Project Insulate — Grant Report #1 (Final)

Project Update

I can proudly say that the Project Insulate work has been completed. I have documented it deeply in my 3-part series.

Progress on objectives

The Chrome Extension is available at Chrome Web Store
Source Code: Link

The backend is deployed at Heroku
Source Code: Link

The source code is overall packed in the project-insulate organization

Key activities

At the core, I wanted to build an architectural solution to solve the issue of protecting data fetched from a backend server - insulating the data, hence Project Insulate. This involved various different steps including:

Step 1: Coming up with an architectural overview and a wireframe. This was probably the hardest part since it involved coming up with a solution to not only protect the data, but also the identity of the user. I explained this step in detail here.

Step 2: Getting access for Coil SSO and establish Coil OAuth to log in users.

Step 3: Build the Chrome extension which end users can use to complement the current Coil extension.

Step 4: Develop the backend server for Project Insulate which the provider can connect to verify users on their website before providing protected data.

This blog shows the final product, and how it works!

Communications and marketing

I have shared the work with my friends and shared the web monetization technology with colleagues. I didn't include marketing in my budget.

What’s next?

I aim the process could be eventually integrated with Coil extension itself. It wouldn't be feasible in the long run for encouraging people to install two extensions, so I wanted this project to serve as a working prototype of how such integration could work.

What community support would benefit your project?

I would love to see what the community feels about the project and work on it. It would be great if it could be shared further in the web monetization community. It would also be interesting to learn other developers' feedback on alternate ways to resolve the issue of protecting data.

Additional comments

It was a great experience to present my project and be a part of this growing web standard and community. Always looking forward to talking with like-minded people, so if any one has any concerns or just wants to say hi, feel free to reach out :)

Lastly, thanks to the Grant for the Web initiative for letting me an active participant.