Will Flare finally enable micropayments adoption and or fix Coil?

[BillyOckham]

Perhaps this is a dumb idea (from someone knowing almost nothing about smart contracts).

Coil is stupidly using a fixed payment subscription model which is the reason they are failing to gain traction.

F-XRP brings the power of smart contracts to XRP.  I’m ignorant of smart contracts, but it seems there might be the possibility for a contract to stream micropayments of XRP (or F-XRP) to content creators or service providers via an account created for the recipient.

Anyone know if I’m barking up the wrong tree?

 

If that IS possible then finally micropayments might become a thing.  And ads a thing of the past.

Edited July 5, 2021 by BillyOckham

[brianwalden]

I don't think smart contracts are the real limiting factor here. I think the biggest factor is that crypto is still disconnected from the real economy. People need to be able to put into the system and take it out in their local fiat currency seamlessly and without fees.

[BillyOckham]

8 hours ago, brianwalden said:

I don't think smart contracts are the real limiting factor here. I think the biggest factor is that crypto is still disconnected from the real economy. People need to be able to put into the system and take it out in their local fiat currency seamlessly and without fees.

The limiting factor for Coil has been key control I think.  They couldn’t sign a transaction to initiate a new payment stream direct from someone’s XRPL account and they couldn’t do a pull request.  So they got you to give them a monthly payment, then they did the streaming for you.

So the lack of a smart contract that could initiate payments or it’s equivalent really WAS the underlying limiter I think.

The other factors like the one you mentioned were secondary hurdles I think.  I could be wrong.

It always seemed to me that they could have used the Ripple funding as a pool to front run the payment for you and then pull any due payments as Fiat (or crypto) from you later….  so you only pay for what you used, not a fixed monthly payment.   I’m certain that is better than their current moronic obsolete subscription model.  
 

I’m really pissed that these smart coders are so feckin business stupid and therefore screwing the opportunity.

So…  as I said at the start…  Flare might add the missing capability.  At least I hope so.  Unless I’m barking up the wrong tree.

 

 

[brianwalden]

I'll admit I haven't followed Coil closely. Was the lack of pull payments the main reason for the subscription model? I thought it was more to do with being able to support enough content creators to bootstrap the ecosystem. Philosophically speaking pull payments are oil to crypto's water - one of the problems crypto set out to solve was that only you have the keys to authorize expenditures of your money. Surely there are ways around pull payments, I've seen browsers with good wallet integration where it only takes a click to respond to a payment request. I would think you could use the equivalent of a bar tab to allow the user 10 page views (or whatever) before they have to settle up. In the same way, you can offer discounts to users who prepay for 10 or 100 pageviews.

Simple smart contacts that are similar to escrows are great - if condition X happens, release Y funds to party Z. But when those smart contracts are hosted on decentralized ledgers they tend to become slow and expensive. I'm curious to see how fast and how cheap Flare will actually be.

[Premiuum_Network]

If you don't mind me asking: what do you use Coil for?

[BillyOckham]

21 hours ago, brianwalden said:

Was the lack of pull payments the main reason for the subscription model? I thought it was more to do with being able to support enough content creators to bootstrap the ecosystem.

I believe so.  The original concept (as I understand it) for micropayments is a user pays system based on actual usage.  The payments being infinitesimal to the individual but significant to the content creator en mass.

But that fails because you can’t do a pull payment.  So Coil came up with their ridiculous monthly fixed fee idea.  Idiots.

So if Flare can support pull payments via a smart contract then the games afoot.

[BillyOckham]

18 hours ago, Premiuum_Network said:

If you don't mind me asking: what do you use Coil for?

I don’t use it.

[jargoman]

On 7/6/2021 at 3:54 PM, BillyOckham said:

I’m really pissed that these smart coders are so feckin business stupid and therefore screwing the opportunity.

This is a thing. People who are highly skilled coders with little to no business skills. Both have extremely steep learning curves. Both have long periods of time without reward.