10 ms·

Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall

49 points by marcell 12y ago

tinypass 12y ago
Tinypass is another paywall service that accepts bitcoin payments. http://tinypass.com http://tinypass.com
krrishd 12y ago
A friend of mine, Zach Latta made something very similar and posted to HN a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881757
udfalkso 12y ago
Great concept. Experience still needs some work... How does the verification work? Do I have to register to verify that I've paid?
- bowmessage 12y ago
  The blockchain will take care of that! Just have to provide a different BTC address for each user.
- marcell 12y ago
  No registration is required to pay or to make a paywall. Verification is done by assigning a slightly different payment amount to each person. For example, if you are charging 0.00015 BTC, the amount 0.00015001 and 0.00015002 may be used to distinguish two payments. These amounts are cycled every ~15 mins. Edit: Also, I may add support for BIP32 master public keys in the future. This would allow derivation of child public keys on behalf of the user, providing a unique payment address for each transaction. This is technically easy to do, the only problem is most people don't know how to access their master public key.
  - Rygu 12y ago
    That is kind of confusing isn't it, because there's also a miner fee. Does your algorithm know how to subtract the miner fee to get the unique amount? Also, are your floating point operations (subtract, compare) done correctly? http://floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison/ http://floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison/
    - bowmessage 12y ago
      Anyone who uses floating point numbers in a bitcoin project is doing it wrong. Bitcoins have a fixed (for now) level of precision. 1 satoshi is currently the smallest discrete amount of bitcoin that can exist. The miner's fee is separate from the amount sent, this is easy to distinguish.
rolleiflex 12y ago
"Coinwall is a zero-friction paywall that uses bitcoin." A little bit ironic. Isn't paywall itself friction?
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Given that you need the paywall, there's no additional friction. By that logic, doing anything is friction, compared to not doing it. Why breathe?
bobbygoodlatte 12y ago
Very cool. One idea you might play with is the idea of debt. In other words: allow me to view the content for free a couple times, while racking up an "IOU". Perhaps after the debt accumulates I'm forced to pay my freeloader's bill to continue seeing content. Second: Go to where the users are. You should have Coinbase support. Looking forward to watching where you take this :)
- marcell 12y ago
  Re IOU system: that is an interesting idea! It would solve one of the big problems with micropayments, which is the mental barrier. Thanks. Re Coinbase support: point taken; they are indeed one of the most popular wallets.
christiangenco 12y ago
Ooo, I like this concept.
adrianwaj 12y ago
Cool. Good for Soundcloud or YT users that want to provide links to dl their content for a fee without requiring too much hoop-jumping. Even a way of locating some content just through the referral link would be nice... that way a user on their SC and YT pages can set a permalink, but provide the redirection addresses on coinwall. Or rather, coinwall could have a "Soundcloud/YT" referral url that the user fills in when setting up the download: it's preprogrammed to handle those referrals and even stats could be given on the download page and the site could offer top-10 lists of music and video.
- marcell 12y ago
  Yea, I was thinking of adding file upload support for music/videos is a next feature. Having support for Soundcloud/Youtube/etc. URLs is a neat idea and would make for an easy UX.
  - adrianwaj 12y ago
    Another idea is to have a "set your own price" w/wo a minimum price, like with Bandcamp, where the download is like a post-donation gift. Also, once paid, the purchaser may want to be able to leave an email address or message to get further discounts in the future from the artist as VIP fans.
jacques_chester 12y ago
Very clever. However I still think that any scheme that requires people to pay in advance is going to struggle. You're always going to be facing the "simulation heuristic".
jordanthoms 12y ago
Unfortunately bitcoin's potential for micropayments isn't so great at the moment, when the transaction fee is 5-10c.
- marcell 12y ago
  It was lowered by 10x recently, to .5-.1c: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305
  - nwh 12y ago
    It really hasn't been lowered. Most users aren't running the latest code, so you would struggle to ever get your transaction into a block that way.
jasonzemos 12y ago
I'm assuming the technology behind this is either of two things: * An implementation of probabilistic nanopayments (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Nanopayments https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Nanopayments) * Massive amount of extremely small transactions. I'd like to know if any consideration has been made for the amount of data hitting the blockchain when this scales. A flood of transactions will cause fees to rise higher than the principal payment.
dijxtra 12y ago
Excellent concept... but I could not use it. It says "To view 46 words of content, send exactly 0.00015612 BTC ($0.10) to 12smAWhdY9aMFyEenX6NLVZDend5WJgfVc". I paid with this transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/047a379b7530f98876818540356b66964534d00115553a78845d41ba390e5e84 https://blockchain.info/tx/047a379b7530f98876818540356b66964... And nothing happened, not even after 2 confirmations.
- rarestblog 12y ago
  Yes, excellent concept, but also did not work for me. Also attempt to refresh the page asks for another payment. In this moment of weakness you wish there was a "refund" button on BitCoin :)
  - marcell 12y ago
    Do you happen to have the transaction ID on hand for the failed payment? Also, if you have a refund address, I can send the BTC back. It is a small amount, but still :)
- AgentME 12y ago
  I payed it, it confirmed practically instantly, said "loading content...", and never got past that step. When I refreshed, a new paywall was in place asking for another payment.
  - marcell 12y ago
    Do you happen to have the transaction ID on hand for the failed payment? Also, if you have a refund address, I can send the BTC back. It is a small amount, but still :)
- marcell 12y ago
  Did you get a "payment detected" message on the client side? Also, if you have a refund address, I can send the BTC back. It is a small amount, but still :)
gbl08ma 12y ago
I built something like this into my URL shortener a long time ago ( http://tny.im/toll.php http://tny.im/toll.php ). However, it is nowhere as easy to use, uses the Blockchain.info wallet APIs in a way they were never meant to be used, doesn't have automatic (nor automated) payouts and I'm not even sure that it still works. I never really advertised it seriously. Since nobody ever really used it, and because it's not the main purpose of the service (it has enough feature creep already...), I am considering discontinuating the feature. If Coinwall becomes popular (and I hope it does) I'll be damned :)
cr3ative 12y ago
Ah. It seems to link directly to the protocol address "bitcoin:" - and I don't have anything registered to pick up on that - making the button appear completely broken for me.
- glitch003 12y ago
  You should get a bitcoin client :)
slipstream- 12y ago
Any chance of dogecoin support? Given their community thrives on micropayments...

49 points by marcell 12y ago

Tinypass is another paywall service that accepts bitcoin payments. http://tinypass.com http://tinypass.com

A friend of mine, Zach Latta made something very similar and posted to HN a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881757

udfalkso 12y ago

Great concept. Experience still needs some work... How does the verification work? Do I have to register to verify that I've paid?

bowmessage 12y ago
The blockchain will take care of that! Just have to provide a different BTC address for each user.
marcell 12y ago
No registration is required to pay or to make a paywall. Verification is done by assigning a slightly different payment amount to each person. For example, if you are charging 0.00015 BTC, the amount 0.00015001 and 0.00015002 may be used to distinguish two payments. These amounts are cycled every ~15 mins. Edit: Also, I may add support for BIP32 master public keys in the future. This would allow derivation of child public keys on behalf of the user, providing a unique payment address for each transaction. This is technically easy to do, the only problem is most people don't know how to access their master public key.
- Rygu 12y ago
  That is kind of confusing isn't it, because there's also a miner fee. Does your algorithm know how to subtract the miner fee to get the unique amount? Also, are your floating point operations (subtract, compare) done correctly? http://floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison/ http://floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison/
  - bowmessage 12y ago
    Anyone who uses floating point numbers in a bitcoin project is doing it wrong. Bitcoins have a fixed (for now) level of precision. 1 satoshi is currently the smallest discrete amount of bitcoin that can exist. The miner's fee is separate from the amount sent, this is easy to distinguish.

rolleiflex 12y ago

"Coinwall is a zero-friction paywall that uses bitcoin." A little bit ironic. Isn't paywall itself friction?

StavrosK 12y ago
Given that you need the paywall, there's no additional friction. By that logic, doing anything is friction, compared to not doing it. Why breathe?

bobbygoodlatte 12y ago

Very cool. One idea you might play with is the idea of debt. In other words: allow me to view the content for free a couple times, while racking up an "IOU". Perhaps after the debt accumulates I'm forced to pay my freeloader's bill to continue seeing content. Second: Go to where the users are. You should have Coinbase support. Looking forward to watching where you take this :)

marcell 12y ago
Re IOU system: that is an interesting idea! It would solve one of the big problems with micropayments, which is the mental barrier. Thanks. Re Coinbase support: point taken; they are indeed one of the most popular wallets.

christiangenco 12y ago

Ooo, I like this concept.

adrianwaj 12y ago

Cool. Good for Soundcloud or YT users that want to provide links to dl their content for a fee without requiring too much hoop-jumping. Even a way of locating some content just through the referral link would be nice... that way a user on their SC and YT pages can set a permalink, but provide the redirection addresses on coinwall. Or rather, coinwall could have a "Soundcloud/YT" referral url that the user fills in when setting up the download: it's preprogrammed to handle those referrals and even stats could be given on the download page and the site could offer top-10 lists of music and video.

marcell 12y ago
Yea, I was thinking of adding file upload support for music/videos is a next feature. Having support for Soundcloud/Youtube/etc. URLs is a neat idea and would make for an easy UX.
- adrianwaj 12y ago
  Another idea is to have a "set your own price" w/wo a minimum price, like with Bandcamp, where the download is like a post-donation gift. Also, once paid, the purchaser may want to be able to leave an email address or message to get further discounts in the future from the artist as VIP fans.

jacques_chester 12y ago

Very clever. However I still think that any scheme that requires people to pay in advance is going to struggle. You're always going to be facing the "simulation heuristic".

jordanthoms 12y ago

Unfortunately bitcoin's potential for micropayments isn't so great at the moment, when the transaction fee is 5-10c.

marcell 12y ago
It was lowered by 10x recently, to .5-.1c: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305
- nwh 12y ago
  It really hasn't been lowered. Most users aren't running the latest code, so you would struggle to ever get your transaction into a block that way.

jasonzemos 12y ago

I'm assuming the technology behind this is either of two things: * An implementation of probabilistic nanopayments (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Nanopayments https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Nanopayments) * Massive amount of extremely small transactions. I'd like to know if any consideration has been made for the amount of data hitting the blockchain when this scales. A flood of transactions will cause fees to rise higher than the principal payment.

dijxtra 12y ago

Excellent concept... but I could not use it. It says "To view 46 words of content, send exactly 0.00015612 BTC ($0.10) to 12smAWhdY9aMFyEenX6NLVZDend5WJgfVc". I paid with this transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/047a379b7530f98876818540356b66964534d00115553a78845d41ba390e5e84 https://blockchain.info/tx/047a379b7530f98876818540356b66964... And nothing happened, not even after 2 confirmations.

rarestblog 12y ago
Yes, excellent concept, but also did not work for me. Also attempt to refresh the page asks for another payment. In this moment of weakness you wish there was a "refund" button on BitCoin :)
- marcell 12y ago
  Do you happen to have the transaction ID on hand for the failed payment? Also, if you have a refund address, I can send the BTC back. It is a small amount, but still :)
AgentME 12y ago
I payed it, it confirmed practically instantly, said "loading content...", and never got past that step. When I refreshed, a new paywall was in place asking for another payment.
- marcell 12y ago
  Do you happen to have the transaction ID on hand for the failed payment? Also, if you have a refund address, I can send the BTC back. It is a small amount, but still :)
marcell 12y ago
Did you get a "payment detected" message on the client side? Also, if you have a refund address, I can send the BTC back. It is a small amount, but still :)

gbl08ma 12y ago

I built something like this into my URL shortener a long time ago ( http://tny.im/toll.php http://tny.im/toll.php ). However, it is nowhere as easy to use, uses the Blockchain.info wallet APIs in a way they were never meant to be used, doesn't have automatic (nor automated) payouts and I'm not even sure that it still works. I never really advertised it seriously. Since nobody ever really used it, and because it's not the main purpose of the service (it has enough feature creep already...), I am considering discontinuating the feature. If Coinwall becomes popular (and I hope it does) I'll be damned :)

cr3ative 12y ago

Ah. It seems to link directly to the protocol address "bitcoin:" - and I don't have anything registered to pick up on that - making the button appear completely broken for me.

glitch003 12y ago
You should get a bitcoin client :)

slipstream- 12y ago

Any chance of dogecoin support? Given their community thrives on micropayments...