So I created a whole new website just to try out an idea, that website is indiepay.me and you're welcome to log in and use it!
The idea is that we can use our own websites to record payments, which can then be confirmed by the recipient and tracked by a 3rd party site to store the balance.indiepay.meis the tracking site, and the idea does work! Here's a screenshot of my recent transaction history:
Thanks to gRegorLove for helping me test, and some great feedback!
Besides being a fun project, one of the motivations for creating indiepay.me was to explore what else we can do with our websites. I wrote earlier this year about urls having value, and I think we're just getting started discovering what data ownership can do.
I'm sure the blockchain is interesting technology, but I'm also quite happy to show that there's a simpler way to do distributed payment tracking. The key difference is that instead of needing to prove ownership cryptographically, we can claim ownership over our urls.
thanks Khürt! non-repudiation would be interesting, you could specify a time out for the original request, and remove your payment post after that. I think it would be up to the requester to decide what it means for the payment to not be confirmed, and indiepay.me only creates a balance from confirmed transactions.
Integrity is a bit harder, you want the confirmed balance to be provable by validating all existing payment amounts at their original urls. I was thinking it would be good to have "verified" badges, and as long as indiepay.me continues to find your original posts you get to keep it.
Hi Malcolm, thank for the follow-up. My understanding of blockchain ledgers is that the integrity of the ledger is paramount. This is one reason why the ledger is encrypted and widely distributed. This protects the integrity of the ledger and also makes non-repudiation non-trivial (a certain number of nodes have to agree).
Perhaps private Webmentions -- something that I did not know existed until I read your post, "credentials: a distributed ledger for the #indieweb" -- can help but ... I guess I'm concerned that a "one-and-only-copy" ledger system is prone to attack, and the fact that Webmentions can be deleted may compromise "trust".
I think the idea is worth exploring but the design (putting on my security systems development lifecycle hat) needs more thinking on the "information security" aspect.
indiepay.me
The idea is that we can use our own websites to record payments, which can then be confirmed by the recipient and tracked by a 3rd party site to store the balance. indiepay.me is the tracking site, and the idea does work! Here's a screenshot of my recent transaction history:
Thanks to gRegorLove for helping me test, and some great feedback!
Besides being a fun project, one of the motivations for creating indiepay.me was to explore what else we can do with our websites. I wrote earlier this year about urls having value, and I think we're just getting started discovering what data ownership can do.
I'm sure the blockchain is interesting technology, but I'm also quite happy to show that there's a simpler way to do distributed payment tracking. The key difference is that instead of needing to prove ownership cryptographically, we can claim ownership over our urls.
Integrity is a bit harder, you want the confirmed balance to be provable by validating all existing payment amounts at their original urls. I was thinking it would be good to have "verified" badges, and as long as indiepay.me continues to find your original posts you get to keep it.
I actually wrote about both those points when I first started thinking about the project too: https://unicyclic.com/mal/2016-06-10-credmentions_a_distributed_ledger_for_the_indieweb
Perhaps private Webmentions -- something that I did not know existed until I read your post, "credentials: a distributed ledger for the #indieweb" -- can help but ... I guess I'm concerned that a "one-and-only-copy" ledger system is prone to attack, and the fact that Webmentions can be deleted may compromise "trust".
I think the idea is worth exploring but the design (putting on my security systems development lifecycle hat) needs more thinking on the "information security" aspect.