I'm not trying to take sides, though I have my preferences. I've always been a fan of startups, and money shapes the landscape. Who, how much, structures, valuations: they drive decisions both short and long term. Knowing where the next round will come from is always on your mind. 

Bluesky has raised more than twice what has been attributed to nostr. They also benefit from friendly publicity. These things make certain things very easy for them. 

They also have traditional business structures, and relationships with VC. These constrain what they are able to do. It currently appears that anything with Bitcoin is off the table. In periods of crisis, I expect even more control to be exerted. 

I'm not inherently vested in either of these. Nostr appeals to me for the same reasons that Jack talks about: there is no corporation, no debt or equity obligations, no points of leverage. I only ended up here after hacking on Mutiny, working directly with the protocol, and understanding what it allows. Most of the politics here are pretty silly if you ask me. 

But, freedom is the ability to make bad decisions. Counterintuitively this tends to focus people on making good ones. Without it you end up with endless mediocre ones that never move the needle, and you can be sure that others are moving their needle to grab as much land as possible.

So, my advice is a modification of Lao Tzu: we shouldn't spend our time challenging them on publicity, moderation, consistency, or scalability. They will always win these things because they are centralized. We should spend our time on things that they will never be great at: availability, portability, interoperability, financialization. 

Can you post to Bluesky over a phone call? Can you memorize your identity? Can you run your own community relay without Internet access? Can you zap your favorite developers?

Nostr will never "beat" Bluesky because they aren't even playing the same game. My view is that the game nostr is playing will become more important over time, and the one Bluesky is playing will erode, one crisis at a time. In the words of the unnamed zen master, we'll see.