Mastodawn

Ripple/XRP (a cryptocurrency company) just granted 200k USD to Social Web Foundation, "...to research sustainable revenue and operating models for digital publishers and community-run platforms":

https://interledger.org/news/interledger-foundation-awards-200000-social-web-foundation-support-decentralized-social-media (archived)

This means they will be able to influence the development of the ActivityPub specification at W3C.

For those who don't know: Interledger, WebMonetization and OpenPayments are basically the same thing, these projects were created by Ripple ~10 years ago in order to insert their cryptocurrency and related payment services into web standards. These projects are sometimes presented as independent, but this is a lie, they are not (not in 2019, not in 2025).

Needless to say, Ripple itself is a borderline scam: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2019/03/01/is-ripple-a-scam/. It's not even a cryptocurrency really, their infrastructure is completely centralized and no one in cryptocurrency space takes them seriously. But they have a lot of money to bribe people, so I am sure that we will hear more about their adventures soon.

RE: https://socialwebfoundation.org/?p=99982

TheLegend27 Feb 4

@silverpill So when's Mastodon just gonna roll out their own federation protocol?

silverpill Feb 4

@kirby Not sure what is Mastodon's role in this, but yeah. It's always Mastodon

TheLegend27 Feb 4

@silverpill They like to wag their dick around the AP people, I figure they wouldn't like this happening and would rather just forcefully branch off instead.

shopkeeper Feb 5

@silverpill yah, hopefully ppl know ripple is a scam.

but what does a grant do in this case. does giving a grant to a foundation forces the foundation to skew their decision the bad way? can the foundation simply say, "thanks for your money, but we do whatever we wanna do. so stop bossing us around."?

can they not do that?

silverpill Feb 5

@potatomeow They can, but I don't think they will. Given that foundation is a member of Social Web working group (together with Meta), they can adopt a simple business model: money in exchange for favors. And, knowing the people involved, I believe this is exactly what is going on here.

Fediverse Report – #149 – On Protocol Governance

On the complexities of protocol governance.

connectedplaces.online

Evan Prodromou Feb 5

@silverpill hey, thanks for sharing the link!

Interledger Foundation is also a W3C member, and can join the Working Group directly. They don't need to make this grant to participate in ActivityPub standards.

Evan Prodromou Feb 5

The grant is for four subprojects:

1. Fediverse sustainability. What are the economic, psychological and emotional pressures on instance operators and other infrastructure providers? How can we support them?

2. Creator economy. What social, organizational, and technical infrastructure do content creators depend on? What are we missing on the Fediverse?

Evan Prodromou Feb 5

3. Cooperatives. social.coop, cosocial.ca and data.coop are all great examples of coops on the fediverse. Does this democratic and participative corporate structure provide an advantage for the Fediverse?

4. Web Monetization. Many Fediverse projects have implemented this API. We'll be identifying two more multimedia projects and helping them use the protocol.

Evan Prodromou Feb 5

@silverpill this is a restricted grant; we're being paid for the work being done. There's no quid pro quo, except that ILF and SWF both want the Social Web to grow and succeed.

Evan Prodromou Feb 5

@silverpill feel free to tag me next time if you'd like to talk about our work at SWF.

Evan Prodromou Feb 5

@silverpill oh, and have you met @Jeremiah ? He's an active participant in the ActivityPub community. A great person for you to meet!

Jeremiah, do you have any recommended links for someone interested in ActivityPub to learn more about ILF and WM?

silverpill Feb 5

@evan There's nothing to talk about. I know who these people are and what they are doing.

Evan Prodromou Feb 5

@silverpill which people?

pudding_verified

@evan @[email protected]

What are the economic, psychological and emotional pressures on instance operators and other infrastructure providers?A lotHow can we support them? Two shawarma pls I am instante operator

SearchOnly Feb 7

The creator economy piece is huge. Most fediverse platforms assume creators will just... exist on goodwill? Meanwhile they need discovery, monetization tools, analytics that actually work, and ways to build sustainable audiences. The infrastructure gap between "we have federation" and "creators can pay rent" is massive.

nicole mikołajczyk Feb 5

@silverpill no trust in swf, i’m switching to silverlight