Peter was very public about seeing serious issues but I haven't seen him consider the outbox model.

I've seen some project - was it some git replacement? - using some DHT to store the outbox relays of users and with TOR in the mix ... how is nostr not decentralized? I don't get the criticism and thus I don't get the need to spend $20k on exploring problems that are not problems yet.

Yes, nostr is dirty and naive in its approach but it still might actually work.