There are many scorecards we could draft up on which nostr gets an undeniably higher score than the others. But then it's back to the nos-Fermi paradox of Where Is Everyone? There are a few common ways I see the nos-Fermi paradox explained—or glossed over. Someone says "nostr's great", you ask "well were are the people then?" the answer you'll get might be: -We don't talk about that here -Nostr band's stats are a lie (spoiler, they're not) -It's just a bootstrapping issue -It's just a marketing issue -Nostr is destined by the heavens to follow the trajectory of Bitcoin (and definitely not destined to follow the trajectory of anything else) so let's all just sit back and watch destiny unfold -Nostr doesn't need users (i see) -All protocols have build phases and growth phases, we're in a build phase now. -This is a 20 year mission and we're only in year 3 -An event will soon occur that results in an influx (though unclear why no events of the past year have been influx-triggering in this way) Whatever the answer is, while all these fediverse and Bluesky and X scandals are going on nostr's growth remains flat. (The absolutes from nostr band stats might have some question marks around them, but the 6 month trend-line should be useful.) My take is that it's a use case issue and that nostr has more immediate growth potential in the business world than in the town-square world. I'm guessing your take is that it's in fact a marketing issue? Which if so I could see as legit—it's true that there is a lot of stuff inside nostr that would be of interest to a lot of people outside nostr if they knew about it.

Well, marketing is obviously a problem, if not for the fact that 'marketing' a protocol is a pointless endevour. The only users of protocol are developers; the rest of the people use apps. But its not just that, its also trying to communicate a new paradigm. Now it is better to show rather than tell; most people cant do much with abstract notions, they dont translate to insight for them. Yet, i do still see merit in 'propagating' the paradigm message under the Nostr banner, it has its use. As to 'market-product-fit', let a 1000 flowers bloom; Nostr can actually do this, the variety of clients in existence today proofs that. What will actually hit the mark, i don't know. But i trust that: 1: different developers are looking at building vastly different things. 2: that atleast one of them will get some meaningfull traction at some point. Luckely its innitial fit with Bitcoiners resulted in a good bootstrap. What is most important I think, is that the moment something really becomes succesfull, the ecosystem as a whole should be able to latch on; the paradigm shift will become more obvious to more people, and things can snowball in a broad manner, not just one particular vertical. Untill such time, the ecosystem seems to simply prepare itself better every day to grasp the opportunity when it arives. Which leads us to the final question; can we hold out long enough? In that regard i think we can. You can argue that things are being propped up by dorseymoney TM, which I wont discount. But in the grand scheme of things, it is not a lot of money actually, especially if you look at the sums of money thrown around elsewhere in the world. And that money is not driving force behind Nostr, in my experience people are very inspired and motivated; it will take a lot before they abandon Nostr. If i look at the caliber of people that 'get it', i am almost tempted to think it is a matter of time.