for universal self hosting to be practical the entry level needs to be virtual hosting that is as simple as setting up an account on a service.
a "hosting account" would be a virtual host. and could be thought of as an account-- some set of persistent state, and an a set of active processes with access to the services that allow it to be a part of the network.
it should be possible to migrate hosting accounts to your own infrastructure.
@confusedcharlot Setting up hosting should be as easy as setting up a Facebook account.