nostr is still mainly used alongside twitter. in the best rare case, as a replacement. and only because people are running away from something about twitter they don't like.
there is nothing that people want to run to nostr for yet. zaps were promising, but bitcoin is still a hurdle (one that primal is doing the best at overcoming), and it's doubtful lightning could scale to a massive adoption moment.
nostr needs a feature or experience that's unique and sets it apart. i *think* that is the ecosystem of microapps over the long term...but it's definitely not in the short term. and that might be ok.
for twitter the initial draw was the simplicity and weirdness of 140 characters (we started with zero network effect, facebook had it all...that's built over time). later it became the conversation which lead to the "public square" (owned by a private corporation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). and then as it grew, it had a single point of control/failure people could attack.
nostr doesn't have to worry about that last bit. it's an incredible feature. but not one the average person cares about (no matter how much they yell "FREE SPEECH!"...if people actually cared about free speech, bitcoin and nostr would be all they used...they don't).
all this to say, we're not doomed. but what we think is the killer feature isn't right now. who's going to discover the one that is?
