In the spirit of @k00b's reply, I think the real question is:

Can I be a paid lightning protocol developer?

I have implemented part of the spec, I have contributed to the spec, so in some sense, I'm already a lightning protocol developer.

It's rather about convincing someone to pay me to continue doing what I've already done for free. I have time, so I'm giving it time. I've also only been doing it for free for a couple of weeks so far.

I think it would be a great honor to get paid to work on the lightning protocol. If the money comes through a grant, even though it's called a grant, I wouldn't take it for granted, haha

🫶