pull down to refresh
2162 sats \ 1 reply \ @chris42 8 Oct 2023 \ on: Lex Fridman asking for Lightning per-article payments bitcoin
Getmash currently is working on this.
Way back in 2020 we attempted this with Satotious(now defunct). It was a paywall which would let the users choose between viewing an ad or paying with lightning. The issues we hit were:
- Lightning was super new back then, no easy on/off ramps. -- better now with big exchanges doing lightning (kraken, binance)
- My assumption was that users may not want to pay for things, actually they were cool with paying and it was the publishers who didn't want Bitcoin.
- Big publishers who use paywalls( like wsj, New York times etc) are really conservative. Adding a pay per article might reduce their membership numbers.
- Big publishers who relied on ads were scared of losing users if they added a paywall.
- Small/new publishers(think hobbyist blog) were trying to grow into big publishers, adding a paywall was too much user friction for too little benefit (they might earn a small amount but would not get many users and grow)
I still think micro payments is way better than ads(in a way ads are micropayments). Hopefully with more lightning adoption, we will have a web with less ads and tracking!
Very insightful response. Thank for sharing your learnings!
reply