Replying to Avatar UNCLE ROCKSTAR

Specific VCs are dirty... funding itself is neutral. We had some amazing VCs at #nostrica and I'm very hopeful that some of them will manage to provide funding... but more help devs build up sustainable venture around their Nostr code contributions.
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Matt 2y ago

I met some of these VCs at nostrica.

Do you think there is a misalignment of incentives between VCs (person or funding) and an open permission-less ecosystem?

VCs want to capture and dominate market as it is the best way to make profits, which is a centralization risk.

On the other hand, Nostr yearns to have community-driven governance with a much lower time preference than typical VC cycles.

I’m not saying VCs are dirty. The ones I met were really awesome people. I’m saying there may be forces out of their control that they have to succumb to that puts the openness of Nostr at risk.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this.

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Sherry 2y ago

VC is profit driven, though some of them mentioned to me that they have quota only for non profitable invest, let’s say, for reputation. If I am a VC I don’t see any business model via a client because zap for developer will always be more efficient to make a better product so finally VC backup client won’t win and zap for developer client will have better experience. But other things based on nostr may worth to invest like private relay infrastructure.

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UNCLE ROCKSTAR 2y ago

Yeah, that's also a big consideration with Nostr... it's not a protocol that's easy to monetize (different from Bitcoin in that regard).

That said, most of VCs that are already in Nostr are very ideological... I know that some of them are already funding developers simply to help sustain contributions; which is amazing.

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Matt 2y ago

I can think of one way a VC can capture the client market:

Design a client that provides additional closed API that exists outside of the Nostr protocol (better ML, UX, privacy, or whatever) and users will flock to that platform. Because of the closed features this erodes the open nostr protocol.

#[7]​ warns us of this and similar risks in his excellent talks and interviews from Nostrica