The creators of the modern Internet thought that it should have a built-in payment system.
Web pioneer and Netscape creator Marc Andreessen, who considers Bitcoin as a good model for standard Internet payment systems, noted that if he had a time machine and could go back to when the Web was first designed, “one thing I’d do for sure would be to build in Bitcoin or some similar form of cryptocurrency.”
Tim Berners-Lee himself, the creator of the Web, tried to develop a micropayments system for the Web through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in the ‘90s, but the idea hasn’t been implemented so far.
Recently the W3C restarted its work on an overall Web payments architecture and produced initial drafts. The W3C drafts make only incidental mentions of Bitcoin and distributed ledger technologies. However, it’s worth noting that digital currencies based on distributed ledgers are the only form of Internet-native payment system that exists, works and effectively implements one-click payments.
There are blockchain-based projects to add micropayment layers to the Web, including micropayments in the core Internet protocols, but adding payments to the underlying Web protocol itself would require years of standardization work by official bodies such as the W3C.
An interesting intermediate approach is integrating micropayments in the browser. A high-profile team headed by Brendan Eich , creator of the Javascript programming language and former CEO of Mozilla, recently launched a new browser dubbed Brave , which offers faster browsing by replacing ads with clean and light ads, with an option to switch ads off via Bitcoin micropayments. A forthcoming version of the Brave browser, planned for April, will include micropayments and a built-in Bitcoin wallet.
Bitcoin Magazine reached out to Eich to find out more about Brave’s approach, strategy and roll-out schedule. Eich confirmed that the schedule for the built-in […]
