I think another problem with micropayments is competing with free is hard. Say you have the best lightning paywall with an amazing UX where it's super easy and automatic to pay a creator a few sats. Most people assume the problem is user's don't want to pay but it's actually publishers who won't put up micropayments on their content. Here's why: for a big publisher, adding a lightning paywall is a big risk which may lose them their audience. For small publisher's, they don't care if 10 people send 10 sats, all they care about is becoming a big publisher
knorker|1 year ago
Won't, or can't?
Do you have a good article about how to set up a paywall or tip jar for small transactions, with a clear description of what percentage goes to middlemen and (mainly in the case of proof of work) how much externality cost it incurs?
I would like to be able to pay $cents or even $dollar for instant access to an article, but only if X% actually goes to the recipient (I don't know what X is, yet), and I would lead by example on my own content. (though most likely tip jar, not paywall)
csumtin|1 year ago
So for context, we built a lightning paywall(now defunct). All you had to do was add a single line of js to your site, as easy as Google analytics/ads. The cost was 0.01% of transaction. You could even move to self hosting and not pay us. Finally, we even built an "auto payer" so users could approve a site and auto pay a few cents with limits. Anyways, our experience is content publishers said they wanted to monetize their content but when it came down to it, were extremely reluctant to add a paywall and would maybe think of adding tipping.
Anyways I think our solution was great but no product market fit. I was especially proud how private the whole thing was but users didn't seem to really value that