I’m still trying to work out the best UX for this, however I have a hacky POC 402 Payment Required image loader Damus patch.

I’m thinking that when an image returns 402 Payment Required, and has a www-authentication header indicating NIP 98 HTTP AUTH, the user can “allow Nostr http auth for cdn.domain.com”, which can either confirm existing access to show image, or offer a LNURL to enable pay for access.

A default thumbnail image or blurhash style unauthorised/unpaid could show by default. Or client apps could show some kind of auth/payment required overlay icon.

Same concept could apply to 401 Unauthorised content - however it would skip the payment request flow. Other content types could be supported too.. images are just easy to start with.

This can enable membership checks or individual paywalled content, primarily for rich media.

Thoughts, feedback and ideas welcome.