Scaling cryptocurrencies would absolutely address this issue, but that's an enormous challenge. A simple, centralized service could easily fill this role with

Scaling cryptocurrencies would absolutely address this issue, but that's an enormous challenge. A simple, centralized service could easily fill this role with batched transactions. Each reader pays once a month, each publisher gets payed once a month, and those payments can be shuffled about a database trivially. O(n) vs. O(n^2) Patreon kind of did/does this. There was a big stink not long ago where this appeared to fall apart. The issue Patreon faced was that it was not so trivial to bundle transactions like this. Some creators wanted to get paid in a piecemeal fashion for each video uploaded, etc. For patreon supporters, they would each be on their own separate billing cycle because they decided it would be bad UX to have the first month be pro-rated or whatever. As much as Patreon is best situated to provide a service like this, I'm not encouraged that they'll do so.