SeedSigner on Nostr: I have not publicly spoken much or asked questions about this for a few reasons. ...

I have not publicly spoken much or asked questions about this for a few reasons. Firstly because I consider you to be a personal friend and I feel that you try to do the right thing in each of the projects and organizations that you are involved with. You helped our project out in numerous ways, especially early on when our core concept was brand new and still being proven out.

Neither opensats nor dorsey owes our project anything. I have been very clear about this, and I moreover feel that opensats is a net good for both the bitcoin and the nostr communities. But I have also avoided asking questions about the status of grants, much less about potential conflicts of interest, because I did not want to spoil Keith's chances at a grant, or negatively impact anyone else who might apply in the future for a SeedSigner-related grant. I think this speaks to the same self-censorship dynamics that jb55 has referenced.

You insinuate in the above that there has been at least one vote on a SeedSigner related grant. This would be news to me because I had the understanding that applications related to SeedSigner were being considered but were deactivated when it became known that Keith had received funding from the HRF.

While a required threshold of "yes" votes for a successful grant is of course entirely reasonable, "no" votes (especially emphatic ones from persons of influence) can cut quite effectively in the opposite direction. nvk's repeated, persistent, very public criticisms of our project communicate something like personally motivated animus rather than any sort of good-faith conscientious objection. Even were he to openly abstain from a formal vote on SeedSigner related grants (which would be in line with opensats' publicly established policies) other board members are likely to be influenced by his numerous public statements. It's honestly troubling that someone running a company that embraces "source available" as an attempt to rebrand what open source means, and who has referred to good/faith FOSS proponents as "commies", should be in a position to decide who does, or who does not, receive open source grant funding.

Some very legitimate questions are being raised about the parties providing funding, their motivations, the entities receiving funding (and those who aren't), the specific tech they're working on, and those who are directly (and indirectly) involved in the funding decision making process. I don't think these questions are being asked because of prototypical bitcoiner contrarian suspicion, but rather are the result of an evolving pattern of observable events; some might call what they are seeing as potential "aligned malincentives". The opensats funding dynamics and scale may also be arriving at a point where larger structural dynamics are coming into play and a "just trust me" approach to public relations and organizational ethics becomes increasingly less and less viable.

So where from here? I don't have a good answer and none of these are my decisions to make. Hopefully opensats just has a short-term public perception challenge that can be resolved with better communication and more transparency. But bitcoiners are a skeptical bunch and these questions aren't going away if they aren't addressed.

Lastly -- I believe that you personally have a good heart and I'm rooting for your success.

(NB - I am speaking here under the exorbitant privilege of operating this account as SeedSigner "the man"; my comments may not reflect the opinions of all, or even of any, of our contributors.)