Oddbean new post about login | logout noone can, since everyone is getting paid by opensats, including me. ten31 is invested in primal and strike. it’s pretty ingenious and prevents anyone from saying anything or else you may not get your nostr grant, at least that is the perception even if its true or not. Odell has called me personally and said there’s no way he would have of conflict of interest, but it’s literally impossible to not have a conflict of interest here. Odell is a great guy and I’m inclined to trust him, but the whole situation feels wrong and is causing a chilling effect.
I was actually thinking about a way to ask you about this specifically just a little while ago. If there was pressure to not say certain things or rock certain boats.
I’m extremely sensitive to self censorship. I noticed this in myself and have trying to put it into words in a way that is not trying to shit on anyone or cause bad blood. I am just concerned of the effect it might be having on this situation. I dislike the feeling so much that I have been working hard on trying to establish an independent income stream just so I feel like I can speak freely again. These effects are real. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the support, I just dislike this feeling that I need to censor myself more.
Nope! You have the army of plebs behind you! 🫂
Odell and OpenSats say they support freedom of speech. Make them put their money where their mouth is (literally) and feel free to criticize openly. If they pull funding, it proves they are hipocrites, if not, they are likely honest actors. High risk for grantees, but high reward for the community either way.
The average person who has yet to get a grant will not criticize. I don’t even feel like I’m criticizing, I’m just describing how I feel about the situation and speculating on the effects it might be having. Not intending to start anything, but it’s clear from the replies here I’m not the only one. I don’t have a solution either, other than to tap into other grant orgs like hrf and establishing other revenue streams, because any amount of reassurance is not going to help and it’s not like this conflict is going to go away.
It’s an unfortunate reality that when dealing with the inherent problems of centralization, some people can’t grasp the systemic cause and effect, and need to blame or attack other people. Centralized funding creates centralized behavior.
If we want to avoid single points of failure opensats creates a bigger problem than it solves…? The goal is Liberty right? Freedom of speech and freedom of money. It seems the best peaceful way is to transfer capital and crash the fiat printer war machine- i.e. more high-income fiat jobs that transfer capital to the network helps more than living completely inside the circular economy? Can the entire project be more of a part-time thing?
It would be great if they could explain what safeguards they have in place to mitigate bias, and to avoid a conflict of interest. This topic has been brought up before, but instead of providing an explanation, or reassurance to the public, there was just a bunch of yelling and “trust me, bro” replies. This is why I, and why I always will, simply pay for what I use and support the devs that are open with their stated goals and outlook on their projects, directly. There’s no reason for me to donate to an organization, when I can pay/donate directly. Direct funding with bitcoin is a much better alternative than sending it to somebody who then gains power and kingmaker status.
Radical sovereignty. Radical leverage. Radical connection. Orgs are great when you aren’t in touch with the people you want to support. Our devs are *here* and you can talk to them and support them directly. Whole point of BTC imo.
I can’t figure it out for the life of me. Why would people give their precious sats to a middle man. Laziness? Lack of trust in themselves and their ability to decipher value? Like you said, we have a direct line to the people building the future we want to see and be a part of.
Rich people do that! They just know that there is a dedicated team who have been in bitcoin for a long period of time that can figure out to whom to pass this sats. Plus don’t forget that for the big donations you can write it off on your taxes.
Yes, I understand the tax implications and understand what wealthy people do. I’m referring to small nobodys such as myself. For me, the tax savings are not worth giving control over to a board, which may not be aligned with my objectives.
Same!
Very true words. There is no good reason why to send sats to a distributor when you can directly tip the creators you want to see supported. On the other hand I see a point in for example ETFs not giving sats to creators they like but rather to an organization that is already trusted and committed to doing this without a focus on the ETF's interests. But then again I would prefer if big donors would setup trusts themselves instead of just feeding one king-maker. nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq5x9ngwtyv7s34dpldyn75svddwh7aazhfpwgengqx37xe4s5qn7qqsrzzd2nq5c7th6f6m5mr20lma9e3z9ss9325mdekm6x7xw8jeef7q3vp0pw
I pay too. But the users instead. The users are even more important.
Bro, you invented Zaps. Update the client with a v4v dev feature allowing for a percentage of every zap is captured and sent to Damus. You missed that one thing during initial implementation. nostr:nevent1qqsr55vqc7558v43je2jv0je4p8xyf8xwslttnmp8e96zqayg9942gspremhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet59upzpx7hpc8nqvxx23sguku3jcgc5am0ycyfvwz00ku7skgajp7lh0t3qvzqqqqqqyl8fa4l
Damus has this feature when you attach nwc and have note zaps unlocked
Most important part of of v4v is the ask. If this exists, make it prominent and make it the preferred method. Merch is a great option, but enabling passive value flow is critical.
Looking forward to making this more prominent in the multi-platform client. i always preferred this over subscriptions. Apple just fucked me over.
I feel the same, I've never had an independent income stream, I just speak my mind and accept the consequences if they come. Yes I've been fired a few times and had to restart all over again, but I couldn't really be any different if I tried.
Why do you feel the need to self censor?
@OpenSats never supported @SeedSigner guess why? Because @NVK is the board member and ten31 invested into coinkite. That’s bad look and we all see it.
This is exactly the reason why there should be no board members for donations. WE are all biased towards projects, topics, etc. That's why we should decide for ourselves which projects we support. But as long as the people think FOSS means free, nothing changes.
It doesn’t help that the F stands for free
It's true. NVK blocked me hear for calling out his bullshit. Odell went from freedom fighter to VC, I'd love to know if Gigi knows about this, but I can't ping him, Amethyst craps out when I try to. nostr:nevent1qqs9pctemf7exgpsuylg62ef3xc2jh0a8e7v80n7kvs9pczu0kn0apgpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsygq4wlj9n8w3pjrrfx878sstmq42ltuznfv4e6putnu2cdrr2vdsnvpsgqqqqqqsf9vpxt
He blocked me too even as a ColdCard user, that guy is poison to the ColdCard brand. Not only does he give off really bad vibes, he’s just a straight up bellend.
I was a fan of him and CoinKite for quite some time. Sad that he seems to be on a crusade against every would-be competitor, regardless of the expense.
Cool, I can finally edit notes.
I assume you are on graphene os. If so install the florisboard alpha version of keyboard from their github and it fixes the amethyst crashing issue. It is discussed on amethysts github.
CalyxOS with Open board. I hated Florisboard for some reason, but will try again. Thanks!
It's true. NVK blocked me hear for calling out his bullshit. Odell went from freedom fighter to VC, I'd love to know if Gigi knows about this.
🤷♂️
maybe it's because of the qualcomm chips...
Yeah, that's why those of us with independent income streams need to be more vocal about it and we all need to push forward with freemium models and etc. This isn't meant as a personal criticism of Odell or Gigi, but the model will invariably have a chilling effect, for psychological reasons. Nobody bites the hands that feeds them. Producers are only truly independent, if they are being fed by many hands.
There is no conflict, there are 9 board members. On top of that there is a Nostr committee that are your peers. The board just follows their lead. Not happy, build an alternative :)
Or even articulate a better way to run the organization instead of just saying it is bad. Everyone can point out problems. Proposing solutions takes effort, and executing solutions is so hard that very few even try.
The only reply I got from Odell regarding my concerns was LMFAO NO. I also have concerns regarding Wavlake, add to that they both share an investor… Addressing the concerns would work better than avoiding them.
Been getting a few people dming me with similar concerns and experiences and that they are afraid of speaking out. Thats crappy, but I don’t know the solution. I’m probably at a great risk as well just for mentioning it. opensats is already unprecedented in terms of giving out no strings attached moneys to open source projects, so maybe its just an “accept it pleb” situation. If we think we can do better then someone should step up and make a competing org, but that is another hard problem all on its own. I personally am grateful there are neutral orgs like HRF that are doing work in this area and are willing to support nostr and bitcoin projects as well. We are quite spoiled already, most of open source is not like this.
I told people that something is really wrong, it's usually 3 things Money, Power and Control
The board is a good board and additional boards turns them from altruistic foundations to competing corporations.
Let’s go 🚀
How can you gather the internal motivation to code and contribute to this beautiful tech? I burned out with code and politics and the life in general. It's not easy. God bless you for all that you did.
because its fun !
Thanks Will 😃 #BTC #Zap⚡#Nostr #FreeJulianAssange
Tricky wicket. I wish we lived in a world where great work for the good of society didn’t have to deal with these hurdles and challenges.
It’s nice to want stuff 🤷🏼 sometimes hard to get, just the way of life.