The recipient of that donation (@fiatjaf) immediately split it 50/50 with the developer of Damus (@jb55). All distributions have been done in public. At last check, fiatjaf has already dispersed 70% of the donation to other people/groups.

fiatjaf has been a prominent developer in the Bitcoin community for many years. Think what you may about crypto bros, fiatjaf is not that. I've had the pleasure of working with him a bit & have been on the receiving end of debates with him. I've always found him to be an upstanding person with deeply rooted ethics, even if I regularly disagree with him. If $240k were enough to sway him to do something he thought was wrong, Bitcoin would've been destroyed already.

I understand where you're coming from, though. If I didn't know the players and hadn't followed along (on nostr) intently throughout, I would likely have the same concerns as you. I still do, to some extent. Though my personal experiences and interactions with these people has helped assuage most of it.