webmonetization VS aperture

From https://webmonetization.org/ :

> Web Monetization provides an open, native, efficient, and automatic way to compensate creators, pay for content, and support crucial web infrastructure.

> Why Now?: Until recently, there hasn't been an open, neutral and cost-efficient protocol for transferring money. Interledger provides a simple, interoperable, and currency-agnostic method for the transfer of small amounts of money.

> Web Monetization is being proposed as a W3C standard at the Web Platform Incubator Community Group.

W3C Interledger Protocol works with any type of ledger.

From "Anatomy of an ACH transaction" (2023)

Coil tried to do that for a couple of years.

https://www.coil.com/

There's even a micro payments api in the works.

https://webmonetization.org/

W3C Web Monetization: https://webmonetization.org/ :

> The Web Monetization API allows websites to automatically and passively receive payments from Web Monetization-enabled visitors.

From https://interledger.org/faq/ :

> Web Monetization is being proposed as a W3C standard. Using the Interledger Protocol, the Web Monetization proposed standard aims to make it easier for web creators to generate income from their work without relying on advertising, site-by-site subscriptions or tracking models.

Interledger was contributed to W3C and has undergone significant major revision. FWIU, W3C Interledger Protocol is a W3C spec but by producing IETF-style numbered RFCs, their process differs slightyl from the W3C WG Working Group model (with a page, a mailing list; and one or more git Repositories with Issues: github,com/orgname, github,com/orgname/readme, github,com/orgname/orgname.github.io ).

It's been a couple years since Dev.to hosted the Grant for the Web hackathon, a month-long sprint to develop innovative projects with Web Monetization. Web Monetization is a proposed JavaScript API that allows browsers to create payment streams directly to websites, allowing for micropayments and unlocking exclusive content on a pay-per-use basis. It's still being incubated at the Web Incubator Community Group, but it's an active project and an exciting technology.

To support the open content creators there could be a sister site where authors can post or list the link to their openly-licensed content listed with donations or web monetization to give to Wiki. I put an offer on the Reward board in line with Safe Harbor#2_important_topics) paid-article policies. The upcoming grants of the 2030 Movement Strategy go toward sustainability, accessibility, and bridging content gaps. There are risks in introducing monetization. I see it as worthwhile to experiment with as there might be extensive potential benefits. What are your thoughts?

Web monetization - People can help creators by just reading their content.

To enable more developers to build open, transparent, and impactful payment systems for the world, opportunities for rapid prototyping and an enabling environment for rapid prototyping are key. That is why Coil will be a many Hackathons this year. In partnership with Major League Hacking (MLH), Coil will support developers to brainstorm and build payment solutions that connect existing and future rails so that no one is left behind, regardless of their location. Developers participating at 30+ MLH Weekend Hackathons will have an opportunity to build with Interledger, Rafiki, and Web Monetization. They will also get mentorship from developers at Coil, Interledger, and the broader Interledger, Web Monetization, and Grant for the Web communities.

Check https://webmonetization.org that's actually a perfectly fine solution. You like something and want to support people who work hard to make it? Why not pay them? Doesn't sound crazy to me.

It's valuable to examine the challenges in machine learning without assuming decentralization as a solution:

> High Cost and Resource Requirements

For training and local inferencing use, quantization may help. Problem becomes local via quantization vs. remote full tensor use. Solution may involve distributed inferencing. Techniques like model distillation can help create smaller, more efficient models for inferencing.

> Data Privacy

For training, some private datasets may be needed. For local inferencing use, determining what needs to be inferenced locally vs. what needs to be run remotely may be useful. Problem becomes privacy scope mapped onto a marketplace to mitigate high cost and resource requirements. Techniques like model explainability (versioning) and robustness testing can help build trust in AI systems.

Complying with data privacy regulations and ensuring that AI systems adhere to legal and ethical standards can be a challenge, especially in international contexts.

> Incentives

Instead of assuming the solution when considering the problem, we assume there is an incentive to either simply train a model or use one. Problem becomes financial rewards, data access agreements, or even altruistic motivations.

> Stale Data and Reproducibility

Both the code and datasets for training the model need to be updated. Inferencing needs RAG, so the augmented reference data needs to be updated as well. Anything updated might need some type of revision control, especially if that data (or code) results in poor output. Labeling data and knowledge transfer are another problems that needs revision control.

> Interoperability

We can assume a marketplace for a ML train/inference platform is needed. We have HuggingFace, for example. The problem here is likely based on the tendency for datasets to be private, such as in the case of Llama 2. Models contain the "essence" of the dataset, but we still need RAG to ground the responses.

There does exist one technology that may assist in solving most of these issues without assuming full decentralization, and that is the Lightning Network combined with the yet to be implemented 402 response code: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

You are right, it's not a strawman argument. It's an ad hominem argument. I get them confused.

While this guy may be shady as they come, and I'm not a big fan personally, the idea of combining Lightning and 402 responses is very interesting, and one I've been thinking about since Joseph and Tadge wrote the Lightning paper.

There is a means to do this today: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

Consider that these entities may become self-managing at some point in the near future. If they need to pay for calls to other models, crypto-payments can be useful because they include identity and payment in one function.

As far as the vendors go, I would agree that some of them don't care about the ethical considerations and they remain focused on grabbing marketshare. That said, it's likely there we be a multitude of models running and trying to get them all talking to each other and paying for the compute required for inferencing is going to be a pain.

While it is true that there have been scams and fraudulent activities in the cryptocurrency space, it is unfair to label all blockchains as scams. Many blockchain projects have legitimate use cases and are backed by reputable organizations.

The Lightning Network is not a cryptocurrency itself but rather a layer-two scaling solution built on top of existing blockchain networks, most notably Bitcoin. It is designed to facilitate faster and cheaper transactions by creating off-chain payment channels between participants, which has risk limited to the initial payment and subsequent updates to the contract. These payment channels allow for quicker and more cost-effective transactions, while the final settlement is recorded on the underlying blockchain.

In the case of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin is the underlying cryptocurrency used for value transfer and security, while the Lightning Network enables faster and more scalable transactions by leveraging the trustless nature of the blockchain.

https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

I’m not sure if lsat.tech is having issues, looks like the protocol was recently renamed L402:

Crypto is useful. A very long time ago there was a conversation about killer use cases. People on the ethereum side of the room thought programmable chains were it. People on the Bitcoin side said it was micropayments and script based post dating.

I said that it was likely paying for compute resources that would be a killer use case. Implementing 402s would be that manifest: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

Now we’re moving deep into the AI markets, this will be a thing, combining both.

That said, con artists will still try to hustle others.

> what's stopping anyone from bridging a non-CN/RU Intranet to CN/RU-Intranet.

If someone were considering this, here's a means to do it with 402s: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

Check out LNURL-auth or perhaps LSATs

https://lsat.tech/ with this authentication specification you can gate your content with lightning payments