removing the cost for real users to join and contribute to the network is an existential problem farcaster needs to solve

most people don't pay for social media - doesn't matter if it's $1 or $10 - it's not something they're used to

this is also an existential problem for apps building on farcaster

If you remove cost, you have infinite spam.

If you gate sign ups, it's not permissionless.

Warpcast has tried a couple of large, reasonably scaled experiments with free sign ups and the long term retention rate is basically 0.

Some other ideas in case you're looking for some: Bond that is slashable by bad behaviour (especially if someone else can put up a bond for your invite).

I imagine something like $25 USDC locked up on behalf of some FID, things like too many reported casts or channel bans burns $5 (for example, could imagine more nuances here?).

Put the bond in AAVE or similar and have it earn yield for the treasury, so there is still some revenue.