Oddbean

For the record, @utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 currently has 9 posts trending on nostr.band. Yes, nine. N-I-N-E. https://nostr.band/?trending=posts Look at that list. Same people over and over. Tell me that there isn't something seriously fucked up about Kind 01 feeds. nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpckv7l8jqspl8u4y54dn9rcduwlrs4v2040nxce0m2h0cunvrj8tqy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtn4w3ux7tn0dejj7qgnwaehxw309amk7apww468smewdahx2tcqyrd74hte8r5sa0x7jlh906p0z97tegenku3ygjqndfcx0ndcpstw5hzf3pm

For the record, I love nostr:nprofile1qqsw9n8heusyq0el9f99tveg7r0rhcu9tznatuekxt764m78ymqu36cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuat50phjummwv5hszymhwden5te0wahhgtn4w3ux7tn0dejj7qg4waehxw309an8yetwwvh82arcduhx7mn99uuwx66a. 🫂 But I gotta say, I post about grain from time to time, making a big robust relay implementation from scratch. Nearly no engagement usually. But when UTXO makes a 1 off specialized relay, it's the talk of the town for a few days. Again, not that I don't love all the relay implementations. We need more. But it's a little demoralizing when I'm making the same thing but way more involved single project and it gets 1/100th of the reach.

The network effect on Nostr is interesting. It took about 5 months for my profile to start generating a significant number of events. At first, the network effect can even be negative, but I’m seeing that the situation improves over time, and even older content is beginning to generate interactions. This has also happened with other profiles I manage; the key is to keep investing, and growth will happen. Another thing I like about Nostr is that it’s the only social network that imposes no barriers to monetization. Even though it doesn’t have an algorithm yet, I already consider Nostr the best social network I’ve tested. I’ve been in the trends on Primal a few times. The "value for value" (v4v) model is challenging, but it really works.

Another interesting observation about Nostr is that most developers have trending profiles because they are actively building the platform. Nostr users greatly value this work, and the profiles that receive the most incentives are generally those of the developers. This reflects a culture among the users of Nostr, who are mostly very engaged bitcoiners.

You've pointed it out like 30 times now, give the devs time to implement some stuff, we don't have magic wands. Nobody benefits from having a small user base on nostr, it's because this is a difficult problem to solve in a decentralized network with no coordination. Clients that can browse individual relays as a feed absolutely will help, just be patient please

Oh, I've definitely noticed. I used to like to write about Bitcoin, sometimes, on Twitter, but it's been shoved down my throat so monotonously and hysterically, since I've been here, that I usually just scroll past Bitcoin-whatever stuff. It's been much more interesting, discussing Bitcoin at meetups, as the discussions are more profound and philosophical, holistic or highly technical. I bet that depth of Bitcoin convo would be less off-putting for new arrivals, as it would mostly be academic, but the algorithmic pressure is clearly against it.

I am tempted to leave nostr entirely, i sort of settled with using nostr very sparingly during a 'bullmarket', and not at all when there are a few % pump days. (There's no point, I know what nostr is saying without opening it). My twitter feed is on the whole much better all round, but certainly during biggish price moves up, and down. (The only person on my twitter feed talking about the price of bitcoin pumping is jay dyer lol).

The problem is that it's too difficult to build "bubbles" on here. On Twitter, I see a completely different feed from most of the Bitcoiners: full of modest fashion, theology, German politics, economics, etc. It was actually interesting to those people, when I occasionally wrote something about Bitcoin because they didn't see that much. On here, I avoid writing about it, as I feel like I'm just adding to the noise, and I'm obviously not drinking the kool-aid hard enough to please the really religious that dominate, so my comments always fill up with The Hyperventilating And Hysterical. I'm like a normie Bitcoiner. Nondenominational Bitcoiner. Also, I'm poor. Nobody wants to hear from poor Bitcoiners. 😅 Theoretically, we don't actually exist. In reality, we're the vast majority.

I think a lot of the post Actually About Bitcoin get lost in the Slogans About Bitcoin and posts About The Price of Bitcoin. Which is why some people mute the word(s) on nostr, when there is no real need to do this on twitter, even if your twitter feed I s a bit bitcointwitter bubble. Lack of subculture bubbles, definitely. Lack of mechanisms to foster subcultures thriving here and little or no reach to attract other subcultures here in the first place. But mostly no one cares cos they want bitcointwitter2, and they have it too lol.

it's quite literally the most common and damning complaint about nostr lol but it gets brushed under the rug with 'they're not ready for freedomtech' and 'there's no algo here to spoonfeed you on nostr'. completely ignoring the cultural problem and lack of network effect and even worse... a lack of any hope for a network effect. it's sorta funny for a bit, but it's been the same since i've joined a wee bit ago now.

There's a real irony here. Why is it even annoying to bring it up? What are you going to do when the next group comes around, sees the fire, doesn't complain and builds a solution? Don't get left in the dust.

Properly catering to communities is going to be disruptive af, there's no way around that. A big part of the current NIPs don't apply or are badly designed (even for the Twitter clones). A big part of the currently used terminology doesn't apply neither. Follow lists ❌ Kind 1 replies ❌ NIP-05 ❌ "Log In", "Account", "Web Of Trust", ... ❌ Etc... Luckily, relays are communities (by default) and keys, events and bitcoin make them interoperable (by default). Just need to build out from there.