x402 - An open protocol for internet-native payments

[Requiem for a Ween]

I actually wondered previously why something like this hasn't been introduced yet and figured there was a good reason. Whilst on the surface it seems like a very simple and useful feature for paid services to charge for access and users to pay, but it's likely just another vector for abuse. I remember idiots who misunderstood net neutrality discussing it in terms of variable site tariffs and thought it sounded moronic, but this could very well challenge me on that.

In general I refuse on principal to pay for anything unless I'm getting a physical product, an exceptional service or supporting something I believe needs my support to exist. I don't know where this would leave me if it became widespread.

Complain - no. Care - yes. And I do believe many others will. Putting aside the issue of making something that used to be free paid, can you imagine how mentally taxing it would be to know that you are on a counter? Like, every single click is now accounted. Even if the price is insignificant, the constant feeling "I'm loosing my fucking money with every hyperlink" would turn off many people, prompting them to lessen their participation, or ceasing it completly. Even Zuckerberg and Adobe didn't went this far yet.

Just reminds me of pay per minute dial up and switching to offline mode to see if you could revisit a previous page without being charged. More hoops to jump through and the costs stack up much faster than you think even if it sounds insignificant. Unless you were familiar with the site you'd also have no way of knowing ahead of time if what you were paying for was worth it. I think it would drive me insane getting duped into paying for shit I would have sooner paid not to have wasted my time looking at.

 

[crunk connoisseur]

I don't see anything that says you are required to use it on every single page, or use it for micropayments.

Maybe I'm naive/uninformed (because I read the thread but didn't look into it too closely), but if this is an API, and one that could possibly be used in tandem with a browser addon (and possibly browsers like Brave in future), Null could just set up an endpoint like "/donate/<amount>", which could automatically subtract the balance and possibly set up the T&H badge / Kiwi Premium™ automatically with a single click to a link.

 

[neger psykolog]

I don't see anything that says you are required to use it on every single page, or use it for micropayments.

Maybe I'm naive/uninformed (because I read the thread but didn't look into it too closely), but if this is an API, and one that could possibly be used in tandem with a browser addon (and possibly browsers like Brave in future), Null could just set up an endpoint like "/donate/<amount>", which could automatically subtract the balance and possibly set up the T&H badge / Kiwi Premium™ automatically with a single click to a link.

I think that's a mindset people have about it, thinking it will be everywhere. It could of course pick up traction and end up everywhere or it could be sparingly used.

Remember all the great blogs and shit from years ago? Or even newspapers that actually have interesting articles? They can give you the preview and you click and pay 20 cents to read more.

It's like Valve's approach to software piracy - just make your paid service easier than piracy. Or course there are cheap asses out there but I would rather pay 20 cents or even 1 dollar than copy paste a link to some article trying to get around a paywall for 10 minutes and would also be happy to support the author.

 

[BigGuyOS 6 : Jovial Janny]

I think that's a mindset people have about it, thinking it will be everywhere. It could of course pick up traction and end up everywhere or it could be sparingly used.

Remember all the great blogs and shit from years ago? Or even newspapers that actually have interesting articles? They can give you the preview and you click and pay 20 cents to read more.

It's like Valve's approach to software piracy - just make your paid service easier than piracy. Or course there are cheap asses out there but I would rather pay 20 cents or even 1 dollar than copy paste a link to some article trying to get around a paywall for 10 minutes and would also be happy to support the author.

If this was implemented, it would basically nuke all paid content from Google search. Remember that even a one cent link tax in Canada/Australia killed all of their news.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Would not fly in my parts legally

 

[Harvey Danger]

Remember all the great blogs and shit from years ago? Or even newspapers that actually have interesting articles? They can give you the preview and you click and pay 20 cents to read more.

That's probably the best use case for it. Nerds like me with crypto wallets in their browser already wouldn't mind paying 5-10 cents for some articles. But I would never willingly sign up to a place like the NYT, give them my info, let them build a marketing profile around which articles I read, etc.

This gets back to the content creator incentives, though. The big players have highly paid marketing assholes telling them they need to juice engagement, brand loyalty, make "sticky" user systems, etc. They also want to harvest your data and track what you do, for analytics that drive every decision they make. Then they use that data to sell ads, on top of selling the data itself.

Those types aren't going to give up all that data and penny pinching per user, even if it's easy to set up. They'd only do it if they thought adding crypto options would bring in more users than the money they lost on data/analytics. But even Josh can't get more than a tiny percentage of his deplatformed, gray web weirdo autists to adopt crypto.

I can see this getting used at places like Substack, where the authors are more directly involved than corporate journos. They're also making articles people might consume piecemeal. Not sure if they have the same reliance on recurring payments though.

 

[neger psykolog]

This gets back to the content creator incentives, though. The big players have highly paid marketing assholes telling them they need to juice engagement, brand loyalty, make "sticky" user systems, etc. They also want to harvest your data and track what you do, for analytics that drive every decision they make. Then they use that data to sell ads, on top of selling the data itself.

Imagine for a moment my friend, a world without Mr. Beast soyface...

 

[Harvey Danger]

Imagine for a moment my friend, a world without Mr. Beast soyface...

I already have that, it's called "never clicking the YouTube home page".

However I'm talking about the old school web sites with articles and news. The primary source of content for others to comment on, do outrage videos, quote in blog posts, etc. CNN, NYT, WaPo, and the second tier big sites like Breitbart, Axios, HuffPo, Polygon DEAD LMAO, and so on. They were all doing analytics, data harvesting, and algorithmic recommendations before places like YouTube did it bigger and better. They were the first to put up paywalls, but they never stopped the harvesting.

I like this x402 idea a lot, but it can't simply replace paywalls. The people who rely on paywalls have other mechanisms for revenue in place that work alongside the payment metadata. The benefits x402 would provide--anonymity, completely disassociated microtransactions--weaken those other plans. You'd need it for a "pure" business model, like the automated/API/agent thing it seems to be targeting, or a more simplified, transactional content platform, like Patreon or OnlyFans.

 

[neger psykolog]

I like this x402 idea a lot, but it can't simply replace paywalls. The people who rely on paywalls have other mechanisms for revenue in place that work alongside the payment metadata. The benefits x402 would provide--anonymity, completely disassociated microtransactions--weaken those other plans. You'd need it for a "pure" business model, like the automated/API/agent thing it seems to be targeting, or a more simplified, transactional content platform, like Patreon or OnlyFans.

I mean it can actually replace paywalls, and what is more it can even replace entire subscriptions so you don't even need an actual account with an email/password. You could sign in with your wallet and agree to pay $3 a month or whatever.
What is more is when the feature is omnipresent then the NYT asking for $30 a month or whatever bullshit will literally get priced out of the market. It isn't feasible for many smaller websites to erect paywalls because they don't have a captive audience nor generate enough traffic organically.

 

[Harvey Danger]

You could sign in with your wallet and agree to pay $3 a month or whatever.

Can you actually do that? I haven't seen anything about it handling recurring payments yet. I think someone suggested doing it with a smart contract, which is fine, but then you're diving into a more complex setup anyway so you don't get the simplicity of x402.

 

[unleashthefreak]

Very optimistic. Anticipating serving to every crawler or annoying country a $1.000 bill per page.

 

[neger psykolog]

Can you actually do that? I haven't seen anything about it handling recurring payments yet. I think someone suggested doing it with a smart contract, which is fine, but then you're diving into a more complex setup anyway so you don't get the simplicity of x402.

Yes it would be trivial to do something like it. And instead of having 50,000 faggot accounts spread across all your email addresses with different passwords it would all be contained within a single wallet (or abstracted ones, depending on your level of privacy/paranoia)
It wouldn't move away from the simplicity of x402 that much either.

It will happen. Maybe not straight away, but it will be a part of things.

 

[BigGuyOS 6 : Jovial Janny]

This entire thing reminds me of that one doge guy who had a Patron with a $10,000 tier with nothing on it.
He knew Journalists would end up paying him $10,000 for nothing because they can't believe someone would volunteer to serve their nation and do something without a profit motive.

 

[Colon capital V]

So from what I understand, this is all currently crypto only correct? How do you get the normies/niggercattle to buy into this so that this proves viable? Could they enter their account numbers on the 402 page to get charged to access the content? Or will they have to deposit their cash into a crypto wallet for this to work at all? Because if it's the latter then this already loops back around to the problem that normies/niggercattle/97% of the existing population doesn't use crypto and would rather do things the old fasioned way of getting charged like they're used to everywhere else.

 

[Harvey Danger]

So from what I understand, this is all currently crypto only correct? How do you get the normies/niggercattle to buy into this so that this proves viable?

They really aren't targeting normies at all.



If someone like Null were to use it, he'd be a side effect, not the intention. Kind of like how he's developing the physical Billpay system to fund KF, which is intended for use on antiquated utility companies that don't have other payment processing setups.

 

[libRT]

That's probably the best use case for it. Nerds like me with crypto wallets in their browser already wouldn't mind paying 5-10 cents for some articles. But I would never willingly sign up to a place like the NYT, give them my info, let them build a marketing profile around which articles I read, etc.

I assume they'll know your wallet address from the transaction and that would be bought and sold by data brokers like everything else with KYC on top of it.

I would like the idea for smaller creators to be able to monetize stuff without a third-party but I'm just so fucking jaded at this point.

So from what I understand, this is all currently crypto only correct? How do you get the normies/niggercattle to buy into this so that this proves viable? Could they enter their account numbers on the 402 page to get charged to access the content? Or will they have to deposit their cash into a crypto wallet for this to work at all? Because if it's the latter then this already loops back around to the problem that normies/niggercattle/97% of the existing population doesn't use crypto and would rather do things the old fasioned way of getting charged like they're used to everywhere else.

I assume banks would set up crypto accounts for people, and then you have a card with a QR code/NFC to use for transactions.

 

[neger psykolog]

So from what I understand, this is all currently crypto only correct? How do you get the normies/niggercattle to buy into this so that this proves viable? Could they enter their account numbers on the 402 page to get charged to access the content? Or will they have to deposit their cash into a crypto wallet for this to work at all? Because if it's the latter then this already loops back around to the problem that normies/niggercattle/97% of the existing population doesn't use crypto and would rather do things the old fasioned way of getting charged like they're used to everywhere else.

Think of it like Apple and Google gift cards/vouchers. They weren't here one day and then the next there's a giant section of the supermarket with roblox gift cards and all sorts of shit as well as prepaid mobile stuff.
It's more than probably that gift cards/vouchers will die off in terms of being specific to stores and crypto wallets in browsers and on phones will be like the CashApp of the later 2020s. Also think about PayPal and shit and how many people hate it and how many other premium online services there are.

It happens slowly and then very, very suddenly. And people will say online stores won't want to do this and that is partly true until you realize they get to get customer money without dealing with fraud and bullshit (there will still be fraud but it won't work like it does now). And these crypto wallets in browsers and on phones are already kind of here, but for this purpose they won't be used to stash millions of dollars but be used for smaller amounts like a few hundred bucks.

edit: also think about NFC payments using your phone or bank card. Shops hate that shit because Visa and Mastercard gobble up a few percent and there's all sorts of insurance and fraud bullshit the shops have to deal with. China already uses WeChat or WePay or whatever and I think that also removed the Visa/Mastercard bullshit already.

 

[Too Many Catgirls]

Imagine a future where crypto is the default to pay for *anything*.

Fuck this, I'll just read a book.

 

[neger psykolog]

Fuck this, I'll just read a book.

Might I suggest this book from 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are (in part) descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.

 

[Moonson]

Interesting stuff. It could probably do some good for everybody. Without a revenue stream most websites would disappear and the current generally applicable method of generating revenue, ads, kinda suck. I think most people would rather pay a tiny sum to use a site instead of paying with their attention and time. If ad blockers become too mainstream (which they should because ads datamine you and why the fuck not when ads are as overused as they are) and there is not replacement like this then the internet could begin to shrink.

Spoiler: my primary concerns

1. Crypto is already so regulated that any normie will be datamined by the gov to a new extreme (and their info will probably be sold by KYC exchanges). This is not something that might happen - it WILL happen.

2. Will crypto in the future become so regulated that only the most devoted are able to browse the internet privately? It's clear the gov hates anonymous coins with how they've treated Monero. x402.org also claims "no fees" so this gives KYC exchanges incentive to lobby the government to enforce KYC exchanges so they can profit off that fiat to crypto fee. Call me schizo idc.

3. It's being worked on by Coinbase right? They're a bit of a shitty company imo. Makes me question the project a bit.

4. Is the transaction secure and convenient? If it's convenient that probably gives up some security, but if each transaction takes some effort then it's just annoying. I don't entirely understand how it requests the payment from the wallet.

5. Will this end up being worse than ads? A lot of people here have been discussing this. I'll add something brief and vague: I don't trust democratic consumerism to create a good market. At least with ads you can use an ad blocker circumvent the consequences the general populace brings upon the whole. That general populace is less aware of ad blockers but smarter consumers aren't so they don't have to carry the burden of idiots.