Hello everyone,
This is sort of an introduction, as well as a long-overdue update on the project. I wanted to start off with an apology to the community; I had a responsibility as a grantee to help drive the conversation around this wonderful technology, something I still honestly believe in and consider to be one of the most important movements in web technologies. Last year was a challenging time, my family was impacted by COVID-19 and had suffered a difficult loss. I know many people were impacted—I don't mean to deflect accountability—but because of this I had difficulties meeting the timelines outlined in my original project roadmap.
That being said, this project is still something I'm passionate about and I'm excited to share where I'm at with the community.
What is Bandi?
This project seeks to solve the fundamental challenge with one-time content unlocks; there's very little incentive to continue to stream payments outside of wanting to support your favourite content producers. This project tackles the challenge of how to incrementally reward users who continue to contribute to a content creator or community.
There are two components to this project: the Loyalty Framework and an OSS component called webmonetization-hooks (which I'll get to in the next section).
The Loyalty Framework is a managed solution for implementing a point system for your users. This could be either in the form of an exclusive marketplace currency (take Air Miles, for example) or for use in a tiered-reward system. Micropayments would reward a premium currency that an application can then use to either build out a marketplace for redeeming exclusive content or using the accrued currency as a leveling system for unlocking thresholds of rewards (like how StackOverflow rewards users who participate in their forums with extended permissions within their ecosystem). This project could be used to provide functional benefits to users (forum moderator, special privileges) or cosmetic benefits (custom badges or avatars).
Project Update
As you'll see in the next section (progress on objectives), I'm slightly behind where I was hoping to be at the six-month period. I have requested an extension for the final deliverables; I'm aiming to develop the MVP for the Loyalty Framework over the next couple of months.
The webmonetization-hooks library is in a stable position and is ready for a v0.1.0 release within the week. This package will allow a user to capture web monetization payment events, set users points, create tiered thresholds, create a multiplier for transforming captured amounts, and supply callback methods that are triggered on specific events (payment events, reaching enough points to hit the next threshold, etc). These are the features I was expecting to deliver, but I'm hoping to continue to expand this library (and welcome people to contribute to the project).
The Loyalty Framework is currently aiming for an MVP release sometime in the next couple of months. Work on the transactional APIs has begun development, as well as the initial design of the administrative console and the landing/docs pages.
The landing page for the Loyalty Framework
Progress on objectives
I want to take the time to go through each of my objectives and give an update about the current status. For reference, here was the initial roadmap:
| Timeline | Milestones |
|---|---|
| Pre-grant period | Develop proof-of-concept for the webmonetization-hooks library. |
| Month 1 | Extend the feature set of the webmonetization-hooks library, as well as develop a playground where users can manage/tweak the distribution of reward currency to fit their personal use case. |
| Month 2 | Initial release of the webmonetization-hooks library |
| Month 3 | Begin development of the Loyalty Framework (design + infrastructure). |
| Month 4 | Development of Loyalty Framework transaction APIs. |
| Month 5 | Begin marketing, development of a website for the Loyalty Framework. |
| Month 6 | Release stable build of Loyalty Framework. |
| Post-grant period | Continue to extend the feature set of the Loyalty Framework, as well as maintain/increment on top of the webmonetization-hooks library |
As mentioned in the Project Update, the webmonetization-hooks library is ready for a v0.1.0 release this week. The design of the infrastructure of the Loyalty Framework, as well as the development of the transactional APIs has been started. The Loyalty Framework website is in progress and many of the pages have been completed (landing/documentation/faq).
The webmonetization-hooks repo is located here: https://github.com/brewsterbhg/micropayment-hooks
Key activities
Right now my key activities are the completion of the Loyalty Framework MVP, as well as continuing to maintain and expand the webmonetization-hooks library. Once the Loyalty Framework has a stable release, I'll begin marketing efforts.
Communications and marketing
I have not had the opportunity to promote the project yet. I had allocated some funds for marketing, but those are reserved until the stable release of the Loyalty Framework.
What’s next?
My next steps are to develop and release the Loyalty Framework, as well as become a more active part of the web monetization community.
What community support would benefit your project?
If anyone is interested in helping to work on the webmonetization-hooks library, I would love for it to be a community effort.
Additional comments
Thank you to Grant for the Web for everything they're doing to help address the glaring issues with the state of the web, and for helping content creators find new methods for monetizing their content outside of the currently cumbersome systems. I wanted to apologize again for my inactivity up until this point, and I promise to provide more regular updates moving forward. I'm incredibly excited to see what the rest of the community is up to.
Cheers,
Keith
Top comments (1)
Hey Keith - it's so great to read this progress report! One-time content unlocks are such an interesting area to explore - really looking forward to watching your work continue to unfold.