Agreed. Brave actually implemented this exact thing[1], and then got dumped together with other crypto scam projects, which continues to happen in this very thread.

Crypto haters are quick to shout that cryptocurrencies have no practical use, and introduce many problems, but this is a perfect use case for them. The negative discussion has detracted from some truly disrupting technologies being adopted, which is a damn shame.

Brave Inc. has made some missteps, sure, but I don't think they're overall an evil or scam company. A solution like BAT can eventually move us away from the current ad-infested web where advertising leeches serve as sleazy middlemen between users and companies, and scams and fake content flood the web in order to trick SEO and get easy ad revenue. The modern web is a minefield corrupted by advertising, and things will only get worse as AI generated content gets widespread adoption.

If browsers integrated with a decentralized wallet, that can either be filled by watching privacy-preserving ads OR by manually adding credit to them, had Humble Bundle-like sliders for users to control how much of their credit is allocated for each site, and the web had standardized APIs for websites to set their minimum price, then it would solve the monetization issue once and for all. The basic customer-business relationship would be preserved, where customers actually pay for the services they use, instead of the corrupt business models of today where web users are not even the customers, but a piece of rock gold can be mined from, and its value milked in perpetuity.

I think the single largest reason this hasn't happened yet is because it would negatively impact the profits of adtech giants who are running the web, and have a strong sway in directing its future. If any solution has a chance in getting mass adoption it needs to happen outside of the web, and be built from the ground up by avoiding the mistakes we now know have lead us to where we currently are.

[1]: https://basicattentiontoken.org/

>> Crypto haters are quick to shout that cryptocurrencies have no practical use, and introduce many problems, but this is a perfect use case for them. The negative discussion has detracted from some truly disrupting technologies being adopted, which is a damn shame.

Crypto haters & "negative discussion" have not detracted from this use case anywhere near as much as the very real fraud and rampant speculation that completely defined this technology for the general public over the last 10 years.

Exactly the point I was hoping to read. Well said.

Rampant fraud and scams are what's at the root of the "negative discussion".

Flattr tried to do something similar, but yes I agree. It's unfortunate that bitcoin became a hoarding/speculation thing, rather than a useful thing.

Decentralized micro-transactions would have been cool had they been used with a decent friendly UI and been integrated into a browser or two as an extension.

> It's unfortunate that bitcoin became a hoarding/speculation thing

It's a natural consequence of its deflationary design, which encourages hoarding. Use as a currency would have benefitted from an alternate pure linear emission, with no reward halvings, where it would take 100 years to get supply inflation down to 1%. That would also leave later generations their fair share of supply.

My understanding (possibly mistaken - I've only been casually watching from the sidelines) is bitcoin (and at least most other blockchain currencies) suffers a similar problem to credit/debit cards, in that there is effort involved in validating/recording the transaction and that work needs to be compensated, and therefore there are transaction fees that are effectively independent of the value transferred, therefore microtransactions are disproportionately penalized by this necessity.

Especially with KYC/AML laws being necessary to run a legitimate financial exchange, there really is no getting around a certain cost-per-transaction and even in a best-case scenario that hits microtransactions "equally" as hard as "macrotransactions" which proportionally penalizes microtransactions.

To minimize the proportion of that going to transaction fees, you're better off making fewer transactions which then manifests as something like a monthly subscription instead of "I'll just transact ten cents to you per action".

The Lightning Network is a layer on top of Bitcoin, which allows users to aggregate a huge number of transactions into a payment channel that’s tracked off-ledger. The only transactions that need to be settled on the base layer (broadcast to the public Bitcoin blockchain) are channel open and close events.

There are already APIs protected by an L402 paywall that charges tiny fractions of a cent for access to protected resources.

http://l402.tech

>It's unfortunate that bitcoin became a hoarding/speculation thing, rather than a useful thing.

Brave tried to do this with their Basic Attention Token, but they seem to be focused on adding generalized crypto features like wallets rather than developing how it could work better.

> Decentralized micro-transactions would have been cool had they been used with a decent friendly UI and been integrated into a browser or two as an extension.

My position on cryptocurrency as well. I think that the ability to send money in this decentralized manner is fascinating. It's too bad it went far, far beyond that. Cryptocurrency should have never tried to replace normal currency, or any of that NFT bs.

Blockchain isn't really the solution there, though.

I don't want a public ledger with all my payments, which tells not only what I consume, but also how much I am able/willing to spend.

And as soon as you are in massmarket you need ways for humans to intervene, for handling complaints, mistakes, whatever or dealing with the unavoidable case that individuals lose their secret keys. Or even cases like medical restriction or inheritance requiring others to take over the funds.

All those things Blockchain purposely and inherently prevents.

You can just send a transaction from your exchange.

Like, let's say I want to send you $0.10 right now. I would just go into Robinhood and send 0.1 USDC to you on Polygon or Solana, that would arrive in your wallet instantly from a Robinhood-owned address, you would have no idea who I am or my previous transaction history. Robinhood also owns the private keys and account recovery process here - it's just using blockchain as the payment rail.

Go ahead and post your address and I'll send you $0.10.

Okay, so the solution is to use a bank, not Blockchain money.

But you can't send $0.01 instantly and anonymously with bank rails. The solution is to use a crypto exchange on crypto rails - just not a regular crypto wallet (you could, but perhaps not very user friendly)

Isn't that just turning the exchanges into unregulated banks?

Many exchanges are regulated, but maybe not as banks. But yes you're trusting that exchange with your money. If used for web-micropayments it shouldn't be much of an issue though.

That's how Brave already works.