You answered your own question. The grin network can barely run its own primary protocol. Asking this community to additionally run its own messaging protocol on top of that is just cruel and unusual.
By adopting something like Nostr (I’m open to others btw. Browse Venmo/Cashapp product planning for some research on this) we can bootstrap and run on top of an existing network.
We also get exposure to the wider Nostr user base. Anyone with a Nostr pubkey can easily use the grin wallet. You get the wallet and any other Nostr functionality at the same time when you make a keypair.
- I think you’re underestimating how many Nostr nodes exist. There are a variety of ways that they monetize their nodes as well.
- Most Nostr nodes allow for encrypted DMs. They can’t filter on what they can’t see.
- It would be much easier to spin up a grin branded Nostr relay (even to fork it and add grin payment support) than to maintain a codebase for grinbox and a fleet of grinbox nodes (Which is another thing to distract developers’ already limited time)