Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments [LWN.net]

Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments

Posted Jul 16, 2026 9:26 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments by gmatht
Parent article: An update on the scraper situation

How, exactly, do you expect the browser to force me to donate to a set of charities, given that there are multiple open source options where someone can remove the "forced donation" code and re-release the browser without it?

With CAs, it's trivial - the browser picks trusted CAs, and I get the benefits of trusted CAs automatically, simply because the browser chose them. In a "proof of donation" situation, however, the thing I need is not a charity, but a donation - and unless the browser makes the donation on my behalf (from what fund of money, for example, and how does it ensure that it only donates for unique users), it doesn't work.

The hard part of all of the possible solutions is getting it past the apathetic and opposed so that it becomes part of the social norms. The easy part is the technical bits of showing that you've done something (a microtransaction, proof of work, mining a cryptocurrency, whatever).

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Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments

Posted Jul 17, 2026 8:42 UTC (Fri) by gmatht (subscriber, #58961) [Link] (6 responses)

'How, exactly, do you expect the browser to force me to donate to a set of charities, given that there are multiple open source options where someone can remove the "forced donation" code and re-release the browser without it?'

You absolutely could do that, assuming the browser even tried to force you. Then the web would fallback to work the way it does now, with many important websites regularly freezing up for a few seconds while forcing your browser to do Proof-of-Work, (or other nonsense like forcing you to do a Captcha just to view a single public facing webpage). Websites could instead deny you service entirely, but I imagine that would be rare. The webmaster might find Proof-of-Work wasteful, but if their goal is to rate-limit requests it may not make much difference to them whether they are limited by Proof-of-Donation, Proof-of-Work or Captcha.

Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments

Posted Jul 17, 2026 8:45 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (5 responses)

But why would I bother doing proof of donation/work/payment if websites don't accept it yet? And why would websites move to proof of donation/work/payment if browsers don't do it yet?

There's a deep chicken-and-egg problem to solve here first, which is that when no user does the new thing, there's no incentive for websites to move away from what they do today; but when no website does the new thing, there's no incentive for users to put time and effort into a thing that does nothing for them. How do you break that cycle?

Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments

Posted Jul 17, 2026 9:10 UTC (Fri) by gmatht (subscriber, #58961) [Link] (4 responses)

Well, the chicken and egg problem is common to every new feature, and many browsers support versions of HTML past 1.0.

The only real challenge is how do we make setting up a wallet trivially easy (as in a user shouldn't even have to know it is there; for proof-of-donation the webmaster doesn't even need a wallet). I guess the first stage would be to just have sort of proof-of-work coin so that you could save up proof-of-work so that the next dozen or so webpages you load start instantly. I guess most coin miners would work for this, though they are a little heavyweight (and they tend to be flagged by virus scanners). Blockchain probably isn't really necessary anyway. Getting paid for proof-of-useful-work (protein folding, random useful medium size NP problems, cold-storage), or getting a couple of bucks of Proof-of-Donation coin off your ISP are possible options.

Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments

Posted Jul 17, 2026 9:47 UTC (Fri) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link] (2 responses)

It is not common to any new feature, just to features you need to force on the user for the user to be interested in them at all.

Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments

Posted Jul 17, 2026 10:20 UTC (Fri) by gmatht (subscriber, #58961) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't see anyone suggesting that we force anyone to use Proof-of-Donation. Are you responding to me, or viewpoint you have seen elsewhere?

Proof-of-Donation a compromise between Proof-of-Work and Micro-payments

Posted Jul 20, 2026 7:22 UTC (Mon) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

I am talking about the users of your particular website, you won't exactly make your users jump through hoops to adopt a system to give you a micropayment for every request unless you refuse requests without that proof attached, i.e. force your users to use it.

The chicken-and-egg problem for any solution

Posted Jul 17, 2026 10:34 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The chicken-and-egg is the significant problem here, though. Everything else is a solved technical problem, and you can copy pre-existing solutions to build your system.

But, as the developers of CLNP found, just because you have a technical solution to a problem doesn't mean that you can get it adopted, even with significant support. In the case of new versions of HTML, adoption happened because the browsers could unilaterally adopt new features without user involvement; once browsers had adopted the feature, websites could use it, and once websites used it, users could move to new browsers without significant cost to get the features they needed to see the latest and greatest websites.

Even then, though, the existence of sites like Can I Use points to the fact that the chicken-and-egg problem remains - some features are barely supported at all even if they'd be useful for some sites, while others are widely available and can be relied upon.

It's worth noting, in that context, that there's basically been two routes to features becoming widely available in the Can I Use tables of recent years:

Apple or Google implement it, force it on all Safari or Chrome (including Android WebView) users as a compulsory feature, and then sites start using it because there's enough users to make it worthwhile. However, at this point, I don't see that as plausible; Google and Apple are both big enough to just ride out scrapers, and therefore won't speculatively implement it.
Websites use it, with a fallback to a lesser option, and browsers implement it because their developers really like the idea of avoiding the fallback or because users clamour for the improvements they get by avoiding the fallback.