Extended Ripple Drop Interview: Coil's Stefan Thomas

Check out this interview with Coil's Founder and CEO Stefan Thomas. The former Ripple CTO explains how his platform is creating a new standard for consuming and providing content.

Thomas also talks about the company's partnership with Imgur and his hopes for the future of Coil.

You've recently launched Coil,

a platform to help creators
online monetize their content.

How does it work?

So Coil is based on an open web standard
called web monetization,

and what that means is that
there's a feature in the browser

that allows to pay different websites
as you're browsing their content.

So rather than, you know, looking at ads,
may be paying a subscription

for each website you go to.

This kinda allows you to
go to any website out there

and pay them like a small amount.

Opening up the web for
monetization to everybody,

rather than just giant platforms
that have lots of users

and lots of content.

So we're hoping to, kind of,
redistribute the web a little bit

and kind of make it easier
for independent websites

to compete with the larger sites.

So where's Coil available right now?

So Coil is available worldwide
to anybody with a credit card,

and then, if you're a creator,
you can get paid out

using any Interledger enabled wallet.

Right now there's U.S. dollar options,
so you can withdraw

to a U.S. bank account,
and there are XRP options.

But we expect that to
expand in the future.

You recently announced
a partnership with Imgur.

What's the goal of this partnership?

We're trying to establish a new web
standard, web monetization.

And in order to do that,
you need to reach a lot of people,

and you need adoption for the standard.

And so Imgur is gonna be a great partner
in terms like bringing this

to a larger audience,

explaining what it's all about and giving
more people access to it.

What kind of feedback are you getting
from these creators

that are using your platform so far?

What we hear from creators is that
it's really hard to monetize your content,

and when you do,

you're very dependent on
the platforms that you use.

Because they have all the users,

they have a huge amount
of content already.

So they hold all the cards.

And so as a creator,

this is kind of an open
alternative to that.

You can be on a smaller
site and still anyone

that supports the standard
will be able to pay you.

So it really kinda opens up the space
for smaller creators,

for independent creators.

What's your greater vision for Coil?

Yeah, our hope is that one day
the standard will be so ubiquitous

that most websites will support it.

And then, you know, maybe
it's even like bundled

with your internet connection.

So rather than having a
separate subscription,

part of that package is, you know,

money that can help
content creators' websites.

And so rather than getting
paywalls everywhere,

getting ads everywhere,

having to get subscriptions
for different sites.

Maybe it's all kinda bundled together

and you can use whatever
you want across the web.