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A new BSV-based content platform called PaiyBit is offering creators a different deal: fans pay only for what they actually consume, with payments streaming to the creator in real time—and the blockchain itself sees only one settled transaction when the session ends.

The platform, which is live and taking signups now, let creators publish a “paiyge”—a gated content page—in under a minute. Categories include live streams, one-on-one video calls, articles, albums and books, in-person meetups/rideshares, or other media. Fans fund access via non-custodial account wallets, and satoshis flow to the creator’s wallet as they watch, listen, or read. There are no subscriptions and no advertisements; the platform takes a 10% fee on transactions, and users who share paiyge links with a referral code earn 5% of resulting sales.

The mechanism underneath is the part that will interest developers. Rather than settling every payment immediately, PaiyBit uses payment channels built on BSV’s nSequence feature: the channel between fan and creator is updated off-chain as content streams, and only the final state is settled on the blockchain when the channel closes. The site’s media files themselves are stored on a server rather than on-chain, which the developer said is simply not cost-effective at this stage.

“I can’t believe no one else is building this kind of payment channel stuff, because I think streaming content is the core, central part of microtransactions,” said PaiyBit’s lead developer, the pseudonymous Æthelstan Åkerbland.

Online media as a marketplace

The model is deliberately designed to mimic a real-world market rather than a subscription service. Fans can sample content and stop paying at any point—try the first pages of a book or the first minutes of a video and leave without buying the whole work.

“You can try it, and pull out if you don’t feel like paying for the whole thing. It encourages quality as well—if you’re a creator, you want someone to watch the whole movie or podcast, or read the whole book, rather than just the first few pages,” he said.

For example, here’s how a CoinGeek article looks with paiyge formatting (just an example, so it’s free to read).

There is one novel (and much appreciated) touch: the site uses an AI assistant that will walk new users through the signup and setup process, determine their interest in using the service, and help them set up their own pages. It’s the first time we’ve seen onboarding done that way, and it’s especially useful for users with limited or no blockchain experience.

He contrasts this with the Netflix or Spotify model, where platforms are incentivized to produce as much content as possible for subscribers who may never watch it. The à la carte approach, he argues, suits smaller creators—an unknown band can sell individual tracks rather than expecting fans to buy an entire album.

The potential ‘future user’ rather than existing niches

PaiyBit is a long-running project for Åkerbland, who started a quest to find blockchain’s “real use case” in 2017 and began working on the app full-time about a year ago. He admits he built it without thinking too hard about who exactly it was for.

“I designed PaiyBit thinking ‘what would the future user want?’ rather than targeting a specific user group,” he said.

That makes the platform more like an exploration. It is complete in the sense that its features work as advertised, but its creator is openly still feeling for the final form, considering a “ring of trust” follow model, a discover page, and signup-incentive schemes, including one where the platform would pool funds for influencers who don’t yet have accounts, waiting for them to claim. He hopes that the many features eventually collapse into a single obvious product, the way the lightbulb fused a dozen separate inventions into one everyday object.

“I’ve tried to cater to every type of gated media and make it as open as possible. I’m still trying to figure out what the final product will look like,” he said.

Early signs are modest but real: around a hundred users have registered using email addresses after limited promotion on X and Twetch, with many arriving after one influencer posted a video urging followers to sign up. Åkerbland said he’s also seen anonymous users with no PaiyBit account at all purchasing content simply by scanning QR codes posted elsewhere.

“I’ve found with this project that when you actually build something, and it functions—you see it actually working, with real transactions—it finally clicks, and you see that this is an actual, mechanical thing you can actually use, rather than an abstract idea,” he said.

Whether PaiyBit becomes that everyday lightbulb or finds a narrower niche is a question its users will help answer (and that’s by design). The plumbing, at least, is already installed and flowing.

Watch: Meet the People Shaping BSV blockchain

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