In preparation for the recent Seoul Bitcoin Lightning Hackathon, I built a Lightning Network chat app that limits the number of messages by requiring payment. The price of a message changes depending on demand.

Features:

The price of sending a message goes down over time

If someone pays, the price of the next message doubles

Current settings result in roughly one message per 10 min

Assuming supply<demand, price discovery naturally occurs

This is what the app looks like, provided random people on the internet are civilized

This is a #reckless alpha on mainnet. Any coins you send will be considered a donation, messages may disappear or not appear at all, and everything will be reset. If you don’t have a connected channel, you can open one with this node.

Currently this is a generic public chatroom that anyone can participate in, but the app could potentially be used for other purposes as well. For instance, it could be used by Livestreamers to monetize their viewers and simultaneously limit the number of message they interact with, or celebrities could set the limit to one message per day and reply to their biggest fans.

Limichat video presentation from the Seoul Bitcoin Lightning Hackathon

If you have questions or comments, you can reach me via Twitter.