Crowdfunding is a band-aid fix and is not sustainable. It's probably fine for the first year or two, but not much longer than that. It needs an actual funding model in the future. Build the tech. Survive on funding/donations. When the tech is ready and able, get a million users. If 1% pay for premium subscription services then you're set.
Discussion
I'll gladly pay for a Damus subscription.
As someone who has built a decentralized crowdfunding/donations platform, I agree with this. That method is not viable long-term and should only be used for once-off rounds of funds.
nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s should turn Damus into freemium model and either accept the ~30% cut to Apple. Or, in some way remotely unlock premium features using a 3rd party subscription API like Stripe or buymeacoffee.com
I disagree. Zaps scale. When bitcoin moons, or when user count moons Damus won't know what to do with the money. Stop being a bunch of Malthusians.
There's precedent out there - Canonical. They've created a buisness model for a Linux distro that works...how? Provide a great product, make it free for end users, provide additional features / support tailored to businesses, and charge those users for that upscaled support and product.
Thinking something similar to Damus (and Nostr in general) might work?
Think "Nostr for my business / comnpany" - maybe internal corporate relays for internal communications--scale it for business, but (since it's free) users already are familiar with it...
Have to think a "private" Nostr might have legs...add in business NostrNests, or private Flare videos - and I'd think businesses might want to pay for that?
Would also pay for a subscription! Doesn’t even have to come with extra features but that would be cool. Damus on my iPhone just works. Wonder what the numbers would need to be in terms of $/month, year, etc to make it happen.