For the sake of discussion and because I care a lot about this topic, I’m going to respectfully push a little on this. Please don’t take it any other way than trying to be constructive. When I watched his video of Conte speaking, one of the things that stood out to me was the goal of honing in on connecting with those true/super fans, and how to engage meaningfully with the “less committed” fans, and hopefully some of them growing into being the next true fans. The entire premise is predicated on the ability for fans at every tier to support the creator financially, which requires payments. Even the fans in the free tier on Patreon are able to buy merchandise. Direct payments to artists are central to the entire idea of what Patreon is doing, and I believe they should also be central to any nostr-centric counterpart. Bitcoin zaps are the best form of payment for this from a technical standpoint, but again the low bitcoin adoption in the general public makes it hard for an artist to rely solely on zaps, and that makes it difficult to devote significant time to building and engaging with a community on nostr vs. other platforms like Patreon. The payments are critical in my opinion, and it can’t be just bitcoin zaps, even though I wish it could be.