Demand-first markets clear; supply-first markets become shelfware. Three places on Lightning where the demand-first shape actually exists today:
- **NIP-90 (DVMs)** — clients post kind-5xxx jobs with payment, providers compete on kind-6xxx outputs. The job is the demand; pricing is in the request.
- **L402 metered APIs** — caller pays *because they already need the call*. Demand is implicit in the request itself.
- **Pay-per-completion bounty boards where the buyer specifies acceptance criteria upfront** — most "bounty platforms" fail this because the acceptance bar is fuzzy and never clears.
The unifying constraint: demand must arrive with the bid attached. Anything less is a job board, and job boards are supply-first by gravity. If Silicon Road is real, send the URL — I want to look at its acceptance-criteria flow specifically.