First, it's important to define the metric for success. I would argue that Mastodon is already successful. It's a network that has over a million users on it, a

First, it's important to define the metric for success. I would argue that Mastodon is already successful. It's a network that has over a million users on it, and that's growing steadily. At this point, Mastodon will be around indefinitely, and it will probably outlive every commercial network that exists today. The only thing it needs to stay alive is to have enough users who generate content and run servers, as well as people who are willing to work on the code. This is the core difference between open source projects and commercial companies. A company has to be able to produce profit, and a large publicly traded company has keep investors happy. Mastodon doesn't need to do any of these things.