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When it was free, growth was fast and constant. Teams used us daily for months, sometimes a year, leaving feedback and spreading love. But the moment billing kicked in, many vanished overnight. Even companies with 30+ users preferred something clunky and unsupported over paying the cost of 2–3 cappuccinos.

In the Bitcoin/nostr world, almost none of the software is paid software. Lightning wallets and ecash mints may not need to charge because they can charge for liquidity or ecash tokens <> sats exchange, but on chain wallets, node software, nostr clients, and many other projects are free.

Should some of them charge?

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200 sats \ 2 replies \ @justin_shocknet 4h

Should some of them charge?

The incentives around Bitcoin software really does need more discussion, we touched this a few weeks ago: #1088687

Until it's solved we'll keep getting scam wallets outnumbering good tools overwhelmingly

It's part of the Core/Knots problem too, for all the fighting it's Jack's money vs. Jack's money... Core particularly is pretty much all NGO funded, and Knots being supportive of covenants indicates its going the same way... fake L2's with a swap-fee business model are dictating almost all development priorities.

Tragedy of the commons.

57 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 4h

Great point! I often feel like Jack is the main billionaire moving the needle from a capital standpoint.

Blockstream and Tether have capital but it appears they only serve their own interests

666 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 4h

Alex Marcos/Chaincode are another such example, at least as far as Core is concerned. Everyone serves their own interest, to the extent they align with broader interest is incidental.

It's the entities we don't know about, operating from behind cover, that are even more of a vulnerability. Blockstream has raised what hundreds of millions, billions? Where did that come from and who pulls the board strings? At what point does Tether's shareholders interest start to deviate from the Bitcoin commoner? Also easy to make the case that Blockstream is a Tether subsidiary, many Bitcoin companies are, in effect.

People gave Saylor shit for being against funding development, but I don't think they heard what he was actually saying. The only way to discourage activist development is to discourage active development.

That's what's so magical about proof-of-work consensus, the only resistance Bitcoin has against human organization is human disorganization... but that doesn't obviate vigilance as enough resources and time can still change the walking meat that ultimately gives Bitcoin value.

76 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek 5h

How can you charge for FOSS that you are meant to run yourself (bitcoin wallets), so you also can’t provide it as a service since then it becomes custodial?

Edit: Or mhh, you can pay for Alby Hub as SaaS or a lightning node on Voltage, but I still don’t understand how these lightning nodes can be considered self-custodial. How do I know they don’t have access to it? Isn’t it literally running on their servers?

55 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 4h

Zeus also is charging somewhat, even that we could consider it more as a V4V contribution:

LSP leasing / renew fees for channels
LSP fees
wrapped invoices fees
routing fees
subscription for extra services fees
merchandising
newly automated split payments with a % you wish to donate directly for each payment. I think this model is not bad and users can sustain directly the maintaining of the app with their own fair price.

sorry for the shity image, I had to make it from another stupid phone

If the services offered are done well it could sustain the cost of maintaining the app.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 4h

Yeah I pay for Alby hub

86 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 4h

Mhh, maybe it comes down to that my phoenixd node on my linode is then also not self-custodial because it’s running in a datacenter and I don’t know if Akamai does not have some backdoor access

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 4h

Yea someone else's computer is inherently trustodial.

I know Voltage put in a lot of work to have custodial deniability in the form of a professional SaaS offering, having LND keys made client-side, encrypted at rest etc... but none of that can solve for the fact that you're unencrypted wallet is running in their memory.

A VPS or Dedi with a reputable host is still the best option in many cases for Lightning, a company like Akamai hosts far more valuable workloads for enterprises... tens and maybe hundreds billions of dollars in value in aggregate... trillions if you consider losses from operational downtime for the major infrastructure they're a cog in (think Bulk Electric Systems).

Their reputation is worth far more than the sum of all Lightning nodes on their infrastructure.

Same can be said though of most hardware one might use to self-host, pretty much everything has a backdoor "management engine" so in both cases you're just reliant on those vendors/the NSA from opening Pandora's box.

200 sats \ 0 replies \ @Entrep 6h

This is one of the hardest and most important lessons in building a product. You didn't have 30+ users per company; you had 30+ people enjoying a free tool. A user and a customer are two different things.

67 sats \ 0 replies \ @jbschirtzinger 4h

The business world has become vampiric when it comes to charity.

46 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 8h

Maybe they could charge for some services, but I think the basic features should stay free. I don't think we're at a point yet where you can charge for the basics, it'd just slow down adoption.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @carter 3h

This is one of my favorite talks I tell freelancers to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

My biggest lesson? Charge early.