@dave@podcastindex.social have you noticed any issues with the index over the past few days - have had a few reports of feeds not updating.
A couple of examples:
https://podcastindex.org/podcast/869672
https://podcastindex.org/podcast/1000839
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
mastodon
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Building Fountain - https://www.fountain.fm
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Fountain:
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
2d ago
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Mar 17, 2026
All lightning payments on Fountain will be temporarily down between 13:00 - 17:00 UTC today while we perform some maintenance work.
Apologies for any disruption. We will let you know when the work has been completed.
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Mar 04, 2026
@dave@podcastindex.social quick question on the API - this feed displays only 4 episodes - https://podcastindex.org/podcast/310504
But the API returns many more - which I think are old ones that are no longer in the feed.
Is there some hidden 'deleted' field that you have in the database but not returned in the API response - if so would it be possible to add this to the API response? (/episodes/byfeedid)
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@alecksgates @StevenB @ericpp @francosolerio @js
The wallet needs at least the option to parse the full metadata - so that people hosting their own wallets can access all the data.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@StevenB @ChadF @js @francosolerio
We're not putting it all on the wallets because this spec is just a URL - anyone can generate the URL - apps, wallet services, or third parties.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@StevenB @ChadF @js @francosolerio
Clickable is a nice to have but you're right does not matter in the long term.
The important part of this is that any receiving wallet if they choose to can parse the full payment metadata with only the text in the description field.
For something like Alby Hub - it will be much easier for them to parse this data from the BOLT11 description as opposed to setting up a dedicated HTTP server to receive from podcast apps.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@ChadF @js @StevenB @francosolerio
Should be easy for Alby to make the links clickable - here's the part of their code that renders the invoice description - https://github.com/getAlby/go/blob/master/pages/Transaction.tsx#L172
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@js @StevenB @francosolerio
Yep just sent you a test payment - this is what it looks like receiving to my Primal wallet - which shows the link as clickable which is nice:
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@alecksgates @StevenB @ericpp @francosolerio @js
I don't think there's any problem with hosts signalling via the feed how to get the payment URL.
It's just that for receiving wallets - they're not going to be parsing RSS feeds - so the 200 character BOLT11 field needs to contain enough info to parse the metadata.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@alecksgates @StevenB @ericpp @francosolerio
I agree the metadata should be payment protocol agnostic.
I also think there could definitely be something in the feed that signals how to get the metadata URL - I just also think we need a way for apps to start doing this now without relying on hosts to make changes.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@StevenB @ericpp @francosolerio @alecksgates
Strike / Cash App are not going to host podcast payment metadata on public URLs - no chance of that.
Sending apps need a URL to insert into the BOLT11 description field.
Any apps that already have web URLs and a database can do this.
For others we need a service - like @js was suggesting he might do.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@js @StevenB @francosolerio
ok great - yeah that would be really useful - and also a great addition to OP3 analytics perhaps?
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@StevenB @ericpp @francosolerio @alecksgates
I would love Alby to support this - in fact by looking at their Alby Hub code - I don't think it would be difficult.
If they see the rss::payment prefix in an incoming BOLT11 invoice - they could just parse the full metadata from the headers and insert it into their existing Metadata field - https://github.com/getAlby/hub/blob/eec8328f6cecf1b322053b0aadbe7b91b4e6574a/db/models.go#L85
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@js @StevenB @francosolerio
That would be amazing John - we'd also be happy to offer this service - but I think it makes it feel slightly weird if one app is hosting the payments for all the others.
The cool thing about this proposal is that if an app includes a URL in the BOLT11 invoice like:
rss::payment:boost op3.dev/payment/123
Anyone can parse the metadata and do whatever they want with it.
I do think services like this should have either an API key or signature to prevent spam
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@ericpp @StevenB @francosolerio @alecksgates
I think the biggest challenge with all of this is deciding who is going to store the payment metadata.
Apps, Hosting Companies, or Wallet Services?
The reason we opted for putting the data in a URL (+ headers for easy parsing) - is that receiving wallets can see the data without knowing anything about this.
Whether the data is signed by the app or not - I think having it accessible from just the payment is important.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@StevenB @francosolerio
Also if the API is in the feed - how do you validate that the payment actually happened?
The good thing about the app generating these URLs is that they know at the time of sending that the payment actually happened.
Fountain / others could still create an API for apps to use - but they would need to have an API key that is trusted.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@StevenB @francosolerio
I think the problem with relying on the host feed having an API in it is that people that are self-hosting need to run a server and database.
I think it's much easier for an app to do this than someone self-hosting a feed.
Fountain / others could provide a service like this - but in my view it should be the sending app that uses this service to generate a URL for the payment description
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
-
if the app chooses to store the metadata they can serve it via their own url
-
if the app doesn’t want to save the metadata in their own database - other services can do this - wallets or analytics services that provide some kind of API that returns a URL
If neither the app or wallet service wants to store podcast payment metadata - then we’re kind of stuck no matter what the spec is
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
Because this approach is just a prefix + URL - really anyone can provide the URL to the sending app.
Podcasters can choose which wallet they want to use to receive - and wallets can programatically parse the metadata and store a copy of it.
So there are multiple options:
- app could store metadata and serve url
- sending wallet service api could provide url for app to use
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
@StevenB
Yes apps or wallet services will need to serve these links - Fountain might provide an API for this as a stop-gap
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
Here's an example payment link - https://fountain.fm/episode/JCIzq3VyFKQVkEzVNA8v?payment=5XIAt66P29Iv6rjSTZUB
And here's how you can query the JSON programatically via curl:
curl -I -s -o /dev/null -w '%header{x-rss-payment}' "https://fountain.fm/episode/JCIzq3VyFKQVkEzVNA8v?payment=5XIAt66P29Iv6rjSTZUB"
(note this is URI encoded JSON string)
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Nov 07, 2025
I know my previous nostr-based payment metadata solution didn't really get adoption from other PC20 apps - so me and @dovydas@podcastindex.social have come up with a much simpler solution for LNAddress payment metadata:
https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/pull/734
TLDR - we use the BOLT11 invoice description field to add a rss::payment prefix along with a URL that returns the full metadata in a x-rss-payment header.
From today all LNAddress payments sent from Fountain will use this metadata approach - so feel free to start testing!
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Sep 11, 2025
I've written an article / guide on how Fountain publishes podcast payment metadata using nostr - https://primal.net/merryoscar/open-podcast-payments-with-bitcoin-and-nostr
I know not everyone's sold on nostr - but this approach is working today and allows podcast payments to display in other nostr clients (see example in the article) - there's no reason we can't have the same interop between podcast apps.
I know @ChadF@podcastindex.social and @ericpp@podcastindex.social are experimenting which is great to see.
I'm also working on a JS library with sample code - will share soon.
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Mar 26, 2025
@csb sorry you feel that way - my belief is that nostr is a great way to do cross-app comments which I really want to see happen. Podcasters also like it because when someone sends a boost on Fountain it is broadcasts the boost on nostr which helps them with discovery. Here's an example - https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsgzdnvpzc0ur6ruamhx5sjwaaj87gevw32lvx9g4zhkzzrhc28v0gs76p64
Our focus isn't just nostr though which is why we've spent the last month on this redesign which is focussed on making the library and content pages better.
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Mar 26, 2025
@inpc Amazing thanks!
Can you send me an email oscar@fountain.fm and let me know if you're iOS or Android and I'll invite you to the beta
View full thread on podcastindex.social
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Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
Oscar Merry
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
Building Fountain - https://www. fountain.fm
podcastindex.social
@merryoscar@podcastindex.social
·
Mar 26, 2025
We've been working on a re-design for the Fountain app over the past month - and I'm looking for a couple of people who would be interested in testing and giving some feedback on the new design - ideally you already use Fountain or have used it previously but switched away because you didn't like the design.
Please let me know if you're interested in helping out!
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