The dilema of charging the users and a solution by integrating blockchain to fediverse
The dilema of charging the users and a solution by integrating blockchain to fediverse
I'm planing hosting an instance, and I think that in the end I'll have to let the users pay for subscription. But just when I was imagining how I should design the subscription, I found there's a dilemma arose from the nature of fediverse:
(assume that people really like my instance for some reason)
- If I charge my users, they may simply register on another instance and keep interacting with my instance to avoid paying the fees.
- I can limit activities of the users who don't register on my instance to force them to subscribe my instance, but such action is obviously destructive to the fediverse.
I think this is not only my own problem. I think every instances with some scale faces the issue of costs, and relying on donation forever may not be a long term solution. So here's the question: how to let the owners of the instances get paid without violating the values of fediverse, i.e. decentralization and federation? Moreover, the solution should let the instances with higher popularity earn more money, so that'll encourage people to host high-quality instances. And I just figured out a (possibly very rough) solution by integrating blockchain to fediverse.
First, there will be a blockchain. There will be these cryptocurrencies:
- the universal currency, let's say "fedicoin". Fedicoin can be traded on trading platforms like normal cryptocurrencies.
- the currency of every single instance, e.g. InstanceA coin for InstanceA, InstanceB coin for InstanceB. The instance-specific coins are only used for federation between instances.
and the blockchain holds these data:
- how many fedicoins and instance-specific coins each instances owns.
- how many fedicoins each non-instance users owns, if any. I guess it would be better that only the instances can own instance-specific coins.
For operating the blockchain, there should be nodes to hold the data and process the transactions. The nodes can be either served by the instances or the non-instance machines. The nodes earn fedicoins.
When instances are federating with each other, every "demand" requires paying some instance-specific coins. The price of each type of demand will be predefined in the federation APIs. For example, if a user on InstanceB want to post on InstanceA, then InstanceB have to pay 10 lemmy.world coin to lemmy.world, and vise versa.
To earn instance-specific coins to pay for the demands, all the instances will "trade" automatically with other instances, and the "exchange rate" will be determined by some algorithm, possibly based on the amount of demands between each two instances. For example, if on average the demand from InstanceB to lemmy.world is 5 times more than the demand from lemmy.world to InstanceB, than in a trade, InstanceB may get 1000 lemmy.world coin, while lemmy.world may get 5000 InstanceB coin.
There will be an upper limit for every instance to own other instances' coins. For example, when lemmy.world owns 100,500 InstanceB coins, which exceeds the limit 100,000, then lemmy.world will refuse to trade with InstanceB by InstanceB coins. Under such condition, InstanceB have to trade with lemmy.world by the fedicoin. The owners of InstanceB will have to purchase fedicoin to let InstanceB trade with lemmy.world to maintain the fedaration.
Currently I think that the exchange rate between fedicoin and an instance-specific coin should be controlled by the owners of each instance, because each instance may have different costs for machines and moderation.
Finally, (hopefully) we'll have a fediverse like this:
- The highly-demanded instances earn fedicoins, which can be exchanged to real-world currencies. Such mechanism also encourages hosting high-quality instances and more open federation.
- The instances can simply charging their users normally by real-world currencies, so the users don't have to bother about cryptocurrencies.
Other side notes: Defining the prices of the demands may be tricky? For example, if my understanding is correct, there's no actual action like "read" when instances are communicating with APIs.
For the automatic trades between instances, of course there should be some controllable configuration, e.g. "don't buy coins over some price from some instances".
I'm just interested in the fediverse, and I hope my ideas can be helpful for its development. Any comments or crossposting are welcome and thank you for your reading.
No, that's absolute nonsense. You want people "interacting" with your instance to also be paying you?
I'm all for charging subscriptions from users of your instances. I'm all for commercial instances, but charging from people on other servers is next-level bullshit.
Seriously, I got angry just by reading this. Imagine if Verizon wanted to charge from calls made to their customers. Imagine if Google wanted to charge people that send emails to any Gmail address.
What a stupid concept, and I haven't even touched the crypto part of it.
Thank you for your comments. Maybe my solution is stupid, but I think the problem I wanted to tackle is practical and simple: how to let the owners of high-quality instances get paid? I don't think everything should be free, in the end the users have to pay the fees in some way, and the nature of fediverse may induce difficulties for the process.
Or, let me rephrase it simpler: if lemmy.world or some big instances got shortage of donation someday, then what should we do? Just give up and go back to X/Facebook/reddit? I'm just trying to answer this question. Could you also share your ideas to this question?
if donations aren't enough, scale down until they are. if that's not an option, then we let those instances die and set up new ones.
this is a network for people. if someone is not enthusiastic about running an instance, they don't have to.
No, if users paid to their own instances, the network would be fine.
if lemmy.world or some big instances got shortage of donation someday, then what should we do?
Then hopefully enough people will learn the lesson and start donating to the existing commercial instances that exist, or start supporting whatever-next comes.
Bottom line is: trying to charge people who are not your direct users is absolutely moronic.
Peering agreements have been around for a long time on the internet, they're part the backbone of the internet.
Peering agreements for internet traffic, what a stupid concept.
You shouldn’t host a Lemmy instance if it’s dependent on donations on day one.
You can use donations to offset your expenses, but you should be able to pay those expenses yourself, regardless of donations.
If you suddenly can’t afford to run your instance, because a lack of donations, you scaled too far beyond your own means.
I should make the context more specific. I don't want to host an expensive instance on day one. However, my long term goal is much bigger: I want to host an instance that serves as a competitive alternative to Facebook/Threads/X to the users in my country, because disinformation is overwhelming here. Thanks to federation, the instances all over the world helps, theoretically I don't have to scale as large as Facebook/X. But to reach that competitive scale, I don't think I can just rely on the "kind, moral and awakened" users' donation, so that's why I'm thinking about such charging mechanism.
Money involvement = enshitification
Let fediverse be unprofitable.
That's just as extreme, and just as short- sighted.
Enshittification is about companies that offer a bunch of things for "free" (actually, using VC funds) on an attempt to get to dominate the market first. When they get the users and establish a monopoly, the VC starts demanding to see the returns of their investment and that's when enshittification happens.
Smaller service providers that make a living out of charging directly for their services do not need VC and have no reason to squeeze their users and the nature of the Fediverse ensures that no single provider can create a monopoly.
Small, independent businesses are healthy and should be encouraged. Saying "money = bad" is a recipe to keep things indefinitely small and unable to compete with the alternatives.
Who will keep the money? Who will calculate what users will have to pay? Who will verify that the money is being used for the purpose it was paid for? How will bringing crypto payments to fediverse increase users, considering that 99% of people have never used crypto before? What will happen to the data of users who decide not to pay anymore? Let's assume that all instances offer paid membership; wouldn't monopoly occur if a corporate/suspicious instance offers completely free membership? Wouldn't offering paid memberships hold instance admins legally liable?
Who will leave the mainstream platforms that are completely free and have many more users, and then pay and use a platform that is 1 in 100,000 times the size?
Even though I received a donation of about $10 for 1 year, I think the current system should continue. If money is involved in something, it would be abused.
Cryptobros fuck off
Sung to the tune of a certain Dead Kennedys song, as covered by Napalm Death.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Another way might be for a Lemmy instance to run a stake pool from the same machine. They could offer perks to users while also not requiring donations directly. Perhaps even reward users with the pool’s native tokens for every post they submit or something (this is a great place to bring up the drawbacks and very real issues that offering a perverse incentive can have: Cobra Effect).
The tech chosen is a key decision(in this case Cardano would be my recommendation honestly because I prefer the tech and not because I have a bag of it) because that stake pool could mint native tokens and use those as a currency for use on their instance if we used Cardano. Native tokens on Cardano are cheaper and not subject to the same fees as other (ERC-20) chains to use and mint. So it would allow that instance to have its own native currency with very little overhead.
Look at Kbin’s old code. There’s some mention of Cardano wallets on there so I’m guessing that the creator of that was interested in this idea.
This is the most stupidest idea (yes, double superlative, that's how bad it is) I've heard posted on the Fediverse since... well, the last time I heard the most stupidest idea, and that was also here on the Fediverse. So, congratulations on that front.
There's like 123456 bad things with this idea, starting with the obvious of blockchain and cryptocurrency, and continuing with the fact that "quality of instances" is equated to "consumption of content". Popularity and connectivity are not indicators of quality.
I think the hardest part here is just getting other instances to participate in the scheme. They likely would give a hard no on this.
Realistically speaking, going with the 2. "such action is obviously destructive to the fediverse." option is probably the only way to go if you wanted to do this.
https://sub.club/ is a little bit controversial, but they might have a more workable and viable alternative option for you.
I think that until we get regulation it's better to avoid generating new tokens and asking people to buy into projects. There is an ungodly amount of scamming and financial nonsense right now and small cap tokens would get wrecked over and over and people would lose money. Even DAOs are too young to be used here.
Also people hate cryptocurrency, as you can tell and I wouldn't taint the fediverse with potential a potential cryptocurrency scam. Nope. I think at best you could host an instance and accept donations from large/reputable tokens.
Yeah, despite the strong anti-crypto sentiment on Lemmy, this is exactly the problem that projects like Nostr is trying to solve by integrating Lighting as a first-class payment system in the ecosystem.
Services get paid for by one of four ways:
- Harvesting and reselling of user data. Which is wildly unpopular, and why a lot of people are on Lemmy and not Reddit or Facebook.
- Ads. Which is also unpopular and again why people come to services like Lemmy
- Pay-for-service, which is what you're suggesting, only via crypto, which is easier than accepting credit card transactions, and safer for users.
- The hosted paying for it out of the goodness of their hearts. So, charity. Sometimes there's corporate charity, and that's nice, except for the potential for money coming with strings attached, now or eventually.
Someone always pays; its expensive to host a popular instance. People suggesting you should host for free are selfish freeloaders, so know that some people understand that hosting costs, and sympathize with with your desire to offset that cost.
I like the volunteer micro-transaction model. Those who can afford to pay some amount for good service, and hopefully this provides welfare for those who can't afford to pay. But the cryptocurrency space is a mess at the moment, and an economical currency (probably proof-of-stake rather than proof-of-work) needs to gain some traction, and overcome a lot of ignorant bigotry.
Nostr also has the excellent cost-control mechanism of first requiring users to set up a cryptographic key pair - you can smell the freedom from here! - and second of being full of coiner spam. This keeps server usage to a minimum in practice,
Nothing wrong with having a key pair, but yeah, most of the content in Nostr is unfortunately cryptocurrency related.
Cryptocurrency is a nightmare space right now and I'm not sure how long or how it will recover. Particularly alt-coins. I don't have a problem with the other stuff.
I'm not sold on decentralized infrastructure yet. I tried Presearch, and it's neat, but a lot of this things are like... when is it never going to be niche or a passing interest?
Thank you for you comments. I'm naive to crypto, so this is just an intuitive proposal. Hope someone can figure out some approaches which are acceptable to wider participants.