[Brighthurst]

I'd like to point out that the apparent "crypto dominance" is mostly due to that group's propensity to be early-adopters of new technology. The apparent crypto spam is actually a good opportunity to squash the bot issue early. Even people "in crypto" hate bots spamming the newest shitcoin.

So while that may put some people off, there is non-crypto related communication, and the "crypto dominance" will decrease over time.

[xigoi]

Still, cryptocurrency is inherently baked into the network due to the “zaps” mechanism.

[3np]

NIP-57 is optional. It's implemented by clients using that functionality but not required per se.

The same goes for NIP-52 [Calendar Events] and NIP-99 [Classified Listings]. Neither of those are "inherently baked into the network".