Fact is, the Lemmy ecosystem needs money to handle the growing server reqirements as more people migrate as well as the development cost of new features (I know Lemmy is OSS but the devs should still get some compensation for their effort).
Seeing how much some reddit users love awards so much that they cant stop giving money to Reddit to award posts protesting the api change, this could be a great way for users to voluntary support the ecosystem. It can be easily ignored by users not caring about them (clients could even add an option to hide them), but users liking the feature can go wild and this time the money goes to volunteers keeping this alive instead of greedy admins, power mods and investors.
Though there would be some big organization questions attached: attached:
- Which server handles the payment? A centralized one, the one where the post was made or the one where the user giving the award account was created.
- How will the money be shared between the Devs and the individual instances in a way that is fair but cant be abused easily.
Right but creators can exchange it for money to like, pay bills and stuff. Don’t be daft
Edit: you can donate to lemmy in crypto https://join-lemmy.org/donate
Why if it’s a scam?
Ok, should I write a check? Who do I make it out to? How bout direct deposit: just give me the bank account number. Why is lemmy anti-crypto?
“Why not just give them money?”
Because every way to do it is trackable and cryptocurrency offers privacy-protecting ways to pay people. This should be important to this community. Nobody batted an eyelash opening their wallets to Reddit for coins, awards and nfts, but crypto is the scam? Ok
Well you could always try to give cash ;)
Snarky remarks aside, I’m not saying crypto is inherently a scam (although I do think it is more or less reinventing the wheel). I think it’s less efficient than fiat currency at this point since you need to convert your crypto to make much use of it. I can see your point about privacy protection given that transactions and accounts are supposed to be anonymous (although I have some privacy qualms about all transactions being put onto a distributed public ledger), and anonymity can be necessary if you’re suffering from persecution. But with anonymity, how do you prove your ownership over your crypto assets should you lose access to your account, or have it stolen? That’s a very critical drawback to crypto.
I’m sorry, but for me (and I’m not alone in thinking that), cryptocurrency is just a big scam. Also, if you can donate money directly to creators (to pay for bills and stuff), there’s no need for any crypto wathever.
