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This is what Web3 is supposed to be. "Want to store some data? Just pay the market rate for data storage!" Of course they chose the most expensive and unwieldy data storage mechanism imaginable.

Inb4 "but X chain is so cheap!", all chains are cheap until they're popular. Make a chain that gets faster&cheaper to commit on as the amount of compute on it increases (as you would expect... pretty much any CS thing to work) and you've solved web3. Oh but then the asset is inherently inflationary and people care more about getting in on the next big hockey stick than sound financial instruments. So... there you have it.

The blockchains you are thinking of were never meant to be data storage layers. The proof-of-storage chains (at least, the ones that store "real" data) are much more reasonable, check out prices for storage on FileCoin.

The distinction here is that nodes publish proof that they have data stored on chain, rather than publishing the data itself on chain.

Yep, proof of storage is the only way forward as far as I'm concerned. At least of the currently available options. But they aren't great for representing a ledger. Some sort of hybrid is needed.

Back in the dot-com era (and maybe since), there were some startups in the micropayments space.

>If we had a magic wand, and there were no technical, business, or security constraints, what would the ideal micropayment system look like? A button on the web page that, when I press it, sends $0.25 from my bank account to the web site.

That sounds like exposing my bank account quite a bit too freely. The obvious approach is that you have an account with someone who collects the money and distributes it--and yes it would probably be prepaid.

In any case, if there were a demand the technical and UX problems can be overcome. The bigger issue, other than establishing the network, are getting people to actually pay per article--given that we've mostly moved to all you can eat subscriptions for other media--at an amount that would actually pay the bills. And in light of the fact that a lot of people don't want mental transaction costs to decide if reading an article is worth it every time they want to read something. (Which Clay Shirky brought up 20 years ago.)

As long as the reader needs 'an account' this will never take off. There should be some way to load money into my computer and then drag a quarter or half dollar coin onto an article that I want to read.

The only information that needs to transfer is the coin's value. There is absolutely no need for any account information to propagate off of my computer. But the current state of the internet basically guarantees that the most syphilitic tech whore lead is going to shout from the mountain tops who paid what to view which article and then carve it into stone which is subsequently dumped into a landfill.

> what would the ideal micropayment system look like? A button on the web page that, when I press it, sends $0.25 from my bank account to the web site.

Now imagine someone making that button 1x1px, same color as background, in the footer, and js clicking it regularly every seconds you spend on some random spam site.

Similar technology is actually already deployed in the real world. All you need is a phone number of a person browsing your website to automagically subscribe them into monthly mobile charges.

> I think the point is that nobody wants to make some account, then pre-load that account with money, and then wonder what the balance is, etc. etc. etc. Yuck!

Those free-to-play phone games seem to survive ok while making players pre-load a balance before they can buy their in-game advantage items with it.

> Those free-to-play phone games seem to survive ok while making players pre-load a balance before they can buy their in-game advantage items with it.

Those games largely depend on addicting people to intermittent rewards and harvesting a disproportionate amount of their revenue from relatively few 'whales'.

See Iota - the only zero fee crypto with realistic ambitions for supporting smart contracts.

Sounds like flattr.com would have worked for you.