An Application Programmable Interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. The API specifies how software components should interact. A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks. A programmer then puts the blocks together. There are many different types of APIs for operating systems, applications or for websites. Windows, for example, has many API sets that are used by system hardware and applications. When you copy and paste text from one application to another, it is the API that allows that to work. With the evolution of the internet, APIs have become more than just an aid for the operating systems inside our computers. This collaboration of code allows many wonderful things to happen.
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One fascinating way of overcoming this problem is the use of micropayments. By building a payment infrastructure for the web, platforms can provide bloggers, journalists, artists, and content creators with a new way to operate. This has produced companies that are steering the environment of microtransactions to a browser near you. With Bitcoin impulse buying, and tipping, they can invigorate a new element in economic sharing.
“Micropayments are great if you use them for a product or service with certain properties. It must be one where you can get away with usage-based pricing, and where there is a strong rationale for making it cheap, yet not free.” — Nathan Myhrvold, Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft
BitWall is a service that allows publishers to put up paywalls rather than utilizing traditional ad models. Instead of subscription models, like the Wall Street Journal has, where you have to pay per month to read their articles, users can pay smaller one-time micropayments to read a content creators stories. The application ProTip works with many social media platforms, and websites integrating with the APIs used on these programs. Users of ProTip can send small tips to people on YouTube, Soundcloud, WordPress, and more with their system. Another service is ZapChain, which publishes material so users can tip content creators who post written content, music and various online material. These new mediums have brought a new spectrum to the internet’s playing field, by adding incentives to create robust online material. The company 21 inc wants to establish a network of micropayment solutions for the Internet. The business led by Balaji S. Srinivasan has created a hardware device that allows developers to build applications with micropayment processing. Digital content can be sold via an organized marketplace, or in other fashions utilizing 21inc’s gadget.
“Our long term goal is to return economic power to the individual. Specifically, we want to make it possible for you to turn your bright idea into passive income by selling Bitcoin-payable goods, games, and services over the Internet through a 21 Bitcoin Computer.” — Balaji S. Srinivasan, CEO 21inc
Micropayments have been discussed for a long time. When HTTP/1.1 was created a return code 402 was initiated, telling the user a payment was required. This system has not been widely used, aside from a limited number of developers, and is officially “reserved for future use.” This concept began with the genesis of the World Wide Web, and many attempts to posit this code have seemingly failed. Many believe that Bitcoin could fill this gap, as it is easier to apply than most of the digital payment processors of today like PayPal. 21inc has applied their client to HTTP 402 within three of the computer’s microtransaction schemes. This system, if it caught on, could allow digital cryptocurrencies to compete with the likes of Google Pay, Facebook, and Zyga.
The service Chain wants to build a network of financial APIs by connecting the dots of asset and currency trading via blockchain technologies. Currently, there is a bold initiative to build private cryptographically secured ledger systems within the atmosphere of legacy institutions. Chain wants to capitalize on this by providing a system for these new digital accords to communicate with each other.
Institutions like Nasdaq, Citibank, Visa, Capital One and others have pushed 30 million in seed funding into the startup. All of these giant companies have been researching blockchain technology within their confines. If Chain can pull off an enterprise-ready system that weaves together the possibility of these trading services today with the digital technology of tomorrow, then the sky’s the limit. These APIs will broadcast in a fashion only blockchains can bring, time stamped transparency, fast real-time trading engines, and low-cost energy solutions.
Algorithms rule our world either online or offline and we can learn to manipulate these equations. Incentive based sharing economies are an excellent way to encourage consumers to become prosumers. In time, people can change the ecosystem of monopolies, ad-structures, and sensationalism. Application Programmable Interfaces with built in micropayments are coming to the web to shake things up, it’s just a matter of which network will be used by the majority.
What do you think of open API’s and Micropayment solutions? Let us know in the comments below!
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