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This is basically just how we want to do micro payments. I think coinbase recently introduced a library for the same using cryptocurrency and the 402 status cod

by asim 1y ago

This is basically just how we want to do micro payments. I think coinbase recently introduced a library for the same using cryptocurrency and the 402 status code. In fact yea it's called x402. https://github.com/coinbase/x402 https://github.com/coinbase/x402

ryan_lane 1y ago
Except I don't want to use crypto, I don't want to accept crypto for content, I don't want to pay middlemen for using crypto. Micro payments using crypto is just a way for folks to prop up crypto currencies. It also is a dead concept, because how do we all agree on _which_ crypto to use? If I'm browsing the internet, and each site only accepts a particular shit coin, is that ok? Does everyone just use a single stablecoin? Now everything is locked to a single currency? The cloudflare approach is honestly ideal, because it charges people profiting from your content, not humans looking to read your content. It also doesn't use crypto.
- BugheadTorpeda6 1y ago
  I don't think it would even be remotely as technically feasible or viable if it was crypto based. I don't want crypto either, but as far as I can tell, crypto is much much much less ergonomic and inconvenient than just having a tab that you pay off monthly in a normal way with a single transaction.
raxxorraxor 1y ago
This is a mistake by Cloudflare. They restrict data access for big players and it would hurt net neutrality as well. I am surprised this gets any positive feedback.
imiric 1y ago
This should be the standard business model on the web, instead of the advertising middlemen that have corrupted all our media, and the adtech that exploits our data in perpetuity. All of which is also serving to spread propaganda, corrupt democratic processes, and cause the sociopolitical unrest we've seen in the last decade+. I hope that decades from now we can accept how insidious all of this is, and prosecute and regulate these companies just like we did with Big Tobacco. Brave's BAT is also a good attempt at fixing this, but x402 seems like a more generic solution. It's a shame that neither has any chance of gaining traction, partly because of the cryptocurrency stigma, and partly because of adtech's tight grip on the current web.
- lofaszvanitt 1y ago
  Because this must be done on the gov level. As I've written about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106
- hhh 1y ago
  crypto seems like a massive waste for what can just be a regular transaction
  - trollbridge 1y ago
    Something like BAT isn't that wasteful, and without crypto you'd be stuck never getting paid by bad actors in the scheme.
    - gessha 1y ago
      But why exactly does it have to be on an append-only ledger where transactions are processed/validated for a fee? Why can’t it be a more conventional transaction processor like VISA on top of the banking system?
      - baobun 1y ago
        Bitcoin Lightning Network works and roughly maps to that.
      - dboreham 1y ago
        Because Visa doesn't (hasn't) wanted to do microtransactions, ever, since the beginning of the internet.
        tzs 1y ago
        You still don't need cryptocurrencies. You just need a middleman that aggregates micropayments into large enough amounts to work with non-micropayment systems. Some might object to having to get middlemen involved, but the thing is that even with cryptocurrency payments you are going to need middlemen because the web is international. If your website is directly charging crawlers to crawl and you get crawled and paid by any crawler from another country, congratulations! You are now engaged directly in international trade and have a whole slew of regulations to deal with, probably from both your country and the country the crawler is from. If you go through a middleman you can structure things so it is the middleman that is buying crawler access from you. Pick a middleman in your country (or anywhere in the EU of you are in the EU) and most of your regulatory headaches go away.
dboreham 1y ago
As someone who has actually built working micro payments systems, this was of interest. Worth noting though that it's really just "document-ware" -- there's no code there[1], and their proposed protocol doesn't look like it was thought through to the point where it has all the pieces that would be needed. [1] E.g. this file is empty: https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/package.json https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/package.json
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- imiric 1y ago
  > Worth noting though that it's really just "document-ware" -- there's no code there That's not true. That project is a monorepo, with reference client and middleware implementations in TypeScript, Python, Java, and Go. See their respective subdirectories. There's also a 3rd-party Rust implementation[1]. You can also try out their demo at [2]. So it's a fully working project. [1]: https://github.com/x402-rs/x402-rs https://github.com/x402-rs/x402-rs [2]: https://www.x402.org/ https://www.x402.org/
- ajford 1y ago
  > As someone who has actually built working micro payments systems The Github repo clearly has Python and Typescript examples of both client and server (and in multiple frameworks), along with Go and Java reference implementations. Maybe check the whole repo before calling something vaporware?
J_Shelby_J 1y ago
How do you handle KYC?
bodge5000 1y ago
Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am, but it feels like the boats out for micro payments. To me at least, it feels like for this system to work you want to have something like what PAYG phones have with top-ups. You "put a tenner on your internet", and sites use that in the form of micro payments. Had that been the case since the start, it could've worked great, but now the amount of infrastructure and buy-in required to make that work, it just feels like we missed the chance.
artirdx 1y ago
This is really interesting. Assuming I understood it correctly, I wonder why the protocol does not allow immediate return when it gave an address and payment amount. Subsequent attempts should be blocked until some kind of checksum of amount and wallet address is returned. This checksum should be verified by a third-party. This would save each server from implementing the verification logic. Two missing pieces that would really help build a proper digital economy are: 1. If the content could be consumed by only the requesting party, and not copied and stored for future, 2. if there is some kind of rating on the content, ideally issued by a human. Maybe some kind of DRM or Homomorphic Encryption could solve the first problem and the second could be solved by human raters forming DAO based rating agencies for different domains. Their expertise could be gauged by blockchain-based evidences and they will have to stake some kind of expensive cryptocurrency to join such a DAO akin to license. Content and Raters could be discovered via like BitTorrent Indexes, thus eliminating advertisers. I say these as missing pieces because it will allow humans to remain an important part of digital economy by supplying their expertise, while eliminating the middle man. Humans should not be simply cogs in digital economy whose value are extracted and then discarded but should be the reason for its value. By solving double-spending problem on content we ensure that humans are paid each time. This will encourage them to keep on building new expertise in offline ways - thus advancing civilization. For example when we want a good book to read or movie to watch, we look at Amazon ratings or Goodreads review. The people who provide these ratings have little skin in the game. If they have to obtain license and are paid, then when they rate an authorship - just like bonds are rated by Rating agencies - the work can be more valuable. Everyone will have reputation to preserve.
PhilippGille 1y ago
It's not a new idea. For example I created https://github.com/philippgille/ln-paywall https://github.com/philippgille/ln-paywall (also using 402 status code) in 2018.

by asim 1y ago

ryan_lane 1y ago

Except I don't want to use crypto, I don't want to accept crypto for content, I don't want to pay middlemen for using crypto. Micro payments using crypto is just a way for folks to prop up crypto currencies. It also is a dead concept, because how do we all agree on _which_ crypto to use? If I'm browsing the internet, and each site only accepts a particular shit coin, is that ok? Does everyone just use a single stablecoin? Now everything is locked to a single currency? The cloudflare approach is honestly ideal, because it charges people profiting from your content, not humans looking to read your content. It also doesn't use crypto.

BugheadTorpeda6 1y ago
I don't think it would even be remotely as technically feasible or viable if it was crypto based. I don't want crypto either, but as far as I can tell, crypto is much much much less ergonomic and inconvenient than just having a tab that you pay off monthly in a normal way with a single transaction.

raxxorraxor 1y ago

This is a mistake by Cloudflare. They restrict data access for big players and it would hurt net neutrality as well. I am surprised this gets any positive feedback.

imiric 1y ago

This should be the standard business model on the web, instead of the advertising middlemen that have corrupted all our media, and the adtech that exploits our data in perpetuity. All of which is also serving to spread propaganda, corrupt democratic processes, and cause the sociopolitical unrest we've seen in the last decade+. I hope that decades from now we can accept how insidious all of this is, and prosecute and regulate these companies just like we did with Big Tobacco. Brave's BAT is also a good attempt at fixing this, but x402 seems like a more generic solution. It's a shame that neither has any chance of gaining traction, partly because of the cryptocurrency stigma, and partly because of adtech's tight grip on the current web.

lofaszvanitt 1y ago
Because this must be done on the gov level. As I've written about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106
hhh 1y ago
crypto seems like a massive waste for what can just be a regular transaction
- trollbridge 1y ago
  Something like BAT isn't that wasteful, and without crypto you'd be stuck never getting paid by bad actors in the scheme.
  - gessha 1y ago
    But why exactly does it have to be on an append-only ledger where transactions are processed/validated for a fee? Why can’t it be a more conventional transaction processor like VISA on top of the banking system?
    - baobun 1y ago
      Bitcoin Lightning Network works and roughly maps to that.
    - dboreham 1y ago
      Because Visa doesn't (hasn't) wanted to do microtransactions, ever, since the beginning of the internet.
      - tzs 1y ago
        You still don't need cryptocurrencies. You just need a middleman that aggregates micropayments into large enough amounts to work with non-micropayment systems. Some might object to having to get middlemen involved, but the thing is that even with cryptocurrency payments you are going to need middlemen because the web is international. If your website is directly charging crawlers to crawl and you get crawled and paid by any crawler from another country, congratulations! You are now engaged directly in international trade and have a whole slew of regulations to deal with, probably from both your country and the country the crawler is from. If you go through a middleman you can structure things so it is the middleman that is buying crawler access from you. Pick a middleman in your country (or anywhere in the EU of you are in the EU) and most of your regulatory headaches go away.

dboreham 1y ago

As someone who has actually built working micro payments systems, this was of interest. Worth noting though that it's really just "document-ware" -- there's no code there[1], and their proposed protocol doesn't look like it was thought through to the point where it has all the pieces that would be needed. [1] E.g. this file is empty: https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/package.json https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/package.json

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
imiric 1y ago
> Worth noting though that it's really just "document-ware" -- there's no code there That's not true. That project is a monorepo, with reference client and middleware implementations in TypeScript, Python, Java, and Go. See their respective subdirectories. There's also a 3rd-party Rust implementation[1]. You can also try out their demo at [2]. So it's a fully working project. [1]: https://github.com/x402-rs/x402-rs https://github.com/x402-rs/x402-rs [2]: https://www.x402.org/ https://www.x402.org/
ajford 1y ago
> As someone who has actually built working micro payments systems The Github repo clearly has Python and Typescript examples of both client and server (and in multiple frameworks), along with Go and Java reference implementations. Maybe check the whole repo before calling something vaporware?

J_Shelby_J 1y ago

How do you handle KYC?

bodge5000 1y ago

Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am, but it feels like the boats out for micro payments. To me at least, it feels like for this system to work you want to have something like what PAYG phones have with top-ups. You "put a tenner on your internet", and sites use that in the form of micro payments. Had that been the case since the start, it could've worked great, but now the amount of infrastructure and buy-in required to make that work, it just feels like we missed the chance.

artirdx 1y ago

This is really interesting. Assuming I understood it correctly, I wonder why the protocol does not allow immediate return when it gave an address and payment amount. Subsequent attempts should be blocked until some kind of checksum of amount and wallet address is returned. This checksum should be verified by a third-party. This would save each server from implementing the verification logic. Two missing pieces that would really help build a proper digital economy are: 1. If the content could be consumed by only the requesting party, and not copied and stored for future, 2. if there is some kind of rating on the content, ideally issued by a human. Maybe some kind of DRM or Homomorphic Encryption could solve the first problem and the second could be solved by human raters forming DAO based rating agencies for different domains. Their expertise could be gauged by blockchain-based evidences and they will have to stake some kind of expensive cryptocurrency to join such a DAO akin to license. Content and Raters could be discovered via like BitTorrent Indexes, thus eliminating advertisers. I say these as missing pieces because it will allow humans to remain an important part of digital economy by supplying their expertise, while eliminating the middle man. Humans should not be simply cogs in digital economy whose value are extracted and then discarded but should be the reason for its value. By solving double-spending problem on content we ensure that humans are paid each time. This will encourage them to keep on building new expertise in offline ways - thus advancing civilization. For example when we want a good book to read or movie to watch, we look at Amazon ratings or Goodreads review. The people who provide these ratings have little skin in the game. If they have to obtain license and are paid, then when they rate an authorship - just like bonds are rated by Rating agencies - the work can be more valuable. Everyone will have reputation to preserve.

PhilippGille 1y ago

It's not a new idea. For example I created https://github.com/philippgille/ln-paywall https://github.com/philippgille/ln-paywall (also using 402 status code) in 2018.