What if you could pay to own the top spot on a social platform?

The concept is simple: there's one "top post" that anyone can claim by paying more than the current owner. The first post each day is free, but then to replace the current post a user must outbid it. When someone outbids you, your post gets replaced. Everything resets periodically each 24 hours.

I kept adding features as I went:

What if I add replies?

What if the replies cost a fraction of the post they're replying to (wondering if I could actually pay reply money to a post creator - this is really interesting to me)?

Temporary ownership (posts expire)

Payment processing through Stripe

Attempted to implement HTTP 402 (Payment Required) but hit some walls. I'd really like to get this working because I think the microtransactions, particularly for replies, would be awesome to experiment with.

Technical details:

Built with Next.js and Supabase for auth/database Real-time updates when posts change hands Had to think through edge cases like simultaneous payments Stripe integration was trickier than expected for variable pricing

The experiment: I'm curious whether people will actually pay for temporary digital "ownership" of a shared space. Maybe it's the novelty, maybe it's spite against the current post, maybe it's just the desire to be heard. Not sure yet.

Questions for HN:

Has anyone tried similar micropayment social experiments?

Thoughts on HTTP 402 implementation, particularly on Next.js? (I couldn't get it working cleanly)

Is there something fundamentally broken about monetizing attention this way?

Link: toppost.io

This is definitely an experiment that could fail spectacularly, but I learned a lot building it and I'm curious what happens when real users try to use it.