Do you want to reward authors and commenters?

The CommentX project allows you to tip authors and commenters whose contributions you appreciate.

We invite you to take part in this experiment and help us see how we can change the web with micropayments. Here’s how.

You're a reader who wants to reward authors and commenters

Sign up to Coil. This costs you $4.50/month and shares that between the content creators you visit.

• Set up the Coil browser extension for Firefox and Google Chrome.

• When you visit participating articles, Coil shares micropayments with openDemocracy and the author – it's currently about $0.36/hour until you've reached $5 in a month (more info). It will also reward other websites and creators in the micropayments ecosystem when you visit their content.

As a commenter who wants to be eligible for payments

• Get a digital payment pointer address, for example with Uphold.com. This will let you make and receive micropayments.

The address is a bit like a web URL and looks like this:

$ilp.uphold.com/Wgf6mYRp4HmZ

Get this now by 1) signing up with Uphold, and 2) finding your payment pointer.

• Then, sign up to make comments in our new comments space at the bottom of an article. Add your payment wallet address to your comment profile on signup (or here if you’ve already signed up).

• Add your constructive comments to articles. Authors will be encouraged to highlight comments that best complement or advance the article.

On articles that have the “this article accepts micropayments” banner, if the author highlights your comment then your wallet will receive a share of the article’s earnings.

This works by putting your wallet address in the page for a proportion of visits – your wallet gets paid by anyone using Coil during those visits.

If you do try this out, please share your feedback with us by email.

Note: the CommentX project is experimental. The above information is subject to change as the project progresses. Payments may stop at any time due to technical or other reasons. We intend to update this page to reflect the latest state of this micropayments and revenue system and to publish the code open-source for transparency. Feb 2021

Learn more about the experiment here.