Is the implication here basically that "those who are doing real decentralization" can only hope to "protect users" by building a client prettier and slicker than all the other "potentially harmful" clients out there? More or less that users shouldn't be expected to look beyond that veneer, so the best you can do to "protect their interests", as a principled freedom tech developer, is to make sure they're attracted to your product than to the "evil competitor"? I'm not even necessarily disagreeing with that. I'm just trying to get to the last page in the book faster.

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If you want wider adoption, yes, more or less it’s what I’m saying. If you’re targeting cypherpunk mentality, you will probably have success appealing to them with technical details and strong code fundamentals, but when it comes to normies (mainstream adoption), priories shift rapidly. You can argue that’s why the “crypto” industry has been successfully attracting dumb people with shiny toys for many years, while Bitcoin is more popular among critical thinkers or people that have the ability to learn from past mistakes. What initially attracted people to Bitcoin wasn’t its solid fundamentals, it was the potential for outsized returns. They only had to learn the fundamentals after some got burned by the shiny alternatives. Nostr users are still early on the journey. Almost no normies use the protocol right now. But if that changes in the future, would you bet that most of them will be onboarded by the cypherpunk clients or with the Primal-likes?