$7,500	MongoDB schema, indexing, queries/aggregations, transaction logging
Payment Integration	$6,000	PayPal PPCP setup, partner referral, subscriptions, order management
Image Processing & AI Integration	$6,000	Watermarking pipeline, OpenAI classification, moderation tools
Cloud Infrastructure (AWS)	$12,000	ECS, S3, SQS, SES, IAM roles, Terraform & Ansible for automation
DevOps & Security	$6,000	CI/CD, TLS, Secrets Manager, session security, rate limiting
UI/UX & Graphic Design	$5,000	Brand identity, logos, icons, watermark styles, mobile layouts
Testing & QA	$5,000	Cross-browser/device testing, bug fixes, performance optimization
Admin Tools & Analytics	$3,500	Admin panel, order tracking, usage stats, image flags
Legal & Compliance	$2,500	Terms of service, privacy policy
Marketing Site & Video	$6,000	Landing page, promotional video
Contingency / Support	$10,500	Buffer for unforeseen costs, post-launch fixes, early user support

Timeline with measurable objectives and goals. REQUIRED: Milestones with which to judge your progress. Milestones should be easy for the Grants Committee to understand and evaluate as your project moves through its term. The Committee reserves the right to accept, modify, or reject proposed milestones to ensure they represent thoughtful and reasonable project evaluation checkpoints. Further payments may be withheld for missed milestones.

The Snap2Sale platform was primarily developed during Q1 and Q2 2025.

Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:

While the core Snap2Sale platform is fully built, potential risks to its long-term success include:

• User Adoption: The platform’s success depends on attracting and retaining photographers and buyers.
• Infrastructure Costs: Ongoing costs to maintain decentralized storage and cloud infrastructure may challenge sustainability without sufficient revenue / user adoption.
• Content Moderation: As user activity increases, effective image moderation and abuse prevention will become more resource-intensive. Snap2Sale relies on OpenAI as its front line of defense for ensuring content is with Snap2Sale’s acceptable use policy. In the case of a false negative, Snap2Sale relies on its users to report content violations in which moderators of the Snap2Sale platform would be called to action to review the unacceptable content.
• Payment Platform Dependency: Reliance on third-party services like PayPal may pose risks if APIs change or accounts are restricted.
• Regulatory Compliance: Changes in laws around digital content, copyright, or financial transactions could require adjustments to the platform.

These risks will be mitigated through active user onboarding, gradual scaling based on usage, and legal consultation especially with regards to sales tax.

The platform acting as a marketplace comes with certain tax obligations which have not been fully accounted for, at least not in any kind of automated way. Snap2Sales initial release includes an integration with Docusign for collecting W9 forms for EOY 1099k US based filings.

We are exploring redundancy options (backup hosting nodes or multi-host uploads) in case Sia node availability becomes a bottleneck or experiences significant reliability concerns/issues.

Development Information

Will all of your project’s code be open-source?

Yes. Upon grant approval the code will be shared publicly in GitHub.

Leave a link where code will be accessible for review.

Snap2Sale GitHub - Core platform
Snap2Sale AUP GitHub - OpenAI image processing / acceptable use policy validator

Do you agree to submit monthly progress reports?

Yes, although since this is a retroactive grant there should just be a final report I think

Do you agree to designate a point of contact for committee questions and concerns?

Bustedware LLC
[email protected]
bustedware_42595 on discord

Provide links to previous work or code from all team members.

Sia Grafana
SiaFund Earnings
Telegraf MongoDB Output Plugin
Coinbase MindsDB handler

Have you developed a proof of concept for this idea already? If not, you can develop this as part of another grant before submitting this grant.

Yes.

Do you agree to participate in a demo at our monthly community call at significant milestones or after the grant’s completion?

Yes

Contact info

Email:
[email protected]

Any other preferred contact methods:
bustedware_42595 on discord

[steve]

Hey @bustedware, thanks for your latest proposal.

I think you’ll need to provide access to the repos to review the code prior to approval. It’s tough for us to conclude this uses Sia and the method of integration without doing that. Let us know if you’re ok with that.

Also, I made an account and couldn’t find a way to upload images. Attempted in iOS Safari, MacOS Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

[bustedware]

Hey @steve thanks for the feedback. Please let me know who to provide access to the repos for a code review, I’ve marked the repos private for the moment.

Regarding the upload of images, you can simply drag and drop the images into the browser window on either the account page or any of your albums. I went ahead and improved the experience by including an upload button next to the album name on the account page and an upload button within the album page. Either way will work now.

Best regards

[frances]

@bustedware Thanks for your response. Please provide n8maninger, ChrisSchinnerl, lukechampine repo access to review the code. Additionally, do you have a video demo of the platform you can share?

We’ll keep this in the Proposed section while we await your response. Thanks again for your proposal.

[bustedware]

@frances I have granted access to both repos for those users and here is a short video demo I prepared - https://youtu.be/CnlIZy0Fvao - thanks!

[Covalent]

I feel that unless the code is public that doesn’t seem like the type of thing the Foundation should be sponsoring.

[pcfreak30]

I personally feel kind of weird about this grant reimbursement. The 1st one made a lot more sense and was highly bespoke to the Sia network.

As a whole unless it can be demonstrated that this grant will create active demand for storage and there is a plan in place to bring users, im not sure it makes sense to reimburse for this project?

Additionally based on how the project and infra has been described, it feels as if using sia here could literally just mean using S3, which at that point its frankly like any other web2 app that uses object storage and not exactly built for sia that it should be justifiable for grant money. The foundation already doesn’t fund anything that could just go through the S3 protocol route, and this feels like it would fall under that? Even if the workers API was used, that is equivalently the same and this would just be some creator eCommerce platform using Sia object storage.

Lastly even if this project is open sourced, I generally feel it may not make practical sense for anyone to run their own copy of this platform.

I could be wrong, but these are the current vibes I am getting. I am obv open to being corrected .

[bustedware]

@Covalent just to clarify, the project will be open-sourced upon grant approval, as stated in the proposal. for the review process, it will remain closed-source to avoid giving away the platform without any funding commitment.

@pcfreak30 as noted under potential risks, if the platform encounters instability using Sia as its primary storage backend (not just for cold backup), im considering increased redundancy such as partitioning data across multiple renterd instances or migrating to S3. I think this kind of usage is a strong test of sias reliability. that said, the community often positions sia mainly for cold storage, which limits broader applications.

youre right though, not just anyone can clone a repo and run the platform and that’s not unique to snap2sale, but for those who can and want to, open sourcing would remove a significant chunk of the work.

[bustedware]

@pcfreak30 i would also like to point out that the platform is already complete. i have seen the foundation fund less developed projects and i believe moving toward a retroactive funding model could reduce deliberation overhead and increase community trust in how grants are allocated

steps are actively being taken to bring users onto the platform. for transparency i am including money i personally spent on freelance content creation for marketing purposes. here is one of the videos i commissioned https://youtu.be/opNuzKqoUW4

and here is a preview of a dry run ad campaign i ran

the user acquisition strategy mirrors what any small business would do, create awareness, test marketing and iterate. i’ve seen the community repeatedly voice interest in real usable integrations like snap2sale or lume web, not just another protocol layer. this project has clear potential to drive organic usage of the sia network and personally i have no interest in switching to another storage backend. i want to see sia grow and built this platform with that specific goal in mind.

i’ve also been paying out of pocket for all infrastructure costs, averaging about $155 a month

aws costs:

redis costs:

docusign costs:

mongodb costs:
currently i’m using free tier mongodb atlas but after free tier I’m looking at an additional $50 a month.

[pcfreak30]

@bustedware

i would also like to point out that the platform is already complete

Yes, I am aware of that and im not here to debate the merits of retroactive funding. My general view on this though is any app that is a normal webapp that uses S3, does not make a lot of sense from a funding POV for Sia to pay for it. And this is something I have seen from the foundation as well on what they are interested in.

My criticism here is this could set precedent for anyone to create any app, use S3 for the storage, then try to sell it back to the community retroactively. Which would be roughly the same as asking for a grant to do it to begin with, when that grant likely would not be approved b/c it isn’t funding anything novel (or if it is, its still going and just using Sia as a technicality and not purpose made towards Sia).

I stated already your 1st retroactive grant made a lot of sense and I broadly supported you getting funded for that. But… this request is a large stretch in my opinion.

I do appreciate you ARE trying to build and put demand onto Sia though, but this im viewing a bit more abstract. Sorry to be harsh .

[bustedware]

im not trying to set a precedent for s3 backed apps getting retroactive funding. the core of my ask is that this doesn’t behave like a typical webapp, its purpose built to use the sia network actively, not just as a cold backup. the data model relies on sia not only for storage but also for user facing access and uploads, so users are directly interacting with sia without even knowing it.

i get the concern around projects shoehorning sia in just to meet the bar, but that’s not what’s happening here. ive already pushed campaigns and am actively trying to onboard users to a real platform with an actual user path that touches sia from end to end. i included receipts and marketing assets to show that this isnt theoretical or passive. if the concern is about closing the loophole or preventing a precedent where s3 backed apps retrofit sia just to qualify for a grant, a simple check using the wayback machine could help. if an app predates its sia integration by more than X months, it could be disqualified from funding, for example

i respect your take and dont mind the pushback, just trying to make the case that this is aligned with the communitys ask for apps that bring tangible usage to the network, even if its not “novel” in the way earlier infra focused grants were. grants should incentivize network growth, if snap2sale is not that, i don’t know what is.

[pcfreak30]

its purpose built to use the sia network actively, That will be up to the grant committee to decide then as I can’t form an opinion myself without seeing code .

Glad you understand my criticism, no ill will intended .

[bustedware]

Providing the flow for image retrieval to help speed along the code reviewers:

image retrieval

1. img src -> https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale/blob/master/views/pages/album.ejs#L296 endpoint pattern: /{album}/image/{image id}

2. image endpoint → https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale/blob/master/routes/albums.js#L388

   • retrieves a single image, has access check logic
   • if request is for “full” image or “full thumbnail” of image,
     • user must be authenticated
     • user must have purchased image
     • retrieve image with getFile()
   • if request is not for full version image
     • retrieve image with getFile()

3. image retrieval with getFile() function → https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale/blob/master/sia.js#L8

   • gets file directly from renterd, streams results back to browser

image upload

file upload logic -> https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale/blob/master/routes/account.js#L457

1. user must be authenticated
2. user must be owner of the album they’re uploading to
3. user must have consented to acceptable use policy
4. must be within storage requirements
   • 1gb for non premium users
   • 1tb for premium users
5. determine if user is a “trusted user” (users with at least 10 uploads, and 80% of the uploads passed acceptable use policy AI checker)
   • upload directly to sia network
     → handleTrustedUpload → https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale/blob/master/routes/account.js#L318
     → uploadFileStream (sia) → https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale/blob/master/sia.js#L34
     → store metadata for files in mongodb https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale/blob/master/routes/account.js#L527
6. if user is not a “trusted user”
   • upload file to S3 and send message to simple queue service for processing
   • acceptable use policy AI process listens for messages in queue
   • AI processor categorizes the file as acceptable or not
   • if accepted
     → uploadFileStream (sia) https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale-aup/blob/master/sia.js#L31
     → store metadata for files in mongodb and mark image as processed https://github.com/bustedware/snap2sale-aup/blob/master/main.js#L186
   • delete file from s3
   • delete message from simple queue service

[mike76]

Hi @bustedware. If your project is funded retroactively, what are your further plans? Do you mean that you will be asking for funding each year to offset your maintenance costs, or you hope that it will be self-sustaining?

Also, I would try to engage more community feedback if I were you. Go to Discord (e.g. #grants-program) and ask what the community thinks and if they are exited about your project. There has only been criticism so far, which obviously doesn’t help a lot.

Thanks.

[bustedware]

the goal is for the platform to be self sustaining, i dont plan to request additional grant funding for this project. there should be enough runway with the requested funding to give the platform a real opportunity. so the grant is primarily to support the time already invested in building it and the time that ill invest iterating upon it, not the infrastructure or services that support it.

im happy to share it in the discord channel for visibility but most of the users in that channel are the same ones active here in the forums. if you have any other ideas for gathering feedback id be glad to hear them and will pursue all avenues. so far only @pcfreak30 has provided meaningful feedback, which i appreciate, but its still only 1 person and i dont believe is representative of the community as a whole. i dont think its fair to say it hasnt been helpful though.

ironically i do plan to migrate to s3 storage if the grant doesnt move forward. although i did build this with sia in mind, there is merit in what he said about just using s3 as a primary storage solution. s3 storage is a more cost effective option in my case, since leveraging sia storage requires running the hardware for renterd and the networking that supports it. id prefer not to run that kind of setup from home and hosting the hardware in a datacenter is more reliable. it would be bad for the platform if my internet provider became unavailable or my electric went out for example, and i wouldnt want that to reflect poorly on the network

hopefully the grant committee has enough context now to evaluate it ahead of the next meeting as we did spark some good discussion here.

[Danger]

Initially I wasn’t sure but after reading all information here and on discord I think that having this funded retroactively shouldn’t be a problem. Having everything funded is kind of win:win situation for everyone as long as the repo is made public after grant is approved. That’s the price of it…

If the foundation’s devs check the private repo, try to run it and see that it matches description, I personally think this is a good proposal. Community has been asking for Sia based products with meaningful use and this is it and already developed at the risk of bustedware.

So my personal opinion is that having this funded retroactively is not a problem. I like that he actually has a plan B in case this doesn’t work out. It shows he is serious enough to take the risk and develop this all with Sia in mind while also being ready to launch it without Sia.

It’s also good to know there is no further funding required as it should be self-sustaining. And even if for some reason he ended up migrating to S3 anyway this is a complete project being made open-source which might serve as important project example for developers to come and learn from.

So, IF the devs can confirm this all works, my remaining question would be about how well it will be documented if anyone wanted to run it themselves. We’re discussing open-source project here and while post-grant additions from bustedware will surely be private, the “basic” setup should be working.

This also leads me to one more thing. Even if it will mean extra expense I think that it would make sense for bustedware to promise to maintain this repository (and keep it updated in case something changes with renterd) at least for next 24 months. This means that if he continues the work in a private repo, some of the core changes (not new features - that would be up to his good will) also get to the grant repository.

I hope this makes sense. It’s probably my main concern… otherwise according to the description it sounds like a well-thought product in an area with demand and focus on the data ownership.

[bustedware]

Thank you for your feedback. Providing response to your questions below, if I missed anything please let me know:

1. I will document the setup process as much as possible. I’ve already created an /admin endpoint on the service which takes a lot of the work out of manually creating things like SES email templates, PayPal products which is used for the subscriptions, PayPal subscription plans that get associated to those products, and the DocuSign W9 template creation - which should help significantly in speeding up deploying the platform

2. I haven’t considered keeping any post grant additions private, its an interesting thought, for now the plan is to keep everything public including any new features

3. The plan is to actively maintain the codebase to ensure continued functionality and make optimizations as needed. a minimum 24 month commitment is very reasonable, though I fully expect ill be supporting the project well beyond that.

[sebastiaan-dev]

Hi bustedware,

I saw the post in the grants-program channel on Discord. After reading the current proposal I had a couple questions in mind. Regarding business viability, do you currently have any users/customers? If so, do you have an average acquisition cost? I do understand that the platform is quite new, which might make these indicators a bit skewed. But I’d be interested in how you see a path to profitability.

Also, there are quite large platforms that have a similar value proposition: www.gettyimages.nl, www.shutterstock.com among others. These platforms have quite large libraries already, something which I feel makes it harder for a new entrant to compete content wise. How do you see your place in this market? Or would you say the value proposition you are offering differs significantly from these platforms?

As a final remark, you mention “users remain the ultimate owners of their content”, I was wondering how this is effectuated? From the description and diagram I gather that the platform is managing the content, would users then still have access to their content in case the platform goes down? Or should I interpret this differently?

Best Regards,

Sebastiaan

[bustedware]

Thank you for your feedback. Providing response to your questions below, if I missed anything please let me know:

1 ) There are currently 5 accounts, 4 if you exclude mine. There is a single test order I put through, so no organic orders so far, but I’ll explain a little more about what I think is going on in the answers below. here is a snapshot of the /admin page I described below which I’ll be monitoring and provides metrics on platform health

The service went live officially on April 28th, 2025. The test order was placed to complete PayPal partnership program on-boarding. I ran the first ad campaign on June 4th, 2025. At the moment, there are no active campaigns while I work on improving the onboarding flow and landing page to increase conversion once users arrive. I think the platform is less intuitive than I originally thought which is what I think is happening and why the users who have signed up aren’t uploading images.

I dont yet have a reliable acquisition cost due to the limited number of campaigns run but I expect this to become clearer as I continue testing ads and refining user acquisition funnels.

---

2 ) I’m aware there are other platforms that do similar things and Snap2Sale’s cost basis was geared to be competitive with https://zenfolio.com. My focus was to get a product out there as quickly as possible without focusing too much about how I’ll be competitive. Some things I think Snap2Sale is better at:

• Serves a single purpose
• Competitive storage prices
• No watermark restrictions. Users can upload and apply unlimited custom watermarks

This is on their landing page. I believe I am competitive with their storage limits and Snap2Sale includes sharable client galleries, custom watermarks (unlimited), photo sharing and some client proofing (view galleries with password access if needed, download high resolution files). I could perhaps see videos/advanced search/people filter coming into play eventually, but I want the focus to be first and foremost on photography and enabling photographers to start selling right away after signing up.

Here are additional storage options on their platform:

Their 1tb yearly subscription is $6.25/mo which isn’t too far from Snap2Sale’s premium $7.99/mo yearly subscription. I picked 1tb arbitrarily for premium users of my platform, if users express a need for more storage at the same price it could be easily modified.

I anticipate the cost basis for using the Snap2Sale will evolve as the platform grows and as I learn more about how users will actually use the platform and what features they want the most. I didn’t put a whole lot of focus on cost as the main focus was getting a chargeable subscription to work and getting a product out and available as fast as possible.

During the initial stages, most of the generated revenue will be from subscription plans and not from 1% of each sale.

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3 ) Yes the proposal does state that the platform facilitates storage on the Sia network and that users remain the ultimate owners of their content. I’ve included a section on Data Ownership in my privacy policy here: Privacy Policy - Bustedware about who owns the data. Snap2Sales privacy policy explicitly states that users retain ownership of their content.

Snap2Sale does not guarantee uninterrupted or permanent access to user uploaded or purchased content. Access to content may be lost due to service outages, account termination, or removal resulting from violations of the acceptable use policy, including DMCA takedown requests. This is a standard limitation shared by most online services that rely on hosted infrastructure. We strongly recommend users retain local backups of any content they upload to or purchase through Snap2Sale to avoid data loss in the event of service disruption or takedown.

[steve]

Hey @bustedware can you confirm you’ve given access to these users?