CrowdBucks is a new payment system for the Fediverse
More developments are happening on the front to provide payment and monetization options for the Social Web. Over the past few years, there have been interesting experiments in making this possible. Mitra, notably, pioneered subscription payments by utilizing Monero. Bandwagon has also built on the concept by instead relying on integrations with traditional payment networks, starting with Stripe and PayPal. The short-lived SubClub implemented private feeds for paid access.
Introducing CrowdBucks
CrowdBucks is a new effort developed by Charles Iliya Krempeaux, better known by his online moniker, Reiver. It builds on some of the ideas previous implementations have tried, and aims to make the process as smooth and simple as possible.
“The long-term vision that CrowdBucks is a part of is to create a payments layer for the Fediverse,” Reiver explains, “obviously, it’s not the only part, there will be other projects later.”
Signing Up
Instead of forcing users to create yet another account, CrowdBucks does something really smart: you can just sign in with an existing Fediverse account.
At the moment, sign-in is limited to just Mastodon, but the plan is to gradually support a number of different platforms. Since a lot of Fediverse software implements part of the Mastodon API, I attempted to log in with both Akkoma and WordPress, but neither one seems to work yet. We opted to use a tried-and-true community instance.
After doing the Authorization dance, CrowdBucks directs users to a simple dashboard, where they are prompted to do basic setup for their page. Fediverse integration automatically pulls in profile details, including the username, avatar, header, and handle, although most of the public-facing details can be customized.
Getting Set Up
The first thing to do with your account is to set fundraising goals and donation tiers. The flow feels reminiscent of something like Kickstarter or Patreon, where rewards can be spelled out as something symbolic, something digital, or even something tangible.
Donations and Payments
Support tiers can be set up with any monthly denomination, and these get prominently displayed on your CrowdBucks page. Donors can use their CrowdBucks accounts to find a page, select a tier, and support creators and projects easily.
When a person pledges towards a Tier, they’re automatically taken to a checkout page. For the time being, the only supported Payment Processor is Stripe. Reiver has explained that this is because Stripe was easiest to implement, but the team intends to also add support for PayPal and other providers, as well as support for standards such as Web Monetization and OpenPayments.
Quick Demo
CrowdBucks was initially revealed in a brief demo at FediCon a few weeks ago, which was recorded and added alongside the FediCon Talks on PeerTube. It’s a useful insight into where Reiver is coming from, what’s being built, and ideas of what CrowdBucks could be used for.
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Open Source and Self-Hostable
“Anyone will be able to set up their own CrowdBucks server,” Reiver explains, “just like anyone can set up their own Mastodon server.”
The CrowdBucks project itself is licensed under the GNU AGPL, with source code readily available. The CrowdBucks.fund site is simply operated as a flagship instance, but the goal is to allow anyone to host their own version as part of their operational infrastructure.
“We want CrowdBucks to help pay server bills, to support developers building Fedi software, and to fund creators on the Fediverse. The whole thing is designed to be native to the Fediverse.”
Future Plans
While the project itself is still fairly young, the team is actively thinking about how to improve. One area CrowdBucks is already exploring involves the ability for the app to post to the Fediverse on the behalf of fundraisers, for example, to give credit to supporters. Another possibility might involve collaborating with Emissary to standardize pieces involving payments and private access.
This is an exciting endeavor, and might be one of the most polished attempts yet to make payments possible on the Social Web. Hopefully, existing projects will get involved, and hash out the details on how to make this as open and interoperable as possible.
sub.club Emerges to Offer Paid Fediverse Subscriptions
Historically speaking, the act of financially supporting creatives on the Fediverse has always been something of a pain point. The network lacks a meaningful payment layer, and most of the network’s iSean Tilley (We Distribute)
Bandwagon is Bringing Music Sales to the Fediverse
Bandwagon, the music-sharing platform built on Emissary, has seen a lot of success over the past few months. The site has grown to a catalogue of over 300 different musicians, spanning a wide range of different sounds and genres. After refining search and discovery features, project lead Ben Pate has decided to focus on introducing a payment system for music sales.What’s Coming
This new payment system allows for ways to financially support artists on the Fediverse, and the levels of support resemble a hybrid of what both Bandcamp and Patreon offer. Not only does this feature include line items for digital media, but a new mechanism for access and distribution. Additionally, the flagship instance of Bandwagon.fm will be taking 0% of any money musicians make.Premier Plans
To support development, Bandwagon’s flagship instance will be offering a $10 per month Premier plan that allows musicians to sell their music and offer their tracks at a higher bit-rate, among other features. To support the artist community, a number of Fediverse musicians will likely be gifted a lifetime Premier membership for free.Album and Track Purchases
Once this feature becomes available to musicians, they will be able to configure a Merchant account to dictate what items they want to include for purchase. This could cover individual tracks, EP’s, or entire albums. It’s also possible to configure Support Levels with monthly billing.Managing products and exclusive media in a merchant account.
When someone buys music through Bandwagon, their purchases get added to a profile. If you’re a native Bandwagon user, those live in your account. If you’re visiting from another platform, purchased items instead live in a special Guest Profile that can be connected to a Fediverse identity.
Special Access
Another new feature unique to Bandwagon is the concept of Circles. These are special, privileged collections of followers who can pay to access exclusive content: special album drops, rare tracks, secret shows, and private “behind the scenes” posts can all be accessed by premium followers.
What’s remarkable about this system is how things are tied together: this mechanism checks for payment, recognizes a Fediverse handle, and grants access on that basis. Previously, other systems needed to provision this kind of thing manually: you might have been able to pay for something through Stripe or PayPal, but there wasn’t always a way to account for a user’s Fediverse identity afterwards. Instead, that all had to be dealt with by hand.
Posts, Events, and Media can now be scoped to specific audiences with Circles
This also means that it’s possible to create multiple kinds of support levels, which could give a Bandwagon musician profile almost Patreon-like functionality. Different support tiers could receive access to different things, allowing rewards to stack with the level of donations. One level might receive private blog posts, whereas another might have access to a monthly track plus access to private blog posts.Alternate Payment Methods
For the time being, Bandwagon will support Stripe and PayPal when the feature launches. However, Ben has stated an interest in supporting many more payment processors, in the hopes of providing choice to artists and buyers:Bandwagon will build integrations with private companies (lots of them, actually) but we will never depend on any one specific company. Open APIs are best, but when those are unavailable, we’ll connect directly to Stripe, PayPal, or anyone who can deliver benefits for indie artists. But If I have to integrate with one merchant provider to accept payments, then I’ll integrate with two, or seven, or as many as we can to guarantee that the companies we work with cannot abuse their position with monopoly power.
The project has also stated having zero interest in implementing support for cryptocurrencies. However, given that Bandwagon is an open source project, it wouldn’t be that surprising to see third parties build in support for various crypto payments for their respective communities.
A demonstration of a check-out purchase through Stripe, which also supports Apple Pay.
Looking at the Big Picture
On the surface, these new features are big milestones for supporting the Fediverse music community. If we dig a little deeper, we’ll find that everything powering this new experience is part of the underlying Emissary platform. This is one more tool in Emissary’s arsenal for developers to build distinct services with donations, payments, and commerce in mind. Maybe in the future, we’ll see new kinds of Emissary apps that could act as replacements for DeviantArt, Nebula, or GameDev Market.There’s a reason this development is so important: the Fediverse today lacks any kind of commerce. While it’s possible to support people out-of-band through things like Patreon or OpenCollective, the reality is that the experience is pretty fragmented. Being able to support artists, musicians, game designers, open source developers, and instance admins are a necessity for growing a healthy Fediverse. If we could build standardized support for this kind of market commerce across different platforms, it could have a huge impact on the network’s ability to sustain itself.
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Wulfy
in reply to We Distribute • • •Daniel V.
in reply to Wulfy • • •I’m actually not seeing where it says crypto, can you tell me where you saw that at?
In the code base there’s references to Stripe and such, and the article talks about adding other providers later, but I didn’t notice crypto mentioned anywhere. But I could have just totally missed it
@reiver ⊼ (Charles)
in reply to Daniel V. • • •I didn't didn't say that word anywhere. Nor did the article.
Right now it just supports Stripe.
We will add more payment providers, too.
Wulfy
in reply to @reiver ⊼ (Charles) • • •From the article "It builds on previous efforts others have tried...others = Monero"
Web monetisation (W3C) => It's currency-agnostic and designed to work with both traditional and digital payment systems.
Open Payments is designed to be an abstraction layer that can issue payment instructions between transacting parties atop *any payment method*, (ATM Interledger (ILP) only)
Stripe's broader #crypto strategy:
They're going all-in on crypto infrastructure - they acquired stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion and crypto wallet startup Privy Fintech giant Stripe developing blockchain dubbed ‘Tempo’ with crypto VC Paradigm | Fortune Crypto.
TLDR; Includes crypto support.
Sean Tilley
in reply to Wulfy • • •@n_dimension @dvandal To clarify, when I was talking about Mitra and Monero, I was largely discussing its mechanism of providing access on receiving signal of a successful payment, not support for Monero itself.
Still, the reality of Stripe having crypto support is indicative of other payment processers, such as PayPal, also having some level of crypto support. There are open questions as to whether these providers simply enable it out of the gate, or if they have to be explicitly set up for crypto payments to be accepted. I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter.
silverpill
in reply to We Distribute • • •Sean Tilley
in reply to silverpill • • •