6 ms·

And a small Coil, who you've probably never heard of before, donated 40% of Google's/Microsoft's amount ($100k). That's pennies to Google/Microsoft. For Coil.c

And a small Coil, who you've probably never heard of before, donated 40% of Google's/Microsoft's amount ($100k). That's pennies to Google/Microsoft. For Coil.com on the other hand... For the unaware, Coil is a subscription service that you pay a certain amount to, and that amount gets spread through websites you visit that have a WebMonetization tag in the <head> element: <meta name="monetization" content="crypto-address-here"> Pretty cool initiative. My personal website earned a total of $1 from it so far.

mike-cardwell 6y ago
I've come across this before. In order to receive money, I should just be able to put: <meta name="monetization" content="bitcoin:my-bitcoin-address"> Or similar, on my website. Doesn't work that way though. I have to sign up with somebody like coil.com and put an address they give me on my websites. This is just worse. Much much worse than it needs to be.
- ahopebailie 6y ago
  That's where the idea started but that means the user has to be able to send Bitcoin. The purpose of Interledger is to abstract away that issue which is why Web Monetization is built on Interledger. You don't have to sign up with Coil to earn. There are other wallets that are on the Interledger network such as Uphold and Gatehub that can give you a payment pointer to put into your site's HTML. If you want your earnings to be converted to BTC that's possible I think.
  - mike-cardwell 6y ago
    I understand that the person paying probably needs an account somewhere, so that payments can be batched together to reduce transaction fees. However, there's no reason for me to have an account anywhere in order to receive bitcoin. All I need is a bitcoin address. I don't want to sign up with Coil, Interledger, Uphold, Gatehub, or any other random third party, in order to receive bitcoin. And there is zero reason why I would have to.
    - jorangreef 6y ago
      Except that Interledger is not a "random third party", it's a protocol: https://interledger.org/ https://interledger.org/ So that you can make payments to someone else regardless of whether they want to use Bitcoin or not. I believe Interledger is the right level of abstraction for this, in the same way that you wouldn't want your email server to have to know or code against the lower protocols, e.g. Ethernet or WiFi, but only IP, TCP and SMTP. This way your email server can EHLO any email server, regardless of the network topology or underlying protocols. Interledger does the same for payments.
      - mike-cardwell 6y ago
        Ok, so my bitcoin address is "bitcoin:1PQLtWnjUi1itHLG6QCQeHM3Nxua8pRsq1". What tag do I put in my HTML in order to receive payment from this system, without having to sign up anywhere?
        dflock 6y ago
        You can just put that there - and then you hope that user agents implement this - or you can use interledger.
        mike-cardwell 6y ago
        The documentation for Interledger appears to be for people who want to build software, not for people who want to send or receive money. And it talks about setting up accounts with xpring.io or rafiki.money. I see no evidence that Interledger can be used for receiving money without having to set up accounts or run software. Plenty of evidence to the contrary. As I said before, to receive bitcoin from one of these systems, there is nothing I should need to do other than advertise my bitcoin address. Anything more than that, and the system sucks.
        dflock 6y ago
        > the system sucks Correct. What you want requires support in the user agent (web browser) though.
- deweller 6y ago
  This is a dream that the lightning network aims to one day fulfill.
  - 3395810 6y ago
    What is the idea here? Open a channel with each website that I visit. Lockup the BTC that I will ever send them but only send it to them slowly each time I visit it.
    - thinkmassive 6y ago
      Why wouldn’t you open a single channel with a well-connected routing node, and use it for all your payments?
      - deweller 6y ago
        Yes. In reality, users would have a connection open with one or a small number of routing nodes. The end result is very cheap and quick funds transfers to any node on the network. This lightning network infrastructure would make micropayments feasible. Granted, there are still problems to solve. But this is the dream.
- Shadonototro 6y ago
  bitcoin is not a currency, it's not a "money"
  - mike-cardwell 6y ago
    Thank you for your valuable contribution to the conversation.
initplus 6y ago
Honestly, committing 100k to this is probably a more effective marketing spend than many...
- efferifick 6y ago
  Well... this is how I just found out about them. I find coil very interesting! Strongly thinking about becoming a member, but I would like to find out if the websites I follow use the web monetization tag first.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    As far as I'm aware, there are two ways of discovering that: 1. Start a one month subscription and browse your websites. The add-on changes colour depending on whether the current site is monetized or not. 2. Try to find them here: https://coil.com/explore https://coil.com/explore. If you click on "blogs", there's a search bar that you can use. There's also a Twitter bot that tracks how many websites have it (https://twitter.com/WebMotized https://twitter.com/WebMotized). Currently at 1400, with about a dozen of sites added weekly.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
so did they actually donate or did they pay the monetization amount that their algorithm determined MDN should have?
- input_sh 6y ago
  Click on the parent link, filter by $5k or more, scroll to the bottom. They actually donated. MDN doesn't seem to have that meta tag.
- tleb_ 6y ago
  Not sure if this is ironical. Either way, it is a donation as the MDN pages do not have a <meta name="monetization" ...> tag and the payment wouldn't go through OpenCollective which does not seem to support Web Monetization.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Pretty sure they donated, no need to doubt the donation like that.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    Ok, I wasn't necessarily doubting the donation. I thought though that if they didn't donate but gave the money that their algorithm determined that it would be an interesting thing for several reasons: 1. would show coil is getting quite a bit of money. 2. would show importance of MDN.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Ah, yeah, I don't think that many people have the extension installed yet, but I can see them not requiring big sites to add a monetization header and just sending the money to them instead.
      - ahopebailie 6y ago
        We're working to make the Web Monetization API a standard that browsers can adopt natively: https://webmonetization.org https://webmonetization.org The extension helps us bootstrap the ecosystem but a native integration is far superior. Check out Puma browser for an example of the integrated experience for mobile.
shaan7 6y ago
Finally someone seems to have done this right. Subscribed now, lets see how it goes!
StavrosK 6y ago
Same here, I tried it and liked it. I've made a few dollars too, it's early days but it looks very promising. I especially like the fact that the site can know you're paying an unlock articles, hide ads, etc for you, even though you're paying a few pennies per minute.

mike-cardwell 6y ago

I've come across this before. In order to receive money, I should just be able to put: <meta name="monetization" content="bitcoin:my-bitcoin-address"> Or similar, on my website. Doesn't work that way though. I have to sign up with somebody like coil.com and put an address they give me on my websites. This is just worse. Much much worse than it needs to be.

ahopebailie 6y ago
That's where the idea started but that means the user has to be able to send Bitcoin. The purpose of Interledger is to abstract away that issue which is why Web Monetization is built on Interledger. You don't have to sign up with Coil to earn. There are other wallets that are on the Interledger network such as Uphold and Gatehub that can give you a payment pointer to put into your site's HTML. If you want your earnings to be converted to BTC that's possible I think.
- mike-cardwell 6y ago
  I understand that the person paying probably needs an account somewhere, so that payments can be batched together to reduce transaction fees. However, there's no reason for me to have an account anywhere in order to receive bitcoin. All I need is a bitcoin address. I don't want to sign up with Coil, Interledger, Uphold, Gatehub, or any other random third party, in order to receive bitcoin. And there is zero reason why I would have to.
  - jorangreef 6y ago
    Except that Interledger is not a "random third party", it's a protocol: https://interledger.org/ https://interledger.org/ So that you can make payments to someone else regardless of whether they want to use Bitcoin or not. I believe Interledger is the right level of abstraction for this, in the same way that you wouldn't want your email server to have to know or code against the lower protocols, e.g. Ethernet or WiFi, but only IP, TCP and SMTP. This way your email server can EHLO any email server, regardless of the network topology or underlying protocols. Interledger does the same for payments.
    - mike-cardwell 6y ago
      Ok, so my bitcoin address is "bitcoin:1PQLtWnjUi1itHLG6QCQeHM3Nxua8pRsq1". What tag do I put in my HTML in order to receive payment from this system, without having to sign up anywhere?
      - dflock 6y ago
        You can just put that there - and then you hope that user agents implement this - or you can use interledger.
        mike-cardwell 6y ago
        The documentation for Interledger appears to be for people who want to build software, not for people who want to send or receive money. And it talks about setting up accounts with xpring.io or rafiki.money. I see no evidence that Interledger can be used for receiving money without having to set up accounts or run software. Plenty of evidence to the contrary. As I said before, to receive bitcoin from one of these systems, there is nothing I should need to do other than advertise my bitcoin address. Anything more than that, and the system sucks.
        dflock 6y ago
        > the system sucks Correct. What you want requires support in the user agent (web browser) though.
deweller 6y ago
This is a dream that the lightning network aims to one day fulfill.
- 3395810 6y ago
  What is the idea here? Open a channel with each website that I visit. Lockup the BTC that I will ever send them but only send it to them slowly each time I visit it.
  - thinkmassive 6y ago
    Why wouldn’t you open a single channel with a well-connected routing node, and use it for all your payments?
    - deweller 6y ago
      Yes. In reality, users would have a connection open with one or a small number of routing nodes. The end result is very cheap and quick funds transfers to any node on the network. This lightning network infrastructure would make micropayments feasible. Granted, there are still problems to solve. But this is the dream.
Shadonototro 6y ago
bitcoin is not a currency, it's not a "money"
- mike-cardwell 6y ago
  Thank you for your valuable contribution to the conversation.

initplus 6y ago

Honestly, committing 100k to this is probably a more effective marketing spend than many...

efferifick 6y ago
Well... this is how I just found out about them. I find coil very interesting! Strongly thinking about becoming a member, but I would like to find out if the websites I follow use the web monetization tag first.
- input_sh 6y ago
  As far as I'm aware, there are two ways of discovering that: 1. Start a one month subscription and browse your websites. The add-on changes colour depending on whether the current site is monetized or not. 2. Try to find them here: https://coil.com/explore https://coil.com/explore. If you click on "blogs", there's a search bar that you can use. There's also a Twitter bot that tracks how many websites have it (https://twitter.com/WebMotized https://twitter.com/WebMotized). Currently at 1400, with about a dozen of sites added weekly.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

so did they actually donate or did they pay the monetization amount that their algorithm determined MDN should have?

input_sh 6y ago
Click on the parent link, filter by $5k or more, scroll to the bottom. They actually donated. MDN doesn't seem to have that meta tag.
tleb_ 6y ago
Not sure if this is ironical. Either way, it is a donation as the MDN pages do not have a <meta name="monetization" ...> tag and the payment wouldn't go through OpenCollective which does not seem to support Web Monetization.
StavrosK 6y ago
Pretty sure they donated, no need to doubt the donation like that.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  Ok, I wasn't necessarily doubting the donation. I thought though that if they didn't donate but gave the money that their algorithm determined that it would be an interesting thing for several reasons: 1. would show coil is getting quite a bit of money. 2. would show importance of MDN.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Ah, yeah, I don't think that many people have the extension installed yet, but I can see them not requiring big sites to add a monetization header and just sending the money to them instead.
    - ahopebailie 6y ago
      We're working to make the Web Monetization API a standard that browsers can adopt natively: https://webmonetization.org https://webmonetization.org The extension helps us bootstrap the ecosystem but a native integration is far superior. Check out Puma browser for an example of the integrated experience for mobile.

shaan7 6y ago

Finally someone seems to have done this right. Subscribed now, lets see how it goes!

StavrosK 6y ago

Same here, I tried it and liked it. I've made a few dollars too, it's early days but it looks very promising. I especially like the fact that the site can know you're paying an unlock articles, hide ads, etc for you, even though you're paying a few pennies per minute.