A half-baked idea: NFT for writers

I graduated from college with a journalism degree in 2008. And since then there has been an elusive dream of "micropayments" helping fund journalism. The idea was that you'd kick a dollar or two to every article you read and everyone would be happy.

Part of the fun of crypto is the removal of real-world identity from your wallet ID. NFT could enable whistleblowers, journalists, dissidents, and others to receive compensation for their work and be totally outside the reach of any nationstate or corporation. It would be like Wikileaks but with a direct financial incentive.

For the first time, we can prove who owns something digitally, and transfer that ownership in a traceable way.

As exciting as NFT art is to artists, a similar opportunity may await writers, editors, and publishers. But, the infrastructure and tools are not quite there.

History didn't work out that way, but with crypto wallets, frictionless paywalls and micropayments become more possible than ever before. There needs to be a way to create an NFT where a reader can pay a small amount to access, thus "owning" a copy of the content.

As I write this, there is no way of collaborating on an NFT and ensuring that royalties are split in perpetuity.