Stay calm about the grant process, please. There wouldn't be a process, if everyone got one.
Build something people will pay you for and don't quit your day job.
Discussion
Also please note that the grant program is using Bitcoin. Bitcoin is gone, if you spend it, and the remainder earns no interest.
That means grants will quickly run out, if they spend it quickly. They can only sustainably spend a portion of the increase in purchasing power, so that they can give out steadily-shrinking grant amounts to the same effect.
Like, do the math.
Also, if they just dump all the money on the market, they'd completely kill the market incentives and ruin everyone else's business model.
Everything would immediately have to be free and innovation would slow.
And they have to keep an eye on all of these projects. That's work! People trusted them with this money. They can't just throw a couple of Bitcoin in some person's general direction and be like,
Have fun with that, bro. 🤙
This is why I keep telling y'all to pay for subscriptions and zap the devs of the products you use. Leave the grant money for core research, lawyers and lobbying, and major infrastructure projects, where they have little competition and everyone benefits.
Grants are the closest private equivalent to the public purse. You don't want the public purse buying your groceries or paying your Netflix subscription; you want them building sewage canals and funding astrophysics departments.
The thread is great !
But.. like I said to another nostrich, it's important to note that on the other hand not charging makes the product accessible to so many more people that wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise and who knows what they'll build, those things compound and could definitely have a snowball/butterfly effect.
As for quitting your job, it allows you to work so much faster, have a life and prevent burnout. So it's definitely a tradeoff and a personal choice !
I quit my job.
It's possible to have both a free and a paid offering for the same service or product, or to have new releases only for paying customers and older versions free. Etc.