Monetization is often a struggle for big open-source projects, donations are nice but I think they often fall short.

Something to consider is to add Rewards people get if they donate, which they can then hand out to posts or comments that they like. I feel this could add a lot to PieFed and is a great feature to have.

The potential extra income from people buying rewards could be used for better servers, more storage, to cover dev costs etc.

I have no clue how Federation would work around this it's probably complex. Thoughts?

Edit: We could have a option to hide badges for those that don't want this feature. It's purely cosmetic