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Chris Lawrence for Interledger Foundation

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Changes to the Web Monetization ecosystem discussion post

Today, our friends at Coil announced they are ceasing operations. We’d like to thank the Coil team for their foundational support and contributions in the ILF journey, and we are truly proud of the amazing community of creators and developers we built together.

While our two organizations have worked very closely over the past 2 years, ILF has always been an independent foundation and will continue the groundbreaking work started by Coil on web monetization and financial inclusion through open payments.

Through this transition, we are committed to supporting our community and welcome questions about the Interledger Foundation, the Interledger Protocol, and our technology moving forward.

Please use this post to ask questions, raise issues or note how this will affect your work. We hope to be able to address your concerns over the coming weeks, and we will start by using our Open Payments Huddle next week to host a Town Hall discussion. We will reschedule the Researcher's Round-table discussion we had planned.

Details for Town Hall:

Date: February 9, 2023
Time: 10:00 am EST / 3:00 pm UTC / 6:00 pm EAT
Register here

So please post your questions, share your views, and we’ll do our best to bring you the latest news and updates as they happen.

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Top comments (21)

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radhyr profile image
Radhy • Edited

Never would've tought hearing this from Coil team. They are holding much of the foundation and infastructure Web Monetization has today. The Web Monetization community is direly in need someone else to pass the torch to fill the void in WM Provider space Coil left behind.

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

Thanks @radhyr While I am sort on details at the momnent, we are planning to be part of the solution about how the torch is passed. Would be curious to hear from you what you think is needed?

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radhyr profile image
Radhy

I think it would be very big if ex-Coil team could open-source internal code base of Coil in an organized monorepo with a clear instruction on how to bootstrap an entire WM provider. There's very little resources on how to make WM provider except for Interledger specs and scattered Interledger libraries. So having a working code base either as a reference or simply a template would be very helpful for anyone who's interested in diving WM provider project.

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

I agree, this could be an exciteing outcome, thanks for stating it so clearly.

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wilsonianb profile image
Brandon Wilson
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kimoo profile image
Kimo

Sir, I am sorry for what happened with Coil, can you tell me about the fate of the gfam.live platform from this decision and will the support for creators there stop or will there be solutions that can be reached at a meeting on 09/ 02/2023???

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ericahargreave profile image
Erica Hargreave

Hi @kimo,

From @gfam on Twitter yesterday, "Interledger is still rocking and with tools like Fynbos, TigerBeetle and Rafiki we're hoping we'll be able to continue providing similar capabilities to our creators."

Join in the conversation on February 9th as we explore solutions and talk about next steps.

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drsm79 profile image
Simon Metson

I think it would be good to understand if the reasons behind Coil shutting down were fundamental technical issues or business/adoption ones. One limits adoption of WM long term, the other is maybe more a timing/market fit problem.

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devcer profile image
Santosh Viswanatham • Edited

With the unexpected shutdown of Coil, I believe it would be beneficial to have a standardized web monetization provider that incorporates multiple wallets such as Coil and Fynbos. This way, if one payment network becomes unavailable/shutdown, users would have the option to use another network or wallet. Are there any plans to create such a standardized provider and integrate different wallets into it? May be build such standardized WM provider after the torch is passed?

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mariabustillos profile image
Maria Bustillos

Hello, and thank you.

We at Brick House first want to renew our commitment to WM and indicate we're ready to put our shoulders to the wheel.

We've been working since 2017 on the development and design of publishing-related WM projects, including digital ownership for libraries, archiving, subscriptions, syndication, microtipping/microfunding, and more. We're extremely eager to advance our plans, very interested in learning about progress at Fynbos/Rafiki, and looking forward to the town hall.

thanks and all best

Maria.

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ericahargreave profile image
Erica Hargreave

Beautifully said, Maria.

The same goes for our StoryToGo / Roamancing team.

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graeme profile image
graeme

I've written some of my learnings here: community.interledger.org/prototyp...

looking to learn more on what payment providers there are, and what I can replace Coil with

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senkgoky profile image
Ivonne Prado Barros

Hello this was an unexpected surprise for us, and we have been concerned in our New Universe platform team.

So we were looking for solutions to the potential dilemmas of losing Coil as a service provider for payments.

My question is if there is any other team creating a tool similar to Coil in the web monetization community?

Our platform is very dependent on this provider and we are concerned because we are promoting the platform in business rounds.

One of the attractions of the New Universe platform is that we avoid the conflict and controversy that game platforms like Roblox have, since here we guarantee direct payment to the game creator without any other type of payment gateway or intermediary in the process.

We are even looking for other allies that have this type of transparent payment system as is done thanks to Coil and web monetization.

We are concerned, if you know of another of the development teams that are creating or are already integrating the service similar to Coil compatible with the Unity Engine, for us it would be a solution to these doubts that have arisen since we heard the news about Coil.

Thanks for serving us and happy day.

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xanderjakeq profile image
Xander Jake de los Santos

What does this mean for our projects? Should we disable Web Monetization features until there's a new Provider?

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

Hi @xanderjakeq there is no need to disable the features b/c new solutions will emerge and you want to have it set-up on the reciever side to be ready. You might however take down/stop pinting people to Coil as an onboarding into WM. Keep the capability there but dormat until news ways it can be activated are produced.

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ericahargreave profile image
Erica Hargreave

No need to do that at present, @xanderjakeq, as Web Monetization will continue working through Coil until the middle of March. Come to the town hall on February 9th, as we will be discussing the next steps and solutions there.

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radhyr profile image
Radhy • Edited

I re-read carefully and realize

In the near future there will be full-featured Interledger wallets powering Web Monetization and many other use cases.

Did he just referring to Fynbos? Would Fynbos adopt Coil's features in the future?

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

I am not sure, but probably related to Fynbos. Before the Coil news I was excited for what Fynbos might enable. We will have to see.

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drsm79 profile image
Simon Metson

Was going to ask if the town hall was recorded, but then found community.interledger.org/chrislar... so cross linking for the next person ;)

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

Here is the recording: community.interledger.org/interled...