[askmike]

While I agree and want this to work (in an economic model that works well for everyone, so not a cashgrab). It might be fundamentally hard or close to impossible.

What makes open source tick is (a) a culture around freedom on an almost philosophical level (free software movement) and (b) extremely low entry bar for anyone to use and participate. And it works in a way where any type of monetization is hard (it's hard to attach $ value to open source things). I hope I turn out to be wrong, but it's very hard to wire in any $ incentives or routes while keeping it actually open source.

If you want to write software and get paid properly when someone uses it, there is a whole existing industry for this (paid software).

From the Tea website:

> We’re not changing how open source works—it’s still free. web3 has introduced powerful new paradigms that allow value to be compensated without direct payment. Creator economy, meet open source.

The money needs to come from somewhere, the only way I can see this work is if you change culture in a way big companies (the only ones that can pay without it limiting their usage) that use open source software are willing to somehow pay money.

Any other type of economic system where people pay for tokens representing a part of some open source project without any cashflow (or future cashflow) is dangerous.