5 ms·

I wish there were a way of sending $0.01, by sending $10 with probability 0.001. That is, you and I negotiate a random seed (using something like Diffie-Hellman

by tlb 7y ago

I wish there were a way of sending $0.01, by sending $10 with probability 0.001. That is, you and I negotiate a random seed (using something like Diffie-Hellman) and then we can generate probabilistic microtransactions and only transfer the $10 in the p=0.001 case. EDIT: fixed arithmetic, thanks skj

nwienert 7y ago
This is smart! Why not build it?
- paulddraper 7y ago
  I suspect the probabilistic aspect would not actually be popular.
  - tlb 7y ago
    Yes, I think people would hate it for the same reason they love gambling slot machines. People overweight rare and random events. You'd always remember the one time you got dinged $10 for looking at some lame clickbait article.
    - nwienert 7y ago
      You wouldn’t need to sell it as random to the end user.
      - paulddraper 7y ago
        That's a good point.
  - kfichter 7y ago
    I've always wondered whether probabilistic micropayments would fly under sharia-compliant finance.
- jonas21 7y ago
  You'd have to have some way to enforce that people actually make the payments. And once you do that, it seems like an intermediary that just aggregates microtransactions and takes care of settlement at the end of the month or whatever would be a lot easier.
skj 7y ago
0.001
geofft 7y ago
This sounds great for the recipient, who will get approximately the amount of money they'd otherwise get, but bad for the sender, who now has to budget a thousand times more than they were intending to spend. Or more precisely, it's good for the party operating at scale and bad for the individual participant. This is the opposite of how most financial schemes handle unpredictable events: they put the risk on the party that can absorb the risk by letting it be lost in the noise, and take it away from the party that cares deeply about small amounts. Insurance companies will charge everyone the same amount, whether it's a customer that will ultimately bring them a bit of revenue or ultimately cost them a lot of money: the price for the individual customer is fixed. A plane flight costs the same amount of money whether there are strong tailwinds and the plane flew cheaper than expected or whether there was bad enough weather that the flight had to land somewhere for refueling, and the cost of the occasional rare disruption is built into the ticket. This trick is mathematically nice, but there isn't really a reason for a consumer to prefer it to even paying $.02, unless the consumer is also paying at scale (in which case you can just aggregate the transfer and not use this scheme at all).
- DaniFong 7y ago
  Great points, but can't you tweak the idea somehow by also buffering individual participants? I could imagine a service here could be worth a lot more than ~$10 user. This is only needed for micropayments so a buffer of like $5-10 could be fine if you could somehow otherwise otherwise verify the user / monetize the relationship. Best way I can think of that preserves privacy is to serve image only ads through the payment network in an appropriately boxed window every time you add a tip to the randomized micropayment scheme.
  - DaniFong 7y ago
    One down vote. The idea's not a winner among the HN crowd. Oh well. Maybe, someday, micropayments will be good.
beerandt 7y ago
This model works maybe for uses where small value transactions aren't worth the cost or hassle, but that's not the (main) problem here. It's that payment itself adds a layer of complexity. And if the problem is that even simple payment complicates things, complicated (probabilistic maybe or maybe not) payment isn't going to make it better.
nnx 7y ago
Lightning does exactly this for sending amounts less than 1 satoshi (minimum unit of the Bitcoin protocol)

by tlb 7y ago

nwienert 7y ago

This is smart! Why not build it?

paulddraper 7y ago
I suspect the probabilistic aspect would not actually be popular.
- tlb 7y ago
  Yes, I think people would hate it for the same reason they love gambling slot machines. People overweight rare and random events. You'd always remember the one time you got dinged $10 for looking at some lame clickbait article.
  - nwienert 7y ago
    You wouldn’t need to sell it as random to the end user.
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      That's a good point.
- kfichter 7y ago
  I've always wondered whether probabilistic micropayments would fly under sharia-compliant finance.
jonas21 7y ago
You'd have to have some way to enforce that people actually make the payments. And once you do that, it seems like an intermediary that just aggregates microtransactions and takes care of settlement at the end of the month or whatever would be a lot easier.

skj 7y ago

0.001

geofft 7y ago

This sounds great for the recipient, who will get approximately the amount of money they'd otherwise get, but bad for the sender, who now has to budget a thousand times more than they were intending to spend. Or more precisely, it's good for the party operating at scale and bad for the individual participant. This is the opposite of how most financial schemes handle unpredictable events: they put the risk on the party that can absorb the risk by letting it be lost in the noise, and take it away from the party that cares deeply about small amounts. Insurance companies will charge everyone the same amount, whether it's a customer that will ultimately bring them a bit of revenue or ultimately cost them a lot of money: the price for the individual customer is fixed. A plane flight costs the same amount of money whether there are strong tailwinds and the plane flew cheaper than expected or whether there was bad enough weather that the flight had to land somewhere for refueling, and the cost of the occasional rare disruption is built into the ticket. This trick is mathematically nice, but there isn't really a reason for a consumer to prefer it to even paying $.02, unless the consumer is also paying at scale (in which case you can just aggregate the transfer and not use this scheme at all).

DaniFong 7y ago
Great points, but can't you tweak the idea somehow by also buffering individual participants? I could imagine a service here could be worth a lot more than ~$10 user. This is only needed for micropayments so a buffer of like $5-10 could be fine if you could somehow otherwise otherwise verify the user / monetize the relationship. Best way I can think of that preserves privacy is to serve image only ads through the payment network in an appropriately boxed window every time you add a tip to the randomized micropayment scheme.
- DaniFong 7y ago
  One down vote. The idea's not a winner among the HN crowd. Oh well. Maybe, someday, micropayments will be good.

beerandt 7y ago

This model works maybe for uses where small value transactions aren't worth the cost or hassle, but that's not the (main) problem here. It's that payment itself adds a layer of complexity. And if the problem is that even simple payment complicates things, complicated (probabilistic maybe or maybe not) payment isn't going to make it better.

nnx 7y ago

Lightning does exactly this for sending amounts less than 1 satoshi (minimum unit of the Bitcoin protocol)