Grant for the Web is proud to announce a quarter-million dollars in funding to our first five awardees – curated projects and individuals that demonstrate the breadth of experimentation in the expanding Web Monetization ecosystem. One of those first awardees is DEV!
In this grant, DEV partners to help to drive innovation around open standards in Web Monetization. DEV’s platform boasts 350k+ registered developers and millions of monthly visitors and they will not only implement a site-wide payment pointer as a real-life application of the technology, but they will also introduce functionality enabling authors to add their own payment pointer to their own posts.
DEV will serve as a key promotional partner and community resource by amplifying Grant for the Web’s first public Call for Proposals, encouraging developers to learn about the technology through the #gftwhackathon (including offering cash prizes for the best entries), and driving high-quality submissions towards Grant for the Web’s open call.
Peter Frank, co-CEO of DEV says about the grant:
DEV has long espoused the values of a more inclusive, open, and fair
internet. DEV Founder, Ben Halpern, published an article over two years
ago titled “How dev.to could topple Facebook” describing the power of
open-source and aligned incentives with the community. The Web
Monetization standard and the Interledger protocol have the potential to
be an important part of a broad macro shift on the web.
Without a vibrant, diverse, and engaged developer community, the mission of Grant for the Web cannot be achieved. Innovative ideas need conversation and connectivity to thrive. That is why we are excited that DEV – because they know that the open web relies on collaboration and networked learning and are bringing that energy to Grant for the Web.
With this grant, DEV will:
- Run a DEV x Grant for the Web community hackathon
- Implement a payment pointer on DEV.to to serve as a key open-source example of the technology
- Enable DEV authors to add their own payment pointer
- Drive quality submissions to Grant for the Web's public Call for Proposals
Top comments (4)
Chris! It's been wonderful working with the Grant For The Web team -- we've see some tremendous projects come through, and are excited to share that we've implemented the first part of our payment pointer plan:
What type of PR is this? (check all applicable)
Description
This is the first step in implementing web monetization.
Web monetization is a protocol which allows websites to accept micro-payments to any page with the payment pointer meta tag. It's not yet standard, but through Grant for the Web, there will be lots of experimentation with this and we're getting involved ourselves.
For anyone that does not have a payment-enabled browser (or browser extension for now), this is just a meta tag that doesn't do anything at all. For anyone that does have payments activated, they'll start streaming tiny amounts of payment into our wallet.
This is the first step just to experiment for the site, but if it's all technically straightforward, we'll soon be adding the ability for authors to plop their payment pointers onto their content to get paid directly with no intervention from us.
This is all lightweight experimentation from us. As you can see from the size of this PR, it's not a huge technical commitment on our part, but if the ecosystem takes off, it will be fun to see what we might do. We'll definitely be following projects like this.
For other live communities looking to implement payment pointer wallets, it's pretty complicated to get going at the moment, so we'd advise to not bother as of yet because earnings will be fairly minuscule early on. The process will be much more straightforward if/when the ecosystem matures and you won't miss out on much while we experiment. Get in touch with us if you're curious about how you might leverage this on your platform in the future.
Boom! Nice!
We're so honored to be an early Grant for the Web recipient. It's been wonderful working together so far in raising awareness about Web Monetization, and we look forward to seeing the ecosystem continue to evolve in the coming months and years.
Does this mean we'll get to have things like coil.com/ style tips on the site? That would be super HUGE!