19 ms·

What happened with the Web Monetization API?

219 points by kuba-orlik 3y ago

TotempaaltJ 3y ago
I think another interesting development related to this space is GNU Taler[0], which has gotten EU and NLnet grants, and could probably hook into these APIs. [0]: https://taler.net/en/index.html https://taler.net/en/index.html
- mhitza 3y ago
  I'm eager to see what the extra funding does for the project. UX, setup, and everything else that relates to integration wasn't something I wanted to work with last time I took a serious look at the project.
  - jmercouris 3y ago
    Unfortunately the UX does not appear to be a priority.
- crotchfire 3y ago
  Taler is basically just a cover to allow countries to stop printing banknotes and minting coins. Once banknotes and coins have fallen out of use, there's absolutely nothing in Taler preventing those governments from changing all the rules. They can simply decide to abandon the payer-anonymity as soon as they've migrated people off of banknotes-and-coins. Sorry folks! We had to stop doing blind-signing because AML and terrorists. But that's okay, we'll sign your unblinded tokens instead! And we promise not to store all those token identifiers in some huge surveillance database somewhere. Pinky-swear. Taler really has very little to do with the internet. It's all about shutting down the presses and mints without provoking riots.
two_handfuls 3y ago
> Decoupling the Web Payments API and crypto is certainly the right move right now. As much as in the past I wanted cryptocurrency to succeed, I agree.
hubraumhugo 3y ago
I remember Brave introducing BAT tokens that you could earn for seeing ads and then donate to other websites and content creators. How did that experiment end up? Was it just a crypto hype thing?
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  The concept is a deliberate scam. Brave removes the legitimate ads from the website owners, and puts their own ads on top. Then presents that as somehow helping website owners.
  - PretzelPirate 3y ago
    > puts their own ads on top. I haven't used Brave for years and don't own their token, but that's just not how Brave ads work at all. The ads are shown as notifications and aren't replacing ads embedded in websites. Why mislead people?
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      The browser has a built in ad blocker, effectively removing the ads that pay for a website. To then put your own ads _anywhere_ after that and pretend that you're helping website owners is a scam. Imagine if YouTube started blocking sponsored content and put their own ads there.
      - svieira 3y ago
        Brave removes unsolicited advertisements and trackers. That is a feature of the browser and is effectively the same as shipping older versions of Chrome with a bundled version of µblockOrigin. Separately (probably not in "planning how to make Brave a profitable company", but definitely so in feature scope) IFF the user opts-in to seeing Brave's ads then they get paid (in a crypto-token that represents a unit of "Attention"). They then can choose to offer those tokens to web sites (either as one-time "tips" or by giving the site a certain percentage of the tokens the user earns over the course of a month, possibly based on the total percentage of time the user spent with the site over the course of the same month.) This latter feature is attempting to create a parallel economy to the ad-supported industry, not a scam (unless they don't believe they can create such an economy and are just trying to fleece-the-suckers, but I don't think that's the case).
seanwilson 3y ago
> It needs to be built into the browsers and web standards such that it’s incredibly smooth and fast. I wanna send $1 to a website, it happens instantly and anonymously, and the developer can do things around this. Like unlock features! For instance, stop showing ads, offer more complete downloads, unlock tutorial courses, etc. Make it easier and faster than using a credit card. Are there any promising avenues towards microtransactions that gets around small card transactions getting a hefty fee? Or an approach that doesn't require one company to have a monopoly over it? I'm really curious how the internet would change if there was a fast and easy way for site visitors to give something like $0.10 to unlock content or just to say thanks.
- frutiger 3y ago
  > Are there any promising avenues towards microtransactions that gets around small card transactions getting a hefty fee This is anathema here in the US but the rest of the world typically does not use credit cards as the default payment method.
  - gear54rus 3y ago
    But they (we) do use debit cards as one tho.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    Mastercard/Visa are not only credit cards - they're used for debit card transactions as well.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    Americans use credit cards as the default payment method? Why?
    - Falell 3y ago
      Credit cards have by far the best in-person UX of the options that I am presented, tap my card or phone and leave and they're accepted everywhere in practice (my debit card is not). The 'cardholder can always reverse any charge' behavior is also nice once every few years.
pdubouilh 3y ago
On the non-crypto web-monetization side, I'm toying with a non-profit idea in the same vein but using third party tooling (browser extension, etc...) website: https://lagom.org https://lagom.org whitepaper: https://lagom.org/docs/lagom-whitepaper.pdf https://lagom.org/docs/lagom-whitepaper.pdf
- coddle-hark 3y ago
  Beautifully designed website! I still don’t know how it’s supposed to work though, the whitepaper has zero implementation details in it.
  - pdubouilh 3y ago
    Thanks :) It's a basic centralised idea - I'm working on a second version of the whitepaper to be more pragmatic with defining the solution, the current one is just conceptual.
- carom 3y ago
  Stripe Connect would be a good option here. Very passionate about this area. I made a website that paid people per approved image annotation (for data labeling). It was high friction to get people to sign up as workers (and enter a bunch of personal information into Stripe) but content creators might be an easier sell.
AndrewStephens 3y ago
The problems with monetization and micropayments are not technical and no easy-to-use API is going to help with adoption. Dealing with money is a real pain due to fraud, security, and legal compliance and those problems don't go away when the amounts are small.
- TillE 3y ago
  Even those are solvable problems, the real issue is social. There's a reason Flattr failed and Patreon has been a huge success. People would rather personally support a handful of creators at $5/month than put the equivalent money in a tip jar at a bunch of faceless websites.
  - internetter 3y ago
    Before coil failed, making this something that happened in the background seemed promising.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    > Even those are solvable problems, Are they? Historically, there have been a lot of people eager to erect barriers to make payments difficult for those who want to gamble, sell porn, buy porn, donate to controversial political causes, avoid taxes, sell drugs, buy drugs, etc etc So a system that lets me send $40/month of untraceable cash to strangers on the internet might face a lot of opposition.
    - photochemsyn 3y ago
      You can send $40 month of untraceable cash to strangers via the post office, how is that any different?
      - AndrewStephens 3y ago
        You can send $40 a month easily but receiving $40 a month from 20000 people is difficult and will raise questions.
carlosjobim 3y ago
The solution to this is a centralized model, where users top up their account with money. Then they get a button in their browser where they can click to pay for features in the current open tab or donate if the page is free. The top up could even be a recurring payment if the user wants.
myfonj 3y ago
I was ruminating around this topic the other day and came to conclusion it is probably terribly missed opportunity for certain advertising company. Now it sounds super scary privacy-wise, smells monopol-y and overall may not happen anymore (I think), but consider: In situation when "all" users are being in fact "logged into" their service anyway, then features such as - pay to hide ads on this particular web (basically "overpay the advertiser"), - pay to keep ads and support the author of this particular web, - pay for extra features but remain anonymous for web's author, - provide data about yourself that the company gathered about yourself to the web's author, then it sounds like quite low-hanging fruit. Web authors would gain "auth" for free, integration would allow some "serverless" features for otherwise basic webs and so on. My initial idea was (probably akin to Brave(?)): - pay advertiser one centralized "ransom" to disable X ad impressions, so they can be distributed to websites authors as I go, just the same way as if I was exposed to a real ad. For favourite websites I could either top that by also allowing ads again, or paying them more, obviously with certain share ending up as a fee for that mediator. I guess there was/is some blatant obstacle that prevented this (perhaps advertisers would all bail out when the could be legally "overpaid" by users?) or it in fact had been implemented somehow in the past (distant enough I missed it completely), but it was a fun thought exercise anyway.
- jsnell 3y ago
  > it in fact had been implemented somehow in the past Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- julianeon 3y ago
  I don't think that website really wants to call attention to the fact that it's serving you ads. They want it to be a seamless part of the Internet experience. Ideally, you wouldn't even notice the ads are ads. They don't want to support services that remind you that they're there, and are annoying. And if you want to monetize your site, they already have a preferred solution for you: sign up to show ads and get a check from them.
ysofunny 3y ago
turned out it's the same API as VISA/MasterCard/every other credit card already provides see also (somewhat of a jump, but the same monetary system) FedNow
nerdo 3y ago
What if money gets sent to websites that host hate speech?
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  Then they are saying something people want to hear, since it's all completely subjective anyway.
- teitoklien 3y ago
  Why do you think anyone reserves the right to block funding to what gov determines as “hate speech”. If someone wants to pay for hate speech they can anyways do it right now with donations. Ideas like this quickly devolves into gov marking any message that criticizes them as “Hate speech”. Democracies like Japan, to an extent Singapore do that already, officially by law. Nations like Canada, India, Israel, Hungary, do it indirectly in unofficial but rampant ways. Speech is not a crime, listening to hate speech and starting to be unjustly hateful towards people is a crime. Punish the people who discriminate and act on the advice of hate speech. Do not punish speech, or else soon, you’ll get confused when gov starts changing what “hate” means.
  - pelorat 3y ago
    Unfettered speech can lead to a cult following which, as we here in Europe know very well, can be extremely fucking dangerous. Which is precisely why some speech will land you in prison.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      Germany had plenty of hate speech laws back when Hitler was elected. Still the question that remains here would be: which government gets to decide what's hate speech? Like even if we could have a payment webAPI that could "block" hate speech (not sure how that would be possible), do we go by the standards of the US? Europe? Russia? How would it work concretely? Trying to discuss the implications of hate speech for something that would be international is asinine imo, the term basically means everything and nothing (when used in a global context)
peteforde 3y ago
I actually had Coil set up on a few of my sites, and I would occasionally get small micropayments showing up in my ledger. I was sad to see it fail, but I also profoundly agree with CC that for the web monetization API to actually work, it needs to distance itself from the crypto/grift ecosystem.
EGreg 3y ago
I think the issue is that micropayments shouldn’t be user-to-website, but rather website-to-website, with users being given some allowances via trustlines to spend. https://qbix.com/ecosystem https://qbix.com/ecosystem Notice that almost none of the above is “Web3”, but it can use Web3 (or other means) to do periodic settlements between websites.
temp0826 3y ago
Tangential but I've never seen a http 402 error (payment required), and I sort of wish it would be implemented somewhere.
- boucher 3y ago
  Stripe sends 402 errors on failed payments (though their docs currently don't really label the error code correctly)
- lippispoika 3y ago
  Several years ago the team I was on worked on a custom app for Splunk. We were on a customer call where they were receiving HTTP 402 Payment Required in their error logs and thought it was coming from our app. We explained we never implemented that error code (although I got paranoid and did triple check our code) so the conclusion was that Splunk must be returning it. Even searching the web today, it appears they never documented that but there are several Splunk community forum threads asking about HTTP 402. If you do use it, it's probably best to clearly document exactly what you want your users to pay for, and how!
lofaszvanitt 3y ago
The basic premise is flawed. This needs to go higher up and regulated by countries and that api implemented by website authors.
cyberax 3y ago
It was nothing but yet another crypto crap. So it died. The only successful model so far was Scroll, and it got bought up by Twitter and killed off. With Scroll you paid for a small monthly subscription and it got distributed between the sites that you visited.
redder23 3y ago
> I’m some big stan for Big Banks, but crypto was (is) just so absolutely riddled with scams and crime that I just can’t anymore. Decoupling the Web Payments API and crypto is certainly the right move right now. Completely disagree with this. Fiat money is riddled with scams and crime more then cryto ever was and can be at this point. Because the world operates on fiat and. Arguing that giving central banks the Monopoly over this is a good thing is just stupid. But OF COURSE Google will not dare to bring anything cryto into the web browser. It could be the opportunity for something really revolutionary with a private coin connected into this. People with this mindset are just horrible gatekeepers. Cryto has so much scams BECAUSE its moving fast and its easy to trick people who are after fast money. Its a sign that crypto actually works and is valuable!
- NetOpWibby 3y ago
  Your argument _almost_ sounded cohesive, and I'm a proponent of crypto. Handshake has an improvement proposal called HIP-0002[1] that utilizes the .well-known directory on your domain's server to enable direct payments. You payment address looks like this: https://<domain>/.well-known/wallets/SYMBOL https://<domain>/.well-known/wallets/SYMBOL. You could even utilize IBAN to send to fiat like so: https://example/.well-known/wallets/USD https://example/.well-known/wallets/USD. Of course, you'd need do a bit of legwork to implement non-crypto support. [1]: https://github.com/handshake-org/HIPs/blob/master/HIP-0002.md https://github.com/handshake-org/HIPs/blob/master/HIP-0002.m...
  - Sargos 3y ago
    The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) provides this functionality in a standard protocol. You can associate Microsoft.com with an ETH, BTC, SOL, etc address. GoDaddy yesterday actually integrated this in a no-gas free manner [https://aboutus.godaddy.net/newsroom/company-news/news-details/2024/GoDaddy-and-Ethereum-Name-Service-Bridge-the-Gap-Between-Domain-Names-and-Crypto-Wallets/default.aspx https://aboutus.godaddy.net/newsroom/company-news/news-detai...]. Other DNS providers will likely follow suite over the next few years. Bonus, most web3 tooling already supports ENS so no jumping through hoops most of the time.
nickdothutton 3y ago
If there was a one-click button in my browser to send $1 to an article author or publisher, I'd be spending a fortune. As it is I'm blocking ads and avoiding lock-in subscriptions like the plague.
efitz 3y ago
A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't see any solution that was based on customer goodwill ("that was cool, here's $1") as something that there is much demand for. What we need is a browser-mitigated micropayment ecosystem. Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card, and then when you browse to a URL you get the option of an ad-ful experience like today or a micropayment option, e.g. "nytimes.com requires a subscription or a $0.50 payment to view this page OK/Cancel". Micropayments would avoid the fee overload of the credit card companies and your browser could display your balance in the toolbar. The server could be provided with a cryptographically signed receipt and there could be a periodic reconciliation. Note that there is no need for the complexity of a blockchain anywhere in this; IMO a blockchain just complexifies the solution and turns off people who don't trust cryptocurrencies.
- bakugo 3y ago
  > A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't know how anyone can still live under this delusion when we're currently seeing multiple paid streaming services putting ads on their paid plans that were advertised as ad-free. Corporations will never be happy with the profit they're making. If they can make you pay AND show you ads, they will.
  - efitz 3y ago
    OK fair enough. As an aside, I don't think that's greed, I think it's perverse incentives - e.g. if a VP wants that big stock bonus next year, they have to figure out how to cause x% revenue growth, rinse and repeat. Sooner or later you hit market saturation and have exhausted all the easy, user-friendly solutions.
  - ertian 3y ago
    That's why it has to be lightweight. The thing that would drive prices down and keep ads at bay is competition. Since setting up a new streaming service is difficult-bordering-on-impossible, the players are protected from competition and can squeeze their customers. In other markets, if you had a lightweight payment system that isn't just a component of a walled garden (ala Medium or YouTube), you could see actual competition. Then, if some player started showing ads or raising prices, people could just up and move elsewhere. Imagine the early internet if we didn't have HTTP & HTML. It would have been a bunch of specialized AOL- or CompuServ-type walled-garden services, each of which could have wrung their customers dry. That's the world we ended up with in streaming. But the WWW doesn't have a mechanism for simple payments, so payment infrastructure can be used to lure and trap content creators. That's why we need a simple, lightweight, portable and open payment mechanism, to complement open web protocols.
tdeck 3y ago
ITT: Ideas that have been tried before that nobody used.
ok123456 3y ago
I remember people discussing embedding microtransactions as part of HTTP in the mid-90s. Cryptocurrencies get us a little closer, maybe. But we're ultimately still having the same discussions.
solardev 3y ago
Contrarian opinion: As a regular consumer, I don't WANT a decentralized, anonymous currency. For users like me, crypto totally misses the point. I don't want digital cash that can't be traced. I'm not buying drugs or illegal shit. I want a centralized, safe way of sending small amounts of money to some content producers, microtransactions, etc., but with basic banking guarantees. Like being able to charge back a transaction if the merchant fails to deliver, or not being liable for fraudulent uses (as opposed to losing my entire wallet, oh well, too bad). Decentralized crypto actively hurts instead of helps my confidence in being able to conduct a safe, easy transaction online. One wrong move and I lose all my funds to some scammer. How is that even remotely enticing? Instead, I wish there was something as easy to use as a credit card, but without the exorbitant fees (for the merchant) and interests rates (for me). I just wish we had a financial organization like Visa/Mastercard but run as a nonprofit (or at least a credit union) so they can provide similar services with similar guarantees but just make less money on the returns. Services like Privacy.com kinda do that, but merchants still get dinged with the Visa fees, so it's not entirely practical for microtransactions. So so far the best thing I've found is still just using Google or Apple to temporarily hold transactions and batch process them at the end of a month. (Lyft also does something similar, I think, batching rides and tips until the end of the day or week or something).
- lostmsu 3y ago
  IMHO, you don't quite understand what you are talking about. Your centralized requirement is entirely bogus. If participants wish so, they could use any of the cryptos to run a subnet with an external oracle/moderator. Or even just build moderation right into smart contracts.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Why? I don't want a bunch of small operators independently moderating, or hope for a bug free implementation of a smart contract. The whole point is regulatory instead of technical protection. I don't want code to supercede the laws that exist to protect us. I especially don't want my finances under the care of the kinds of companies and opportunistic individuals normally drawn to crypto. One mistake and everything is gone. That's only a plus if you're a cyber libertarian. I would much sooner trust a reputable brand or government.
Devasta 3y ago
Everyone loves the cookie prompts, I'm sure they'll be only delighted when its nonstop begging for pennies on every single website.
chupchap 3y ago
I think the biggest challenge is the country specific regulation with regards to money and then there is tax regulations. Add to this the checks related to money laundering and we can forget such a simple thing from existing without a whole company working in the backend to make it work.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
paxys 3y ago
The problem with web payments isn't the lack of a standard API, it's everything that happens under the hood. As a developer it makes no difference to me whether the browser natively supports a payments interface or I add it in via one line of JavaScript. Now tell me how to deal with credit card fees, sales tax, direct debit, crypto transfer and a million other jurisdiction-dependent payment mechanisms and rules. Does the standard account for the fact that in India every online credit card payment requires a one-time code sent via SMS? Or that every bank has its own online payments interface? Or that UPI is now a thing? The folks publishing the Web Monetization spec sure aren't thinking about any of this.
- thrwwycbr 3y ago
  The core issues with the Web Monetization API is that all the things you mentioned get dangerously close to SAP and Salesforce waters, and there's a reason these systems are the definition of bloated legacy accounting tech.
  - djbusby 3y ago
    It's not bloat when you "need" those features (read: BIG Company)
    - troyvit 3y ago
      Our problem as a < 200 person non-profit is that our teams are being convinced that we _do_ need these systems, and in that scenario it is bloat. We keep telling ourselves that we need to "grow into" SalesForce and all its ancillaries that we're paying outrageous sums for. And that growth looks so much like a balloon. We have more and more SaaS stuff to support but the same number of people to do it. And we think we're getting ahead.
- manquer 3y ago
  What are you on about ? The spec/interface for developer does not have the handle the complexity of implementation browsers have to . Do you as the app developer deal with any of that integrating Stripe ? of course not, you yourself say it is just one line of JS for the app developer. If the API goes through, it will be a key stream of income for browser developers, They can then monetize their most important asset - brand and trust people have on their product without diluting it and not be dependent on advertisements or search engine placements from competitors or crypto to support the development. It is no different from IAP APIs mobile platform provides, they are not complex(for the app developer). Complexities of geography and taxation is not the app(website) developer's problem it is the platform's nothing in the interface has to handle that. Browsers will charge 30% the Apple and Google do for variety of reasons, but just Stripe level rates is enormous income source for them to support development.
latchkey 3y ago
A friend of mine in Vietnam needed some quick cash to go home for Tet holiday and asked me for help in paying for their travel costs and some spending money. Nothing nefarious, just a few hundred USD. I'm happy to help them. I went to a popular VN crypto website, put in their name and bank account number and how much I wanted to send them (and on what crypto network and token, as they support a bunch of them). The site spit out an address to send the tokens to with my wallet. The transaction cost me $0.05, the conversion rates were totally fair and actually quite good, it only took a couple hours, and as an added bonus, didn't even require any sort of KYC because it was just a small amount of money. For those of you dumping on crypto, I can tell you that it doesn't get any easier than that. There is no way that I can do something like that otherwise. We need more of this, not less.
- Zuiii 3y ago
  HN's jerk reaction reminds me a lot of the 5 monkeys and ladder experiment. I'm sure a lot of the people railing against crypto don't understand why they hate it or just look at the negatives. I'm confident that they would be just as hostile to cash if it was invented today. The good news is that they don't matter. Cryptocurrency is here to stay. People like you and me are using it to transfer money, donate, and buy things. It doesn't have to be widely adopted to be useful, which is something that I find to be just grand :-)
  - ShamelessC 3y ago
    People here railing against cryptocurrency are generally unable to see past its proclivity for scams. This is an entirely reasonable situation. Further, cryptocurrency proponents are historically completely unwilling to admit there are any flaws to the point that it’s obvious they have a stake in cryptocurrency and it’s severely biasing their judgement. You don’t seem like that per se but if you haven’t seen it before you haven’t been watching.
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      [dead]
martindale 3y ago
Just start using HTTP 402 and JSON payloads. We can just converge on whatever ends up common; for me, there is already a monetary standard for the Internet. I participated in these meetings for some time, during the rise (and rise) of Bitcoin. It's clear that the landscape of the financial web has shifted significantly at this point (for better or worse, in many ways), but standards, as usual, lag the market.
npoc 3y ago
It will happen once bitcoin has proven itself as a store of value, new layers have been built on top of it and matured and have acquired a large user base with network effect. Right now we already have proof of concept of a decentralised micro-payment network with Lightning. But it won't gain widespread adoption until more people have bitcoin, so much that they'd like to start spending it rather than buying/holding it (see Gresham's Law), its value has stabilised to a point that it can be used as a unit of account, and shops are therefore willing to price their goods/services in it.
judiiiiii1 3y ago
[dead]

219 points by kuba-orlik 3y ago

I think another interesting development related to this space is GNU Taler[0], which has gotten EU and NLnet grants, and could probably hook into these APIs. [0]: https://taler.net/en/index.html https://taler.net/en/index.html

mhitza 3y ago
I'm eager to see what the extra funding does for the project. UX, setup, and everything else that relates to integration wasn't something I wanted to work with last time I took a serious look at the project.
- jmercouris 3y ago
  Unfortunately the UX does not appear to be a priority.
crotchfire 3y ago
Taler is basically just a cover to allow countries to stop printing banknotes and minting coins. Once banknotes and coins have fallen out of use, there's absolutely nothing in Taler preventing those governments from changing all the rules. They can simply decide to abandon the payer-anonymity as soon as they've migrated people off of banknotes-and-coins. Sorry folks! We had to stop doing blind-signing because AML and terrorists. But that's okay, we'll sign your unblinded tokens instead! And we promise not to store all those token identifiers in some huge surveillance database somewhere. Pinky-swear. Taler really has very little to do with the internet. It's all about shutting down the presses and mints without provoking riots.

two_handfuls 3y ago

> Decoupling the Web Payments API and crypto is certainly the right move right now. As much as in the past I wanted cryptocurrency to succeed, I agree.

hubraumhugo 3y ago

I remember Brave introducing BAT tokens that you could earn for seeing ads and then donate to other websites and content creators. How did that experiment end up? Was it just a crypto hype thing?

carlosjobim 3y ago
The concept is a deliberate scam. Brave removes the legitimate ads from the website owners, and puts their own ads on top. Then presents that as somehow helping website owners.
- PretzelPirate 3y ago
  > puts their own ads on top. I haven't used Brave for years and don't own their token, but that's just not how Brave ads work at all. The ads are shown as notifications and aren't replacing ads embedded in websites. Why mislead people?
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    The browser has a built in ad blocker, effectively removing the ads that pay for a website. To then put your own ads _anywhere_ after that and pretend that you're helping website owners is a scam. Imagine if YouTube started blocking sponsored content and put their own ads there.
    - svieira 3y ago
      Brave removes unsolicited advertisements and trackers. That is a feature of the browser and is effectively the same as shipping older versions of Chrome with a bundled version of µblockOrigin. Separately (probably not in "planning how to make Brave a profitable company", but definitely so in feature scope) IFF the user opts-in to seeing Brave's ads then they get paid (in a crypto-token that represents a unit of "Attention"). They then can choose to offer those tokens to web sites (either as one-time "tips" or by giving the site a certain percentage of the tokens the user earns over the course of a month, possibly based on the total percentage of time the user spent with the site over the course of the same month.) This latter feature is attempting to create a parallel economy to the ad-supported industry, not a scam (unless they don't believe they can create such an economy and are just trying to fleece-the-suckers, but I don't think that's the case).

seanwilson 3y ago

> It needs to be built into the browsers and web standards such that it’s incredibly smooth and fast. I wanna send $1 to a website, it happens instantly and anonymously, and the developer can do things around this. Like unlock features! For instance, stop showing ads, offer more complete downloads, unlock tutorial courses, etc. Make it easier and faster than using a credit card. Are there any promising avenues towards microtransactions that gets around small card transactions getting a hefty fee? Or an approach that doesn't require one company to have a monopoly over it? I'm really curious how the internet would change if there was a fast and easy way for site visitors to give something like $0.10 to unlock content or just to say thanks.

frutiger 3y ago
> Are there any promising avenues towards microtransactions that gets around small card transactions getting a hefty fee This is anathema here in the US but the rest of the world typically does not use credit cards as the default payment method.
- gear54rus 3y ago
  But they (we) do use debit cards as one tho.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Mastercard/Visa are not only credit cards - they're used for debit card transactions as well.
- Filligree 3y ago
  Americans use credit cards as the default payment method? Why?
  - Falell 3y ago
    Credit cards have by far the best in-person UX of the options that I am presented, tap my card or phone and leave and they're accepted everywhere in practice (my debit card is not). The 'cardholder can always reverse any charge' behavior is also nice once every few years.

pdubouilh 3y ago

On the non-crypto web-monetization side, I'm toying with a non-profit idea in the same vein but using third party tooling (browser extension, etc...) website: https://lagom.org https://lagom.org whitepaper: https://lagom.org/docs/lagom-whitepaper.pdf https://lagom.org/docs/lagom-whitepaper.pdf

coddle-hark 3y ago
Beautifully designed website! I still don’t know how it’s supposed to work though, the whitepaper has zero implementation details in it.
- pdubouilh 3y ago
  Thanks :) It's a basic centralised idea - I'm working on a second version of the whitepaper to be more pragmatic with defining the solution, the current one is just conceptual.
carom 3y ago
Stripe Connect would be a good option here. Very passionate about this area. I made a website that paid people per approved image annotation (for data labeling). It was high friction to get people to sign up as workers (and enter a bunch of personal information into Stripe) but content creators might be an easier sell.

AndrewStephens 3y ago

The problems with monetization and micropayments are not technical and no easy-to-use API is going to help with adoption. Dealing with money is a real pain due to fraud, security, and legal compliance and those problems don't go away when the amounts are small.

TillE 3y ago
Even those are solvable problems, the real issue is social. There's a reason Flattr failed and Patreon has been a huge success. People would rather personally support a handful of creators at $5/month than put the equivalent money in a tip jar at a bunch of faceless websites.
- internetter 3y ago
  Before coil failed, making this something that happened in the background seemed promising.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > Even those are solvable problems, Are they? Historically, there have been a lot of people eager to erect barriers to make payments difficult for those who want to gamble, sell porn, buy porn, donate to controversial political causes, avoid taxes, sell drugs, buy drugs, etc etc So a system that lets me send $40/month of untraceable cash to strangers on the internet might face a lot of opposition.
  - photochemsyn 3y ago
    You can send $40 month of untraceable cash to strangers via the post office, how is that any different?
    - AndrewStephens 3y ago
      You can send $40 a month easily but receiving $40 a month from 20000 people is difficult and will raise questions.

carlosjobim 3y ago

The solution to this is a centralized model, where users top up their account with money. Then they get a button in their browser where they can click to pay for features in the current open tab or donate if the page is free. The top up could even be a recurring payment if the user wants.

myfonj 3y ago

I was ruminating around this topic the other day and came to conclusion it is probably terribly missed opportunity for certain advertising company. Now it sounds super scary privacy-wise, smells monopol-y and overall may not happen anymore (I think), but consider: In situation when "all" users are being in fact "logged into" their service anyway, then features such as - pay to hide ads on this particular web (basically "overpay the advertiser"), - pay to keep ads and support the author of this particular web, - pay for extra features but remain anonymous for web's author, - provide data about yourself that the company gathered about yourself to the web's author, then it sounds like quite low-hanging fruit. Web authors would gain "auth" for free, integration would allow some "serverless" features for otherwise basic webs and so on. My initial idea was (probably akin to Brave(?)): - pay advertiser one centralized "ransom" to disable X ad impressions, so they can be distributed to websites authors as I go, just the same way as if I was exposed to a real ad. For favourite websites I could either top that by also allowing ads again, or paying them more, obviously with certain share ending up as a fee for that mediator. I guess there was/is some blatant obstacle that prevented this (perhaps advertisers would all bail out when the could be legally "overpaid" by users?) or it in fact had been implemented somehow in the past (distant enough I missed it completely), but it was a fun thought exercise anyway.

jsnell 3y ago
> it in fact had been implemented somehow in the past Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
deleted 3y ago
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julianeon 3y ago
I don't think that website really wants to call attention to the fact that it's serving you ads. They want it to be a seamless part of the Internet experience. Ideally, you wouldn't even notice the ads are ads. They don't want to support services that remind you that they're there, and are annoying. And if you want to monetize your site, they already have a preferred solution for you: sign up to show ads and get a check from them.

ysofunny 3y ago

turned out it's the same API as VISA/MasterCard/every other credit card already provides see also (somewhat of a jump, but the same monetary system) FedNow

nerdo 3y ago

What if money gets sent to websites that host hate speech?

stronglikedan 3y ago
Then they are saying something people want to hear, since it's all completely subjective anyway.
teitoklien 3y ago
Why do you think anyone reserves the right to block funding to what gov determines as “hate speech”. If someone wants to pay for hate speech they can anyways do it right now with donations. Ideas like this quickly devolves into gov marking any message that criticizes them as “Hate speech”. Democracies like Japan, to an extent Singapore do that already, officially by law. Nations like Canada, India, Israel, Hungary, do it indirectly in unofficial but rampant ways. Speech is not a crime, listening to hate speech and starting to be unjustly hateful towards people is a crime. Punish the people who discriminate and act on the advice of hate speech. Do not punish speech, or else soon, you’ll get confused when gov starts changing what “hate” means.
- pelorat 3y ago
  Unfettered speech can lead to a cult following which, as we here in Europe know very well, can be extremely fucking dangerous. Which is precisely why some speech will land you in prison.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    Germany had plenty of hate speech laws back when Hitler was elected. Still the question that remains here would be: which government gets to decide what's hate speech? Like even if we could have a payment webAPI that could "block" hate speech (not sure how that would be possible), do we go by the standards of the US? Europe? Russia? How would it work concretely? Trying to discuss the implications of hate speech for something that would be international is asinine imo, the term basically means everything and nothing (when used in a global context)

peteforde 3y ago

I actually had Coil set up on a few of my sites, and I would occasionally get small micropayments showing up in my ledger. I was sad to see it fail, but I also profoundly agree with CC that for the web monetization API to actually work, it needs to distance itself from the crypto/grift ecosystem.

EGreg 3y ago

I think the issue is that micropayments shouldn’t be user-to-website, but rather website-to-website, with users being given some allowances via trustlines to spend. https://qbix.com/ecosystem https://qbix.com/ecosystem Notice that almost none of the above is “Web3”, but it can use Web3 (or other means) to do periodic settlements between websites.

temp0826 3y ago

Tangential but I've never seen a http 402 error (payment required), and I sort of wish it would be implemented somewhere.

boucher 3y ago
Stripe sends 402 errors on failed payments (though their docs currently don't really label the error code correctly)
lippispoika 3y ago
Several years ago the team I was on worked on a custom app for Splunk. We were on a customer call where they were receiving HTTP 402 Payment Required in their error logs and thought it was coming from our app. We explained we never implemented that error code (although I got paranoid and did triple check our code) so the conclusion was that Splunk must be returning it. Even searching the web today, it appears they never documented that but there are several Splunk community forum threads asking about HTTP 402. If you do use it, it's probably best to clearly document exactly what you want your users to pay for, and how!

lofaszvanitt 3y ago

The basic premise is flawed. This needs to go higher up and regulated by countries and that api implemented by website authors.

cyberax 3y ago

It was nothing but yet another crypto crap. So it died. The only successful model so far was Scroll, and it got bought up by Twitter and killed off. With Scroll you paid for a small monthly subscription and it got distributed between the sites that you visited.

redder23 3y ago

> I’m some big stan for Big Banks, but crypto was (is) just so absolutely riddled with scams and crime that I just can’t anymore. Decoupling the Web Payments API and crypto is certainly the right move right now. Completely disagree with this. Fiat money is riddled with scams and crime more then cryto ever was and can be at this point. Because the world operates on fiat and. Arguing that giving central banks the Monopoly over this is a good thing is just stupid. But OF COURSE Google will not dare to bring anything cryto into the web browser. It could be the opportunity for something really revolutionary with a private coin connected into this. People with this mindset are just horrible gatekeepers. Cryto has so much scams BECAUSE its moving fast and its easy to trick people who are after fast money. Its a sign that crypto actually works and is valuable!

NetOpWibby 3y ago
Your argument _almost_ sounded cohesive, and I'm a proponent of crypto. Handshake has an improvement proposal called HIP-0002[1] that utilizes the .well-known directory on your domain's server to enable direct payments. You payment address looks like this: https://<domain>/.well-known/wallets/SYMBOL https://<domain>/.well-known/wallets/SYMBOL. You could even utilize IBAN to send to fiat like so: https://example/.well-known/wallets/USD https://example/.well-known/wallets/USD. Of course, you'd need do a bit of legwork to implement non-crypto support. [1]: https://github.com/handshake-org/HIPs/blob/master/HIP-0002.md https://github.com/handshake-org/HIPs/blob/master/HIP-0002.m...
- Sargos 3y ago
  The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) provides this functionality in a standard protocol. You can associate Microsoft.com with an ETH, BTC, SOL, etc address. GoDaddy yesterday actually integrated this in a no-gas free manner [https://aboutus.godaddy.net/newsroom/company-news/news-details/2024/GoDaddy-and-Ethereum-Name-Service-Bridge-the-Gap-Between-Domain-Names-and-Crypto-Wallets/default.aspx https://aboutus.godaddy.net/newsroom/company-news/news-detai...]. Other DNS providers will likely follow suite over the next few years. Bonus, most web3 tooling already supports ENS so no jumping through hoops most of the time.

nickdothutton 3y ago

If there was a one-click button in my browser to send $1 to an article author or publisher, I'd be spending a fortune. As it is I'm blocking ads and avoiding lock-in subscriptions like the plague.

efitz 3y ago

A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't see any solution that was based on customer goodwill ("that was cool, here's $1") as something that there is much demand for. What we need is a browser-mitigated micropayment ecosystem. Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card, and then when you browse to a URL you get the option of an ad-ful experience like today or a micropayment option, e.g. "nytimes.com requires a subscription or a $0.50 payment to view this page OK/Cancel". Micropayments would avoid the fee overload of the credit card companies and your browser could display your balance in the toolbar. The server could be provided with a cryptographically signed receipt and there could be a periodic reconciliation. Note that there is no need for the complexity of a blockchain anywhere in this; IMO a blockchain just complexifies the solution and turns off people who don't trust cryptocurrencies.

bakugo 3y ago
> A paid web could eliminate the ad ecosystem and all its toxicity (surveillance technology, etc.) I don't know how anyone can still live under this delusion when we're currently seeing multiple paid streaming services putting ads on their paid plans that were advertised as ad-free. Corporations will never be happy with the profit they're making. If they can make you pay AND show you ads, they will.
- efitz 3y ago
  OK fair enough. As an aside, I don't think that's greed, I think it's perverse incentives - e.g. if a VP wants that big stock bonus next year, they have to figure out how to cause x% revenue growth, rinse and repeat. Sooner or later you hit market saturation and have exhausted all the easy, user-friendly solutions.
- ertian 3y ago
  That's why it has to be lightweight. The thing that would drive prices down and keep ads at bay is competition. Since setting up a new streaming service is difficult-bordering-on-impossible, the players are protected from competition and can squeeze their customers. In other markets, if you had a lightweight payment system that isn't just a component of a walled garden (ala Medium or YouTube), you could see actual competition. Then, if some player started showing ads or raising prices, people could just up and move elsewhere. Imagine the early internet if we didn't have HTTP & HTML. It would have been a bunch of specialized AOL- or CompuServ-type walled-garden services, each of which could have wrung their customers dry. That's the world we ended up with in streaming. But the WWW doesn't have a mechanism for simple payments, so payment infrastructure can be used to lure and trap content creators. That's why we need a simple, lightweight, portable and open payment mechanism, to complement open web protocols.

tdeck 3y ago

ITT: Ideas that have been tried before that nobody used.

ok123456 3y ago

I remember people discussing embedding microtransactions as part of HTTP in the mid-90s. Cryptocurrencies get us a little closer, maybe. But we're ultimately still having the same discussions.

solardev 3y ago

Contrarian opinion: As a regular consumer, I don't WANT a decentralized, anonymous currency. For users like me, crypto totally misses the point. I don't want digital cash that can't be traced. I'm not buying drugs or illegal shit. I want a centralized, safe way of sending small amounts of money to some content producers, microtransactions, etc., but with basic banking guarantees. Like being able to charge back a transaction if the merchant fails to deliver, or not being liable for fraudulent uses (as opposed to losing my entire wallet, oh well, too bad). Decentralized crypto actively hurts instead of helps my confidence in being able to conduct a safe, easy transaction online. One wrong move and I lose all my funds to some scammer. How is that even remotely enticing? Instead, I wish there was something as easy to use as a credit card, but without the exorbitant fees (for the merchant) and interests rates (for me). I just wish we had a financial organization like Visa/Mastercard but run as a nonprofit (or at least a credit union) so they can provide similar services with similar guarantees but just make less money on the returns. Services like Privacy.com kinda do that, but merchants still get dinged with the Visa fees, so it's not entirely practical for microtransactions. So so far the best thing I've found is still just using Google or Apple to temporarily hold transactions and batch process them at the end of a month. (Lyft also does something similar, I think, batching rides and tips until the end of the day or week or something).

lostmsu 3y ago
IMHO, you don't quite understand what you are talking about. Your centralized requirement is entirely bogus. If participants wish so, they could use any of the cryptos to run a subnet with an external oracle/moderator. Or even just build moderation right into smart contracts.
- solardev 3y ago
  Why? I don't want a bunch of small operators independently moderating, or hope for a bug free implementation of a smart contract. The whole point is regulatory instead of technical protection. I don't want code to supercede the laws that exist to protect us. I especially don't want my finances under the care of the kinds of companies and opportunistic individuals normally drawn to crypto. One mistake and everything is gone. That's only a plus if you're a cyber libertarian. I would much sooner trust a reputable brand or government.

Devasta 3y ago

Everyone loves the cookie prompts, I'm sure they'll be only delighted when its nonstop begging for pennies on every single website.

chupchap 3y ago

I think the biggest challenge is the country specific regulation with regards to money and then there is tax regulations. Add to this the checks related to money laundering and we can forget such a simple thing from existing without a whole company working in the backend to make it work.

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paxys 3y ago

The problem with web payments isn't the lack of a standard API, it's everything that happens under the hood. As a developer it makes no difference to me whether the browser natively supports a payments interface or I add it in via one line of JavaScript. Now tell me how to deal with credit card fees, sales tax, direct debit, crypto transfer and a million other jurisdiction-dependent payment mechanisms and rules. Does the standard account for the fact that in India every online credit card payment requires a one-time code sent via SMS? Or that every bank has its own online payments interface? Or that UPI is now a thing? The folks publishing the Web Monetization spec sure aren't thinking about any of this.

thrwwycbr 3y ago
The core issues with the Web Monetization API is that all the things you mentioned get dangerously close to SAP and Salesforce waters, and there's a reason these systems are the definition of bloated legacy accounting tech.
- djbusby 3y ago
  It's not bloat when you "need" those features (read: BIG Company)
  - troyvit 3y ago
    Our problem as a < 200 person non-profit is that our teams are being convinced that we _do_ need these systems, and in that scenario it is bloat. We keep telling ourselves that we need to "grow into" SalesForce and all its ancillaries that we're paying outrageous sums for. And that growth looks so much like a balloon. We have more and more SaaS stuff to support but the same number of people to do it. And we think we're getting ahead.
manquer 3y ago
What are you on about ? The spec/interface for developer does not have the handle the complexity of implementation browsers have to . Do you as the app developer deal with any of that integrating Stripe ? of course not, you yourself say it is just one line of JS for the app developer. If the API goes through, it will be a key stream of income for browser developers, They can then monetize their most important asset - brand and trust people have on their product without diluting it and not be dependent on advertisements or search engine placements from competitors or crypto to support the development. It is no different from IAP APIs mobile platform provides, they are not complex(for the app developer). Complexities of geography and taxation is not the app(website) developer's problem it is the platform's nothing in the interface has to handle that. Browsers will charge 30% the Apple and Google do for variety of reasons, but just Stripe level rates is enormous income source for them to support development.

latchkey 3y ago

A friend of mine in Vietnam needed some quick cash to go home for Tet holiday and asked me for help in paying for their travel costs and some spending money. Nothing nefarious, just a few hundred USD. I'm happy to help them. I went to a popular VN crypto website, put in their name and bank account number and how much I wanted to send them (and on what crypto network and token, as they support a bunch of them). The site spit out an address to send the tokens to with my wallet. The transaction cost me $0.05, the conversion rates were totally fair and actually quite good, it only took a couple hours, and as an added bonus, didn't even require any sort of KYC because it was just a small amount of money. For those of you dumping on crypto, I can tell you that it doesn't get any easier than that. There is no way that I can do something like that otherwise. We need more of this, not less.

Zuiii 3y ago
HN's jerk reaction reminds me a lot of the 5 monkeys and ladder experiment. I'm sure a lot of the people railing against crypto don't understand why they hate it or just look at the negatives. I'm confident that they would be just as hostile to cash if it was invented today. The good news is that they don't matter. Cryptocurrency is here to stay. People like you and me are using it to transfer money, donate, and buy things. It doesn't have to be widely adopted to be useful, which is something that I find to be just grand :-)
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  People here railing against cryptocurrency are generally unable to see past its proclivity for scams. This is an entirely reasonable situation. Further, cryptocurrency proponents are historically completely unwilling to admit there are any flaws to the point that it’s obvious they have a stake in cryptocurrency and it’s severely biasing their judgement. You don’t seem like that per se but if you haven’t seen it before you haven’t been watching.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
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martindale 3y ago

Just start using HTTP 402 and JSON payloads. We can just converge on whatever ends up common; for me, there is already a monetary standard for the Internet. I participated in these meetings for some time, during the rise (and rise) of Bitcoin. It's clear that the landscape of the financial web has shifted significantly at this point (for better or worse, in many ways), but standards, as usual, lag the market.

npoc 3y ago

It will happen once bitcoin has proven itself as a store of value, new layers have been built on top of it and matured and have acquired a large user base with network effect. Right now we already have proof of concept of a decentralised micro-payment network with Lightning. But it won't gain widespread adoption until more people have bitcoin, so much that they'd like to start spending it rather than buying/holding it (see Gresham's Law), its value has stabilised to a point that it can be used as a unit of account, and shops are therefore willing to price their goods/services in it.

judiiiiii1 3y ago

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