Kind of like an Emacs vs vim thing.
I think this is right, but harder to measure for Damus because there's relatively little UX lock-in and the only product on offer is UX.
IMHO True fans are easiest to measure as paying customers. SN has a wip true fan metric of daily spenders (and we are well off kk's 1000).
If I were Will, I'd attempt to find a complementary service Damus could provide. Something like Obsidian's Sync comes to mind - run me a personal relay and make my "work" durable and available.