I'm interested in the following use cases:
- Web content
- Voice and media traffic
For the first case, it would be ideal to be able to include some sort of proof in a custom HTTP request header showing that the client has made the payment. The server should be able to check this proof and verify that the payment has indeed been made, and then reply with the requested resource or return an error.
It may be a payment (required), or it may be a donation/tip (voluntary); in the latter case the server may collect these and verify them later.
For the voice and media case, the idea is to incentivize independent relay nodes to forward traffic for clients behind NAT/firewall or simply those who wish to add a layer of anonymity (similar to Tor). Again, these could be "metered" payments (e.g. 0.0001 XRP per 10 MB, or say for 30 minutes), or they could be tips. The speed would be extremely important in this case.
As I understand it, there are two ways to do micropayments:
On-ledger: These are payments made on the ledger and verified by the recipient using the transaction ID. This may be too slow, depending on the use case.
Signed transactions: Here the sender simply sends a signed transaction to the recipient, who can verify instantly if the sender has sufficient funds. Double-spending is possible in this case.
What would be ideal is if we could generate some sort of bearer token that could be passed around over multiple payments before it is finally redeemed on the ledger.
It would be even more awesome if these bearer tokens were anonymized using blind signatures.
Has anyone implemented micropayments with Ripple, and are there any guidelines/recommendations on how to go about it?