I built a Lightning Network paywall

2 min read

generic lightning

Obviously this post was going to be paywalled with a generic lightning photo. What did you expect? A free article? You have to pay me one cent to access the article. Mwuahahah! I’ll make you poor. I hope I am not being too greedy? Before you pay, you have the chance to read this teaser of what is to come. The article is more or less my story on how I built the paywall. It’s a proof of concept, and quite a functioning version at that, too.

I built the opacity-gradient and the UX, a connection to Lightning Network (LN) wallet via REST API, and an extension for both mobile and desktop (WebLN). These extensions make paying with LN wallets more easier, rather than just scanning the QR code. I also had to use a Deno Worker to make the paywall an actual paywall and not just a facade.

What’s amazing is that I built all this in one, fricken’, day. Well, so I thought, haha. Actually it took four days after bugs and improvements. You know, the usual. The plot twist: I was babysitting Claude Code the Clanker, which (who?) made it for me. I gave it orders (gentle directions!) and voilà. To be honest, you don’t even need to pay and read the rest of the article unless you are interested in the technical execution. Bon voyage!

pay to see

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