There will likely be a bunch of complaints this week about "too much financialization of Farcaster" wrt channel passes.

1. It's still an experiment (why they aren't decentralized)

2. You're free to create a channel without a pass, i.e. free

3. We will have a way to gift passes to people for free

And a reminder:

1. A channel is a curated space with a host. You don't have a right to cast in a channel.

2. You're always free to cast to your followers outside of a channel.

3. You can create your own channel.

so long term, if experiment is successful, channels can be gated at protocol level?

yes channel passes would be onchain as part of the farcaster protocol