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248 sats \ 6 replies \ @MattAhlborg0 30 Jul \ on: Any tips for next adoption move as a merchant? bitcoin

Hi guys, I'm the creator of PPQ.AI, a pay-per-use AI chatbot running on LN.

I've thought fairly deeply about building a pay per use VPN (not a subscription) where every time a user clicks the "on" button to activate VPN, a lightning payment is fired.

This pay-per-use vpn can work really well with wallets like Alby which have "budgeted recurring payments" where the user can set a budget and such that the lightning payments run silently in the background.

This pay per use VPN is a really big innovation IMO and you could separate yourself from the entire other world of subscription VPN's.

Even charging 50 cents for a 15 minute session would allow me to save greatly on my VPN subscription since I only use a VPN 4-5 times per month.

Please let me know if you want more of my thoughts on this idea... I think that LN is perfectly suited for this and could even draw non-lightning people to lightning since it is something, like PPQ, that can help people save on subscriptions.

Here is a twitter post I made about the idea some time ago:

131 sats \ 2 replies \ @jp305 30 Jul

I just saw your app on alby marketplace, it's very nice, congrats! You could probably make this into a higher level API right of wallet to product?

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @MattAhlborg0 30 Jul

I don't know what you mean by "right of wallet to product", but yes, we are releasing an API soon where a user can load some credits onto an API key and then plug that API key into third party apps for use.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jp305 30 Jul

Sorry for the typo.

I was referring to the possibility of 3rd parties using an API (yours) where they can track if a user (lightning key?) has paid for a product (15 min VPN)

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @viktorv OP 30 Jul

hi Matt!

this is a good suggestion, and we have thought about this. mainly off the back of podcast 2.0 personal experiences + L402 experiments. the reason we did not pursue this is the main use case for our user base is "always on VPN" to counter mass surveillance primarily by ISP's. we could not forecast real demand for this and making it happen was not a straightforward exercise. I still think it's a novel/useful approach though, will reach out when we discuss it again internally.

half-related question - what's your use case for a VPN browser extension [besides this idea]? it's been in our backlog for some time but could not find compelling reasons to build it. "can't install software on my work laptop" and "i need ad hoc tunnels for a short browsing session and won't bother tunnelling all my traffic through the vpn" were the primary ones.

good luck with PPQ will look into it.

62 sats \ 1 reply \ @MattAhlborg0 30 Jul

I use a VPN periodically to:

Watch Netflix from different countries
Look at how my employer's website appears and functions from different countries as a part of my job in marketing.
Use some of my Bitcoin and Crypto wallets (I live in NYC and many crypto apps are IP blocked in NY due to the BitLicense).
Trade and/or research certain crypto platforms that IP block US crypto users
Use swap services that ban US crypto users
When I am using public Wifi

The browser extension is the ultimate non-techie, intuitive, and user friendly way to turn on a VPN.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @viktorv OP 31 Jul

Great writeup, thanks for the input!