Decentralized Funding
The concept of having restricted or premium content has been an integral part of the internet ecosystem with people increasingly happy to pay for personalized content. Making money from display ads is in decline. There are a number of centralized ways to support content creators, with Patreon, Onlyfans and Kofi to name a few.
With distributed ledger technologies DLT’s and the accessibility of immutable record keeping, informal transactions between people can now be handled onchain using the Unlock Protocol
Unlock Protocol Integrations
It is possible to lock down certain pages or posts on a site, this does require MetaMask or other support wallet and to create the lock, visit app.unlock-protocol.com/dashboard
From here I had to connect metaMask to xDai as the price of gas was coming in at nearly $200. Adding it to the xDai chain cost a fraction of a penny.
Create Locks
Once a wallet is attached to the Unlock application then it can be used to generate a lock, this allows to set how long an unlock is valid for, what network it will be using, with it being possible to create locks on the xDai network without incurring large fee’s. Once connected using the xDai network locks can be created.
Unlock Protocol
Unlock have a great use case for Web3 technologies that has the potential to replace centralized paywalls and connect users to creators in a decentralized way. They currently have an active community and with the convergence with Web3 browser integrations a decentralized future appears on the horizon.
As a proof of concept this site can now be supported via Unlock, on the support cryptopticon page there is a Support Cryptopticon button which would grant access to the second image in the art gallery: Panotpticon Two
