Part 3 of our "Building Recurring Payments in Public" series where we give describe real-world scenarios based on our behaviors, constraints, and definitions.
The Rules of Recurring Payments: Every Constraint Has a Story - ATProtoFans Blog
Part 2 of our "Building Recurring Payments in Public" series where we give some context the behaviors, constraints, and definitions of recurring payments.
Why We're Building Recurring Payments Differently - ATProtoFans Blog
Part 1 of our "Building Recurring Payments in Public" series where we give some context about what we're trying to do and why it matters.
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
By Donella Meadows~ Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. This idea is not unique to systems analysis — […]
Feature / Product / Business: A Framework for Sustainable ATProto Projects | ATmosphereConf VODs
The ATProto community built a ton of great features and products over the past year! For our next trick, let's mature them into products and businesses. In this talk, you'll get a practical framework for understanding whether what you're building should be a feature, product, or business, plus concrete funding models at each layer to keep your work going and growing. (More in this thread: https://bsky.app/profile/mosh.bsky.social/post/3mckiat2ne22q)
Payments on Protocol - Nick's Blog
atprotofans.com was a proof of concept for payments on ATProtocol built at Graze Social. This post is about what we built, why proof of payment on protocol matters, and what it makes possible.
Harnessing naturally occurring data to measure the response of spending to income
Balancing your incomings and outgoings Economic theory predicts that when someone receives money should have little effect on their spending patterns. Gelman et al. constructed a data set of 60 million transactions made by 75,000 people to test this theory. People do seem to go on a mini–spending spree after they get their paychecks or pensions. However, closer inspection reveals that that's mostly explained by the convenience of linking regular payments, such as rent and utilities, to regular income. Unsurprisingly, cash-strapped people are more likely to increase their spending in response to receiving income. Science , this issue p. 212 , How do theoretical predictions of individual fiscal behaviors match up against real-world, real-time data? , This paper presents a new data infrastructure for measuring economic activity. The infrastructure records transactions and account balances, yielding measurements with scope and accuracy that have little precedent in economics. The data are drawn from a diverse population that overrepresents males and younger adults but contains large numbers of underrepresented groups. The data infrastructure permits evaluation of a benchmark theory in economics that predicts that individuals should use a combination of cash management, saving, and borrowing to make the timing of income irrelevant for the timing of spending. As in previous studies and in contrast to the predictions of the theory, there is a response of spending to the arrival of anticipated income. The data also show, however, that this apparent excess sensitivity of spending results largely from the coincident timing of regular income and regular spending. The remaining excess sensitivity is concentrated among individuals with less liquidity.
A conceptual model of ATProto and ActivityPub
If you were to design an open social networking protocol, what would that look like? Which metaphors and comparisons would you use to get a general idea of how the network functions? And what would you answer if people ask if your network is decentralised and federated?
Introducing attested.network: Proof of Payment for ATProtocol - Nick's Blog
attested.network is an open spec for decentralized proof of payments on ATProtocol, built on what we learned making atprotofans.com. It formalizes the three-party attestation model and opens it up for any app to implement.
attested.network — Proof of Payment for ATProtocol
An open specification for decentralized, cryptographically verifiable proof of payments.
ver.ooo
Curious about systems — how they behave, how they fail, and what they get up to when nobody is steering.
The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt
In the standard economic account of consumer behavior the cost of a purchase takes the form of a reduction in future utility when expenditures that otherwise could have been made are forgone. The reality of consumer hedonics is different. When people make purchases, they often experience an immediate pain of paying, which can undermine the pleasure derived from consumption. The ticking of the taxi meter, for example, reduces one's pleasure from the ride. We propose a “double-entry” mental accounting theory that describes the nature of these reciprocal interactions between the pleasure of consumption and the pain of paying and draws out their implications for consumer behavior and hedonics. A central assumption of the model, which we call prospective accounting, is that consumption that has already been paid for can be enjoyed as if it were free and that the pain associated with payments made prior to consumption (but not after) is buffered by thoughts of the benefits that the payments will finance. Another important concept is coupling, which refers to the degree to which consumption calls to mind thoughts of payment, and vice versa. Some financing methods, such as credit cards, tend to weaken coupling, whereas others, such as cash payment, produce tight coupling. Our model makes a variety of predictions that are at variance with economic formulations. Contrary to the standard prediction that people will finance purchases to minimize the present value of payments, our model predicts strong debt aversion—that they should prefer to prepay for consumption or to get paid for work after it is performed. Such pay-before sequences confer hedonic benefits because consumption can be enjoyed without thinking about the need to pay for it in the future. Likewise, when paying beforehand, the pain of paying is mitigated by thoughts of future consumption benefits. Contrary to the economic prediction that consumers should prefer to pay, at the margin, for what they consume, our model predicts that consumers will find it less painful to pay for, and hence will prefer, flat-rate pricing schemes such as unlimited Internet access at a fixed monthly price, even if it involves paying more for the same usage. Other predictions concern spending patterns with cash, charge, or credit cards, and preferences for the earmarking of purchases. We test these predictions in a series of surveys and in a conjoint-like analysis that pitted our double-entry mental accounting model against a standard discounting formulation and another benchmark that did not incorporate hedonic interactions between consumption and payments. Our model provides a better fit of the data for 60% of the subjects; the discounting formulation provides a better fit for only 29% of the subjects (even when allowing for positive and negative discount rates). The pain of paying, we argue, plays an important role in consumer self-regulation, but is hedonically costly. From a hedonic perspective the ideal situation is one in which payments are tightly coupled to consumption (so that paying evokes thoughts about the benefits being financed) but consumption is decoupled from payments (so that consumption does not evoke thoughts about payment). From an efficiency perspective, however, it is important for consumers to be aware of what they are paying for consumption. This creates a tension between hedonic efficiency and what we call decision efficiency. Various institutional arrangements, such as financing of public parks through taxes or usage fees, play into this tradeoff. A producer developing a pricing structure for their product or service should be aware of these two conflicting objectives, and should try to devise a structure that reconciles them.
Families' Use of Payment Instruments During a Decade of Change in the U.S. Payment System
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington DC.
Embracing ATProto, part 1: Setting up a PDS
In this series of posts, I'll explore my journey into setting up my workflows and services for atproto. The first step is setting up my PDS. Let's start with a bit of explanation for all this lingo.
Another post in the Graze series. This one's about atprotofans and putting payments on protocol. Small feature set, big idea.
Payments on Protocol
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