Paying your Internet, One Byte at a Time

With the growth in Internet capable devices, users expect to be able to access the Internet at all times. Wireless access points are abundant but users cannot access them because of restrictions placed by the owners of the access points. One of the main reasons for this is compensation; owners do not want to give access for free when they are paying for it. This could be resolved by owners accepting payments for opening their access points. However, current methods of payment involve high transaction fees. Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency, looks promising since it has lower transaction fees but even these fees might be too significant when the transaction amount is small. A micropayment channel primitive can be built on top of Bitcoin, that allows users to make very small payments on the go without incurring high transaction costs. This thesis builds a proof-of-concept that allows an access point to provide Internet access to untrusted users in exchange for payment in bitcoins, using a micropayment channel.