Most of the fediverse is just text and metadata which is relatively small and easy to handle. The issue arises when we start hosting images/videos ourselves which consume far more bandwidth and storage. We are then distributing all the media across to all instances multiplying the requirements.

What we need to do is implement a bittorrent proxy as our cache server. Activpub distributes links that can be accessed directly getting served by a bittorrent proxy or torrented by the client itself. This means u dont need ur instance to have a copy of the media as long as enough other people have it ur good. If the client itself is doing the torrenting then popular posts get more people serving it thus shifting the load to many client and lowering load in each individual instance.

The other solution is to implement fediverse gold. Let it be a monero based donation with a reward split of 50% to instance 50% to content itself ie community, post, comment itself, etc. If u make it so gold ranks things heigher it aligns the incentives quality content generation and quality instance/community management with that of the financial incentives. Instances get paid to host, people get paid for heigh quality content. The whales get to have a power trip effecting rankings with pay to win, the tankie devs get their baby corrupted by capitalism. Win, win, win, win.