Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall

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 :)

Re: Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall

#6

Post by christiangenco » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 4:31 AM UTC

Ooo, I like this concept.

Re: Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall

#7

Post by bowmessage » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 4:34 AM UTC

udfalkso wrote: post #3

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

The blockchain will take care of that! Just have to provide a different BTC address for each user.

Re: Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall

#8

Post by adrianwaj » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:11 AM UTC

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.

Re: Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall

#9

Post by marcell » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:58 AM UTC

udfalkso wrote: post #3

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

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.

Re: Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall

#10

Post by marcell » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 6:11 AM UTC

bobbygoodlatte wrote: post #5

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 :)

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.