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What happened with the Web Monetization API?

chriscoyier.net

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Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#111

Post by emmo »

ertian wrote: post #76
bakugo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 co…

Sorry, slightly tangential, but haven't we seen streaming services get progressively worse as more competition has entered the space? Netflix was great when they were pretty much the only place in town; now it's a fragmented disaster of services that have to squeeze harder and harder to keep things viable.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#112

Post by efitz »

bee_rider wrote: post #86
imiric wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe browser vendors could come up with a standard where you can "charge up" your account like a prepaid phone card This will, sadly, never happen. When an adtech giant controls not only the world's most popular web browser, but also has major power in directing the future of the web itself, there's no scenario where they would voluntarily align against their own business interests. Brave actually has a browser th…

It isn’t that surprising that Google isn’t bringing us to the post-ad web, but I’m surprised Apple isn’t. The idea of an app or something asking the OS for a payment, and then the user trusting the OS to handle the details behind the scenes is already conventional on iOS, right? They already have a nice way of doing subscriptions to podcasts too. So it isn’t like Apple is totally allergic to giving content providers…

The problem is while credit card processors want 2-4% with a minimum, Apple and Google would want 30% - their App Store rates. So expecting Apple to do it is a nonstarter.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#113

Post by jjcm »

CaptainFever wrote: post #80
seanwilson wrote: post #5

> 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 toward…

This is literally the use case for cryptocurrencies -- digital cash, not investments. In the more... questionably legal parts of the web, Monero is pretty common since you can't use regular banking anyway. The fees are pretty low, at around USD0.001 IIRC. There's also Nano (feeless) but it doesn't seem to be very popular, unfortunately.

Please correct me if I'm wrong here (I've been out of the crypto game for a couple years), but I don't think crypto holds up here. The nature of transaction fees with crypto is they scale exponentially with demand. Monero fees are low because volume is low. Bitcoin fees are high ($9.97 was the average transaction fee yesterday!) because volume is high.

Any fully decentralized crypto at the scale of use that the Web Monetization API would need would have enormous tx prices. There are ways to scale this, ie the lightning network, but those are essentially centralized solutions to scale.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#114

Post by ambigious7777 »

CaptainFever wrote: post #80
seanwilson wrote: post #5

> 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 toward…

This is literally the use case for cryptocurrencies -- digital cash, not investments. In the more... questionably legal parts of the web, Monero is pretty common since you can't use regular banking anyway. The fees are pretty low, at around USD0.001 IIRC. There's also Nano (feeless) but it doesn't seem to be very popular, unfortunately.

unfortunately, looks like Monero just crashed from Binance delisting it for security reasons. hopefully it manages to recover.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#115

Post by caseyf »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

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?

I operate a website and I earned $70 in BAT during the most recent month (Aug 14 - Sept 14 2023)

September is the most recent month because I turned the Brave stuff off after that.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#116

Post by pants2 »

seanwilson wrote: post #5

> 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 toward…

The best way to do this today is through any crypto exchange that supports USDC.

I just tested this - I went in to Robinhood and sent 0.01 USDC to a SOL address. It cost me $0.001 as a transfer fee and took about 30 seconds total. I agree the process could be a bit smoother, but it works fairly well.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#117

Post by pants2 »

caseyf wrote: post #115
hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

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?

I operate a website and I earned $70 in BAT during the most recent month (Aug 14 - Sept 14 2023) September is the most recent month because I turned the Brave stuff off after that.

Why would you turn it off if you're earning $70/mo?

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#118

Post by pants2 »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

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?

The problem with BAT tokens is they're BAT tokens. If they had just used USDC I feel like it would be much more popular.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#119

Post by pants2 »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #109
pants2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just send a transaction from your exchange. Like, let's say I want to send you $0.10 right now. I would just go into Robinhood and send 0.1 USDC to you on Polygon or Solana, that would arrive in your wallet instantly from a Robinhood-owned address, you would have no idea who I am or my previous transaction history. Robinhood also owns the private keys and account recovery process here - it's just using blockc…

Okay, so the solution is to use a bank, not Blockchain money.

But you can't send $0.01 instantly and anonymously with bank rails. The solution is to use a crypto exchange on crypto rails - just not a regular crypto wallet (you could, but perhaps not very user friendly)

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#120

Post by bee_rider »

efitz wrote: post #112
bee_rider wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t that surprising that Google isn’t bringing us to the post-ad web, but I’m surprised Apple isn’t. The idea of an app or something asking the OS for a payment, and then the user trusting the OS to handle the details behind the scenes is already conventional on iOS, right? They already have a nice way of doing subscriptions to podcasts too. So it isn’t like Apple is totally allergic to giving content providers…

The problem is while credit card processors want 2-4% with a minimum, Apple and Google would want 30% - their App Store rates. So expecting Apple to do it is a nonstarter.

I’m not sure that is the problem really. 70% of something is still better than 100% of nothing after all.

Something that looks a lot more compelling which came up in some comments here is that KYC regulations can be a headache for payment processors. Maybe nobody wants to deal with them for the not-so-lucrative 10c per website view market.

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