Oddbean new post about login | logout Its been beginning for years! Nostr growth is slowing steadily. Lets face it, the general public are turned off by crypto. And many damn well hate and fear it. Its toxic to nostrs otherwise great potential. The damage has been done sonce every client pushes the zaps etc.
A market place or zaps aren't nostr's only use case. There are many other incredible ways to use it. Thankfully it's not a pie and increasing its use as a marketplace doesn't decrease the other use cases. In fact quite the opposite, each use case helps the other one grow.
I know that. Its why I use Nostr. But the crypto/zaps is a marketing / perception problem, not a technical one for those who don't want to use them. Most people hate crypto (just a fact of life because , rightly or wrongly, it has a reputation for scams and darkweb trading - because well, it IS used for those, regardless of its other merits) . Nostr has tainted itself by being fixated on that world. And now people just roll their eyes when they land ona nostr client and see the word crypto plastered all over the homepage. Or as soon as they try and figure out what the hell zaps are!
The saddest part is that zaps are even more complicated than L1 bitcoin, and most people can't get to grips with layer one, even with custodial wallets, which would be a bad and pointless way to do bitcoin anyway!