
Payments on the Solid Framework - jmunsch
https://docs.solidpay.org/
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ryanjshaw
Okay I'll bite. I've worked in both retail and corporate banking for over a
decade. I've been responsible for software that processes large payments and
receipts daily. I've cloned a few cryptocurrencies for fun and have a pretty
good understanding of them. I cannot understand anything on this entire site.
Does anybody know what this is all about?

~~~
apo
I've studied Bitcoin for many years on a technical level. I've studied altcoin
and ICO scams from the beginning. This site has all the hallmarks of a
technology scam.

Case in point: nowhere does this site articulate a problem to be solved. This
has become my litmus test for a technology scam. Instead we see marketing
happy talk - lots of it.

Most ICO and altcoin scams make vague references to Bitcoin's limitations.
This one makes vague references to Lightning Network's limitations:

 _Layer 2 such as lightning network has a deposit in order to participate and
two transactions to build a channel, then can scale micro payments across a
network efficiently._

Gobbledygook designed to bamboozle the technically illiterate.

Looks like another rung has been added to the evolutionary ladder of the
Bitcoin, But Better scam. First altcoins, then ICOs, now not-Lightning.

~~~
pwaai
helps to flag if you find shady submissions

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Renaud
The solid infrastructure looks promising to me. Based on the other submission
today on Solid[1], there are varying opinions on whether it will take off and
really be able to challenge the big social media.

However, I think we _need to want_ this to succeed, even if there are other
ideas of what decentralised architectures should look like.

It may not be the best system to everyone, but it has some clout with Tim
Berners-Lee behind it and its architecture and capabilities can -and will-
evolve. It looks to me like our best chance to start 'disrupting' the current
status-quo, even if it flies under the radar for a while.

I can imagine an Instagram-like app that would let me import a take-out
archive from my Instagram account and just let me continue where I left off.
Maybe I would need to rebuild a user-base, but that's OK, there would be new
people on that platform and and more control over what I want to see, rather
than some ad-optimized algorithm deciding for me.

A payment systems built on top could allow direct monetisation for content-
creators without having to go through a 3rd party that enforces arbitrary
rules over what content gets and doesn't get monetized.

[1]:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18100895](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18100895)

~~~
eksemplar
Disruption is driven by need though. Uber succeeded because traditional cab
companies suck. I can’t remember when people weren’t complaining about cabs,
even before the internet, and Uber came and removed almost all of the
annoyances. Sure they were bad for labour, but for the customers it made
sense.

I’ve never seen anyone complain about Instagram or visa. How can you disrupt
services that people love?

I mean, it should be obvious by now that almost nobody cares about privacy.

~~~
fastball
Literally everyone that has interacted with the financial sector has
complained about the financial sector at some point.

Person-to-person settlement is a stepping stone on the way to a better
financial/banking system.

~~~
eksemplar
We already have person-to-person payment apps that work instantly and feeless
though, at least in my country we do. They were made by banks.

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jarym
2nd solid post today and despite being familiar with the concepts I don’t
understand any of the detail.

Marketing spiel is fine but somewhere concrete details need to be provided
without the BS. Very disappointing that Tim Berners-Lee would be associated
with something so poorly expressed.

~~~
j45
In the case of SOLID, I'd probably cut the guy who started the web some more
slack than a cursory glance at the work and determine if I can't immediately
understand it - there can't be any understanding or value in it.

Some things that take years to design and put together, might take a while for
all of us to catch up to.

I hope examples continue to come out, but more importantly, those who develop
can spend some time to hack with it. Maybe some brains are seeing this that
are primarily wired to work and understand through a lens of front end, or
back-end development, where but Tim Berner-Lees like lots of other devs here
is used to end-to-end.

It seemed pretty simple to me, and pretty simple to follow along with. If
we're looking for something shiny, the web wasn't shiny on day 1.

~~~
Aeolun
Every single user story on that website uses concepts that make absolutely no
sense to me. And I’m a power user.

If you can’t make it understandable to me. I just don’t believe that you’ll
ever get anyone to use it.

~~~
j45
I don't disagree that it could be easier to understand.

My point is presentation doesn't wipe out the initial or potential long term
relevance of the tech, only accessibility and approachability to create
beginners. Bitcoin comes to mind.

Maybe some experienced power users helping tell some more stories.

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sunseb
The web 1.0 was a success because it was simple. I don’t understand anything
about Solid.

~~~
GordonS
You probably would if the Solid websites actually explained anything about how
it works, rather than being filled with ridiculous marketing speak. I'm
honestly really disappointed that TBL is obviously OK with this.

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gilbertmpanga12
Read about Solid yesterday and was super fascinated by the idea of Pods and
since am solving a payment solution, I saw it would be a kickass solution for
payments.Now solidPay is out but sadly it's confusing, how do I begin
implementing it

~~~
stephengillie
You get some Bitcoin and send it to a URL, then it will be in your wallet, or
so we hope.

Some parts are incomplete. This service isn't ready. From the Paywall page:

> _Process

This is a work in progress_

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datavirtue
[https://solid.mit.edu](https://solid.mit.edu)

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z3t4
One of the basic ideas of a ledger is that once a transaction has been added,
it can not be removed or changed.

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simonmorley
No https redirect on signup or login. That worries me.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Where are you seeing a signup/login? I'm only seeing the documentation (maybe
one of my plugins is blocking something?).

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etaioinshrdlu
It is pretty interesting and kinda disappointing to see renowned tech
luminaries hopping on the hype train left and right.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Or maybe there's something to it, and it's still being worked on?

I have no opinion either way on Solid (yet), but the comments on these
submissions seem extremely critical considering they're still rolling it out
and it's a work in progress.

When I read the OP link above, and the other submission today, I just see an
early-stage project that is still being actively developed, no different to
thousands of other projects posted on HN.

I do think their marketing/buzzword approach to be a bit "thick", but that
could also be said about 90% of HN-loved products/services.

~~~
nulbyte
> ...but the comments on these submissions seem extremely critical...

I think there are very good reasons for the critical commentary. Tim Berners-
Lee made the comment recently that it took 15 years for us to get "here,"
where here seems to be a bunch of handwavey marketing fluff and broken demos.
I am going to take what he says and believe he meant that the broken demos
were built upon 15 years of prior work on bits and pieces that no one put
together until recently; at least that is slightly more palatable. But Solid
Pay suffers even more from the handwavey marketing fluff, because its
handwavey marketing fluff relies on Solid's handwavey marketing fluff.

> Solid builds on 30 years of Web research and development. It has a cutting
> edge semantic layer with proven scalability...

Since when has Solid proven its scalability? The demos don't even work. Even
if it overcomes the infirm state of Solid, it then suffers from the apparent
fact that while Solid Pay is intended to interact with the existing monetary
infrastructure, no one working on Solid Pay seems to understand that
infrastructure. In Solid Pay, a Credit increases your balance; but everywhere
else, a credit decreases it. This sounds simple, but if you mess up simple, I
fear for the complicated bits will be worse.

There are real problems here, and we can't just hope they go away; we must be
critical of them or else we risk dealing with them for quite some time should
these systems actually materialize.

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simonmorley
Oh and ‘add your producst’. I’m out.

