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.

I didn't mind the fee at all.  IDK that I would have spent as much time figuring this place out if I hadn't paid for it.  It was a modest fee, but I'm still on a tight enough budget even modest is a stretch sometimes.  It's paid itself back many times over in just the few weeks I've been here.