I've been saying exactly this for many years, so I'm in full agreement. But I must say the idea of bundling micropayments with traffic is one I hadn't considered.

This is very interesting because it incentivizes network development and traffic handling. At the packet level you get resource contention based on the value the sender is placing, which goes straight into the node-manager's bank.

This bypasses the problem posed by the solutions that big actors like Google and Netflix have taken, where they invest directly into infrastructure and then get to (try to) behave like they own it in perpetuity. It's a sticky problem because they should be compensated well for creating a network where before there was something shitty or nothing at all.

But this solution of inverting the bandwidth problem from being a pure cost to a cost-benefit balance (because of its intrinsic value thanks to bundling value with data) means that there is a natural incentive to service traffic instead of a natural disincentive requiring compulsion to see the traffic through.

I like this concept very much. And I'm surprised also that it never occurred to me. It's a smart, simple, answer to the problem of incentive in a pure resource-drain system like network traffic service.