Nostr is both frustrating and invigorating. I'm on the cusp of writing a desktop client because the current options are pretty rough.

This is good stuff. Do you have a description about how it works under the hood?

Is it just me, or does it seem like everyone is super reluctant to monetize services and relays on #Nostr?

If we can’t make these things sustainable then we will either lose them, or they will stay nothing more than a weird little corner of the internet with lots of hope but no chance of ever scaling.

I still haven’t seen the basic model of zap sharing tried by any major client or relay. But I DO see regularly comments about how expensive relays are. I mean it might not work, but can’t we TRY it?

I want to make the distinction here too that this doesn’t mean we are closing off the network, we are adding permissions to the protocol, this doesn’t suggest at all to used closed source code, we simply need the services necessary to keep this ecosystem robust, to be profitable and have the resources to thrive. If they aren’t, then NONE of this works. Economics is everything.

I know building features is more exciting. I know we all want to make everything that we can free, and I agree all of the *code* should be shared. However, I think there is a natural insecurity (and I say this because I have this problem personally) with charging a fair price, and fearing criticism or the ire of people who believe everything should be free (as in price) when we need things to be free (as in Liberty). They are not the same, and confusing the two could stifle, or drastically slow down, the insane potential of this place.

TL;DR We have GOT to divert some energy to thinking about how to make this ecosystem sustainable, or we will lose it.

(Disclaimer: this isn’t a judgement on whoever is thinking about this problem. It just *seems* like few are. If you are building in this way please share your ideas or what you are trying. I’m extremely interested)

Monetizing relays is not “making Nostr inaccessible unless you pay.” I think you misunderstand the bigger picture here. Read some of the thread, there are a ton of great ideas and no one is talking about making it so new users can’t join and start exploring and commenting for free. You are completely correct on that point, it would relegate this space to a tiny group, which would defeat the purpose I laid out above, is how do we *avoid* that.

In that sense, I’m hoping for thoughts and feedback on how we can find this ecosystem, *without* the barrier you correctly identify.

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