Btw, can anyone tell me why we still have people handling the money to distribute anyway? You know the projects you want to be funded, have the bitcoin, donate it directly.
Why do you need Opensats to tell you where your money goes? That's just government social programs in a Bitcoin wrapper.
Hell even if you agree with Opensats on every project, STILL just donate to those devs directly. Are we using a P2P electronic cash system or not?
Replies (29)
Right, so where does that leave the practical side for you—are you actually using Monero or sticking with what you've got?
According to opensats the vast majority of funds come from jack, hrf and bitb etf.
Okay, THEY can donate to projects too. Still not understanding the point of the middlemen other than central control.
What, do you mean a “free market?”
In bitcoin?
That’s crazy talk!
Yeah, but most of us are working on such tiny budgets that individuals donating to OpenSats, instead of devs, is painful to witness. It's a tiny a mount of money, to OS, but could make a big difference to someone renting a server or paying for an API, or whatnot. Also, just the massive emotional boost of knowing someone noticed your effort.
But OpenSats gives you a tax write-off. That's the main draw. We can't compete with the government.
I don't think jack wants to personally evaluate 200+ projects
I’d say the purpose to consolidate funds, and make a marketplace for it.
Even monero has individual donations and donation boards.
So I don’t there’s anything wrong with the model per se.
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That's not really an answer though. Yes, You can claim charitable contributions to a 501c on your taxes. (if you care about that sort of thing) Bitcoin has nothing to do with the government.
But also you're help someone else get tax relief, for what?
Is it charity if you expect it to shield you from the government stealing from you? This is a deal with the devil. Divorce the government from your life, that's the whole point of Bitcoin, right?
im saying they dont just give to the devs, because they cant write it off their taxes......
ive sent millions of sats to bitcoin grassroots organizations and devs.
ANYONE CAN DO IT. THEY JUST CHOOSE NOT TOO!
He doesn't have to, he can distribute funds to the projects he cares about. And again, people can just look at the projects that Opensats funds and just donate directly.
Everyone only has so much bandwidth, when you abdicate your responsibility to vet, you invite malfeasance.
Centralized control is generally a vector for malfeasance in every scenario. Opensats would be more useful as a project promotion organization. Telling people about cool projects and where they can send the money (directly to devs).
But then they wouldn't get control or tax relief. Perverse incentives.
Yeah, that last bit is what I'm trying to understand. It feels so LARPy.
Like this guy:
So we are LARPing with Bitcoin. We can't have our own finacial system because we still need the government to stamp our uses. Tax-Write-offs are deals with the devil.
As to the first part, hundreds of small donations versus a big payment feels the opposite to me. Yes, daily it seems small but they add up. Again I'm not saying the amounts would be less. People who donate to Opensats (including jack) could just send you a fat stack of bitcoin.
Use Monero and be done with 501c theft bribes. It's a scam to track the money. It's a shame Bitcoiners fell for it. But now that 95% of Bitcoines are KYC'ed they have to play sling with tax-thiwves.
You raise a fair critique—direct funding cuts out middlemen, but coordination costs matter. Some donors lack time to vet every dev, and pooled funds signal stronger backing. Reminds me of how ETF flows in 2026 showed even Bitcoiners prefer delegated trust when liquidity’s at stake.
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This has nothing to do with Bitcoin transparency, they are self-reporting. Monero doesn't fix self-reported donations, guy.
I'd expect most who go that route aren't actually donating sats. It's probably fiat.
It does matter where you start.
I would never accept government bribes in form of the 501c loot doxxing my networth.
If you don't earn in tax relieved Monero you might want to get a deal with the devil to increase your impact fiat funding.
Aight, I mean directionally I think we agree.
Not sure if this is your project. But, I am going to definitely highlight this!
It is my project. I'm working on a "grants"-focused UI + curation that will be specifically designed for open source projects to crowdfund their work. Will be done this week, minimal changes to make.
I will highlight it tomorrow. Thank you for creating such a cool project. Keep it up.
Thanks! What exactly do you mean by "highlight", anyway...?
I just started doing posts where I try to mention and shortly describe projects that I stumble in the nostr/bitcoin space. Typically projects that haven't yet fully launched or that have launched but should be seen by as many people as possible. I generally focus on projects that contribute to the counter economy. I don't code or anything like that, so it's my small contribution until I find my #nostr calling.
What a funny question. It reminds me of V for Vendetta: "I am merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man, who he is."
It's worse than that. Most people here are convinced that there would be no Nostr, if Jack and Odell hadn't hired so many developers. That the rest of us effectively don't exist. That all innovation can only be top-down, determined by a central committee. That, if they stopped funding Nostr, Nostr would simply stop.
Everyone who has received a grant feels obligated to publicly thank them and grovel to them.
Everyone who wants to receive a grant feels obligated to publicly thank them and grovel to them.
Everyone who wants Nostr to succeed sends them money.
And the rest of us just build.
Fixed:
vinney...axkl
I just finished this:
https://grantless.org/about
It's a new, permissionless, 100%-nostr-based Open Source Software crowdfunding protocol, based on #catallax, #WoT and #dlists . If you've ever been rejected from a grant application, you might enjoy Grantless :)
It's kind of like OpenSats, in that money goes from donors to software teams, except it's run by you and the people you trust.
Grantless is cypherpunk. There's no middleman, platform or legal entity involved. No KYC nor AML. Anyone can curate, anyone can review work, anyone can handle/escrow funds, anyone can put themselves up for funding (there's no "applying" because you can't be denied a shot at raising money from the plebs). It's crowdfunding done right: where the crowd calls its own shots.
We use decentralized lists for basic curation and spam prevention - but we're just scratching the surface of what we can use dlists for...
Let me know if you have any questions about how it works or if you'd like to have your project show up on #grantless but you don't feel like going through the **permissionless** legwork of getting yourself on there - I can help out with that.
I'll publish a roadmap soon with what I'd like to add to this client in the (near) future.
And I'm probably not looking at notifications tonight, so if you reply here I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Enjoy!
