I’ve started hearing “nostr is just a shiny toy that is distracting devs” more and more, and honestly think that’s just really, really dumb.

I don’t see the difference between saying this now and saying that lightning was distracting devs in 2017.

lightning needs bitcoin and makes it more valuable via demand pull. nostr needs lightning and makes it more valuable via demand pull. ergo (by the transitive property of “needs” and “makes more valuable”) nostr needs bitcoin and makes it more valuable. this is building in layers. this is the antithesis of crypto’s “world computer” bullshit. like, seriously, what more do you want?

not to mention that the more people who come to bitcoin, the more developer hours you end up creating.

I have absolutely zero on-the-ground info on this, but I strongly suspect that for every core contributor who first got involved in 2019 or later, lightning was a huge part of what motivated them, *even if* their actual output since then has had nothing to do with lightning directly.

open to being convinced this is all completely misguided btw. as mentioned earlier I have a lot of time today to argue …