And that's because there's a huge fundamental cost to trustlessness, decentralization and permissionlessness that substantially no project actually benefits from.
Start with coil.com what they do it not possible with the financial system. They enable users to stream money to content creator in real time with fractions of cents per second. A central system would not make any sense. It must be p2p and there must be a ledger to "settle the transactions"
Its not impossible to make it central it just not lucrative in any way. But if the middlemen is removed it doesn't have to be lucrative for that middlemen anymore and it turns out to be almost free because you just need to send p2p data packages to stream money.
Its called interledger protocol (ILP) its not a blockchain its a protocol but like I said above you need to settle somehow and which bank or financial system lets you settle fractions of cents? No one because there is no money to be made from this so a system that does not generate money for the owner (a decentral system) works best.
Correct.
> Start with coil.com what they do it not possible with the financial system. They enable users to stream money to content creator in real time with fractions of cents per second. A central system would not make any sense. It must be p2p and there must be a ledger to "settle the transactions"
Any wallet could offer the same thing. PayPal could offer it. But they don't because nobody wants micropayments. Nobody's ever actually wanted micropayments, it's something they think they do, but in reality, they do not. This comes up from time to time. One of the crypto folks actually wrote a really good paper on it, I'll dig it up.
You just build up the balance until it's over $1 and ACH/RTP it. Those transaction methods cost $0.0033 in bulk.
Further, this is just revisiting whether people are willing to pay for content online. They are not. They would rather be subjected to ads and not pay anything.
No, its not a wallet at all its a protocol like TCP but for money. If you are interested go read about it first. There is no point in arguing about something you dont know what it is.
>PayPal could offer it
Yes, they could but its not lucrative and if it would be they would not be interested in using a public interoperable protocol where everyone can offer the same service and compete.
So you have some sites that use PayPal and other sites use 15 other payment companies. You just recreated subscription hell. Its completely missing the point. If its decentral and standardized all systems work together. If I have the wrong token or currency the decentral system finds a way to swap them so I can use any services no matter what "wallet" or currency I use. I cold stream Netflix and Amazon Prime and only pay what I watch and when I watch.
Also why would I want PayPal to know whom I stream money? If its central its impossible to hide such data. If its p2p no third party know what content I pay for. That's how it should be.
>Nobody's ever actually wanted micropayments
We already have it.... its called ads. Ever page load, every click, every interaction and every data collected about you is a form of inefficient micropayment. One that does not respect your privacy, tires to maximize the time you waste and tries to trick you into buying stuff you dont need. And the cost of that is slapped onto the product you may buy.
Don't you think there are tons of people out there who would rather not annoy their visitors with ads? They would rather have them pay a few fraction of a cent directly to them without the ad-mafia taking a huge junk out of the revenue. And dont you think there are people who would rather pay a few fraction of a cent than see ads or block ads knowing that the content creator does not get paid then?
>Further, this is just revisiting whether people are willing to pay for content online. They are not. They would rather be subjected to ads and not pay anything.
That's your personal opinion. The facts are not on your side. People already pay to not see ads its just cumbersome because every service needs a subscription or pro app or whatever. It does not scale to the number or services the average user wants to use. And it hardly adjust to the actual use. Its objectively just so much worse than if you could stream for what you use in real time.
You could go a long way without ads for a few bucks if you would replace them with the actual revenue they create. Only if your time is worthless you would rather watch a 15 second ad than pay 1/10 cent or whatever to not see it.
People will pay if it's a frictionless payment of a small amount reflective of the value gained. Netflix did this with movies, Spotify with music, `crypto with everything?` if the tech and business models are worked out.
After 10 min you notice the film sucks so you stop the stream. You only payed for the first 10 min.
Totally friction-less ofc. You could watch on a random TV anywhere and stream the money from your phone.
Sounds like sci-fi but we have all the key tech needed for this.
[edit] not to mention, content creators don't price their movies in dollars per byte haha, they price it based on what they think people will pay. This is part of the reason all you can eat is much more enjoyable.
Its not "all you can eat" is "you can eat where you want" you never missed that because it was always like that you never needed a subscription for certain food or restaurant chains. You just go and eat wherever you want and they all expect you to pay what you ordered or whatever deal they offer. This system makes it far more likely you go eat somewhere new and far more likely that you eat spaghetti where you like it the most and pizza somewhere ease. Web content should work the same.
This example right here. It presumes that content creators will happily just bypass distributors like Netflix. I find that unlikely because it ignores what Netflix actually provides for content creators.
1. Funding in some cases.
2. Discovery and a ready audience.
3. Availability of content to your audience.
Content creators have little motivation to not use Netflix or Disney+ or whatever other service. Those services have little motivation to use crypto streaming payments. And frankly most consumers don't care enough to create an incentive for the creators by voting with their wallet.
There’s a mass grave of micropayments startups, and I bet you anything it’s not because they couldn’t figure out how to debit and credit fractions of a unit.
People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content.
Why dont you look into the things we talked about here? See coil.com its a flat-rate system you are never bothered to decided if what you see is "worth the money" you just see that it streams money and you know its roughly halve a cent per minute. If the content sucks you leave because obviously you want the money to go to something you like. But that's already the default behavior anyway.
This is the problem you've danced around a few times. Content producers do not price their content by the byte or by the minute. They charge premium prices for premium content. And they charge low rates for low-end content. The flat-rate per-unit-data billing model falls down as soon as content providers set their own rates (and they will demand to). Then not only is there a ton of perverse incentive (like content providers just setting the max rate all the time since they know you're not making a purchasing decision) but it also feels crap to know you have no (a) idea and (b) control over how much you're getting billed.
The only model that I can see working is a Netflix type model where you bill folks a fixed monthly fee, and you hand out the money to content producers based on agreements you negotiate. You aggregate the risk, you negotiate the pricing, you intermediate the customers and the content producers. You bill once a month, a fixed, predictable amount. No blockchain needed, just a Stripe account.
I'm uniquely qualified to answer this, I worked at a startup that considered building literally this 5 years ago. The payment mechanics were never the issue. The fundamental billing model and customer interaction dynamics were at issue. Nobody wanted it haha, according to our user research. Nothing has fundamentally changed by stapling the blockchain to it.
We actually got pretty far along building it - and had a bunch of high profile content producer relationships, you're welcome to reach out if you want to take the learnings. You seem involved in the project.
Now go pitch it to the 50+ copyright owners that you'd need to convince to make this happen.
Strong hint: it's not going to happen. The people who own the content you want to stream like this have no incentive to make it work like this.
If they could go back in time and say "no" to Spotify, they would.
How about instead I pitch it to people that make content I _actually_ want to see. The Netflix/Spotify thing was just an analogy. Before youtube became big brother, the majority of content I watched was there.
I'm personally sick of the `50+ copyright owners` homogenizing our culture into bland idiotic sludge. My hope is the `50+ copyright owners` lose all power and wither away.
No, I don't. I mean I think they would if it didn't cost them anything but I firmly believe when given the decision between being vaguely annoyed by ads vs. ponying up the cash, they'll do the former substantially all the time.
Nick Szabo has a great paper on it. [1] Trust me when I say this is almost certainly the only thing Nick Szabo and I agree on.
[1] https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-...
Standardized web monetization with micropayments has obvious benefits, its like email you dont care what provider the other people use its just works.
However, my own investment thesis is that the "crypto" market is ultimately destined to march towards that useful and unprofitable outcome, kicking and screaming the whole way, by dint of the long-term market survivors being the civically oriented perennials. But this is a long journey, maybe another decade or two in the making(a epochal shift in tech). It will continue to have ups and downs.
I’m sorry, what? Genuinely curious about what the use case is here, I’ve never heard of this before. I pay based on the amount of time I consume?
Its obviously intentional very simplified ATM because its rather new. There is long way to go before we can actually pay for exactly what we consume.
[1] https://webmonetization.org/
Old (2018) but fun: A Raspberry Pi ILP power switch (Turns on a light if money is streamed) https://xrpcommunity.blog/raspberry-pi-interledger-xp-powers...
source: i helped build some.
Coils is just payment provider for web monetization. You can use another (probably none exist so far) and more importantly you can use web monetization outside of coil owned platforms.
The cam site thing maybe look similar on the surface but its not. It only works in very limited full controlled closed system. It can not scale to the web. You would need 100+ subscriptions in the end that not the goal. Or you would need one overlord that has the monopoly on web monetization and everyone is forced to use g$$gle. Obviously bad for all kinds of reasons like privacy, competition, censorship etc etc.
Web monetization puts a payment pointer into the HTML meta tag The browser reads this and streams money there. See https://webmonetization.org/docs/getting-started
Like you can use PayPal to sell (access to) digital assets? Or patron?
I'm not sure which part of the core value proposition of coil has anything to do with blockchain?
And small wonder: crypto/chains allows us to transfer trust (eg, I trust i can buy milk for my dollar, I buy bitcoin for a dollar, I give you bitcoin, if you can sell bitcoin for a dollar, we trust that I have given you the opportunity to buy milk).
This could also go via bank transfer, or hybrid systems like PayPal,stripe or vipps[1].
I see some benefit to "magic crypto cash on the interwebz"- but untraceable tender is generally not what chains facilitate. Quite the opposite.
When you realize crypto currency can go two ways: perfect taxation (billionaires and corporations will fight it, to the death), or: perfect money laundring/tax evasion (government will fight it, to the death) - the crypto future looks quite distant.
[1] a Norwegian bank owned platform for instant digital settlement: https://vipps.no
Coil primary uses ILP its not a blockchain its a protocol it can use fiat or "magic crypto cash on the interwebz" its irrelevant.
>This could also go via bank transfer, or hybrid systems like PayPal,stripe or vipps[1].
As soon as they support ILP yes, it could use whatever that's the whole point. An open standard/protocol where everyone can join and offer competing service and 2 parties can transact with each other regardless of whos underlying service they use.
Like email. I dont care whos your email provider I just need your address and it works. The IPL equivalent is called Interledger Payment Pointer. Again has nothing to do with blockchain.
If you actually are interested its now up to you to read more about it. I wont go any further with this discussion.
>> The question you have could easy be answer by yourself if you just go to the official page and read for 5 minutes what they are doing and how.
From coil.com:
> Get your Coil Membership for $5 per month.
> Install the Coil Extension or the Puma Browser app.
> Log in to Coil and enjoy web monetized content and features across the internet.
So the same model as patron?
The original question was about if the companies product could work without the blockchain. I would be happy to see an open standard for transactions - but no one will pay coil.com for that. They make money as middlemen. That's what they are selling.
So, again - how is blockchain essential to what coil are doing (as a business)? Is their business model not being a payment provider, collecting legal tender ("real money") from consumers and funelling it to producers? Do users not depend on coil for the client code and platform?
Certainly creating an open protocol, is a way to build the product - but it does not appear to be quicker or easier than a more traditional, centralized solution?
The following
> trustlessness, decentralization and permissionlessness
Are better results.
But I do admit, that they come at _performance_ trade-offs.
All of them rely on a centralised authority, as can be seen with the bitcoin & ethereum forks - if something goes bad, the people in control will step in and make it better. That means there are people in control. This is not trustless, decentralised or permissionless.
Permissionless--nobody can stop a transaction from taking place because of ideology.
Decentralised--the miners and the software devs have to agree on something to make a hard change. This has happened so rarely as to be a non-issue. When it does happen, the currency forks and those that want to use it can do so as they please.
BTC became LiteCoin, BCH, and BSV from hard protocol forks.
Ethereum forked from Ethereum Classic.
Hive forked from Steamit as Tron tried a hostile takeover.
Trustless -- Here trustless really mean visibility. I can verify everything is correct in the chain myself. I don't have to believe there are gold bars in a vault somewhere, but to a degree it also means I can trust there's no central authority that may be ponzi-ing or ready to abuse the protocol.
You need to be pretty techy to verify a transaction in the chain yourself, or do any of the other things you talk about. A non-technical person can't do this. They have to trust other people. This really isn't different from trusting that there are gold bars in the vault.
It's been what, 5 years ish, since this all blew up? In 5 years you can name 5 hard forks in the major currencies. That's not "rare".
Nope, Cardano, Monero, Polkadot, Tezos and ARRR all kept in my own wallet--backed up with seed phrases.
I don't keep BTC as I think it's basically crippled (TPS). I have individual wallets for each on both my PC and phone. I'm staking DOT, XTZ, and ADA from my PC wallets.
> In 5 years you can name 5 hard forks in the major currencies.
BTC has been around for 13 years--not 5.
The forks are success stories. Further, forks grant holders equal amounts on each chain--so no coin is lost in this way.
The Hive fork remains a great example of on chain (Proof of Stake) governance, and having beat back a centralized hostile takeover, came back valued higher in post.
> A non-technical person can't do this.
But it's at least possible. Would you discount science and technology purely because you don't understand it?
Mind helping me with my assumptions??
From what I see, the classical solutions assume the central authority will always exist and provide its services at reasonable prices, that the authority will be benevolent and just, and the central authority is usually single purpose.
Regarding survival, crypto space has a similar assumption that at least some people will run nodes - but I like it's robustness to being 'killed off' because only a few people need to participate in mining or validating.
Regarding benevolence, I think there are plenty of examples of hostility towards users in the payments space specifically.
Regarding single purpose, blockchains are fairly interesting as they allow for any purpose that's signed with the participating parties. Which is a wildly open means of coordination amongst groups -- which is also why blockchains look a lot like currency at outset, because currencies have been the tool for eons to coordinate human efforts.
But looking at it closer, a lot of the world runs on IFFT logic, which seems ripe for smart contracts - the only issue is the interoperability between traditional world and blockchain world to become like Daniel Suarez's Dameon.
Domestic Tx are fast and cheap because all parties involved have agreements and the same laws etc. etc. Cheating between local banks is rather useless because there is some kind of overload (the sate/a judge) that can order stuff to be reversed.
Blockchains are for when no such trust/power based system is in place.
So if you send USD to Mexico for example. You exchange USD to crypto send crypto to Mexico and sell it there to get MXN. The crypto transaction is final there is no reversing, it can not be unfunded, frozen or anything. The receiver doesn't need any kind of trust relationship to the sender. Its either transacted or not and both sides can independently verify that. Its not just a real time transaction its also a instant settlement (clearing). Other way to make settlement is if you move physical cash or gold but there goes the "instant" part.
People keep saying this like it’s a good thing. It’s dreadful.
> Blockchains are for when no such trust/power based system is in place.
And exactly what situation are you transacting with somebody you do not trust and you cannot find a mutually acceptable intermediary? If no such situation exists you probably should not be transacting. You are exposed to too much counterparty risk.
Do you have a concrete example of a time that this has been a problem for you? Because I can’t think of a single one.
Ethereum is another one to look more into. Smart contracts are doing things that no classical solution has ever done. Have you done a deep dive on how the technology of Bitcoin or Ethereum actually work?
FWIW, I think plenty of the altcoin tokens are garbage, but some of the top players, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are doing things that classical solutions simply do not allow today.
How does Bitcoin solve inequality?
How does Bitcoin solve world hunger?
How does Bitcoin solve disease?
Bitcoin — and cryptocurrencies more broadly — do none of those things, with only one notable exception. Bitcoin — being a global currency of fixed supply — stands to usher in a global deflationary economic system. Investors in a deflationary environment have little incentive to invest in the future, and consumers have little incentive to spend. These two things could grind the caustic consumerism destroying our planet’s natural ecosystems to a halt. However, there’s room for interpretation even here; many humans would likely not trade off their own survivability for that of the planet’s natural ecosystems.
All of the hullaballoo about “Defi” and Ethereum only amounts to a Wall Street reskin, i.e. better high brow gambling. This does nothing for humanity either. Very innovative (!), lots of money being made, nicely exascerbating inequality of course. But achieves nothing.
(The S&P is actually down since 1970 as measured in gold [1]. Wall St is a carnival, and defi is just that carnival, squared.)
[1]: https://www.longtermtrends.net/stocks-vs-gold-comparison/
Controversial opinion — but I'm of the mind that the world is about to experience massive inflation due to the horrifying Covid response of massively expanding the money supply, so we might be able to see even more of a need worldwide.
It hurts man. Market cap is not how much money is stored.
Have a read https://coil.com/p/XRPFax/Understanding-the-Crypto-Market-Ca...