To paid relay operators:

I'm working on a concept for how service providers could add recurring LN subscriptions and I'd like your feedback.

I already drafted a spec and coded a demo for something that IMO should work with current LN tech (BOLT11 and LN Addresses).

Spec: https://oak-node.net/doc/trunk/doc/ons/ons-4.md

Demo: https://se.oak-node.net

Let me know what you think. Does it make sense? Do you see any major problems with it? Is there something I missed?

Thanks!

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Discussion

Seems like the ideal procedure for this (from a user perspective) would be to get an invoice to pay in a DM when it’s time to re-up

I like the idea of a prorated subscription! Nice work. Also, I think Wallet of Satoshi (and probably a few others) only allow adding a limited characters to the LN note/memo. I think in WOS It's limited to 32 characters. This would mean users of such wallets would not be able to paste their entire public key. However, I think it's more of a WOS problem.

It would also be nice to have a QR code displayed that automatically handles this for the user after they input their pubkey on the input field of the website.

I'm going to test it out with another wallet.

Looks like I'm in after I paid using Getalby.

Great! Good point with WoS and limitations on the memo length.

I tried to get a QR going, but AFAIK I can't generate a QR for LN Address with a pre-defined memo. Will look into it tho, maybe I can generate an invoice. However that's another interaction with the LN node, trying to keep the comms to a minimum.

I love the idea but I think I found a bug. I paid 1000 sats and it set my expiration for 3/13. Perfect. I tested another 200 sats and it reset my expiration to 3/7 rather than extend to 3/17.

Thank you sir, good catch! Fixed and patched.

The idea isn’t new, was also discussed in nostream TG. But the idea is good and nobody has done it so far.

So you are a firstmover 🤙🏽⚡️

I like the idea, but we will see what so people will use. At this point I’m comfortable with my 1000Sat admission. But maybe the people will also use a subscription instead of onetime 🤷🏼‍♂️

Generally speaking, I like the idea of a recurring fee. As for now or at least as long as Nostr is growing quickly, a one-time-fee should be sufficient. Newer nostriches will pay for the early innovators, I am fine with that. However, in the long run a recurring fee will be needed.

But I think as a customer I would prefer top-ups, as long as there are no lightning-only recurring payments without a 3rd party.

What are your plans #[2] about recurring payments? I have seen in the nostream database that there is a balance field, I suppose it is planned to be used for a recurring payment, isn't it?

That’s going to be a thing for sure for whoever just wants to pay a monthly and forget about it.

But I also think there’s gonna be a good chunk of users that will prefer a prepaid model where you pay for what you will use.

Imagine paying 1000 sats which grant you 10000 events on a relay. You will only need to pay again once you’ve consumed that. How often that will happen will be completely different depending on your usage.

Will it be open sourced?

Does it need to use a specific relay implementation?

Would be great to somehow further improve this idea by charging users with per event bases, if someone rarely write to a relay it would make sense to charge less.

Great job 👍

What to do when people forget to set the memo? Is there a refund mechanism? Or can it generate a lnurl that already has a pubkey memo embedded?

Awesome! Gonna check it out 🔥