The Interledger Community 🌱: Kendraio

Kendraio Report 2

Antonio Talarico — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 20:49:56 +0000

Project Update

At Kendraio, our goal is to develop, test and create a new way for web monetised content in the music industry. Our main goals are to:

1) allow streaming platforms to use web monetisation as a business model for fair, user-centric and transparent payments to their artists
2) to create a simplified end-to-end demonstration of a complete value chain from artist interface to DSP to universal player
3) to create a way to distribute and upload tracks in bulk that have the ability to be web monetised once ingested in the streaming environment.
4) To interface payment systems such as Uphold to create virtual cards (wallets) for specific royalty balances

Progress on objectives and key activities

In order to progress with our deliverables, we’ve built a web player within the Kendraio App as a workflow block. The web player has an OAuth2 verification and registration process that allows multiple DSPs (Digital Service Providers) to manage their tracks. At this point this only for Coil users, and only if there’s no Coil/ Web monetisation installed already. The web player enables the listener to find and play multiple tracks from artists streamed from multiple DSPs from within one interface. This required us to maintain role based permission for the various account types (i.e. listeners, artists, managers, DSPs). As of now, we’re using the Web Monetization API and we’re investigating the various implications. We’ve succeeded in switching between multiple payment pointers dynamically within one meta tag. Which, in and of it itself, is a great design pattern for the web monetisation community as a whole. One of the biggest limits before going into this project, seemed to be the inability to have multiple monetised creators (musicians in our case) within one webpage. There were only less than sub-optimal solutions for this, yet it seemed such a crucial point to the value proposition of web monetisation. We’ve managed to do so by dynamically adding and altering the payment pointer in a meta tag header when triggered by, for example, a play button. Additionally, we’ve created a functionality to start and stop payments that doesn’t require complicated event management in a program. The simple but powerful solution we found was to dynamically apply and remove the payment pointer when the music plays. This proved to be the most optimal way and seems to be working flawlessly when tested.
Regarding the distribution and ingestion feature, we have a working prototype that can ingest spreadsheets and convert large size files from DDEX format (the conventional format for music metadata in the industry) and we're still determining how best to add payment pointers at the distribution level. Furthermore, we’re researching ways to ingest (or potentially generate) payment pointers, so as to automate the link between tracks and payments. In this, we're partnering and collaborating with music streaming platform Resonate, which we're using as a proof of concept for real use cases.
Lastly, we’ve prototyped an integration to Uphold’s API using OAuth to allow Kendraio users to create cards (wallets), and list balances. This will allow users to be able to create Uphold virtual wallets in an automated way. Uphold allows users to deposit value into a specific card from an external source (ACH account, debit/credit card or wire transfer as well as Interledger Protocol deposits) or withdraw to an external source (ACH account or wire transfer). It will allows users to retrieve the details about a specific account, which also allows recipients of funds to transfer funds to a single store of value, regardless of how the value was originally sent. By querying the API, Kendraio App returns the details associated with the card ID provided. You can see more of it in the video below!

Communications and marketing

We initially announced our participation with Grant for the Web in November on all of our social media, namely Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This project was also the main headline on our end-of-the-year newsletter that got sent out to more than 1,500 people and took centre stage in our 2020 Recap. It has opened up some opportunities and potential partnerships. We have also been working in our open Slack community. In our original planning, we were aiming to have user stories by now, but since we have pivoted away from having several musicians trial the project, to fewer DSP partners, like Resonate, these will take another shape in the coming months.
Our main marketing activity (and where all the budget we have allocated will be spent) is to create “bounties”, small development challenges we will be organising and distributing on development platforms and social media. These will generate interest in the project and will also help us innovate. We have realised that bounties are a very rewarding, but at the same time very difficult and cumbersome. They often take a lot of work and effort but might not lead to much value or community engagement

What’s next?

In the pipeline, we have real-life use cases with DSPs such as Resonate. Within this process, we want to integrate the bounties we mentioned in the marketing section and hope to reach many more collaborators. We’re also planning to keep a close relationship with the team at Uphold and do additional development with them in our app. We have consolidated more partnership with Envoke and are in still in discussion to partner and work with Raidar and OMI.

What community support would benefit your project?

We would also love to connect with more people within the Grant for the Web community who are working on music industry projects. We’d love to share experiences and see if we can collaborate or share insights. As we exit the grant, we would like to keep in touch and possibly help and continue development and partnerships with new cohorts who fit our goals and development interests.

Relevant links/resources

You can take a look at all our documentation in our public drive here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d2D_JMbM1EpM52Ju8nEYmXkU4rYgejL0

Quadratic Funding - Kendraio FundOSS

Antonio Talarico — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 10:24:44 +0000

Have you guys ever experienced Quadratic Funding (QF) solutions? Quadratic Funding is a more democratic and scalable form of matching funding for public goods, i.e. any projects valuable to large groups of people and accessible to the general public. QF optimizes matching funds by prioritizing projects based on the number of people who contributed.

At Kendraio, we're experimenting with it, so throw between two and five dollars to Kendraio today and we'll end up receiving up to an extra $20 in matched funding! FundOSS is a new system for fundraising open source software that rewards projects based on the size of their community rather than the amounts they raise.

So the multiples on the matched funding are bigger for the smaller the amount donated. Hence $2 gives the greatest multiplier! You need to have a GitHub account to donate. But that's easy to get.

Head to https://fundoss.org/collective/kendraio and donate a few dollars! And then tell your friends, family, and loved ones!

$500 USD developer bounty!

Antonio Talarico — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 13:21:11 +0000

Who? Fullstack JavaScript developer
When? Anytime from now
What? Integrating the open-source music information encyclopedia MusicBrainz within Kendraio Player, a proof-of-concept for a multi-service player for music streaming using web monetisation technology.

We want to give $500 to whoever can create an interface where you can look up as well as upload information to MusicBrainz via Kendraio Player in Kendraio App. We want users to be able to use Kendraio Player to display and also upload information to and from MusicBrainz.

Kendraio App is a general framework for creating low-code applications. Kendraio App was originally created to service the creative/music industry to enable easy asset and rights management both locally and on third-party platforms. But what we've ended up creating is a generic data browser that plugs into remote APIs and enables highly configurable low-code interfaces to be built. As part of our project for Grant for the Web, we developed Kendraio Player, an end-to-end reimagining of the interactions between streaming services, artists and consumers and how we can monetise music on the web to create the healthier, more open and fair internet that Grant for the Web strives to see built. MusicBrainz is an open-source, community-led music encyclopedia.

If all tasks have been completed after the mutually agreed-upon time frame, you will receive a $500 reward! This bounty is proposal-based, so have a look and submit your proposal here:

Kendraio App MusicBrainz integration (bounty) #184

dahacouk posted on Apr 27, 2021

Our second bounty is to integrate the open-source music encyclopedia MusicBrainz into Kendraio App. Kendraio App is our low-code 'data browser' application. Within Kendraio App we've built Kendraio Player, a proof-of-concept for a multi-service music streaming player using web monetisation technology, funded by Grant for the Web towards their mission to create a healthier internet.

We want this integration to enable Kendraio App users to search and browse, and also upload information to MusicBrainz. To participate, we would like talented full-stack JavaScript developers to propose how they would integrate MusicBrainz with Kendraio App.

Timeframe: 2 weeks
Bounty: $500 USD (paid out via https://opencollective.com/kendraio -- so you need to have an account here to be paid)

We're rewarding the individual (or group) that carries out this bounty in a transparent, interoperable, and easy to use way.

See how our first bounty went at Kendraio Player Audiotarky integration. And see Radhy's writeup of his experience at Afterthought on integrating Audiotarky API into Kendraio App.

Deliverables

A proposal written out before work starts and agreed upon beforehand in our Google Drive.
Interfaces created in Kendraio App using Flows where a user can:
- Look up information about a particular MusicBrainz entity ("give me info about The Beatles")
- Browse MusicBrainz to find entities connected to a particular entity ("show me all releases by The Beatles")
- Search for entities matching a specific query ("show me all artists matching the query 'Beatles'").
Interfaces created in Kendraio App using Flows where a user (artist) can:
- Upload information about a specific music release to MusicBrainz via Kendraio App.

Technical details and source code

Kendraio App: https://github.com/kendraio/kendraio-app
MusicBrainz development resources: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development
MusicBrainz API: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_API
MusicBrainz GitHub: https://github.com/Borewit/musicbrainz-api

Evaluation

The bounty will be evaluated by the Kendraio Team and advisors.
Evaluation will be based on the completion of the task, as well as on how transparent, interoperable and easy to use it is.
The more you can commit to documenting and talking about your experience with Kendraio App the more excited we will be to work with you.

Requirements

Candidates should have some existing experience with JavaScript and web APIs. Must be willing to document and talk about their experience of working on the tasks in this bounty.

Process

Once a candidate has put themselves forward, our Kendraio developers will mentor them exclusively for 2 weeks (or more, by mutual agreement). If after the agreed-upon period tasks remain open, another candidate may be given the opportunity instead.

About Kendraio

Kendraio App is a general framework for creating low-code applications. Kendraio App was originally created to service the creative/music industry to enable easy asset and rights management both locally and on third-party platforms. But what we've ended up creating is a generic data browser that plugs into remote APIs and enables highly configurable low-code interfaces to be built. And we'll use this framework as the basis of this project. Please check out these links before accepting this mission: Kendraio App demo, Kendraio App on GitHub, Kendraio App documentation, Kendraio App website. As you create this project your feedback will influence the direction and capabilities of the Kendraio framework.

The Kendraio App lets users build interfaces from blocks. The blocks themselves are plumbed together with modern JavaScript, TypeScript, and are configured using JSON. We have various backend APIs, and proxy endpoints hosted using Vercel's serverless platform.

</div>
<div class="gh-btn-container"><a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/kendraio/kendraio-app/issues/184">View on GitHub</a></div>

You can also find more specifications, evaluation criteria and documentation in it.

Kendraio Pay Progress #1

Daniel Harris — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 17:12:05 +0000

At Kendraio, our goal is to develop, test and create a new way for web monetised content in the music industry. We previously published Kendraio Pay Progress #0.5. And here's the rapid progress we've made since then...

Project Update

Integrated with Coil's API to enable Interledger payments without the need for a browser extension.
Integrated Web Monetization in our Kendraio Player block.
Integrated Coil's OAuth user login process as part of the API.
Started developing a transaction tracking tool.
Started developing a DDEX (music industry standard) tool for uploading batches of songs to streaming service provider partners. A number of our partners are receiving repertoire from record labels and/or distributors in bulk DDEX form. Decoding the DDEX format requires an understanding of strict XML. We use Kendraio App to help us do this. Stay tuned.
Released of our first bounty program to integrate Audiotarky content into Kendraio Player.
Various podcasts, articles, and copious discussions with partners.

Progress on objectives

Web Monetization Flow block completed.
Completed Coil API integration.
New partnership with Audiotarky. Our first streaming service provider with Musicoin and Resonate hot on their tails!

Key activities

I think the other sections cover what we've been doing just fine but you may also want to take a look at The sound of payments - Kendraio Pay - Web Monetization Community.

Communications and marketing

We just launched the first of our developer bounties on our social media and also here on the Web Monetisation Community. If you know someone who would like to earn $500 USD by integrating the fair streaming service Audiotarky into Kendraio Player, forward them this link: https://github.com/kendraio/kendraio-app/issues/169.
There will be three more bounties coming up in the future, which we will share on the Kendraio community page, as well as in our public Slack, on our LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
We also just published a blog post about how to integrate Coil Web Monetization on mobile -- no browser extension needed, on Medium and here in the community. The post gives you a step-by-step guide on how you can use Coil's API to stream payments from Coil users without their browser needing to have the Coil extension installed, from the initial OAuth setup to payments flowing.

What’s next?

Integrate with Uphold API and investigate reading and displaying an artist's balance, and creating payment pointers automatically as part of the bulk song import process.
Create a transaction tracking tool.
Investigate reporting royalties directly to CMOs.
Create a tool to import, edit and export DDEX (music industry standard) files.
Investigate revenue splits using different methodologies including smart contracts.

What community support would benefit your project?

We're currently looking for artists to test our player, who have published music on Spotify and are registered with a CMO. If you fit these criteria or know someone who does, let us know!
We're also looking for developer feedback, specifically on DDEX, Kendraio Player, our Coil API integration, UI/UX...

Relevant links/resources

Kendraio Player: https://app.kendra.io/player/all
Kendraio Player demo video: https://youtu.be/T2yXWJKIgOQ
Public Google Drive folder: Kendraio Pay

$500 USD developer bounty!

Antonio Talarico — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 13:17:39 +0000

Who? Fullstack Javascript developer

When? Anytime from now

What? Integrating fair streaming platform Audiotarky within Kendraio Player, a proof-of-concept for a multi-service player for music streaming using web monetisation technology.

At Kendraio, we are kicking off the first of our four bounties as part of our Grant for the Web project, Kendraio Pay. Kendraio Pay is an end-to-end reimagining of the interactions between streaming services, artists and consumers and how we can monetise music on the web to create the healthier, more open and fair internet that Grant for the Web strives to see built. Our partners at Audiotarky, are building a "new music streaming platform, that puts privacy and fairness in front of algorithms and shareholders".

We want to give $500 to whoever can integrate Audiotarky's streaming platform into the Kendraio Player, within Kendraio App. You will be mentored by our Kendraio developers for around two weeks (or more, by mutual agreement), working on integrating the Audiotarky streaming platform within Kendraio Player, which is a component of Kendraio App. If all tasks have been completed after the mutually agreed-upon time frame, you will receive a $500 reward!

Learn more and get in touch via our GitHub

Kendraio Player Audiotarky integration (bounty) #169

dahacouk posted on Mar 04, 2021

We're kicking off our first of four bounty programmes in collaboration with Simon Metson from Audiotarky. Audiotarky is one of our partners in our project, Kendraio Pay, funded by Grant for the Web. Grant for the Web is founded on the belief that a healthy internet needs openness and opportunity. It's a fund by Coil, Mozilla and Creative Commons, supporting an open, fair, and inclusive standard for monetising content on the web. In this bounty, we're exploring how rights management and payments operate when working with multiple DSPs.

The bounty

Timeframe: 2 weeks
Bounty: $500 USD

For this bounty, we're rewarding the individual (or group) that carries out the tasks below, in a way that is transparent, interoperable, and easy to use.

We have an existing audio player that supports Web Monetization with Coil login - with or without a browser extension - but not yet with Audiotarky. Candidates should have some existing experience with Javascript and web API's. Once a candidate has put themselves forward, our Kendraio developers can work with them exclusively for 2 weeks (or more by mutual agreement). After the agreed period if tasks remain, another candidate may be given the opportunity instead.

Tasks

Enabling a user to retrieve artist and track metadata from Audiotarky's API using a Kendraio Flow.
Enabling a user to play Audiotarky tracks within Kendraio Player, alongside existing DSP1 tracks.
Bonus points for enabling an artist to import tracks to Audiotarky including payment pointers using Kendraio App.

We will be very flexible with any hiccups that may occur and we will hold your hand all the way. We don't like stress here at Kendraio. We just want to see people enjoying building with Kendraio App.

Technical details

We have a technical blog post that provides background and demonstrates a simple Flow using the Kendraio Player block with the "Web Money" block. The more advanced Kendraio Player uses GraphQL to load a track list and artist payment pointers from DSP1.

Source code

Audiotarky API

Audiotarky data is available through a simple API. Currently this is not "discoverable"; you need to know the artist stub ID to find their work. There will be a genre API ~soon.

Discover artists API: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/index.json
Discover albums API: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/albums/index.json
Artist details: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/chris-foster/index.json
Album details: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/chris-foster/hadelin/index.json
Track details: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/chris-foster/hadelin/the-seeds-of-love/index.json

Evaluation

The bounty will be evaluated by the Kendraio Team and advisors.
Evaluation will be based on the completion of the task, as well as on how transparent, interoperable and easy to use it is.
The more you can commit to documenting and talking about your experience with Kendraio App the more excited we will be to work with you.

Kendraio Player

Kendraio Player is a media player incorporating Coil's implementation of Web Monetization and funded by Grant for the Web. The player was built in Kendraio App. Kendraio App is a low-code dashboard creator that helps build interfaces using Flows that connect to APIs with minimal code needed. The App has an audio player block (Kendraio Player) that supports Web Monetization, using either Coil's browser extension or login API -- but it is not yet integrated with the Audiotarky streaming service.

The Kendraio App let's users build interfaces from blocks. The blocks themselves are plumbed together with modern Javascript, Typescript, and are configured using JSON. We have various backend APIs, and proxy endpoints hosted using Vercel's serverless platform.

Requirements

Candidates should have some existing experience with Javascript and web APIs. Must be willing to document and talk about their experience of working on the tasks in this bounty.

Process

Once a candidate has put themselves forward, our Kendraio developers will mentor them exclusively for 2 weeks (or more, by mutual agreement). If after the agreed upon period tasks remain open, another candidate may be given the opportunity instead.

Please check out these links before accepting this mission:

As you create this project your feedback will influence the direction and capabilities of the Kendraio framework.

View on GitHub

The sound of payments — Kendraio Pay

Antonio Talarico — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 17:16:45 +0000

Project overview

Kendraio has come a long way from its origins. To date we've been allocated a whopping 1.5 M EUR in grants from the European Union, UK, Google and most recently Grant for the Web. We have worked with CMO's (Teosto), streaming platforms (Resonate, Musicoin, Audiotarky) and have participated in accelerators (Wallifornia Music Tech) and hackathons (Next Stage Challenge). We're pioneers in interoperability, data privacy and people having control. We think people are better off when they have sovereignty over their digital information and interfaces rather than at the mercy of closed silos.

Project team

As of now, the team consists of 5 members. Daniel, the founder and chief architect. Darren, the lead developer. Luke, full stack developer focusing on web monetisation. Antonio, partnership and outreach manager and Lena, doing marketing and communication. For Grant for the Web we've partnered with streaming platforms Resonate, Musicoin and Audiotarky, with which we're building ad hoc solutions for musicians to have alternative revenue streams that are direct-to-fan and user centric. If you also work in the music industry, please feel free to get in touch with us.

What we are doing

Here's a short video of our prototype:

What community support would benefit your project?

We've created a bounty program inviting developers to work with us to work with us on solutions we're prototyping. Sign up and join us in developing the future of monetisation in music. If you want to contribute, see here.

Kendraio Player Audiotarky integration (bounty) #169

dahacouk posted on Mar 04, 2021

The bounty

Timeframe: 2 weeks
Bounty: $500 USD

For this bounty, we're rewarding the individual (or group) that carries out the tasks below, in a way that is transparent, interoperable, and easy to use.

Tasks

Enabling a user to retrieve artist and track metadata from Audiotarky's API using a Kendraio Flow.
Enabling a user to play Audiotarky tracks within Kendraio Player, alongside existing DSP1 tracks.
Bonus points for enabling an artist to import tracks to Audiotarky including payment pointers using Kendraio App.

We will be very flexible with any hiccups that may occur and we will hold your hand all the way. We don't like stress here at Kendraio. We just want to see people enjoying building with Kendraio App.

Technical details

Source code

Audiotarky API

Audiotarky data is available through a simple API. Currently this is not "discoverable"; you need to know the artist stub ID to find their work. There will be a genre API ~soon.

Discover artists API: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/index.json
Discover albums API: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/albums/index.json
Artist details: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/chris-foster/index.json
Album details: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/chris-foster/hadelin/index.json
Track details: https://www.audiotarky.com/$/artists/chris-foster/hadelin/the-seeds-of-love/index.json

Evaluation

The bounty will be evaluated by the Kendraio Team and advisors.
Evaluation will be based on the completion of the task, as well as on how transparent, interoperable and easy to use it is.
The more you can commit to documenting and talking about your experience with Kendraio App the more excited we will be to work with you.

Kendraio Player

Requirements

Candidates should have some existing experience with Javascript and web APIs. Must be willing to document and talk about their experience of working on the tasks in this bounty.

Process

Please check out these links before accepting this mission:

As you create this project your feedback will influence the direction and capabilities of the Kendraio framework.

View on GitHub

Link Round Up!

You can join our public Slack where we give updates on what we're working on, our public Google Drive where we document our findings and research, as well as planning and collaborative docs. Additionally, you can find our GitHub repository with our open source, MIT licensed, code. Feel free to reach out to us if you have additional questions on the code and to let us know what prototypes you're building, or report an issue, bugs, request features and suggest improvements here. We're always open to collaborate and partner with like-minded individuals, companies and developers.

Highlight other projects

You can see the work of our partners and collaborators here: Resonate, Musicoin, and Audiotarky. As well as other interesting projects such as Ampled and Vivid Iov Labs.

We want to thank Coil, Mozilla and Grant for the Web for this opportunity and the community as a whole for being so open and collaborative.

Coil Web Monetization on mobile - no browser extension needed

Luke Stanley — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 11:26:34 +0000

This post explains how you can use Coil's OAuth login API to stream payments from Coil users without them having to use a browser extension. Coil has proposed and implemented a new standard to monetise content online without depending on advertising, called Web Monetization. The service is built on the Interledger Protocol. They are doing an amazing job at squaring a circle to make a better web for everyone. They have a service for Coil subscribers who pay to a personal balance, which is then distributed to content owners via Coil browser extensions, mobile apps and apps connecting to the Coil API.

If you want to see what you'll learn in this article, try out our implementation in the Kendraio Player and see our screencast.

Setting up OAuth and login process

Several steps are needed to set up OAuth. To get started, email Coil, fill in the web form on their site, make a one-off API request to get a key, and implement your own backend (to securely access Coil with a secret key) as well as your frontend to present a button and deal with various redirects as part of the OAuth authentication.

Thanks to funding from Grant for the Web, we were able to add Web Monetisation support to our low-code tool, Kendraio App, which enables users to make data-driven apps with custom workflows. Kendraio is a non-profit organisation and all our code is open-source, so you may benefit if you're implementing your own Coil login integration.

Maybe you have some content you want to monetise with Coil or maybe you have already monetised and want to provide users with access to content they've already paid for with Coil. Either way, if you're interested in making this content available and monetisable without your users needing to depend on a particular browser or browser extension, then you may find this technical guide useful.

Step 1 - Request access and provide resources

As outlined by Coil themselves on their docs, the first step is to make a Coil account.

After making an account, email the Coil developers with your use-case so they can approve your use of their API. Once approved, you'll need to register your app or website by providing them with a link to your logo, privacy policy, terms of service, and a list of URLs your users may be redirected to after logging in with Coil.

A word of warning: As there does not appear to be an easy way to change the list of URLs later, ensure you have a development URL or two set aside. This might be a staging URL and a localhost URL. Without this, testing the login flow could be a lot more clunky, so it's worth having a good think about what URLs you will need ahead of time.

Once you've sent the form, you should be emailed a registration access token that you can use once to get a secret key. This key is needed to connect your users to their Coil accounts and the Coil API for each subsequent login.

I used the Insomnia web client to make this POST request to their API at https://coil.com/oauth/reg and it returned a pretty printed JSON response containing the OAuth secret key and other info. Another option is to use a curl command directly or from Postman. Be careful to store the key securely, as you only get it once and it is used for potentially sensitive activity, such as moving money around and accessing user account info.

Step 2 - Create Backend API

Now that you have the key, it can be used by a login backend. The backend must use the key to verify you are who you say you are, to complete OAuth login attempts for your users.

We used Vercel, a serverless (think Lambda) platform, to make our backend API. Vercel has a way of securely storing environment variables that must be manually selected. Other backend solutions have different options for secrets managers.

After the user visits a Coil login URL and has been redirected back to your site with the OAuth access code parameter, your backend API will need an endpoint that accepts the OAuth access code and returns a Bilateral Transfer Protocol token.

This is done by using the users OAuth code, and the secret OAuth key to request an OAuth session token from Coil's API. Once you have it, the session token is used to request the BTP token, which finally is returned to the browser. This must be done in a backend to prevent exposure of the secret OAuth key from Coil.

You can see our backend API implementation here, and our frontend button that calls it is here.

Step 3 - Integrate frontend

A unique ID is needed for each OAuth session, and a UUID generator is a good way to create one. Our frontend does this and combines it together with other URL parameters to generate a login button link to Coil.

After the user clicks the link and approves your app's access to Coil, the user should be redirected back to the URL specified by you, with a token parameter. You'll need to send this token to your backend, and get a BTP token back for the user.

Step 4 - PROFIT!

Once we have a BTP token for a user, it's possible to start streaming payments using the Web Monetization protocol! Thankfully, Coil provides a script that can speak this protocol and stream money! Now that the user is finally authenticated and in possession of a BTP token, we can provide the Coil script with the token. The script, like the browser extension, checks the webpage for a payment pointer meta tag. With an active BTP token, as soon as the Coil script finds the meta tag, the payment stream should start.

Initial setup cheat sheet

Manually make a Coil account for the organisation
Email devs@coil.com with your use case
- E.g. OAuth login is needed to support users without the browser extension)
Fill out the OAuth registration form
- At https://coil.com/oauth_register provide Coil with your logo, privacy policy, TOS, what URIs Coil is allowed to redirect to (don't forget production, dev and localhost URLs!) Then wait for the REGISTRATION_ACCESS_TOKEN to be emailed to you
OAuth registration API
- Use the REGISTRATION_ACCESS_TOKEN to register with the OIDC provider to get your client_id and client_secret by manually make a POST request to https://coil.com/oauth/reg (with a lot of the same info as the prior registration step)

Login flow cheat sheet

We generate a random session ID
We assemble an OAuth login URL by adding a few parameters to https://coil.com/oauth/auth: client_id, session ID and a callback URL (e.g. hosted at localhost for testing, or your domain)
User presses a login button and visits the generated login URL
User returns at the callback URL, with an OAuth access code parameter from Coil (and session ID) added
POST the access code to our secure backend. Our own API then talks to Coil's API to:
- get an OAuth token from https://coil.com/oauth/token using the user's access code and our secret key (from our secrets store)
- use the OAuth token to get the Bilateral Transfer Protocol token for the user via https://api.coil.com/user/btp
- return the BTP token to the browser for the next step
A Coil Web Monetization client is run via a script and is provided with the BTP token
When a metatag with a payment pointer is detected, the payment stream can start (and works much like the Coil extension)

Kendraio Player block integration

Kendraio App, a low-code dashboard creator, helps build interfaces using Flows that connect to APIs with minimal code needed. We created a player workflow in the app and integrated a Coil login within Kendraio Player. We have a simplified player workflow example of how to use the audio player block and a "Web Money" block. It uses JSON data provided by a mapping block:

{
  "display_artist": "Patient Pacifist",
  "display_title": "Divided",
  "url": "https://dsp1-track-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/auth0|5fa9852a2576900076396b60/b49cd51b-6f0a-4c7a-9c69-b83b753ee867",
  "paymentPointer": "$ilp.uphold.com/QhJqdGMmjZM4"
}

Then, below, we have a block that configures the audio player with JSON:

{
   "type": "player",
   "onPlay": [
       {
           "type": "web-money"
       }
   ],
   "onPause": [
       {
           "type": "web-money",
           "enabled": false
       }
   ]
}

See here for an introduction to Kendraio.

Don't forget to check out our latest bounty!

That's enough for now!

Kendraio App is a project by Kendraio, the interoperability advocacy initiative. Kendraio App is an open-source dashboard application currently focused on music/media creators, copyright and related rights owners. The app was developed to investigate how the transformative benefits of interoperability can improve existing processes — and to demonstrate how they can impact business, personal and public life.
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50% Uphold fee?

Daniel Harris — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 08:21:56 +0000

I'm sure I've done something silly! ;-) Is it that Uphold is rounding up the 1.4% fee to the nearest 0.01 EUR? If that's the case then maybe EUR is not the best currency to use for small Interledger payments from Coil. If so, which is the best currency for my Uphold wallet in terms of small Coil payments? Is there such a thing as a native currency? Any ideas?

Kendraio progress report #0.5

Antonio Talarico — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 14:23:22 +0000

Project Update

At Kendraio, our goal is to develop, test and create a new way for web monetised content in the music industry. Our main goals are to:

Progress on objectives and key activities

Regarding the distribution and ingestion feature, we have a working prototype that can ingest spreadsheets and convert large size files from DDEX format (the conventional format for music metadata in the industry) and we're still determining how best to add payment pointers at the distribution level. Furthermore, we’re researching ways to ingest (or potentially generate) payment pointers, so as to automate the link between tracks and payments. In this, we're partnering and collaborating with music streaming platform Resonate, which we're using as a proof of concept for real use cases.

Communications and marketing

We initially announced our participation with Grant for the Web in November on all of our social media, namely Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This project was also the main headline on our end-of-the-year newsletter that got sent out to more than 1,500 people and took centre stage in our 2020 Recap. It has opened up some opportunities and potential partnerships. We have also been working in our open Slack community. In our original planning, we were aiming to have user stories by now, but since we have pivoted away from having several musicians trial the project, to fewer, DSP partners, like Resonate, these will take another shape in the coming months. This progress report will also serve as the basis for a blog post.
Our main marketing activity (and where all the budget we have allocated will be spent) is to create “bounties”, small development challenges we will be organising and distributing on development platforms and social media. These will generate interest in the project and will also help us innovate.

What’s next?

We're working towards the beginning of February for having a functioning MVP on Kendraio App that uses a web monetised track player with the dynamic triggering of payment pointers for multiple artists within one interface. In the pipeline, we have real-life use cases with DSPs such as Resonate. Within this process, we want to integrate the bounties we mentioned in the marketing section and hope to reach many more collaborators.

What community support would benefit your project?

We’re currently working on figuring out the scope and details of the bounties/challenges we want to pose to the public. Our biggest questions are how much work we can expect our participants to do for the “prize” money, where to post these challenges for them to get attention, and more. If anyone in the community has previously organised something like this we’d love to have a chat.
We would also love to connect with more people within the Grant for the Web community who are working on music industry projects. We’d love to share experiences and see if we can collaborate or share insights.

Relevant links/resources

You can take a look at all our documentation in our public drive here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d2D_JMbM1EpM52Ju8nEYmXkU4rYgejL0

Coil API request

Antonio Talarico — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:39:03 +0000

Hi everyone, Antonio from Kendraio here,

I was wondering whether anyone has had any experience in receiving access to the Coil API token and if, as grantees, we have to ask for request to devs@coil.com having to outline the use cases, like everyone else?

Is there a process in place to facilitate this by Grant for the Web? It'll be really helpful!

Thanks in advance!