Will likes to eat and live in a house. Infrastructure isn't all that much. It's more about spending 80 hours a week working on Damus and not having another job to pay the bills.

I'm being facetious of course . I don't use the Damus app , but it is a vital part of the Nostr ecosystem , and shit , I don't know what the solution is here , how do we fix this ? Do we crowdfund using Bitcoin ?

Crowdfunding is a band-aid fix and is not sustainable. It's probably fine for the first year or two, but not much longer than that. It needs an actual funding model in the future. Build the tech. Survive on funding/donations. When the tech is ready and able, get a million users. If 1% pay for premium subscription services then you're set.