So is Mozilla building Web Monetization into Firefox?

#1

Is Mozilla doing anything in this space other than providing funding through Grant For The Web?

The Coil extension isn’t even a featured extension in the Mozilla Add-Ons catalog. Just curious if Mozilla will use any of the channels available to it to actively promote Coil, Flattr, and other services to their hundreds of millions of users.

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#2

I would be interested to understand this too :slight_smile:

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#3

Great question. Following.

#4

Good question, can’t see it working without platform support. Has Brave said anything about supporting it as they have BAT and payment built in.

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#5

Their CEO isn’t positive to the Web Monetization API. Brave is still focusing on their controversial ad-replacement scheme where they remove all ads from websites and substitute them with their own ads instead.

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#6

Ouch, he might have relevant technical points but not going to effect change with that combative style. Thanks for the link Dan.

#7

Hi Dan thanks for the question. One note, Mozilla is not funding Grant for the Web, they are an advisory collaborator. They are doing a few things right now.

  1. Featuring Coil and Grant for the Web prominently at their Mozilla Festival in London in a few weeks
  2. Will be naming a Web Monetization Fellow(s) in their larger fellowship program. They will help drive adoption, innovation, policy and other issues around WM
  3. They are key to the governance of Grant for the Web.

As for the technology parts here are some details about where we stand now.

What browsers are currently supported?

Firefox Desktop, Firefox Mobile (android), Google Chrome Desktop, and Puma iOS are currently supported by Coil.

For Firefox Desktop and Mobile, you can install an add-on that will activate Coil payments to websites that are setup to receive web monetization. You can activate Coil payments on Google Chrome Desktop via Coil Extension. Puma has web monetization included in its code and with a Coil sign-in, no other add-ons or extensions are needed. Note: Puma is currently funded by Coil CEO Stefan Thomas and is actively supported by Coil. Web Monetization is available in Puma iOS, with Android coming soon.

So no there is not yet full integration into Firefox, but this is because of a larger strategy by Coil to go for a standard that could be adopted by multiple browsers, and thus more deeply ingrained in the web itself.

Coil has proposed the Web Monetization API as an open web standard to the W3C Web Incubator Community Group

For detailed documentation of the standard, check out the explainer, Web Monetization Draft Community Group Report Coil submitted to the W3C, and this W3C Interview: Coil on Interledger Protocol and Web Monetization.

Note: These ideas and documents were discussed at the WC3 Technical Plenary Meetings (TPAC) in Japan the week of September 16.

One key thing to remember, all of this is very new. And for it to be fully adopted it will need to be measured and strategic. This is a long game.

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#8

LOL. Yeah, I watched their spin on it while grabbing some free BAT’s on coinbase

#9

Thank you for this explanation. Seems very forthright and without the normal big-company spin.

Anyway I do hope this works out for the content creators on my site :slight_smile:

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#10

He makes good points. What I took from it was that he says there are some things that are vague and could affect users privacy. If those can be addressed I’d like to see Web Monetization working in Brave as well.

Side note: It might be good to have him in some capacity as an advisor considering is considerable contributions to the web.