Yeah, based on Bitcoin lightning (which is quite different from normal bitcoin) meaning no transaction costs and very low energy use. Basically it happens off-chain until someone syncs-up (then it becomes a btc transaction). It makes payments in fractions of cents possible, ie I stream 10 sats/min which is about 60 Eur cent per minute (so 1 cent per second).
You can also send messages to creators and attach amounts (those are called boosts), so you'd send a short message and attach 10k sats (or whatever you want), which is about 10 euros/dollars.
Some podcasts I listen to use this to read messages on the show (the highest ones). It's fun and casual but remains highly technical for now, https://getalby.com/ takes away some friction (but you're still self hosing a lightning wallet using docker compose). Easiest I think is Fountain [0, 1], which has it all built in. But I never tried that, I use Castamatic [2] with Alby.
I have to say, it seems to divide the Linux podcast world a bit with some shows embracing this, and some just calling it crypto-bs. A well, people seem to enjoy it and creators get real value, enough to have to rely less on ads even. I think this is one of the babies we'd throw out if we banned crypto currencies (which I agree are 99.999% bs).
