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Comment by vertoc | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit hard to do currently - there's no "pull" support for any Ethereum wallets right now, so the user has to approve every request manually and usually has to be on the site for the site to even make the request.

However, one of the concepts I'm working on to make it easier for the average person to use Ethereum is to introduce a hosted wallet option. If Etherglade hosts wallets, we could then introduce easy subscription functionality (which the user can manage). So definitely plausible down the road!

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There's currently an EIP discussion regarding subscription payments: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/948

Oh interesting! Thanks for the link - will definitely be following that, I think it's a really good idea. My one fear is that some websites will try to trick users with dark patterns that their purchase is 1 time but will actually be a recurring subscription, but I'm sure if wallet confirmations make subscriptions clear that should be less of an issue.

Can't you make a smart contract that is effectively a subscription? And then you'd only need to sign it once?

Yep, but as the other commentator pointed out, you need to take all the ether at once. So if you wanted to charge 0.1 ETH a month for 6 months, you would need to take 0.6 ETH up front into the contract, which kind of defeats the whole point of the subscription model.

The smart contract could allow the user to withdraw the unused ETH to cancel the subscription but the fact that it still requires the entire amount upfront makes it an extremely poor user experience.

Yes you can. You could create an smart contract where you lock X amount of eth, and set up how much the other party can withdraw each month. Then is up to the provider of the service to withdraw the amount each month, which seems to me less an issue since they want to get paid.

That's actually how a SEPA direct debit works

Cool idea! I'd be intrigued to try it out on an idea or two.

Awesome! I'd love to hear more about the ideas and how I can implement this best to help. If you have the time, my e-mail is in my profile :)

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