Monetization is often a struggle for big open-source projects, donations are nice but I think they often fall short.
Something to consider is to add Rewards people get if they donate, which they can then hand out to posts or comments that they like. I feel this could add a lot to PieFed and is a great feature to have.
The potential extra income from people buying rewards could be used for better servers, more storage, to cover dev costs etc.
I have no clue how Federation would work around this it’s probably complex. Thoughts?
Edit: We could have a option to hide badges for those that don’t want this feature. It’s purely cosmetic
There’s no immediate financial imperative to do this. I wouldn’t complain if Rimu if tried to do this now, but I don’t think it would go down well at all.
Cool so let’s just pin this as one of the best current suggestions until something better can be thought of.
FYI, the current trend is a decrease in number of active users: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats