The weirdest thing about Nostr is that they're hiring any dev anywhere on the planet to do paid work, but can barely find anyone.
How is this even a thing?
Discussion
You guys are getting paid to develop on Nostr?
Nope. 😂
But other people do.
That seems to be the rule, there are some devs on Nostr and very few are getting paid.
I'm assuming almost all of the grant money is going to a small group of people (which confuses me because it's millions of dollars and I doubt the grant recipients are receiving millions), and then a couple of big projects have VC money or a contracted employer.
Odell mentioned on his podcast last week that opensats grants have gone out to ~100 nostr projects/devs. So ... That's not small.
Who the heck are these people? 😂
Ghost devs.
Ah, the article says it almost all goes to Bitcoiny/Twittery stuff.
That makes sense, since I'm hanging out with more backend/other-stuff people who have to work much harder for much longer, before they have anything finished that they could show.
And then nobody cares about what they built because it's too obscure and technical for anyone to get the point, but oh well. 😂
Well, did they apply? Did they show their work? I worked on my backend project for 7 months full time before I got a grant. Whoever you're talking about should open their code and apply before they burn out. 乁༼☯‿☯✿༽ㄏ
You said it. 7 months. We've been working on ours since before Christmas and the code is open and we publish announcements regularly.
Nobody responds, nobody looks, nobody cares. It's simply too low-level and complex to market. We have to finish the entire tech stack and build out the infrastructure, and then use it to build some clicky thing, and then we can ask for money for the clicky thing.
So, whatever. Project survivorship bias is real.
That's strange to think that I haven't really seen you talk about what your project is.. nostr network is very lossy sometimes and also people tell me I'm terrible at marketing, so I will pass that message on like an annoying little 🐝. Whatcha working on?
Here's some feedback if you want...
I read that landing page twice, and clicked on each project, and then started clicking the libraries. I still am not sure what exactly the citadel is about. My best guess is it's a repository of libraries with respective projects, but the projects I looked through were all just empty repos.
And I'm a coder, most people won't click through on any of this.
I would say, you should have a mission statement / goals top center. Links to where the active dev is happening, and links to demos or videos of demos in action. And a latest updates, milestones, or something like this. Who is this being built for? Is it a product for other devs, to use these libs?
The libraries are not in those repos, yes. And we're working on lower-level libraries, so there's no demo possible.
I am working on more project documentation, so that we can at least describe the plans to outsiders.
Was it 7 months before getting a reply?
Hehe, no. When I started building there was no opensats. Only a dream of nostr business, that was based on corn, working for myself and saying fU to the man. I had finally launched it, took a lot longer to build the first parts to where it was working than I thought it would. When I saw opensats start and the first couple of cohorts get in I applied. It seems like they do a review every month or so of the applications.
oh. i guess i got rejected and never notified. i'll reapply.
Ah, that's lame, yeah keep pinging them, they sounded like they got overwhelmed there for a while.. now is probably good timing.
They don't just take every project that applies.
Lmk if either of you would like a proof reader for opensats applications.. I'm a good proof reader/editor 🤙
If you look at the lists you'll see it's almost every project that exists on nostr.. having a grant doesn't guarantee success, but a few hundred of them and that will likely mean some will succeed. Or it's an experiment that won't work. I've never seen it tried till now. I think it's strange when people shit talk opensats, the thing that brought to life all this stuff, but also, not surprising. Everyone should apply for one that wants to code in the open because the fund got more sats.
You're conflating projects with people. Some people have multiple projects that were funded, most people have none.
The costs for maintaining projects is high, so the projects that don't receive grants, or where grants have ended, just let the infrastructure contracts run out and abandon the repos. What we see leftover and heavily-marketed is grant stuff, but that doesn't mean that nothing else was created or that nobody is working on anything else.
And they don't just give out grants for whatever. They have specific themes and topics and they select projects that fit.
I don't know, I don't really spend time on seeing why a project dies, that seems entirely possible that projects after running out of a grant would not be successful if they have not somehow created a revenue stream. Open code never dies though. Even if no one picks up the project, it's that much more code to feed into the AI so the next devs can chatGPT their way to success. Opensource can never truly die or be useless once it is published.
Yeah, but that leads to a bunch of thin clients and simple webscripts. Low investment, so that if it doesn't catch on, you can just walk away without a major loss.
I guess I'm just kinda lost as to what your point is 😅 mine is to defend what opensats is doing cause I think it's really cool and I saw what you said and thought maybe you hadn't seen the list of projects.
If you do the math, you'll see that the grants are not paid all that much. There is no secret cabal getting all the funds. (5 million / 100)
It's a good opportunity to work in opensource should anyone want to try. I encourage it. Don't be afraid of failure, and just go for it. A VC firm in silicon valley last I checked will only give you 50-80k and control your company from the start. There are very few jobs where you can be this open and work on this new of technology and try to bootstrap something.
I think also, it is an extremely difficult thing to do, given that grantees could easily get a job that pays far more and be stable and not have all the risks that come with making software that is trying to change the internet. So I applaud opensats for helping, I highly doubt nostr would have come this far without it.
Is it that not enough people know about it ?
I don't know. How many does it take?
I don’t know. What’s also interesting is that a lot of npubs have software developper in their bio. Maybe they don’t want to do extra work on top of their say jobs
*day jobs
There's definitely that, but I bet they'd consider it as a side-gig. It's more that you end up with a second employer, but not much more money, and you can invest that same effort into your present employer and net more, in the mid-term.
I agree with you. If the nostr side gig pays well though, the bitcoin is worth it mid to long term. Maybe they even get paid no kyc
We don't want a side-gig with a de facto employer, tho. We want to be self-employed.
And we want to be self-employed, from the very beginning, not only after leaving the employer.
I wonder if there are some that wouldn’t mind a side gig, even if it has another employer. But maybe they don’t know it’s possible or who to ask. Getting paid in sats is enticing
Are they getting paid in sats?
Maybe not in their day job. I mean in their potential nostr side gig. I’m thinking that they probably like sats since they’re on nostr
I meant, does OpenSats pay in sats? Have they said that?
I have no idea. All the memberships we pay for nostr services are in sats though
According to their website yes
Hey, that's cool. Always assumed they converted everything to fiat, for accounting purposes.
One issue nobody ever talks about is about "how" a dev entered Nostr. The ones that came here lurking, just to learn to code, or who joined at the very beginning (before you could actually use it to post your opinions) are personal and political blank slates.
If they apply for a grant only their project application is under review, not their entire persona.
The most-experienced devs are often the strongest personas, with longest and most tumultuous histories on here. We can't go out and re-enter and play it off and be like, Yo, fellow coders, I'm just here to learn javascript. 😂
Asking for money from people we've been flirting with, fighting with, or who muted us cuz they think we're totally regarded. LOL Not gonna happen.
This is funny 😂😂
But like you said, the most experienced devs. I mean statistically there should be many less experienced ones that could help the project move along no?
Sure. I guess. Depends upon what they are supposed to build.
Senior devs would be building something different, but they're probably best off building in a separate group with independent financing, so that they don't feel like like have to shut up and play nice with others.
Do you know if bounties are still a thing or if it works well? I saw a Semisol note a few months back where he seemed disillusioned by that system
Our project started off chasing a bounty and gave up after a couple of weeks because it was a circus, and now we just do whatever.
That doesn’t sound great
We have had to keep reorganizing and changing direction, which has really slowed us down and been demoralizing. Feels like we're constantly trying to outmaneuver a horde of development locusts, at the same time as lots of important work isn't getting done on their own projects.
Are you working on a client?
You don't know what our project is?
I saw the website but not sure what’s it about 😅
Maybe it’s a secret and that’s fine too
It's complicated. 😂
It'll be cool, once it's done.
If you don't want to work for OpenSats, you have to do something really complex, wide, and deep, so that they can't just hire 15 scriptkiddies and overrun the space you're in with free shit. It has to be something so big and so hard-core, that they can't even understand WTF you're doing.
You have to think very strategically because they can just drown you, as they have millions of dollars in funds. I call them Nostrsoft. 😅
The upside is, something like that is something that you really can charge money for and you don't have to worry about someone copying it because it's something that generates a heck of a lot of maintenance and support work, rather than being something small and snazzy someone can just fork.
100%
Scriptkiddies 😂😂
I might have to meme some of this
The mindset I've had to adopt is just to keep my head down and work on the project. The winds of public opinion/popular demand shift on a weekly or even daily basis, and there's no way we can keep up with that. One day folks want Nostr Git, the next it's discovery algorithms, and the next it's walled gardens and web of trust stuff. We've got ideas for all of those things, but very limited time, so it's always a "we'll get to that...eventually."
It's fun, though. I wouldn't be working on Nostr stuff if I didn't enjoy it.
Most professionals working on it probably see it as a cute project to teach themselves new skills, have fun, and polish their resume with something FOSS that people actually use.
If they don't see a financial return, eventually, they'll also abandon the products. They're just willing to work harder and longer, initially, because they're used to payment-on-delivery.
Definitely
I pitched nostr so many times to devs here and there.
When they know they are going to get sats in return to their efforts they get spooked.
Concerning from all aspects lol. 😂
Wait, who's 'they' ??
And people who put up bounties, but the bounties aren't attractive because they usually don't have clear acceptance criteria, the money isn't held in escrow, and you don't even know if it's still open or how many other devs are working on it.
You could bust your butt for weeks or months and get nothing. Don't quit the day job. 😂
Bounties work well when there is skin in the game. In order to build trust, it is good to put some sats down on the project with the developer, which shares the risk and puts an incentive in place to get the job done. Having the bounty paid out all upon completion is not very motivating or enticing.
Well, that's why it's safe to assume that the bounty is meant for someone they already have a personal or business relationship with. They then don't have to bother putting any money down or negotiating clear criteria, because it all runs on "trust me bro, see you on the island".
Trust is built, not granted. To earn trust it takes PoW, like many things, work for free until you build a product/reputation strong enough to get paid. I don’t think it’s more than that.
That's fine, but then they should stop whining that other devs aren't going after the bounties.
Set the bounties up, so that it's attractive to a wider number of devs, or call your bros. 🤷♀️
I didn’t grasp the full context at first and was just speaking to my own experience with bounties, but yes, there would be a benefit to building a talent pipeline of developers (and non developers) and in that case it has to be attractive and incentivized 😁
As an example of how this can be done well, I believe nostr:npub1yx6pjypd4r7qh2gysjhvjd9l2km6hnm4amdnjyjw3467fy05rf0qfp7kza set up a system for "reserving" bounties related to Corny Chats. So devs can apply, get locked in, and get paid upon completion. Those bounties were also clearly defined and dealt with bite-sized bits of functionality (like adding support for a certain NIP to the Corny Chats app). That's a pretty good way of soliciting open-source contributions.
That was nostr:npub1ssjaq3spxe6j5vhh0cc3g44wj75fvp8d3j44nwk7dapzg9t4rm4savvhr4 who had the nostrbounties.com website. Its no longer up, but the project was made open source (MIT License) last year with source available at github.com/diamsa/nostrbounties
The bounties I post now are either to project github issues or to individuals.
Of course, it's no longer up. 😂 Like everything.
Who's the person on nostr that you talk to?
She runs her own relay.
See this note for details of why it's confusing:
What observations did you make when you drew the conclusion they can barely find anyone?
Good point. 🤔
They might be turning people down regularly and just ask for more applicants, to raise their rejection rate.
Like Harvard, as a marketing ploy.
I’m not making any points I’m just asking what you took into account to make your conclusions.
I think you might be making assumptions.
Any time a project doesn’t have genuine market pull (people paying significant amounts not just odd zap of a few cents) it’s going to have problems like this.
I don't think we can know what market pull something has in Nostr because the potential funds have been collected and sequestered in one entity and now we only know what that one customer wants.
Market pull would be your and other’s willingness to pay for your usage of a product.
If the answer is 0 or a couple zaps here and there the result is no market pull.
The charity organizations are not real market pull.
Learning 2 program now would love to get paid in sats and work for Nostr!!!