That’s the best monetary incentives under certain circumstances, however in todays market, when you compare nostr vs the “big players”, there are huge roadblocks to bring more creators :

-Scale: just look at the size of the reach people get on YT, Twitter, Etc. And look at the size of the checks they get either directly from the platforms, or from their sponsors (who pay for exposure)

-Bitcoin: as you rightly pointed out, not many people understand Bitcoin, or want to deal with the hassle to juggle with any currency other than their home fiat currency. And I’m not even going into the technical aspect for creators to learn, understand and apply self custody… What should be a strength is currently a weakness, imho.

-Big tech reliance : as we’ve seen with Damus and a few Bitcoin apps getting hassled by Apple regarding zaps, there’s nothing guaranteeing us that Apple and friends won’t use any bullshit excuse to remove the main nostr clients from their store if/when they decide having a true free market of speech with zaps (where they can’t get a cut) isn’t good for them, or getting tapped on the shoulders by government because “there are too much wrongspeak on nostr”.

Sure, there will always be the option to use nostr with a web-based client, however that’s another thing that gets in the way of mass adoption.

I could go on but you get my point.

If we rely on organic growth, I don’t expect it to takeoff until 10+ years (unless we roll out tons of features much quicker than I think is possible, without sacrificing relays’ reliability).

But I’ll ever stay bullish nostr just for the fact that’s it’s a protocol that could save our lives if/when governments decide to definitely kill free speech on the mainstream platforms.