Assume it was 1-click and 100% automated to deploy, run and update a Hub.

How much per month would you be willing to pay to run one? 

No direct economic incentive other than you know you're supporting Farcaster decentralization and you have your own copy of the network.

OK, if you're answer is you wouldn't run one.

1/2 i would pay 0

ethereum already showed that people don’t run nodes if not incentives by staking (EF is trying to fix it by paying incentives out of their own pocket https://esp.ethereum.foundation/run-a-node-grants)

BUT…

customer support @supercast

trying to sound smart /doingnumbers

2/2 … but if I get a badge “hub operator” on warpcast (and even better, on protocol level) im probably willing to pay some unreasonable money for signaling, say up to $50/mo — i know how to get much more from clients who see it

as a dev / company it’s a totally different game, i thought we are talking about individuals

yeah i can pay whatever infra is needed to run the business as long as it makes unit economics work

Coinbase run nodes without staking for years. :)

yeah of course there are *some* people running the nodes but it's not a rational economic behaviour

but i doubt there is many people who do that — there is only around 6000 active ethereum nodes (https://ethernodes.org/), how many of these are not used for staking or run as infra for businesses? 1/2

Events @Ethereum 🦄 Indie Hacker 🛠️

I don't think that's true. Lots of people ran their own nodes, even before staking with POW, without any direct incentives. People who like to play around, experiment with these things, contribute to the health and values of the network, etc.

The grants program is mainly to expand diversity (and doesn't provide stake)