I think with Elon's takeover of twitter and the continuing alienation of people, Nostr is at the right place at the right time but I agree that it would be great if it could capitalize on this opportunity more rapidly. The "gradually then suddenly"  mantra is not wrong but maybe it is too idealistic. 

Apart from the no-brainer to capture as much of the bitcoin crowd as possible and - for lack of a better term - better marketing, two aspects could also be considered: 

a) similar to bitcoin's value proposition, not looking at it from a western perspective but thinking about the long term appeal of Nostr to people living under authoritarian regimes. It should be immediately obvious to anyone living under such a regime how Nostr differentiates from Twitter & co in many regards (e.g. doxxing risk from the central authority, shutting down their account because the government said so etc.). Make Nostr better known to those people and maybe we see a rapid rise in participation. I realize many good people like  nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu are working that angle already but could we do more in that direction? 

b) that might be controversial but I strongly believe if one could convince a major celebrity to switch to Nostr exclusively from twitter, you will have a big portion of their following joining along. Imagine if Taylor Swift tomorrow declares that she quits twitter and will continue on Nostr! Nostr would immediately gain millions of users. Question is, if/how to convince a celebrity with a strong following to become exclusive? Apart from idealistic arguments, maybe purely financial motivation is needed? I realize this is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way but what if instead of  nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m supporting Nostr development work with the next round of money, Swift gets paid $5M to become Nostr exclusive for 3 months? This might have a bigger impact on Nostr' popularity and uptake than anything else.

Not the morally best way to do it and the numbers might be off but I'm more playing devils advocate a bit here for brainstorming reasons.