Mid level grants are funded at between $15,000 and $50,000 USD. Many of the projects in this category focus on experimenting and prototyping at the platform level, building monetization tools, and conducting research into how Web Monetization can benefit specific communities.
Projects were submitted through a public, global call for proposals launched in late April for three levels of funding: Spark, Mid-Level and Flagship. In less than two months, 286 applications were submitted and reviewed by a panel of independent judges recruited from across the technology, open standards, philanthropy, and arts/culture sectors.
Read more about Grant for the Web’s Mid level recipients:
Samuel Allemang, Janet Mowat & team, Canada
Demonstrating viability of comedy website Spooky by mentoring and publishing diverse and emerging comedy writers. Developing open-source resources to promote equity and ethics among web publishers. Team includes Caitlin Kunkel (Second City, Belladonna Comedy).
Douglas Arellanes & team, Czech Republic
Adding support for Web Monetization features to the Mural software, while building engagement in the arts community to explore how Web Monetization can be implemented for artists in a user-friendly and intuitive way. Team includes Pete Haughie, Naomi Aro and Dr. Dominic Smith.
Juan Caballero & team, Germany
Creating a working prototype of a "pay what you can" eBook publishing model, characterized by transparent and simple royalties structures. It will integrate both WMS and legacy payment rails, and anchor royalties in self-sovereign identity tooling. Team includes Jefferson Sofarelli and Anja Henckel.
Nestor Campos, Chile
Develop a series of libraries (generic as well as specialized libraries for Jquery, NodeJS, VueJS and React) that allow Web Monetization to be used in any web application with minimal impact on the code and extend development and community to the whole world in a simple way.
Abhinav Chawla, Canada
Providing an authenticated way to enable pulling protected data from a server. It will ensure users' personal information is kept private and not shared with the content owner.
Jon Clement & team, Canada
Tracking the non-monetary value of your creation using a flexible graph database schema. GretNet extends current limited accounting systems, like spreadsheets and captures the bigger system picture while quantifying the grey area of transaction ownership and value add.
Josh Senyak, USA
Building Tembo, a free and open development platform, designed for creating open-source web database applications that are monetized by default, with micropayments accruing to the software creator.
Richard Davey, UK
Creating open-source plugins for the HTML5 game libraries Phaser 2, Phaser 3, and Pixi 5 that enable developers to easily add Web Monetization features to their games. The plugins will be backed with comprehensive tutorials and game-specific examples.
Harbour, USA
Addresses the challenges businesses and individuals face when wanting to properly license content from a creator. Harbour is developing a tool that makes it fast and easy for a person to send a content creator a license request link, which explains the context of the request and executes a license for both parties. Team includes Joshua Elkes, Eric Doversberger and Kevin Rochford.
Andre Garzia, UK
Unlocking a more sustainable authorship experience for self-publishing writers through Little Webby Press, a progressive web app (PWA) that generates both an eBook in EPUB3 format and a Web Monetized static website with the book content.
Brett Gaylor & team, Canada
Using the interactive web documentary series, Discriminator, to explore the use of Web Monetization as a funding mechanism for web documentaries, giving makers a direct relationship with audiences. Team includes Darren Pasemko.
Andrew Hancox - Open Source Learning
Engaging with the Moodle community to design, develop, publish, support, and promote a suite of plugins to bring Web Monetization to Moodle. The plugins will allow entire sites, courses or individual activities to be monetized. A reference site will be set up to demonstrate the technology, allow selected individuals and organizations to publish content, and provide free courses on installing and configuring the plugins (for site admins) and setting up a digital wallet (for consumers). Once the plugins are delivered there will be a programme of out-reach via Sussex University to not-for-profit organizations who would benefit from building new or more sustainable business models around existing content and knowledge.
Lou Huang, USA
Experimenting with Web Monetization a revenue method to keep Streetmix accessible and funded solely by industry professionals as our customers. Streetmix is a web-based street design platform, which encourages anyone to redesign streets in their own neighborhood, without needing urban planning or civil engineering expertise.
Mike Huggins & Luke Brobbin - Nascent Blockchain, UK
Developing a fast, efficient, streaming, and international payment system for on-site donations to provide alternative and convenient revenue streams at physical cultural locations such as charity events, museums and art galleries.
Open Index Protocol, USA
Producing the second season of the series What Kind of Internet Do You Want? with a focus on educating people about Web Monetization through fun educational videos, deep-dive discussions with experts, and reviewing case studies of monetized projects. Team includes Amy James, Ryan Jordan, Kris Newsom, and Devon James.
Sonia John, Kenya
Developing courses to teach web 3 technologies using Porium, a pipeline for creating more web 3 developers, collaborators, and co-founders. Participants will access material developed in collaboration with engineers maintaining technologies like IPFS, Interledger, Polkadot, Near Protocol, Ethereum and more.
Michiel de Jong, Netherlands
Enabling Web Monetization by default in all open source implementations of the Solid pod server specification. Also, making changes to Darcy Social, a Solid-based social space, so that payments end up at the actual creator of the content that is being viewed, even if it's embedded in a newsfeed.
Ushahidi, USA
Web Monetizing deployments on Ushahidi, an open-source crowdsourcing platform that’s been used globally for crisis response, human rights protection, good governance, and ensuring integrity in elections. This will enable users to opt-in to access donations to their work seamlessly and directly from their projects. Users will also be able to publicize the licensing associated with content generated on their deployments using a content disclaimer feature.
Vivid IoV Labs, UK
Creating a live-streaming platform that employs the freemium approach to grow Web Monetization usage. The platform will drive community engagement by delivering events and educational content, showcasing Web Monetization, and leveraging Coil and Interledger to provide fairer creator rewards. Team includes Greg Hannam, Ike Iwumene, Yo-Der Song, and Ben Marshall.
Audiotarky, UK
Helping musicians to maximize their potential income by making it easy to monetize recordings and smaller content like sounds, patches, and loops. We will provide musicians with a streaming music platform, and use it to compare revenue from Web Monetization to traditional methods, publishing this information and providing guidance to musicians on how to use the technology to supplement other sources of income. Team is Simon Metson, Ben Wellby, Ian Popperwell, Matt Hamilton, and Ali Chant.
A* Digital, USA
Improving healthy and equitable participation in digital economies by allowing users to purchase and share prepaid links to Web Monetized content using Gib. Creators will be able to set increments of access that will be made available for purchase, and sharing will engage potential audiences that may not otherwise experience the value of their premium content. Team includes Alexander Mozeak and Adelya Aksanova.
New Media Rights, USA
Conducting one-on-one consultations to provide pro-bono legal assistance to independent online creators who use Web Monetization technology, including to Grant for the Web grantees. Also, publishing educational resources based on those consultations to provide guidance to the vast majority of creators in need who we don’t have the capacity to directly assist.
Bruno Luis Panuto Silva & team, Brazil
Building WMHub, a tool that simplifies Web Monetization by allowing users to configure multiple projects at once. Users can then add capabilities such as revenue sharing and custom content, and get insights on how their content is consumed. Team includes Gabrielle Telman Lopes da Silva.
Edward Saperia, UK
Building a suite of open source plugins for etherpad, the open source real-time collaborative text editor, to provide monetization as well as many common popular features such as improved usability, accessibility, presence, retention, governance, conversion, and scalability.
Stephanie Rieger, Canada
Writing a white-paper that explores the potential long-term impacts of the Web Monetization standard and Interledger protocol, positing both positive and negative ways these tools may change to how we use the web, and providing practical recommendations to ensure these technologies result in a more equitable, open, and diverse web.
Processing Foundation, USA
Using Web Monetization to create alternative revenue sources for p5.js, a JavaScript library for creative coding, with a focus on making coding accessible and inclusive for artists, designers, educators, and beginners. We aim to create a sustainable funding model for the p5.js Editor, the main tool used to make things with p5.js.
Michael Scipioni & team, USA
Web Monetizing the Chicago Genius Herald, a satire outlet experimenting with civic-focused longer form content. Without the corporate backing other satire sites rely on, we look forward to learning about what a profitable, sustainable way forward might look like that leaves our creative vision intact and continues to generate content that spurs essential community dialogue. Team includes Alexander Borkowski, Carolyn Ten Eyck, Erik Morrison, Ron Ferrara, and Hobert Thompson.
Richard Seshie, Côte d’Ivoire
Monetizing africakitoko.com, a site that features rich, data-driven visual content about Africa and African Heritage. Implementing Web Monetization will allow experimentation with a different business model to reward our team of graphic and visual designers, and we will dedicate an explainer page on our website.
Alex Shiffer & team, USA
Prototyping Web Monetization on NewsAtomic.com, an online platform for local print newspapers based in New York's Hudson Valley. Adding a Web Monetization payment option will permit readers to pay our publishers to consume their content. Team includes Sharon Richman, Mike Loeffler, and Amberly Jane Campbell.
Marc Laporte, Canada
Integrate Web Monetization features into the web application builder Tiki. Site administrators will be able to monetize the contents using Coil and users will be able to monetize the pages or contents they own on a Tiki site. We'll also build modules & integrate ILP in Tiki sites to send and receive online payments for products or services.
Briana Stuart & team, Belgium
Addressing the lack of content made by dancers for dancers while providing valuable information about monetizing content, building networks, entrepreneurship, gaining professional skills, and boosting personal development. The 'Web Monetization for Dancer’s' award will provide financial support for dancers to create their own dance-related content. Team includes Evan Morsell and Akande Davis.
Hypha Worker Co-operative, Canada
Giving authors greater control over publishing and monetization through democratic ownership of online publications. We will prototype our publishing tools through COMPOST, our magazine that shares stories and art about the digital commons. It will publish to the World Wide Web and Distributed Web.
Bay Area Tech Club, Estonia
Integrating Web Monetization into Waasabi, an open source portal software that allows communities organizing online events to easily add live streaming & video functionality to their website. Event hosts will be able to choose privacy-respecting business models while still receiving compensation and event speakers will have new ways to monetize their work.
Ugobame Uchibeke & team, Nigeria
Running a Web Monetization hackathon with NaijaHacks, Africa's largest hackathon. Open to both beginners and experienced developers, mentors will be assigned to teams and there will prizes for the winners. At this moment in history, it is especially important that we are inclusive and support communities around the world equally so that regardless of where a person is born, they have access to learn and create on the Web. Team includes Christine Dikongué.
Sharon Wang & Elliot Evans, Canada
Continuing to develop Akita, a website, browser extension, and outreach initiative that seeks to increase awareness and improve understanding of Web Monetization by providing individuals with helpful resources and insight into their online browsing. It also increases accessibility by enabling engagement with Web Monetization without having to commit money. Additionally, this effort includes the ‘A Web Monetization Story’ project, an interactive, story-based Web Monetization tutorial for online creators.
Bart Tunnissen, Netherlands
Providing an alternative business model, based on voluntary donations, for organizations that offer free online services and content, and do not want to monetize user data. Using a browser extension, users will be able to donate small amounts according to their preferences.
Roelf-Jan de Vries & team, Netherlands
Improving the business model for the publication of ultra-resolution images using Micrio, an IIIF-compatible platform for creating interactive stories. This involves making ultra resolution stories less risky for publishers and building monetization solutions that fits specific content. Team includes Erwin Verbruggen, Guido Bouman, Marcel Duin, Mathijs Kadijk and Taco Ekkel.
Kajetan Biedrzycki, USA
Enabling portable, monetized 3D content in the browser by integrating a monetization feature into Webaverse's package system so usage of packages implicitly pays the creator while unlocking perks for the user.
openDemocracy
Developing a version of the open-source Coral Talk comments system that incorporates monetization and experiments with new incentives that reward quality comments, encourage authors to participate in conversations, drive moderation, and that test new ways of stimulating engagement.
Lincoln Mullen, USA
Creating a plugin for the open-source Omeka S platform that uses the Web Monetization Standard to collect micro-donations from users, allowing them to contribute automatically and voluntarily to cultural heritage and educational institutions without requiring these institutions to lock content behind a paywall.
Catalina Goanta & team, Netherlands
Creating a transparent and traceable system for spontaneous micro-transactions between creators and audiences to improve trust in the monetization of philanthropic initiatives on the web. Team includes Constanta Rosca, Bogdan Covrig, Vikas Jaiman, Dimitris Kolovos, Jerry Spanakis, and Visara Urovi.
Lior Zalmanson & team, Israel
Conducting experiments to study the effects of a micropayment counter on users' level of attention, length of engagement time, retention, sense of community, and other variables. The project is addressing the challenges of content creators to attract and retain users and make their work sustainable. Team includes Denisa Kera.
Frederic Font & team, Spain
Prototyping a licensing mechanism for Freesound Licensing to help content creators monetize their sounds by re-licensing them to content users that need usage rights beyond those allowed by the sounds' original CC restrictions. Team includes Alastair Porte, Sonia Espí and Xavier Serra.