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100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

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Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#11

Post by matdehaast »

thisisitnownow wrote: post #7

I don't understand why Mozilla doesn't implement a native web3 wallet directly in Firefox. This would help onboard people more easily to Ethereum & EVM-compatible decentralized networks. People wouldn't have to install MetaMask or download another desktop wallet/browser app.

And then the lightning crowd would ask why did you not implement their wallet... Or say I want to do payments on the web using my creditcard,paypal. You need to have something built into the browser that allows transfer of value be agnostic to underlying ledger

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#12

Post by toast0 »

greycrasan wrote: post #5
FreeHugs wrote: post #3

It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet. A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an article. That would make the world so much better for indie developers. Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have.…

Unfortunately the service that is free will always be more popular and ultimately win over more users. People have decided that paying with their privacy is better for them. I really wish paying 10 cents to use the service was the norm, but alas I doubt it will ever happen.

I suspect you're right that people will strongly prefer free over paid, but it's hard to know how many people would pay ten cents for something, because it's not feasible to charge that little. Paypal has a micropayment rate of 5% + five cents (USD), which means if you charge ten cents, you get maybe $0.0045. Plus, you have to do all the billing infrastructure etc.

The economics would be better with a stored balance system, but those are sketchy --- you'd need the balance holder to be someone you trust already; or a credit system where you pay once you've accrued enough content debt to make billing worthwhile, but that's going to be totally scammed.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#13

Post by tempsy »

FreeHugs wrote: post #3

It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet. A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an article. That would make the world so much better for indie developers. Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have.…

Well that is the whole premise of this grant.

Coil, the co-sponsor of this grant, is a company founded by the ex Ripple CTO and trying to do that.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#14

Post by aesthesia »

toast0 wrote: post #12
greycrasan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the service that is free will always be more popular and ultimately win over more users. People have decided that paying with their privacy is better for them. I really wish paying 10 cents to use the service was the norm, but alas I doubt it will ever happen.

I suspect you're right that people will strongly prefer free over paid, but it's hard to know how many people would pay ten cents for something, because it's not feasible to charge that little. Paypal has a micropayment rate of 5% + five cents (USD), which means if you charge ten cents, you get maybe $0.0045. Plus, you have to do all the billing infrastructure etc. The economics would be better with a stored balance…

"Free" is also a very psychologically special price. Micropayments would make it easier to get over the energy barrier to paying for something, but it's still there. Laboratory experiments (and real-world experience) show that people value the difference between a price of 1 cent and 0 cents much more than the difference between 1 cent and 2 cents.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#15

Post by Kiro »

I liked Coinhive but despised that 99% used it for malevolent things. I do like the idea of letting my computer do some proof of work for a few seconds to unlock an article. It's like doing a micro payment with your electricity bill, anonymously and without any setup.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#16

Post by marknadal »

Congrats Stefan & team!!!

Very curious to see how this will shape up.

Would you say this directly competes with Brendan Eich's BAT token in Brave? Yes/no? How so?

I've also been working on figuring out some mathematical models for economically evaluating digital goods (intro here https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd7... ), would love to discuss various web/open-source centric economics ideas with people!

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#17

Post by cameronbrown »

aesthesia wrote: post #14
toast0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you're right that people will strongly prefer free over paid, but it's hard to know how many people would pay ten cents for something, because it's not feasible to charge that little. Paypal has a micropayment rate of 5% + five cents (USD), which means if you charge ten cents, you get maybe $0.0045. Plus, you have to do all the billing infrastructure etc. The economics would be better with a stored balance…

"Free" is also a very psychologically special price. Micropayments would make it easier to get over the energy barrier to paying for something, but it's still there. Laboratory experiments (and real-world experience) show that people value the difference between a price of 1 cent and 0 cents much more than the difference between 1 cent and 2 cents.

Which is why spreading £10 over thousands of websites is much easier to sell than £0.01 per article. With the later model people become paralised with choice, and the former model has been successful as the backbone for SMS/data infrastructure almost everywhere.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#18

Post by sp332 »

jsnell wrote: post #2

Halfway through reading this, the site suddenly covered half the screen with a "donate to Mozilla" banner. The case for "reshaping the economics of the web" would have been a bit more compelling without that... (My problem isn't about asking for donations. It's about asking for them in a particularly user-hostile way. If the call to action at the bottom isn't enough, work it into the text.)

Super ironic too, considering they are working on blocking in-page JS popups like this and there's an addon to report them. https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#19

Post by BubRoss »

FreeHugs wrote: post #8
BubRoss wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency can do this, but Bitcoin artificially keeps the blocksize to 1.6KB/s so people think that small transactions are not practical in a general sense, since they aren't practical there.

The throughoutput is only one of the problems. There are more: 1: You need to download and install software to use current cryptocurrencies. And users hate that. 2: Turning Fiat into Bitcoin and vica versa is not easy. 3: It is less private then cash. 4: Volatility of the value. Users would want something pegged to their currency of choice.

These aren't show stopping problems.

Web pages and browser extensions are pretty low barrier to entry.

Exchanging cost is not too bad, but probably the biggest hurdle still.

Privacy I don't think is a problem here. One random address to another is good enough for these type of transactions.

Pegging to another currency means centralization, though that is acceptable to plenty of people.

You said you wished there was a solution, all I'm saying is there is a clear path to how it could be done.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#20

Post by cameronbrown »

FreeHugs wrote: post #8
BubRoss wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency can do this, but Bitcoin artificially keeps the blocksize to 1.6KB/s so people think that small transactions are not practical in a general sense, since they aren't practical there.

The throughoutput is only one of the problems. There are more: 1: You need to download and install software to use current cryptocurrencies. And users hate that. 2: Turning Fiat into Bitcoin and vica versa is not easy. 3: It is less private then cash. 4: Volatility of the value. Users would want something pegged to their currency of choice.

> You need to download and install software to use current cryptocurrencies. And users hate that.

People already trust companies with their money. If banks supported crypto natively the no-install/web app model works great. The last three points are rendered irrelevant here if banks are able to make the experience easy and guarantee some value.

Those who don't want the protection of a bank are trading off points 1/2/4 for point 3.

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