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The problem is there's no way to estimate costs without a price up-front. You have to determine how many "tokens" to charge and that price won't be stable like

The problem is there's no way to estimate costs without a price up-front. You have to determine how many "tokens" to charge and that price won't be stable like the dollar. Just imagine paying a fixed BTC per request. It would be impossible to predict your costs. Of course you could peg it to the dollar but that's what we already do with paid API subscriptions which have a price known up-front with limits. I don't see what blockchain tech has to do with charging for API access.

pfraze 10y ago
> I don't see what blockchain tech has to do with charging for API access. In the situation he's proposing, Twitter's product wouldn't be an API; it would have to be a blockchain protocol. > You have to determine how many "tokens" to charge and that price won't be stable like the dollar. I agree, pricing is a problem. Do you poll exchanges for the current rates, every time you make a transaction? It's not ideal. I think Twitter is a bad example, also. Twitter and file-hosting are already free, within usage constraints. Why would people want to start paying for it? Also, all of the blockchain clones of Twitter have been much less efficient, and provided little benefit over the central model. - edited for brevity -