Fediverse creator payment platform sub.club is shutting down

Sub.club, which allows Fediverse creators to offer paid subscriptions and premium content, was launched at the end of August, but has since been shut down. “Unfortunately, we will be closing this project in the coming weeks,” the sub.club team said. announced last week. Creators using the service will be “paid in full,” but the sub.club feed will cease to function “by the end of January.”

As I wrote when I first covered sub.club, this service seems like an interesting way for people in the Fediverse to monetize their audience more easily without having to direct them to other platforms like Patreon. I did. But the organization that built it, BLVD, ran out of money.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to quickly achieve sufficient traction in product market fit and product adoption. sub clubOr to attract investors, partnerships, etc.,” said Bart Decrem, founder of BLVD. The Verge By email. He said more than 150 creators were participating in sub.club. “We remain bullish on the Fediverse and the success of Blue Sky is great, but it will take time for all the pieces to come together.”

“As more users join platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads, and the open ecosystem grows, we will eventually see subscription services that are not tied to a single platform, are protocol-based, and are freely available to users. There will be a need for it to be easily portable,” says Anuj Ahuja, advisor, sub.club. “We hope that sub.club or a similar service can fill the gap at that time.”

Due to lack of funds for BLVD, pull the plug I am also working on two other projects. Mammoth is an open source iOS app for Mastodon, and moth.social is a Mastodon instance that is a companion server for Mammoth. A huge Mastodon account appeared in late November said Mammoth is “currently operating without funding or a paid team.”