Notes from W3C Micropayments Breakout
- Getting rid of paywalls
- Supporting creative works (tipping?)
- Badges for support
- Premium website experience
- Streaming service payments (electricity, AWS, B2B use cases)
- Ad-free content
- Paying for content curation
- Re-sharing content (getting paid for sharing good content)
- Micro work (like Mechanical Turk)
- IoT
- WebApp monetization
- Paid APIs
- How small is a micropayment? (Maybe any amount you would be happy to do automatically)
- Transfer fees would need to be small enough
- Need to prove why this time is different for micropayments at W3C - the right stakeholders weren’t in the room, implementers all were working on their own projects and not interested in standardization
- Privacy
14:07 Stefan: [Demo of browser plug-in]
14:08 Demo is at https://red.ilpdemo.org
14:08 Stefan: Value prop for ILP is that payer and payee don't need to have a common payment method
14:09 ... the demo uses the Interledger Protocol
14:10 Alternate "system" at https://blue.ilpdemo.org
14:10 ... assume I am a content producer
14:10 ... I create content (a website)
14:11 ... video site but the content requires payment
14:12 ... user get's a browser plugin to make payments
14:15 ... the plug-in allows a payment to go through to the content producer
14:15 Evan: What is Interledger?
14:16 ... Stefan showed one of the user experiences that is achievable with micropayments
14:16 ... ILP is one technology to facilitate micropayments
14:17 [ILP slide deck]
14:18 [Video from June workshop of Stefan presenting this deck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaqWdL25caU&list=PLIR1FI1vEGeHgJeTGOh8CpKXXUhuXJ5Lm]
14:19 ... key problem we are solving is sending payments across networks which solves for reach
14:23 ... in the same way that the IP protocol allows for packets to travel between different underlying networks ILP allows for payments to travel between payment networks
14:25 ... it defines a universal addressing scheme for any asset holding account (bitcoin wallet, bank account, mobile wallet), a way for intermediaries to facilitate the transfer of assets between networks and a way to protect the sender and receiver from intermediaries that might take payment one one network but not deliver the corresponding payment on the next
14:25 network
14:31 alberto: do connectors make money from facilitating payments?
14:31 evan: yes, they can offer a spread
14:32 alberto: I think it is great that this is an open protocol but there is an open question about why we should use this instead of another protocol
14:35 evan: [description of holds and conditional transfers as a way of protecting sender and receiver]
14:35 manu: what is the plan for ILP and the Web Payments WG work.
14:38 AdrianHB: The goal is for there to be one or more payment methods that are based on ILP. Today the Web Payments flow has a step to allow users to pick a payment method our goal is to eliminate that step but the Web Payments work will roll out with that to accommodate the way people pay today.
14:40 ... we see micropayments as a use case that is well suited to solve at W3C using ILP as interop between crypto-currencies.
14:40 topic: Use Cases
14:40 - Content Payments
14:40 (Dropping paywalls)
14:41 @@@: People want to support artists so making it voluntary seems like the thing to do
14:42 evan: you could have a badge system where payments earn you public recognition
14:42 manu: streaming payments - pay as you consume
14:42 ... not just services (removing batches around payments)
14:42 ... realtime payments
14:43 roy: what counts as a micropayment?
14:43 stefan: Def a matter of perspective
14:44 ... either the content provider or the consumer takes the risk on DVP
14:45 ... the smaller the payment the lower the risk
14:45 adamr: the other way to look at it is anything that's not viable because of tx fees
14:46 andrei: -use case - getting rid of ads
14:46 ... if you can pay a site to use it then they don't need ads
14:47 stefan: there is an interesting project from Google called contributor which does this in some respects
14:48 andrei: re-sharing content earns you something
14:49 dimi: -use case - micro work, like mechanical turk
14:50 Internet of Things, like SlockIt where payments are tied to real world
14:50 topic: next steps
14:51 david: This could be done at IG but there is a history of failures in this domain so we'd need to prove that this time is better
14:52 manu: there has been some analysis of the failures and why they happened and it seems like the it was a lack of the right stakeholders
14:53 adrianHB: seems like there is an opportunity here for browsers to differentiate based on their ability to curate content
14:54 stefan: another use case is apps and payment for those
14:55 alberto: do you handle exchange of compliance info
14:55 stefan: we are still just focused on the basic interop layer and those requirements would be met by higher level protocols
14:56 kaoru: privacy vs money laundering is a tough balance. Open standards can be defined that toe that line
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