Run the numbers. Paid relays and many other use cases can only work with economies of scale. Let's say 10K DAU and 1% are prepared to pay $10 a month, that means $10000 a month to be shared by all the relays and all the apps. That makes no sense, one good dev would get paid more than that. You can fiddle with the numbers but it largely remains the same.

The flaw is thinking that nostr is a large eco systerm with existing economies of scale, rather than a small eco system that is in an embrionic phase.

nostr is something that so many people want to happen, and with good reason. But it has recieved 100x more in donations than it has in revenue. So the key is to use those donations as wisely as possible to grow the baby until the economies of scale can kick in. Therefore a % of the donations (it doesnt have to be alot) needs to go to the relay network, rather than to be either hoarded, or spent all on building. The people taking donations should have ear marked 1% for the relay network, maybe a bit more. Opensats need to spend their war chest as wisely as possible. There is an issue that people take the relay network for granted, but every time we have had a surge the relays melt down. Then users go to bluesky or mastodon. Another thing nostr needs is a scaling architecture.

Apart from that someone could come along and make a game changing new app, but when nostr assets did that they were sadly run out of town. They are rebranding away from nostr now.

I think without a growth strategy, say from opensats or fiatjaf etc. it will probably go sideways for a while. Which is OK, but still has the issue that things are not self sustaining.

That's not to say nostr cant grow. But 10x growth would require a change in strategy. I'd rather say 10% a year would be decent growth otherwise, but id more prefer to keep the 30k WAU than to lose them.

tl;dr people that want growth need a strategy for growth, which is hard work, and not there right now. However, but identifying the problem, it can then be solved.