I'd rather see something involving micropayments, likely using the Lightning network, to make viewing a single article for the cost of one viable.

And in fairness this does exist on Nostr (I think in multiple forms). It's just not widely used. Not least because most on Nostr don't really believe in the idea that information can be owned in the first place.

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/2156 for discussion around the NIP.