I think this kind of decoupling is one of the most powerful benefits of building on atproto.
That said, I’m ambivalent about bringing authoritative payment data or commitments (i.e.: x paid y some amount z). That is what blockchains do, and that risks inviting all the legal, regulatory, incentive, and structural problems of that industry. And if the records aren’t authoritative - if they are cryptographically verifiable but not necessarily true - then it isn’t clear to me what the value of tracking that info on-protocol would be, while it may still introduce regulatory risk.
By contrast, I don’t think this problem exists for on-protocol relationship status (x is a member of community y of type z), which is about communicating the meaning or purpose behind a payment - and allows the payment (or any other means of contribution or validation) to be implied rather than on-protocol. I think this gets at the value while sidestepping much of the complexity and risk (which is what I was trying to capture here).
I spent some time since Atmosphere mapping what I think the minimum viable signal is for this, and have notes as part of the at.fund project here. TLDR - I think there may be very simple ways to get to Pareto value: when both parties agree a relationship (whether associated with a payment or not) exists, it does. If they don’t both agree, it doesn’t.