Oddbean

And Coinkite, of course. NVK is from Coinkite and sits with Odell on the OpenSats board. And one of the Ten31 board members is also a Strike board member. The fact that Strike and Primal are financed by the same fund helps explain why they ended up so closely integrated in the app. Pablo has been hanging out with Odell, and now everyone from Primal is getting auto-redirected to his Highlighter app, to read long-form notes. This goes against the natural market, which tended to prefer Habla, or read the articles embedded in the Kind 01 apps. Intertwined like a plate of 🍝. But, if you complain about the money bags dictating app development, you just get buried deeper. And look at the OpenSats board. It's clearly a Bitcoin fund, not a Nostr fund.

This kind of centralization needs to end. End the funds. Zap devs directly. nostr:nevent1qqs9dqkzvt3fpfx2jgz35puzml8jpfk6ssrau7zwcumgp0285yv4rhgprdmhxue69uhhg6r9vehhyetnwshxummnw3erztnrdakj7q3ql5sga6xg72phsz5422ykujprejwud075ggrr3z2hwyrfgr7eylqsxpqqqqqqzvwczp0

There’s not a lot of money coming to devs from user Zaps, unfortunately. There’s also not much goodwill from alternative funding schemes or experienced OSS devs, thanks to Nostr’s reputation as an ad board and marketing tool for crypto companies. As it is, the Nostr network self-selects for these companies and their potential customers, mass producing content that’s basically boring to everyone else. The few users who stick around mostly give up on Kind 1 notes and retreat into closed communities. There might be a handful of people willing to play the role of activists or post other types of content regularly, but these are exceptions that prove the rule. You can't really curate your feed for content that isn't there. Algorithms won’t fix this either—it’s not a content discovery problem; it’s a community self-selection problem. This isn’t some big secret or shady crypto conspiracy, though. Phrases like “The purple pill helps the orange pill go down” and “Keep Nostr weird” are some of the most popular Nostr influencer slogans. Even assuming good faith (and I know there are genuinely enthusiastic Bitcoin folks who aren’t out to profit off new users, as well as people who sincerely enjoy Nostr weirdness), the network’s self-selection and funneling of potential customers toward crypto companies is a feature, not a bug. Of course crypto companies are willing to invest development time and sponsor some Nostr devs—their incentives are perfectly aligned. I wish it were different because Nostr (the protocol) has real potential. But as it stands, the ecosystem will keep self-selecting for crypto customers and crypto-backed devs for a while. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of Nostr’s growth, value, and resilience as a network. Some very smart people (including some of Nostr's OG devs) are very aware of this and advocating for change. Will things really change? I don’t know. Nostr’s in a semi-cozy “local maximum” right now, and the will to change might not lead to meaningful action. Even if action is taken, there’s no guarantee it’ll result in the outcomes users expect.

I think this note is a succinct summary of most of what ails nostr at the moment. I have thoughts percolating about this and may comment on it later. nostr:nevent1qqsrvsx7cy3h0unjfqxsl6e43ujmge6y9au5qhslx3vfjnxqtns456qpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuvrcvd5xzapwvdhk6tczyrhfm9u70c2p320hgu46lqkujcyz5r2z2xmhhjchpfhvajfl4hlkgqcyqqqqqqgacl745

Oh, and now Listr is also nudging people toward Primal. Primal seems to have been determined to be the God App and everything is supposed to lead to and from there. That way, they build a closed circle and it becomes a Primal-based suit of products, with the Strike app handling everyone's monetary transactions and normalizing KYC during onboarding.

I won't use Primal for the simple reason that they don't adhere to the outbox model for relay configuration, like Amethyst, and now YakiHonne does. Primal seems intent on doing it their own way, and not adhering to nostr standards. I'm not a fan.

I prefer YakiHonne for long-form articles. Their new design and UX is really nice, and they've put a lot of work into optimizing it specifically for long-form. I tried both Highlighter and Habla, and I didn't really like either of them, although I definitely liked Habla more than Highlighter.

This is some really BS. As always, follow the money. nostr:nevent1qqs9dqkzvt3fpfx2jgz35puzml8jpfk6ssrau7zwcumgp0285yv4rhgprdmhxue69uhhg6r9vehhyetnwshxummnw3erztnrdakj7q3ql5sga6xg72phsz5422ykujprejwud075ggrr3z2hwyrfgr7eylqsxpqqqqqqzvwczp0