Currently, the web is monetized mostly by either ads or subscriptions (or by companies offering you free stuff and then selling your data). Over the years, there have been various attempts to switch to a system of micropayments. But despite a few limited successes (e.g. buying one song from a music service), these attempts have generally failed.... See more

-Has not lived up to expectations as a pmt mechanism. Fees and vol are obstacles

Micropayments could potentially resolve this friction in a decentralized way, which I would love to see. On the other hand, this is a really hard problem: people have been working on it since at least Digital's Millicent over 25 years ago. There have been many proposals and startups, but nothing has really worked out.