Fambit

Fambit is a WebExtension for Firefox, Opera and Chrome to "Make the Web Great Again" by replacing advertisements. It's an opt-in system where users can automatically "microdonate" bitcoin to each website that they visit.

Building and running

1. npm install
2. npm run dev
3. In Firefox Developer Edition, about:debugging > Enable add-on debugging
4. In Firefox Developer Edition, about:debugging > Load Temporary Add-on, choose gen/manifest.json

FAQ

How does it work?

Joe is a consumer of the Internet. He likes cat videos, though he recently has been following some blogs that publish interesting information about vehicle maintenance. He has installed Fambit onto his browser, and has already sent a small amount of bitcoin to his instance of the plugin. Now, each time he reads one of those neat blog posts about cars, Fambit will express his gratuity by sending a fraction of its remaining bitcoin funds to the blog author.

So, are you making a paywall? Don't you know paywalls are worse than old oatmeal?

Fambit is not a requirement to access content. Only users that want to participate will be spending any bitcoin. The "Fambit Theory"™ is that many consumers do want to pay for content, but not enough that it's worth manually spending any amount of actual money. The beauty of bitcoin is that very small amounts of value can be transferred, so users are able to express their gratitude in a way that's negligible per-user, yet can be a bonus for the content producer.

but_why.gif?

Though advertising is already providing a similar value to authors, and it doesn't require user payment, advertising has become a bit of a "greasy" industry. User-tracking and increasingly-deceptive tactics make dealing with ads very undesirable for everyone who uses the internet. Ideally, Fambit participants can provide enough income that casual website maintainers won't be forced to turn to advertising to cover costs.

I'm sold. How do I participate?

This is a deliverable for our final-year project at Thompson Rivers University, so there'll definitely be an installable browser plugin by the end of 2016. However, no deliverables exist yet, sorry (#canada).

How do I contribute?

Neat, you're a champion for even considering it. This is a GitHub project, so if you see any issues, just report them on the issues page. If you're super xtreme, you can also create a pull request. Travis CI will automatically check formatting and run all tests in test/.