Varun Srinivasan
@v
With Snapchain live, we're starting to think about what's next. Growth is our top priority the and most obvious roadblock is the "Pay $3" screen when signing up.
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
Step 1 is to make it a lot cheaper. Thanks to Snapchain, our capacity is much higher and we can lower fees. We have a new FIP out (storage redenomination) that will lower fees to ~ 20c onchain. https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol/discussions/229
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
Step 2 is to get rid of it entirely. X and other networks don't charge at all to get started. They are able to handle spam post-signup by deleting accounts that don't meet their policies. We haven't been able to do this because it would (obviously) compromise decentralization. But there is a hybrid model that is now possible thanks to Snapchain that would let us get to this "no fee" UX.
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
Storage Delegation is a new feature that would let an account delegate each storage unit it owns to another account. An app like Warpcast could rent a thousand units and give it to a thousand users that it onboards without charging them. If an account turns out to be a bot, it can reclaim the storage and hand it to someone else later. Apps can easily front the storage costs for users because they can fix mistakes in underwriting "good" users by re-delegating the storage to another new users.
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
Storage Delegation introduces a hybrid model of decentralization. You can pay for your own storage and stay soveerign, or let an app pay for you but be subject to their usage policies. Importantly, you can start off being sponsored by an app and then upgrade to being sovereign at a later time. This approach seems to strike a good balance between fast user experience, decentralization of the network and a good developer experience by ensuring some fee mechanism to prevent the nodes from being overwhelmed.
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Frederik Bolding 🦊
@frederik
What's the long-term thinking? Users sign up for free and eventually find enough value in the platform to pay a storage fee for their own content? Just wondering how it will eventually scale for the delegators.
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
Apps will figure out how to monetize users and the average user will not have to pay. If storage costs 5c and you can monetize each "good" user at 10c (through ads, tx fees, subscriptions or whatever) then its a no brainer for you to onboard as many users as possible onto the protocol. The users that really care about sovereignty (which is always a small %) can pay their own fees. But I suspect the majority of people will not pay directly on day one, but will pay indirectly through the app.
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Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
Think of storage as more expensive data storage in a cloud computing provider. The storage is more expensive since it's a fraction of a somewhat fixed amount of decentralized storage in the network. Apps manage their own allocations.
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