I should make the context more specific. I don’t want to host an expensive instance on day one. However, my long term goal is much bigger: I want to host an instance that serves as a competitive alternative to Facebook/Threads/X to the users in my country, because disinformation is overwhelming here. Thanks to federation, the instances all over the world helps, theoretically I don’t have to scale as large as Facebook/X. But to reach that competitive scale, I don’t think I can just rely on the “kind, moral and awakened” users’ donation, so that’s why I’m thinking about such charging mechanism.
Thank you for you comments. I’m naive to crypto, so this is just an intuitive proposal. Hope someone can figure out some approaches which are acceptable to wider participants.