This is a bummer. As much as I love lichess, I think there's a beautiful array of opportunities of monetisation which I believe would be nothing short of wrong

This is a bummer. As much as I love lichess, I think there's a beautiful array of opportunities of monetisation which I believe would be nothing short of wrong incentives. Value-based monetisation (instead of restriction / ad based monetisation) might as well motivate the team to maximise that value for the user. Just a couple of examples (for which I'd be actually willing to pay for) 1. Stockfish, server-side game analysis, learning from mistakes 2. Deep individual analysis based on XY games, practicing on weak spots, openings etc. with stockfish 3. Their practice library Again, all of these are super valuable to those who want to take their game to the next level, don't see why anyone in that segment wouldn't pay for this. The "entertainment" feature of lichess which is the chess itself should be free indeed.