These are big claims

Opensats and 1031 are different entities with different goals. Odell has a vote in opensats but doesn’t make all the decisions. Opensats has supported other clients as well so it’s not like they’re colluding to have primal dominate.

I also don’t really see what’s wrong with him promoting coldcard. It’s in his best interest to do so. I think the important thing is that he acknowledges that he is invested in coldcard which he does. I think it’s unreasonable to expect someone to go against their own self interests. In scientific research, people are expected to disclose their conflicts of interest. That doesn’t make their finding invalid, but the bias should be disclosed and Odell does that regularly.

I’m not a fan of the caching relay but I don’t believe that everyone must follow standard practices. It’s a free and open protocol and way too early to know what the standard practices should be. The market will reward or punish them for using it. If it’s bad for nostr, I think they’ll eventually get rid of that system. But I’ve heard that the caching relay is very beneficial to people in poorer countries where bandwidth is weak and Internet access is expensive. Damus may not be usable in those places. I also think that primal saves on battery usage but I could be wrong on that. I mostly agree with you that the caching relay is bad but to call it nefarious is a strong claim that doesn’t seem justified to me. Why would they act this way? How does that benefit them? Is this caching relay really a threat to nostr?

Regarding the media uploads, I think it’s a good thing they host their own media. It’s not a good thing to centralize all the media uploads with nostr build. That’s one spot that can be easily attacked. Also for a long time, primal provided the largest and free data file uploads. Having different options for uploading is a good thing imo. Nostr build could censor you or change your uploads too. But primal integrated blossom with nostr build. That means the content can’t be changed even if nostr build or primal media got shut down, the content will be available through mirrors. So I think they’re doing the right thing to keep media uploads decentralized and censorship resistant in case they or nostr build get attacked. Primal is also innovating a lot of cool new concepts into nostr. Some will work and some will fail but it’s good for nostr to see what sticks.

I don’t agree with all of primals practices though. And I don’t agree with all of Odell’s political views, but I think calling them nefarious or hypocrital is a bit harsh.