Are y'all shotgun kyc-ing folks?

Not really. In the context of Geyser Grants, where we are distributing the funds we must verify users to ensure we are not funding projects in sanctioned countries. This has always been the case for Geyser Grants. And we mentioned that it was a requirement from the start, but perhaps it could have been made clearer. We also apologized if this was not made clear, and we'll do better next time. As part of Geyser crowdfunding we're not in the business of doing that, as you know we try to remain non-custodial to not KYC. Even for the All-or-Nothing we built it the 'hard way', but the 'right way', entirely non-custodially, which allows us to preserve user privacy. Does this clarify things?

Not exactly. https://blog.breez.technology/time2build-meet-the-2025-winners-1d8b11501ad9?gi=ff5bcc2f9807 How/why are the winners of this competition being KYC'd? This doesn't seem like a grant directly from geyser, seems like at least part of the funds would have come from breez at least, so falls under the aspect of crowdfunding, not a grant. Or its a separate thing entirely.

?

Any response?

they should use

Catallax - A Protocol for Pseudonymous Contract Work Economies

Catallax is an open protocol that enables pseudonymous contract work economies. It runs over Nostr, Bitcoin and Cashu ecash for censorship-resistan...

for crowdfunds and grants, since the protocol doesn't kyc or ofac or anything else

Yes, the funds came from Breez and other sponsors - but they have been sent to Geyser to dispatch as part of the Hackathon management process. Since Geyser is dispatching the funds directly, we cannot be sending funds to an OFAC or sanctioned country (nor would Breez want to do that) hence why this is part of the Hackathon service. Note: we are soon going to roll out changes so that this Grant is not going to be connected to Geyser any longer. If you have issues with this, I would recommend to contact the Breez team and see if they would like to manage it differently.

Geyser does not KYC for crowdfunding by default, as we are non-custodial.