Turn down the world tonight piano2/20/2023 ![]() ![]() The latest company to attempt a crypto-based subscription model is the news and research site The Block, which encourages loyal readers to buy and stake tokens in exchange for full access to its content. The service is free for publishers, who get paid a rate of 36 cents per hour for every user on their sites-a tiny sum, to be sure, but one that would becomes significant if multiplied by thousands or millions of users. A company called Coil received $250 million from the crypto company Ripple to expand a service that lets readers pay $5 month to “stream” content from various websites. ![]() ![]() Specifically, controversial publishers like pornographers or radical political sites would be less at the mercy of payment providers like Stripe or Visa cutting them off. ![]() He adds that, along with convenience, the permissionless nature of NFT ownership reduces the potential for censorship. In the future, Genestoux believes, web users will use NFTs to access bundles of content tailored to their interests-perhaps one that lets them read dozens of sports or entertainment sites. The publishers, meanwhile, can divvy up the revenue from NFT sales and resales by means of a smart contract or an offline arrangement. Unlike a traditional website subscription, the membership can be transferred or sold. Unlock’s model relies on blockchain smart contracts to verify whether an NFT owner is in good standing and, if so, to grant them access to the participating publishers’ websites. The site uses non-fungible tokens-unique digital tokens registered to a blockchain-as a way for readers to access content on different websites without the fuss of repeated credit card signups. Genestoux has been hard at work trying to redeem this original sin with a service called Unlock. The existence of the 402 error page reveals that the web was supposed to have a native payment mechanism-one that let users pay for content without disclosing much in the way of personal information-but that for whatever reason it never got deployed. This is reflected in the existence of a browser error message describing a 402 error, which is analogous to the ubiquitous 404 error (“page not found”) but reads “payment not found.” But unlike the 404 error, the 402 message is still “reserved for future use.” He points out that the original designers of the web did envision a native payment tool. “It was awakening to realize membership could have been the business model of the web the whole time,” says Genestoux, adding that the failure to build in a payment model was “the original sin of the web.” Julien Genestoux, a software engineer and self-described “fan of the open web,” worked at the popular blogging platform Medium in 2017 when it launched a paywall that allowed users to become “members” and access a variety of content by different authors. The difference today is that technology has taken a giant leap forward, offering new tools-based around blockchains-that could make the web feel like the open, freewheeling place it used to be while also letting publishers make a living. The mixed blessing of paywalls has been debated since at least 2007 when the New York Times deployed and then scrapped its earliest version, TimesSelect. ![]()
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