I mentioned this a few months ago, but have made progress since - I'm working on an alternative to subscriptions for online publications. Instead of subscribing to entire publications / blogs, publishers would register their publication on this network and configure thresholds and pricing. Add a bit of code to the site and a paywall will show up, allowing readers to pay for individual articles. The prices would be minimal, amounting to less than a dollar in most cases. i.e. reading articles using micro-transactions

I know it's been tried before, but I thought I'd attack it with a few different angles - web based, no chrome extension, thresholds to help verify the article is worth it, extensive use of an aggregator to help with discovery and validation.

You can see the work in progress here: https://paperwall.io