It is also interesting to see some NOSTR clients getting broken by this cloudflare issue. Seems to me they are passing through centralized channels. Lets see if they say anything in their defense.

I wonder if it is the solar flares, or if they tried something stupid during the scheduled maintenance they had

There might be more to it than that, for instance the kind of people who want to use NOSTR. Because unnecessary toxicity is a cheap instant reward for many people. In other words they would do it for free. I think that the effect of zaps is especially felt in the incentive to produce proper content. Other platforms cater for cheap engagement and views, but most viewers would not care to give money to the producers of the content they watch. They are literally consuming garbage and saying: 'I wont pay, this is actually garbage content'. But the thing with real value is that a person who provides it, receives it back. They might have less total views, but the fewer who do appreciate, are more willing to return real value for it. So the zaps disincentivizes trashy, disposable, negative content, in favor of real value. Now that is an incentive it is not a hard set rule so people will still be people.