So I’ve made a fair bit of progress with a white label Nostr CDN (use your own domain) that accepts Lightning payments and checks access either via a cookie session or Nostr HTTP AUTH spec.

For paid images you don’t have access to, it shows a blurhash or thumbnail preview (but with a 402 response status), then you can hover and click to buy via lightning (money goes to seller directly, with a provider service fee added using a wrapped invoice).

You can pay with Ably. And then if you refresh the image, and send either the session cookie or Nostr HTTP AUTH header, it will show the unmasked content.

The best part is this actually seems to work fairly well in web browsers. Nostr apps would just need to detect a 402 image response, and either try auth or offer to pay the invoice.

Early days, however it’s possible to use Alby as a Nostr auth extension and invoice payment method. And a simple JS library for loading 402 style images that leverages it could be pretty cool.

PS. If this post kills @fiatjaf with boredom, forgive me.