Right!?

The list is an organic way for us to share those that we admire and follow. Its helpful in Nostrlans when things seem chaotic and disjointed. Nostr kind of resembles real life, you never know what connections you'll make when you step outside. Some you carry with you for a few chapters, others a lifetime, and many are just passbyees, never to be seen again. It's all rather poetic.

though making a low friction paywall with nostr is easy

you could also do subscription based use but throwing someone 100 sats to read their 1000+ word essay with the payment processing in the background after setting budget and automating it... it's just nobody has really done it yet

substack does quite well with subscription model, it is the lowest cognitive burden and implementation complexity... it's not really different to subscribing to a relay, either, that can even be the whole point of the relay, creators pay a small sub to post, and readers pay a bigger sub to read, and the relay operator records impressions and directs the cashflow according to this

someone needs to make a nostr substack, like, seriously, how is it not already existing