By: Geeq  on Nov 2, 2021

Dear Community,

🎉 TF v0.2.2 is available now for use with Geeq’s Chrome extension GoMicro, in the Chrome browser, on a desktop. 🎉

Today’s release of Geeq’s in-browser Micropayments Testing Framework (TF) will be familiar to those who have already been following how we plan to deploy Geeq Pay to create markets for video, audio, and other kinds of content and services on the web. Geeq has tools well suited for this purpose: multiple chains that use the same efficient protocol to validate, settle, and keep track of micro-coin transactions in a blockchain. (See the definition of Current Ledger State here.)

Some might refer to Geeq Pay as a base layer or a Layer 1 solution. Regardless of terminology, scalability is possible because there is no limit to the number of chains that may be launched to work contemporaneously. Having the capacity to scale seamlessly to handle traffic at low cost is critical for customers to know, if they are going to be first movers in creating the micro-value chain economy, which was the theme of Chief Economist John Conley’s talk on Cloud Day last week.

Keeping a Customer-Centered Format

In TF v0.2.2, we continue to show how easy it is to use an in-browser wallet to communicate directly to blockchain nodes, which track every micro-coin account balance. These accounts are generated when a user converts Geeq into micro-coins, for example, to spend at any website that adopts Geeq Pay.

We also have kept the home ‘protocol’ page that demonstrates how Geeq’s code and networks configuration systematically processes micro-coin payments behind-the-scenes. This home page has proven to be a handy tool when showing how Geeq’s protocols handle incoming requests. It is an important selling point to show that Geeq Pay processes transactions as they arrive. Customers who want an easy experience do not want to worry about delays, especially if they suspect some transactions may get preferential treatment to theirs.

If you ask one hundred people to name their most preferred idea to use micropayments, you may get nearly a hundred different answers. Besides the creator economy, which focuses on peer to peer interactions, several new cases caught our attention. As a result, we’ve added two new “stores” to TF v0.2.2.

We’d like to focus your attention on one of these stores in particular, because it is relevant to how Geeq Pay introduces new ways of doing business that can improve existing enterprises’ abilities to adapt quickly, in ways that decrease risk and increase their chances to improve their bottom lines.

Using Micropayments to Match Payments to Services

Economic conditions are changing so rapidly that businesses across the spectrum are under pressure to make significant decisions about how they adopt technology and change their work processes. How can Geeq Pay help them make informed decisions more efficiently? Using a micro-coins payment system to target specific needs while staying within budget means existing work product may find significant new demand through unbundling, expert curation, and repackaging – all without having to impose ads on customers, who don’t want to see them or be bombarded with attempts to up-sell them.

Customers generally want to satisfy what they need, now. Providing them with a good experience in the moment is a time-proven way to start relationships that build loyalty, yielding repeat customers who seek you out, rather than the other way around.

As in all new markets on the internet, when customers find value in the product, word spreads, and more traffic is organic. Unlike traditional markets with significant fixed costs, markets for digitally provided information can sustain themselves while charging prices closer to marginal costs. Illustrating the potential for these kinds of more efficient markets is the reason we added the DATA UP storefront to TF v0.2.2.

DATA UP

If you have ever conducted research for a business or non-profit, or have had a reason to try to fact check a statement yourself, you know it can be frustrating to find reliable information online.

For example, in academic publishing, much of the quality research is behind very expensive paywalls. If you don’t have an institutional login, the prices publishers charge to view a single book or research article can be prohibitive. Furthermore, these choices are often framed as a gamble. You may see the title, a short abstract, authors, and ranking on search results, but is that enough to pay $30 or more to download an article? It’s a risk. Meanwhile, the authors who deserve credit for their work and the business entity who wants good information miss the opportunity to gain from trade.

Similarly, business reports often cost thousands of dollars to access, pricing smaller companies out of the market. Even if you know exactly what you want: access to a single graph, table, chapter, map or finding, you need to pay to view the entire report, or take out a subscription to the publication. The siloed nature of online research and information acts as a barrier to innovation.

Services like DATA UP or Navigate, powered by Geeq Pay could provide a more open system of information exchange, while enabling businesses and research institutions to monetize their intellectual property more effectively. Imagine being able to access a curated list of validated research in your field and only pay for what you need. Research providers could charge per page, per chapter, per minute, per chart, per map or per statistic. By making information more divisible, affordable, and accessible, users could gain targeted access to specific information. As a result, such a system could form the foundation of richer, more nuanced data markets which would make it easier for everyone to build on existing knowledge.

Having a more open and accessible system of information exchange through micropayments was, indeed, part of the original vision of the internet. Walled gardens are the antithesis of the original vision. Geeq Pay restores and advances the ideal of an open platform and we will continue to follow paths for its adoption.

Outlook: Tech Update and New Cloud-Based Testing Framework Coming Soon

Later this month, we will provide a more technically oriented update, as well as release the cloud-based version of TF v0.2.2. Hosting the Geeq TF in the cloud rather than in a user’s browser will enable us to remove some of the current limitations that have been imposed to allow you to simulate the entire blockchain in a single tab. The cloud release will provide a more realistic simulation of how the final version of Geeq Pay will perform in real-world scenarios.

Putting the TF in the cloud is a commonly perceived milestone for the blockchain community. For those unfamiliar with blockchain, however, it also may add an aura of mystery – which runs counter to our intentions to demystify and encourage adoption.

In the cloud, your interaction with the blockchain is confined to what you can see and do as your own computer communicates with nodes in the cloud. In other words, you will lose the “all-knowing” perspective that you have when you are able to see everything on the home pages for TF v0.1, v0.2.1 and v0.2.2. That is why it has been important to put these demonstrations of Geeq Pay in the context of use cases, so we can show you what Geeq Pay can do and why you can count on it, even though it is happening via the cloud.

If you are new to Geeq and would like to learn more about Geeq’s Proof of Honesty, we encourage you to explore TF v0.1 and its FAQs and our accompanying collection of video explainers. Of course, as the Geeq community grows, we hope it will become easier and easier to spread the collective knowledge we acquire.

Thank you for being a Geeq

As always, we look forward to hearing your comments and feedback. To keep informed about the latest Geeq updates, including our forthcoming tech update and cloud TF launch, make sure to follow our feeds on Telegram and Twitter for up to date announcements, and please stay tuned for our second Newsletter, for an overview of all of our recent activity.

The Geeq Team