Oh, I agree 100% that Nostr should be as easy to participate in as centralized platforms.
When you can tell me how much easier it is to set up zapping on Facebook, you might have a point. We're doing things here that are not possible on those platforms. Can you imagine what the process would be for connecting your bank account to Facebook so you could tip your friends' for their posts? Connecting a lightning wallet to a Nostr client is FAR easier, I assure you.
To participate in Nostr is dead simple. Download a client, generate your keys, put some info in your bio (or not) and start posting, commenting, following, reacting, etc. You can just stick with the default relays and media servers your client has prefilled. It takes WAY less time or effort to just "participate" on Nostr than it does to participate on a centralized platform. Have you tried setting up an account on X lately and the hoops they make new users jump through? It's ridiculous!
But there is a world of difference between simply getting started participating on Nostr, and being able to make the most of all that Nostr has to offer, such as being able to send and receive zaps, choosing the right client for the content you are interested in, properly protecting your private key, and all the other stuff that Nostr enables beyond just writing and interacting with kind 1 notes.
Zaps are something we take for granted now, since they have been integrated into the vast majority of clients, but that was not always the case. Nostr has been around since 2020, and zaps weren't even a thing until 2023. Before that, we were just pasting lightning invoices into our notes and hoping someone would be generous enough to pay them. There are plenty of folks on Nostr who do plenty of participating, but have no interest in sending or receiving of zaps.
