I hope both options exist, but as I get to understand the ins and outs of the Fediverse and the work that goes into maintaining these systems, I'm personally leaning toward small recurring subscriptions for both my instance provider and the app I use. I'd love it if Lemmy stayed free of corporate overreach, algorithmic content manipulation, and rampant advertising. The way to accomplish that is to make sure things can operate without outside sponsorship.

Ditto. I’ll throw down a nice chunky one payment and would be good if a link to tip jar is placed in the app too

Same