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@ Marks
2024-04-17 14:06:11
Recently there has been discussion on the socials about supporting open source developers, specifically those who work on Bitcoin and Nostr. There is a small-ish camp of people who think that Bitcoin should remain as is…it’s perfect, don’t mess with a good thing. Many others think – correctly, in my opinion – that Bitcoin needs to be maintained and even enhanced. As long as the changes make Bitcoin better money, we should evaluate, go slow, and keep things simple.
Who will maintain Bitcoin and other open source projects? Will devs do it out of the goodness of their heart? Builders gotta eat; food ain’t free. A handful of institutions, both non-profit and businesses, provide grants and long term support to developers. This is great and I hope that continues. However, there is more that we can do. There is more that **you** can do.
### Zappy 21st
I propose we make the 21st day of every month the (un)official ”Zap a Builder Day”. It’s simple. **On day 21 in the current month, find a developer and zap them sats.**
Created in the spirit of #v4v and the #grownostr social experiment, I’d love to see people make this part of their monthly routine. It’s common for certain days of the month to have meaning. The 1st day marks the start of a new month. The 5th day is a common day when mortgage payments are due. In the United States, on the 15th day of April taxes are due. So now there is the 21st day, the day you send some value to devs.
### Who are you gonna zap?
Any open source developer. Start simple; don't overthink this. If you're using a Nostr client that you love, go find one of the contributors and zap them. If you use Bitcoin or Lightning regularly, find a Bitcoin or Lightning dev. There are many other great freedom tech tools, like wallets, sovereign computing apps, and privacy tools that have developers behind them. Zap a developer. (I say developer, but I really mean "contributor". Remember the designers, product, support, and project people who also contribute.)
I'm intentionally not giving names of developers here because I don't want to favor one over the other. Every open source developer is important to different people based on the tools they use. So go zap the people in your realm.
I'm only publishing this on Nostr, but I'm happy if the idea spreads beyond that. Nostr is the perfect place because you can so easily find a core dev and zap them. No need to track down their website hoping to find a wallet address or request a Lightning invoice.
### Join the Zaps
While everyone is excited about block 840000, halvings come and halvings go. But the 21st is always here for you. Every month, reliably, quietly doing its thing. Just like those open source devs you rely on so much. They’re here every month, reliably, quietly doing their thing. Let’s show them some love.
This April 21st find a dev and zap them. If you’d like, add a message telling them how awesome their work is and tag it with #Zappy21st. Let’s flood the feeds with #Zappy21st messages and surface great open source developers to others. Next month on the 21st, we’ll do it again.
🤘