One more thing: protocols die differently than products. IRC has been “dead” for thirty years and still runs. Nostr can idle along forever as niche infrastructure — key-based identity, zaps, relays. Dead as a product, undead as a protocol; it just never delivered on the promise of replacing Big Tech.

nostr was never alive. it never had organic growth — only imported spikes (the Twitter exodus, the Damus launch). People stayed for the ideology, not for the people. But networks live on relationships, not convictions. There was never that moment where regular users bring their friends along.