I used to be in a similar position, I was the only non-shareholder/“first and only worker” in a X years old “startup” that made no profit and struggled to find investors. It felt like I had the weight of the world behind my back (and suffice to say my family only made things worse for me). After Y years of being loyal to the company and rejecting better paying jobs elsewhere (when it was still easy to find a job), I got really burned out from taking shit from everywhere and was promptly fired the week following of my failed suicide attempt. Been bedridden for Y years now, unable to do anything or speak with anyone because all I can feel is disgust when I look into the faces of the people around me who happen to share some of my DNA. To add insult to injury, my laptop no longer powers on so even if I managed to fix my mind just enough to be productive and find work, I wouldn’t be able to. Moral of the history: it can always get worse. People who have it easy will be quick to judge and say this is victim mentality or some other bullshit some popular retard guru spits out, only those who have been crushed at least once know how bad it is. I wish I could provide something more useful than this but somehow it felt relevant to share the story of a looser since everyone pretends to be always winning on the internet and that certainly has an impact on morale.

That actually does help, even though it's a terrible story. We often feel like we're the only ones, but the majority of FOSS projects receive little or no funding. Even on here. I actually have no idea what everyone is spending all of this money on. We have a similar productivity, running on Bitcoin dust and hopium. I find it all completely bewildering.

That sounds like open sores!

As it turns out, time does not, in fact, heal every wound.

it covers the wound with scar tissue and you tend to think about it less. But touching the scar still hurts.

The longer I watch Nostr, the more I struggle to believe the8 stagnation is accidental. It reminds me of what Bitcoin Core did to Bitcoin. The project still exists, the language of freedom is still there, but the useful parts get narrowed, constrained, and redirected until only a very specific version is allowed to survive. Nostr should be much bigger than a Bitcoin social network. Its core design is powerful because it does not need a blockchain. It should be a neutral social and identity protocol that can support any app, any community, and any payment rail. That is the whole point. It is not beholden to one cryptocurrency ecosystem. Yet in practice, payments are treated as if Lightning is the only serious option. That immediately limits the appeal to a niche market. And if we are going to have Lightning forced into everything, then at least use it for what it is actually good at. Micro payments could be powerful because they break the subscription model. You should not need an ongoing commitment just to read one article, access one feature, boost one post, store one file, use one service, or unlock one piece of content. That is the point. Pay once. Pay per use. Pay for access when you need it. No account lock in. No recurring charge you forget about. No platform sitting between the user and the service provider forever. A good Nostr app should be able to say: here is a useful service, here is the price, pay however you want. Use Lightning for instant small payments where it makes sense. Use Monero where privacy matters. Use fiat, cards, bank transfer, or anything else where that works better. The payment rail should serve the application. It should not dictate the entire culture of the protocol. Instead, whenever people talk about monetisation, everything gets dragged back toward value for value. Value for value has its place, but it is not the same as charging for a service. It does not reliably fund infrastructure, support, moderation, development, storage, bandwidth, discovery, or long term product work. The same issue shows up in the apps themselves. They are trying to chase normies by compromising privacy and censorship resistance for convenience. But what normal person is going to accept worse performance, a smaller social graph, and a niche culture just to use a protocol they do not care about? That is what makes me suspicious. The obvious path is to build real apps that do something useful, charge directly for the service, and use Nostr as the open social layer underneath. But the path promoted by the influencers always seems weaker: Lightning only, value for value, half baked social apps, and endless appeals to ideology. Maybe it is just bad incentives. Maybe it is ideological capture. But when the same weak ideas are pushed over and over, and every commercially useful path is treated as impure, it starts to look like containment. The best way to stop Nostr is to fund and promote versions of it that absorb the dissidents, keep them busy, and never become useful enough to threaten the platforms. Nostr should be the open social layer for applications that cannot be captured and don't give away more user data than necessary. Right now, it feels like it is being steered into becoming a harmless Bitcoin subculture.

Thanks for sharing this personal story.. 🫂 It can always get worse.. it's true. I wish it will get everyday slightly better for you. 🍀

nostr's most underrated lol

We're VUPs. Very Underrated Persons. 😂

we need a VUP area for the next nostr conf 😂

Add $DOGE or whatever to your payment targets and see if someone sends you some.

Nostr is a thankless protocol.

As a self described "Normie", I agree with everything you said. I've always assumed the purpose of this platform was to move beyond apps, passwords and paywalls. The universal key pair concept is my favorite part. Retrofitting existing apps to use it would be my first step if I were a dev. Would be amazing to be able to access multiple websites for shopping with a single nsec that's associated with my wallet. Then setting up micro payments like you described. The parallel social media clients are nice mainly because they can't be shut down by a government.

Yes. Build your shitty centralized service app that charges for money, but use nostr for the comment section or whatever social functions you need.

Yeah, but for comments on website's we should use nip73, permission less comments on anything, more.

GitHub

nips/73.md at master · nostr-protocol/nips

Nostr Implementation Possibilities. Contribute to nostr-protocol/nips development by creating an account on GitHub.

New to Nostr. As as a Monero user, I’m troubled by the lack of an XMR payment option.

Do you have a donation page? Or monero address? Except zaps?

I have other payment targets visible here:

Imwald

Imwald

Imwald — a user-friendly Nostr client focused on relay feed browsing, publications, and relay discovery.

#7 Nostr’s Value4Value (V4V) model is all about plebs directly rewarding creators for the value they receive, no middlemen fees, no ads, just pure community-driven support using sats via the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Thanks to

ZAPLIFE.LOL

A decentralized Craigslist running on Nostr

by @PABLOF7z for providing this data. Here are the Top Zapped/Top Zappers from last week, showcasing the creators who received/sent the most engagement: 🔥 Top 3: Most Zapped 1. Name: @utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 Zaps Received: 461 Sats Earned: 57k 2. Name: @FLASH Zaps Received: 427 Sats Earned: 111k 3. Name: @corndalorian Zaps Received: 331 Sats Earned: 41k 🔥 Top 3: Most Zappers 1. Name: @AQSTR Zaps Sent: 1859 Sats Spent: 96k 2. Name: @FL Justin Zaps Sent: 178 Sats Spent: 50k 3. Name: @Turkey Zaps Sent: 158 Sats Spent: 9k 💰 Top 3: Most Sats Received 1. Name: @Fountain Boost Bot Sats Earned: 840k Zaps Received: 324 2. Name: @RABBIT HOLE RECAP Sats Earned: 259k Zaps Received: 36 3. Name: @The Daniel 🖖 Sats Earned: 223k Zaps Received: 131 💰 Top 3: Most Sats Sent 1. Name: @utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 Sats Spent: 310k Zaps Sent: 129 2. Name: a-a-ron Sats Spent: 250k Zaps Sent: 1 3. Name: @ODELL Sats Spent: 139k Zaps Sent: 46 Here are the Top Zapped from last week, showcasing notes that received the most engagement: 🔥 Top 3: Most Zapped 1. View quoted note → Zaps Received: 85 Sats Earned: 22k 2. View quoted note → Zaps Received: 42 Sats Earned: 10k 3. View quoted note → Zaps Received: 40 Sats Earned: 2k 🔥 Top 3: Most Sats 1. View quoted note → Sats Earned: 212k Zaps Received: 2 2. View quoted note → Sats Earned: 168k Zaps Received: 21 3. View quoted note → Sats Earned: 74k Zaps Received: 14 #most-zapped_nostr_recap