I think the solution to the next leg up, is a simple one. And that is: "let nostr be nostr".

Nostr is a relay system that transmits notes, and other stuff, from one user to another.

It should be used for that. Nostr is a terrible database, and should never be used that way. Of course, developers love to break the rules, but it comes at the cost of bugs, lack of scalability and technical debt. Which nostr is now swimming in, and no one wants to admit it. Eventually they will have to.

If you let nostr be nostr, then you can let a database be a database. You can let the cloud be the cloud, and so on. Everything just works when you use the right tool for the right job.

Just like the LAMP (Linux-Apache-Mysql-PHP) stack allowed different techs to specialize in what they are good at, and avoid what they are bad at. But all working together are greater than the sum of the parts. That's how facebook was built, by an unexceptional programmer, in 2 weeks, and we're nowhere near to a facebook on nostr after 4 years, even with talented front end coders.

If you have a mentality of "nostr or nothing", you will most likely end up with nothing. The solution is simple, just let nostr be nostr, and everything esle falls out.