Being there from the start, I can say it wasn't fiatjaf; he was involved with Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, and more recently Bitcoin. You might remember the drivechain debacle—he pushed for a controversial soft fork of Bitcoin, causing some challenges, including for Nostr. While fiatjaf has made notable contributions, some of his ideas may have been polarizing.

The key to our success was an exceptionally talented and hardworking team that carried the project for two years, tirelessly working behind the scenes. The real game-changer was Jack, whose intuition and leap of faith elevated the project. Initially, we had under 100 users until Jack came along.  Also I think damus played a critical role in that, too.

Bitcoin adjacency is Nostr's killer feature, sharing an identity system with Taproot. Bitcoin is a trillion-dollar ecosystem, and Nostr adds serious value to it. Without this synergy, the project might have turned out very differently, possibly even died, like many open-source projects.