I'm not sure what "failed" means in this context. Some people get by on v4v and we don't have any way of assessing who else "should" be earning more than they are from v4v.

That said, the v4v model was always going to under-fund creators. Most people will freeride if that's an option and we don't have anything preventing that from being an option.

Stacker News "works" because supporting creators is incentivized through the rewards system. I could easily imagine nostr clients trying to implement a similar incentive structure as SN has.

I could also imagine nostr clients using the stick, rather than the carrot, and trying to maintain zapping with social enforcement. Something that comes to mind is giving people scores that indicate how generous they are with their zaps and publicizing who the most and least generous users are.

We're still very early and there are many more experiments to be attempted.