SimpleTip

One-click tipping for any website. Fund once, tip everywhere.

Try it: Tip the author

Click a dollar amount. If you have a wallet with funds, it tips instantly. Otherwise you'll be prompted to add funds.

Detained and Forgotten: Families Fighting for Answers

By Raise the Voices · March 23, 2026

Across three continents, families of the wrongfully detained are banding together to demand accountability. What started as a Facebook group of desperate mothers has become a global movement documenting cases, pressuring governments, and refusing to let the world look away...

Try it: Split tip — author + subject

When the article covers someone who could use support, readers split between the journalist and the subject.

Inside Sudan's Emergency Rooms: Doctors Without Supplies

By James Okafor · March 12, 2026

In the besieged hospitals of Khartoum, medical staff work 20-hour shifts with dwindling supplies. Dr. Amira Hassan hasn't slept in two days. "We need everything," she says...

What a new visitor sees

Before the reader has a wallet, the widget looks like this. Clicking any amount starts the signup flow.

First-time visitor view

Embed SimpleTip in your site

Add tipping to any article in two lines of HTML. Works everywhere JavaScript runs.

Ghost WordPress Substack Hugo Jekyll HTML

1 Register as a receiver and add a payout method

2 Paste this at the bottom of your articles:

<script src="https://demos.linkedtrust.us/simpletip/simpletip.js"></script>
<simple-tip receiver="your-slug" receiver-name="Your Name"></simple-tip>

+ Split tips between multiple receivers:

<simple-tip
  receiver="journalist-slug"
  receiver-name="Journalist Name"
  subject="subject-slug"
  subject-label="Subject Name or Cause">
</simple-tip>

For Ghost: add as an HTML card, or put the script tag in your theme's post.hbs template so it appears on every article.
For WordPress: add as a Custom HTML block.
The script only needs to be included once per page.

Open protocol, verifiable payouts

SimpleTip is decentralized. Anyone can run a node — a press freedom organization, a university, a journalism co-op. Each node handles payments with whatever methods work in their region. The widget is the same everywhere.

What makes this work is accountability. Every payout from a SimpleTip node is published as a LinkedClaim — an open attestation on ATProto. Not an internal record. A public, verifiable statement on the decentralized network: this node paid this person this amount on this date.

That means:

Receivers can point to a claim wall showing every verified payout — not self-reported, node-attested
Donors can verify their contributions actually reached the intended recipient
Newsrooms and NGOs can audit disbursements without requesting reports from anyone
If a node stops operating, the attestation history lives on ATProto — it's portable, not locked in

No node is trusted by default. Every node builds its track record in public, one attestation at a time. The LinkedClaims spec is open. The data lives on ATProto. Anyone can verify it.

LinkedClaims.com · Source code · Built by LinkedTrust

What this is

SimpleTip is not a platform like Ko-fi or Patreon. It's not trying to replace them. You could even fund a SimpleTip wallet through Ko-fi if you wanted.

SimpleTip is an abstraction that makes donating to individuals one click. An embeddable widget that sits on any website — the reader never leaves the page. Fund once, tip everywhere. That's it.

On the receiving end, it works with whatever payout method the receiver actually uses: PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, ACH, M-Pesa, MoneyGram, USDT. A freelance writer in Lagos gets paid via M-Pesa. A journalist in Bogotá gets MoneyGram. A US-based blogger gets ACH. Not because these are exotic — they're just how people get paid where they are.

Tips can split between multiple receivers — the journalist and the subject of the article, for example. Received funds can be re-tipped to other creators without withdrawing first. And anyone can run a SimpleTip node.

That last part raises a fair question. Anyone with a Stripe account can hold funds on behalf of others. So: why should anyone trust the operator?

When a receiver gets paid, they confirm it — a signed attestation published on ATProto as a LinkedClaim. Not an internal database entry. A public, independently verifiable statement: I received $X from this node on this date. That record doesn't disappear if the node shuts down.

Proof of delivery for the operator. Receipts for donors. An audit trail anyone can verify without asking for access. A node that consistently pays out builds a public record. One that doesn't, has a visible gap. No trust required — just evidence.

Related open-source projects:

Liberapay — recurring donations, zero platform fees, Stripe + PayPal (not embeddable)
Open Collective — fiscal hosting for open-source projects and communities
BTCPay Server — self-hosted Bitcoin/Lightning payment processing
Open Payment Host — self-hosted alternative to Buy Me a Coffee (Go, AGPL)