402: Payment Required. Micropayments for IoT
summary
A concrete demo of HTTP-based micropayments: a three-step 402 flow where a client gets a payment challenge, uses the 21 library to post a Bitcoin transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain, receives a receipt and retries the request. Built examples include a storage filesystem charged per byte (works but unstable) and a distributed ping test that paid 7 remote pings at 3,000 bits each. Major limits remain: on-chain fees (~$0.08) too high, no robust proof-of-service or refunds, and workarounds like Lightning or verifiable computation are needed.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:12Forward to Payment Required
- 2:55Smart Sprinkler
- 6:35FourCast
- 14:17Service Setup
- 15:14Demo
- 19:52Things to be done
- 23:11Protocols
- 24:04HTTP
- 27:22Lightning Paper Network
- 28:35Ned Zero
- 29:39Theorem
- 31:02Lessons learned
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