[hughesjj]

That would be gating websites with contributing to a crypto mining pool, although crypto microtransactions are indeed a way the web could evolve to handle non ad payments, and I'm surprised (but also kinda thankful) that the web 3.0 people never pushed that possibility.

Right now, I'm saying that compute is useful. If you've ever used BOINC or folding@home, you've seen the "download some data, do some work, upload the data" paradigm in action.

Idk. Right now, the only paradigms I'm seeing are "paywall, totally free, or sell your data" for accessing web content. I wish there was another alternative of "sell my computer" or "sell my bandwidth" (like maybe acting as a cache for can). I get those are easier to abuse, but I'd still love to at least see some content provider exploring such options.