HAPPY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS. HIT ME WITH THEM. OPENSATS IS NOT PERFECT BUT WE ARE TRYING OUR BEST. MORE PEOPLE SHOULD SUPPORT DEVS DIRECTLY. STRICTLY BETTER THAN RELYING ON OPENSATS. I HAVE BEEN A DAMUS PURPLE SUBSCRIBER SINCE THE DAY IT LAUNCHED. EVERYONE HAS BIAS. TRANSPARENCY HELPS. OUR BOARD STRUCTURE HELPS (WE ARE NOT PAID, 5 OF 9 VOTES REQUIRED FOR GRANT APPROVAL). TEN31 HAS INVESTED IN PRIMAL. WILL IS INVESTED IN DAMUS. OPENSATS HAS PROVIDED GRANTS TO 20+ OPEN SOURCE NOSTR CLIENTS THAT COULD BE SEEN AS COMPETITORS TO BOTH ALTHOUGH I WOULD ARGUE NOSTR FOSS DEV COMPOUNDS AND BENEFITS EVERYONE.

OK. THANKS FOR POSTING THIS AS IT HELPS ME UNDERSTAND YOUR POSITION AND I FIND IT ACCEPTABLE.

So what was the reason to never fund @SeedSigner ?

Excellent and commendable as always. Thanks.

Freedom to invent is basic freedom .. no one can take it away no matter what .. Other two are - freedom to exchange and freedom to express .. The problem is exchange wants stability while "invent" worships change .. so .. conficts are inevitable .. just take them with a stride for things must happen the way they happen .. and its all good for #Bitcoin ..

Why you didn’t give me a hug dude? 😔

You do you man. It can be seen as a bit centralized to some since you are providing such a big funding footprint, but it's better than many who choose to not help at all. I give out Sats with everything I have built for Nostr, yet ask for nothing (nor grants) in return. Is this ideal? No. Will I go broke? Maybe someday. I'm not building clients just Nostr user experiences and providing media content that would pull in others with different interests so it rarely falls under funding radars or criteria here anyway. I just do it because I see a void that needs to be filled. Once I see no one needs it anymore, I'll stop. Seen it plenty of times over the last 30 years online.

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions. In your role as a board member of opensats, what is your goal for the development of Nostr? Who do you believe you are accoutnable to? In your role as a managing partner of Ten31, what is your goal for the developement of Primal? In this role, who are you accountable to? Do you believe that these two roles are free from any overlap, or conflicts of interest? If not, why? Lastly, do you think that being a managing patner of a VC firm may have a dampening effect on criticism from other developers who receive grants from opoensats, who are not aligned with the methods/development/design of Primal? Once again, thank you for taking the time to discuss this with the community.

Some suggestions of expanding the funding ecosystem of Nostr. (This is not for OpenSats or Odell, but for all). 1. Explore equity crowdfunding that enable users to own equity of the company. This will speed up early stages and users can help devs grow the business 2. OpenSats to expand individual funding into modular system. Like how designers are funded to assist many devs, also fund PR and comms, marketing etc to assist multiple devs. This are diff modules of a startup to make the outcome more complete. 3. Setup incubation / accelerator : Devs here are not entrepreneurs (yet) and don’t fully understand market penetration, financial plans and growth, user engagements etc (yet). This is common for any tech person who starts a startup. They need different help 4. Fund receivers to provide ROI from time to time based on funding - this will help everyone understand how the funds were maximised. This opens up transparency for both funders like OpenSats and HRF and for fund receivers. And will be an attractive factor for users, angels who want to invest large amount onto devs. 5. There are many types of funding models - anyone can create create this and implement this. To keep yelling at OpenSats is not going to make much diff only because the devs here are plenty and the market is wanting a wider funding ecosystem. Whatever is happening here is natural growth and a good thing. On a side note : 1. It’s good to expand funding ecosystem. There are no disbenefits. 2. Bootstrap means using profit to reinvest into r&d and at early stages there are little / no profit so it’s a slow slow process. Having funds expedites the build. 3. Break even won’t happen tmr or this year or next year (in case anyone is wondering). 4. Market penetration is important. Nostr has only teased the market and not gone head in. 5. A lot complain why users don’t want to pay for what they build. This is likely because users don’t know what you built or don’t see a value to it. I once read somewhere that entrepreneurs jump off a cliff and builds a plane on their way down. This is true. Good luck all !

👏🏽

WE NEED A DIVERSE ROBUST FOSS ECOSYSTEM ACROSS BOTH BITCOIN AND NOSTR. THIS IS MY PRIMARILY GOAL ACROSS EVERYTHING I DO. PRIMAL CANNOT SUCCEED WITHOUT A ROBUST NOSTR ECOSYSTEM. THIS IS WHY MILJAN MADE THE ENTIRE PRIMAL STACK FOSS. I STRONGLY BELIEVE FOSS DEV COMPOUNDS. IT BENEFITS EVERYONE. I DO NOT WANT DEVS TO SELF CENSOR. I DO NOT PERSONALLY HOLD IT AGAINST THEM IF THEY SHIT ON ME. OPENSATS IS NOT PERFECT BUT WE TRIED OUR BEST TO BUILD IT IN A WAY THAT ATTEMPTS TO MITIGATE A LOT OF CONCERNS THAT ARE INHERENT WITH A CENTRALIZED ORG. BUT IT IS STILL CENTRALIZED. IDEALLY MORE PEOPLE SUPPORT DEVS DIRECTLY. IDEALLY WE HAVE MORE ORGS PROVIDING FUNDING IN THE SPACE. IDEALLY SOME FOSS PROJECTS DEVELOP SUSTAINABLE ETHICAL BIZ MODELS (SPARROW IS A GOOD EXAMPLE HERE.) LAST BUT NOT LEAST, DISPATCH IS LIVE AND UNEDITED. SOME OF THESE CONVERSATIONS MAY BE MORE PRODUCTIVE IN THAT FORMAT WHICH IS WHY THE SHOW EXISTS IN THE FIRST PLACE. I WELCOME THEM.

WHY THE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS?

No one is fault-less. But some are faulty and donate to open source devs. Thats makes all the difference here.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO SPEAK CLEARLY.

Why? What’s the importance of what you’ve got to say?! Sometimes attention can be addressed more adequately by reflecting on the purpose.

IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO SAY SOMETHING IN CAPS THEN WHY SAY IT AT ALL?

It's an annoying schtick of his

Thank you for taking the time top respond. In an attempt to clarify what you have said, and to further my understanding, I am going to summarize your answers. If I have misintrepreted anything you have said, I apologize, and welcome any clarification. In response to my first question, it seems that you believe that it is opensats' role to help further the development of the entire nostr ecosystem. That it should seek out the best projects that are aligned with this goal. You also believe that your VC firm's investment in Primal, can't be successful without a diverse and expansive ecosystem to support it. You didn't really answer my second question, and once again please clarify if I missed it , but I am assuming, based on what I have read from you before, that Primal presents tradeoffs that are acceptable to you as an investor, because nostr needs an access point for the masses, with the least amount of friction in terms of onboarding people to bitcoin and nostr. And in response to last question, I am assuming that you don't believe that this presents poor optics, or any reason for people to think there is a conflict of interest? That your invesment in Primal should not be of any concern to anyone who has received a grant? Based on your answers, and the assumptions I have made, is this the way you see your role, and the roles of opensats and ten31: 1. Opensats (non profit) should be used to build out the ecosystem 2. Ecosystem flourishes 3. Thereby making Primal and my investments more likely to succeed 4. Primal is great for onboarding people to bitcoin and nostr and this is needed and it's filling a hole in the market. Thereby making nostr more likely to succeed. 5. Return on my investment is good, investors are happy. 6. My personal return is good 7. Nostr is successful 8. Everyone is happy

SOLID SUMMARY BUT THIS IS KEY: IDEALLY MORE PEOPLE SUPPORT DEVS DIRECTLY. IDEALLY WE HAVE MORE ORGS PROVIDING FUNDING IN THE SPACE. IDEALLY SOME FOSS PROJECTS DEVELOP SUSTAINABLE ETHICAL BIZ MODELS (SPARROW IS A GOOD EXAMPLE HERE.) -- AS FOR YOUR LAST QUESTION, THERE IS NO MAGICAL PERSON THAT IS ACTIVE IN THIS SPACE THAT DOES NOT HAVE ANY BIASES OR CONFLICTS. CENTRALIZED ORGS WILL ALWAYS BE CENTRALIZED. WE ARE GOING TO GREAT LENGTHS TO TRY TO MITIGATE THE IMPACT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL AND THEIR RESPECTIVE BIASES ON THE ORG. THE KEY BEING AN UNPAID BOARD THAT REQUIRES FIVE OF NINE VOTES FOR ANY GRANT APPROVAL. I THINK WE HANDLE THIS BETTER THAN 99% OF NON PROFITS IN EXISTENCE. WE WILL CONTINUE TO IMPROVE OUR PROCESSES OVER TIME.

Using caps is an option and I do use them sometimes, not to speak clearly though. I usually try to type in a way similar to the way I talk while stressing or highlighting using quotes. I would rather think of the reader while choosing my way of typing or words and use the most suitable way to deliver the message that I want to say depending on the meaning and context.

Were you in the army?! I know that my question might not make sense, that is the impression I get when I see that you are typing in caps because of wanting to speak clearly anyways.

I 💯 agree with what you said about everyone having biases, and/or conflicts of interest, hence the reason for my questions, and maybe the questions of others. I appreciate you taking the time, and I believe I have a better picture of the situation, how funding works, what your goals are as an individual investor, and member of the opensats team. I hope others have too. 🤙

One more question I have: has the board ever discussed recusing an individual from the process of grant approvals, if there is a conflict of interest, or if one could be construed?

Matt I love you but I seriously do not buy the 5 of 9 thing. You have people on the board with assertive personalities/expertise in certain areas where they’ll almost certainly hold the majority of the sway if there’s disagreement. It’s not a good look to have people with so many intertwining business interests and if I were you I’d find someone virtuous to replace me and step aside. I know it’s a challenge but it’s best for bitcoin and ultimately for you imo. I.e. fewer NVK and Odell’s (assertive businessmen with numerous intertangling business interests) more Nifty’s (open source dev more in it for purely the tech). You’re a great entrepreneur but that should be your focus and the bias you get from that leaves many like myself skeptical. Please consider this honest feedback sent with love. Onward.

EASIER SAID THAN DONE BUT I DIRECTIONALLY AGREE.

This sounds retarded. “There are people with business interests on boards so you should step down to make me comfortable.” Start your own fund. @ODELL is great. He’s working with a flawed model, using flawed people, surrounded by armchair retards with loud, giant face holes and even bigger armchair opinions, and He is DOING it. Get it you do nothing bitches? Doing it. And @jb55 has the spirit of an early Unix pioneer in him. He could develop circles around most of humanity given the right environment. If I see one more no solution finding armchair fat face, with spam grease in their shirt talking about “you should resign” as they waddle to the cookie cupboard, I swear I’m looking for drone coordinates.

People can always donate directly to who they want to support. Never understood the OpenSats hate aka “constructive criticism” Damned if you and damned if you don’t

I really didn’t intend to start anything or for there to be this much vitriol. I think ill just take a break from nostr for awhile and not question anything from now on. sorry ✌️

We love you Will ODELL Sikto, don't go anywhere 🫂🫡

You sound like the most pathetic boot licking keyboard warrior faggot. If you saw me on the street you’d run. If you’re not an anon you will see me in person and I’ll step right on your toes and you will do nothing cuz you’re a bitch ass nerd. Go fuck your fucking self.

Sovereign individuals freely donating to an organization that funds projects that they want funded. If anyone has a better model, then implement it or donate your money to someone who does.

Aw. Don’t cry cupcake. Ask mommy for a juice box and a Pat on your angry little bottom. 🤓❤️

I have a question. If Opensats receives substantial funds to funnel into dev projects (and the fact that it is 100% passthrough is laudable), the Opensats board will become a powerful entity in the Bitcoin world. Everyone knows that power corrupts. Have you thought about a mechanism to limit this power? Why have 9 permanent board members?

You mean, have a rotating board? 🤔

Election by lot from those with skin in the game? (However defined.)

Derek, we're not trolls. Stop trying to shut down the debate with name-calling.

The fact that people are freaking out this much just means that they also see the problems, but have no ready answers. It's not a simple problem to solve. In fact, I don't know of any open-source movement that has even bothered trying to solve it. So, we're funding model pioneers.

Yeah, this is always a problem with a board sitting on a big pot of money: figuring out who should be on the board and for how long.

Idk, if it’s not right the first time I guess you should just quit 🤷‍♂️. I believe the old saying goes “haters goin to hate” Development ≠ complete-ment (🤔)

I also received a lot of feedback from Nostriches who said they were uncertain who to donate to and how, or even who had built the stuff they're using. I see things like what @🐈 and @PABLOF7z have produced as a way to fill that information/convenience gap. @ODELL it would be great if OpenSats could somehow refer to these tools or something similar from their webpage. That would be a big help for those who didn't receive grants, to receive free marketing from you all.

Agree that using some of the grant money to create a "help devs to help themselves" infrastructure would go a long way. They're doing that with #SovEng and some of the design documentation, etc. That stuff scales really well, without skewing the market as much. It's clear that there are a lot of good devs missing what I'd call "project infrastructure" and "business knowledge" and they don't have the professional experience or the time to learn it and provide it to themselves. That's giving an advantage to my own team, but I can't provide it to everyone. It's frustrating because I see interesting projects sort of wilting away and devs getting discouraged.

We should solve this problem. Are you trying to solve this as well?

wait, you use apple? 💔

That's what the conversations are about. We talk a lot about it in our project. It's a conundrum, but the advent of zaps and zap-splits has made it a problem that can actually be solved. Opens up entirely new models. I think it'll be chaotic, for a while, until some Standard Funding Models emerge, but it's important to even declare that we need and want them. We want everyone in Nostr to at least have the hope that they can one day be an active part of a common market. Only then are we sovereign.

And we want this for EVERYONE EVERYWHERE. That's what SFM can deliver, but grants can't, because processes and code can be distributed worldwide, with low effort, without getting consumed in the process.

I think term limits would make sense. Election is difficult because there is no clear electorate.

Term limits are often useful. Donors could be electors. 🤔

Ok retard.

Imma need this for sure. 👍🏼

I’m not the one asking for open sats donations. Matt regularly asks for donations so I’m giving my feedback on what would make me feel comfortable doing that. I donate to individual projects that support my values where possible. It is undeniable that there are economies of scale. The best case scenario is to have principled open source devs and advocates who don’t have vested business interests in the projects in question. Bonus points for radical transparency (meeting minutes, reports etc).

I wonder how “social onboarding” could be funded? I’m developing a web client and incentive program to support sharing Nostr with friends. While onboarding projects are typical “low hanging fruit” when it comes to receiving grants, “social onboarding” ALSO has the “value add” of strengthening webs of trust for new accounts. ADDITIONALLY … the “social onboarding” user experience is an excellent opportunity for clients and relays (and their funding partners) to gain new users, and for influencers (and their supporters) to gain new follows. Nostr Advocates act as the conduit, sharing their recommended apps and follows with their “new account” friends. Could a “multi stakeholder owner membership” (equity crowdfunding, where everybody has a stake in the business) funding model be a something that works in this case?

Forgive me for not knowing, but who is your team and what are you all working on?

Compliance Is Defiance®

Not sure about that, otherwise it would be the ETFs indirectly deciding what gets developed.

Do you think things will be developed that the ETFs don't want?

Follow me and find out.

Everyone needs this. 🫂 To be honest, everyone needs it in real life, too. I just spent three months trying to quit my job and it still isn't finalized. And then I got a new job offer on Sunday. 🤷‍♀️ Real life has the same lack of human resources. The people were never born, who are now needed as workers.

For sure. Likewise, I think ETFs may want (or be compelled) to have things developed that most Bitcoiners don't want

No, I mean... You think that's even a possibility? That the fund would ever finance a project that the biggest donors don't want?

With the current board, definitely

Already am.

I CAN'T AGREE MORE

Also my dev account? 🤔 @Silberengel

At any rate, we're opening the repos tomorrow and making a little announcement, so you should see that, if you follow me. GN 😊

Perhaps, let’s establish some common grounds first. ** On funding : 1. Grants are technically for development purposes to encourage the building part of the business. It is with hope that after you build, you find other funding means or you can take off the business independently. 2. Loans - there are two types - Business loans are what you take when your businesses are generating stable revenue. Personal loans are the riskiest as early stage business has high failure rates, you don’t have income and you gamble everything. 3. Equity - you are selling company stock for money, with the assumption that you can generate returns. You can sell your stock to anyone who believes this business has potential. Traditionally, there’s angels as pre-seed / seed stage, VCs at seed/series A,B and PEs from Series B until IPO. Equity crowdfunding sometimes falls under pre-seed or seed stage depending on who is investing in you. There are diff interest of investors - those who want to expand the business quick and fast and those who prefer slow and steady, with profit sharing revenue, ** On selection at early stages : Typically stuff like EBITDA / DCF / CCF / PTA can be thrown out of the window for early stages. The Early-stage evaluations are normally based on : 1. Founders - industry expertise, creativity, ability to think out of the box, integrity. 2. Business potentials - market size and opportunity, business model, competitive landscape. 3. Traction - based on how you are able to acquire customers. ** On startup stages 1. Pre-seed - brings an idea to life. You might do rapid or native prototyping to test the receptiveness of the market on your innovation. Often, you might do several iterations to find a fit. Most devs are at this stage now, and build something with the assumption that it is awesome, do not test the market, and get frustrated when it doesn't pick up. 2. Seed stage - this is when you create something more solid like an MVP after a little test on the market. Good time to apply for grants as you will need some time creating a better product and testing market more in depth. This is when you officially launch it. 3. Series A onwards is exploring market deeply and penetrating other markets ** Now that we have established that, you need to ask yourself a few questions : 1. Does your product work ? Not functionally but in the market i.e - How many people have you used it on to bring into Nostr ? 1000? 10,0000? How long did it take you to engage them ? Who are there and where are they from ? 2. If your product can be monetised in order to generate revenue, then you can attract equity investors. 3. Alternatively you can create a revenue sharing model where you don’t need investors but you can attract people to generate and earn income - the more people participate, it becomes an attraction factor to get more people in. And serves your end goal of bringing people into Nostr. 4. Are you building something out of goodwill /non profit /no touch of capitalism that purely benefits the people? then you need to get funds out of goodwill from opensats or people like Jack who don’t expect you to repay. 5. Can your product be easily leveraged as a simple app / interface by clients? This will determine your product value. It doesn’t matter if it's open source or not, the purpose of your product and traction is what makes a difference. 6. How can you grow your product ? This question is really important. Can you partner up with clients that attracts specific communities for example like Coracle who works closely with Christian community + local business community or other clients that serves diff purposes / market? Can you expand it into local meet-ups based on interest ? a dating platform ? nostr nest hangout sessions ? You won't find the answers to these questions overnight or in a week. You will have to test the market, find ways for your product to reach people wherever they are, and go through many iterations. On a diff note, I wrote more on equity crowdfunding here and have brief example of cap table, income statement if you want to read more. note1xsyxqsv2xxfr3wyssaagp73nmujryyylw5fe4n90t6tksq2x8qws29hu84 Hope this helps. All the best. Keep going!

I only feel like these discussions could be more structured. SFMs are the way to go.

Wow. Thanks for the detailed reply. I had already read your reply to will earlier, and wanted bounce this by you then… I’ve already received a small grant from @Blockhenge for an MVP release. Was supposed to be done by end of March … so I’m kinda rushing to get this out the door asap … but once I do I’ll be looking to take the next steps. I’ll prolly need another grant (and enough for an assistant) but I do see great promise for nostr in “social onboarding”. I have 20+ years in creative web dev. I’d like to see where this could go, cause frankly, Nostr is worth it.

GitHub

GitHub - nostrmeetme/nostrmeetme

Contribute to nostrmeetme/nostrmeetme development by creating an account on GitHub.

@Laeserin 🇻🇦 This is what I meant: View quoted note →

Hmm. I don't really follow.

The ETFs will definitely be against privacy

Oh, yes. Of course.

i'm not sure about that... they only have to be transparent in their records, being transparent on chain is probably to their detriment in fact