Fediverse

Nostr has. Over the last two months alone, their users have "zapped" (tipped/donated) other users around 950K (nearly 1 mil!) USD worth via lightning and that number continues to grow. And it doesn't just make it easy to pay content creators, but to also put a portion of your "zaps" towards the relay you use or development of the software if you want. If you have a nostr account, you can easily tie it to a lightning address to send/receive tips, nostr doesn't take a fee. Relays can also portion out a bit of their zaps for the people who publish the most engaging content on their relay. The possibilities are quite extensive. And because it's over lightning, zaps happen instantly and for pennies or less in fees. Though, you can use nostr without zaps at all.

For those unfamiliar with nostr, it's a decentralized social media software much like ActivityPub/mastodon, the main use right now is as a twitter/instagram clone but there's also a reddit-style section being built up as well. Moderation abilities from the perspective of the instance/relay are identical. But one bonus if that if your relay goes down, you don't lose your identity, since your identity and relay are separate. And if you change apps or relays (you are typically connected to multiple relays), all your content moves with you seamlessly. And the payment/zap infrastructure is all decentralized, relays don't ever custody or manage the payments. If you tip a content creator, it goes directly from you to them. The lightning network has basically limitless transaction capacity. If you have cash app, it supports lightning, so you can already send zaps (you will need different apps to receive zaps though because cash app doesn't support the LNURL standard). Strike natively supports it. And because it's lightning, it works in every country automatically.

Long-term, if I am a content creator, which "fedi"-type system is going to be attractive to me? One where users can send me tips and mircopayments or one where they can't? This is why I think nostr is going to win out long-term over AP/Mastodon. Mastodon could add this kind of functionality but I don't get the impression they're open to it. People may not want to commit to yet another $5/month subscription to a YouTuber's patreon or nebula or whatever, but they are happy to tip 1-10c after watching a video. So there's a psychological beauty to micropayments as well. As some random person I have made like 7c on tips this month, but I've also given out plenty to other people.

Source about nostr fees: https://lemmy.ml/post/17824358