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An Update from the Web Monetization Workshop

This article shares some highlights and next steps from the recently concluded 2021 Web Monetization Workshop hosted by Coil. Follow along as the Web Monetization specifications see some new changes and updates.


Project Showcase

During the Project Showcase session at the Workshop, participants saw demos and talks from Developers, Designers, Creators, and others who shared their stories and experiences working with Web Monetization. At Showcase, we had 13 pre-recorded presentations by:

  • Matt Baer, Founder and CEO @ Write.as
  • Joel Wasserman, Founder @ Flossbank
  • Erica Hargreave, Immersive & Interactive Storyteller & Educator @ Ahimsa Media / StoryToGo / Roamancing
  • Michiel de Jong, Founder @ Ponder Source
  • Matt Mankins, Mozilla Fellow
  • Hannah Grijns, Concept developer @ Waag
  • Thomas Visco, Community and Partnerships Manager @ Permanent Legacy Foundation
  • Fernando Daguanno, Founder @ Alquimétricos
  • Matthew Henshall, CEO @ room.sh
  • Andrzej Mazur, Founder @ Enclave Games
  • Amber Case, Mozilla Fellow
  • Yuriy Dybskiy, CEO @ Puma Browser
  • Alex Lakatos, Technical Lead at Interledger Foundation

A replay of the Web Monetization Showcase is available at workshop.webmonetization.org.

Alt Web Monetization Workshop replay


Technical Architecture session

The technical discussion featured the following topics and feedback raised on Github, Community forum and Discussion channels.

Alt Web Monetization Workshop

On some of the discussed items, a consensus was reached about how to proceed and a spec update is currently underway. Below are the top 4 items:

Branding

Because the current Web Monetization logo/icon uses the dollar symbol, a working group is being formed to internationalize the Web Monetization logo and branding.

Furthermore, considerations are being made for a provider-independent Call to Action (CTA) phrase and icon like the Support me with Coil button to be used for the Web Monetization ecosystem.

Meta vs Link tag

After discussing the pros and cons of the vs tag, the tag was selected as the choice for setting payment pointers.

And a pull request has been created by W3C's Marcos Cáceres to update the specification from using to .

For backward compatibility, Providers like Coil will continue to support both the to tag.

Web Monetization Events

The MonetizationStart, MonetizationProgress and Stop events were discussed. And the events will be simplified from 3 events to 2 events in a future specification update. The proposed new events are:

  • Error
  • Progress

Document.monetization vs Navigator.Monetization

Currently, Web Monetization is implemented in the Document Object. However, for developer and browser vendor purposes, there was discussion to move the Monetization object to Navigator.

Further discussions on this topic are happening at https://github.com/WICG/webmonetization/issues/24


Future of the Web Monetization Specification

Anyone can contribute to Web Monetization and join the current maintainers to update the specs, build with Web Monetization, or support other maintainers. Some ways to get involved are:

Spec update

Implement Web Monetization in Browser

Rafiki open source project


Thank you for reading and watch the Workshop Showcase replay at workshop.webmonetization.org/stage/showcase2


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