Ray is the guy who made both zapadd and aqstr :)

I wouldn't say I've "leaned into" centralized media that much, nostr was and is the main social channel from the get-go, it's more about trying to be present in most channels where potential customers may lurk.

IDK exactly about what the fee covers but I would assume Ray and/or team takes some cut as well. I don't think either of those ventures have other revenue streams.

BTW I used hCaptcha myself before going with Turnstile. It worked fine. No captcha meant a lot of spam. But I had to go w/ Turnstile because someone figured out a way to cheat the loyalty system early on, so had to protect Woocommerce against bots and fraud.