Since the introduction of zaps on Nostr in February, the total number of zaps has surpassed 750,000, according to Nostr.band statistics. This remarkable figure clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of the value-for-value model. Whether it's a single developer contributing to open-source development or a part-time content creator, this model proves beneficial. However, the model faces challenges when it comes to teams of content creators with fixed production costs. This is where aggregating sites like Substack, Patreon, and OnlyFans come into play. While they offer paywalled content, they also take a significant portion of the revenue share, exerting control over distribution. As these platforms grow, they gain more control over the content and may even remove creators who don't adhere to their arbitrary rules.
Nostr has already addressed one aspect of this problem by allowing creators to own their content and preventing expulsion from the platform. However, there is still a missing piece: the ability for creators to set their own price for their content and provide access to users accordingly.
An attempt was made to implement this model on yalls.org by paygating content and unlocking it once users paid the lightning invoice. However, a major issue arose due to the multiple steps required to unlock the content. If it takes more than one click, users are less likely to proceed with the additional effort of scanning a QR code and making a payment. Nostr has successfully tackled this problem through the NIP-47 Nostr wallet connect feature. By linking a wallet to a client just once, Nostr clients enable one-click payments without having to navigate away from their current screen.
This led us to contemplate the idea of allowing anyone to upload premium content such as images, videos, long-form text, or music and enable users to purchase them through zaps. Utilizing Nostr events significantly reduces the complexity for creators using their self-hosting lightning node. Additionally, this makes it easier for Nostr clients to implement the feature quickly.
The content itself would be hosted by a service such as nostr.build, nostrimg.com, or nostrcheck.me. Only authorized users who have paid for the content can access it using NIP-98 HTTP authentication. By leveraging existing NIPs and the familiar zapping process, we were able to integrate paygated content while maintaining its security.
To put our thoughts into action, we implemented this end-to-end and created a demo site, https://zapgate.link/, to showcase how it works in practice. Anyone with a Nostr key using the NIP07 extension can upload content, set their price, and provide the lightning address where the funds will go. Users can simply click to unlock the content and consume it.
Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed numerous developers sharing their ideas and even creating demo sites for paygated content, such as https://www.zapit.live/. We would like to coordinate with all developers and contributors to establish a standardized approach to implementing zapgated content. This will enable Nostr clients to easily adopt and benefit from this feature.
We welcome feedback on this NIP or any aspects we may have overlooked. If you are interested in co-authoring this NIP, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We value collaboration and aim to create a unified solution that will benefit the entire Nostr community.
Demo site: https://zapgate.link/
NIP proposal: https://github.com/Egge7/nips/blob/zapGates/XX.md
Demo video: https://i.current.fyi/help/ZapGate+Demo.mp4
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