Oddbean

Nostr has accomplished everything the “web3/crypto” startups are allegedly doing. It’s a decentralized, permission-less information/communication protocol, where users are the owners of their account and data, anyone can join or build on the network, and where its development and direction are shaped by a free market of features, data, and ideas. But web3 doesn’t actually care about that stuff, that much. “Web3” founders co-opt the philosophy and convert it into buzzwords, in order to sell (dump) free-to-produce crypto tokens on retail investors make fast cash for their VC backers without even needing an MVP, and then move on to the next hype cycle. Nostr fixed this. We don’t need a token because 1) this isn’t an affinity scam and 2) Bitcoin already works.

“Without the darkness there is no light” or something like that FWIW, if these are all people who are curious about this stuff, i find most “crypto” people are not anti-Bitcoin; I’ve had one or two productive conversations with people in this sort of context in the past year, and came away feeling like they moved in the right direction (purple+orange). Think about who (or how many) people helped shape your early journey and education that got you here. If you have the opportunity to point anyone in the right direction, it might help this feel less of a waste of time.

Most crypto people are not anti-bitcoin, but so many bitcoiners are anti-crypto. It's okay to love Bitcoin and think it's the only sound money we have discovered while also appreciating that digital assets on a blockchain have interesting use-cases (NFTs for instance)

I don’t fault someone for being curious about other use cases, and I’m not the type who claims “everything else is a scam” (which strikes me as arrogant, even though nearly all the other tokens are, in fact, affinity schemes or pump-and-dump scams). The issue is that blockchains are extremely slow and inefficient (which GREAT for a new global sound monetary base layer, but not great for the majority of other proposed crypto projects), and unless it’s sufficiently decentralized - like Bitcoin - the “rule of law” that Bitcoin’s blockchain offers is rendered irrelevant by more centralized projects. The fact is that most of these projects are run by a company and are rug-able to one extent or another, which defeats one the primary purposes of a blockchain. For these reasons (and others), my curiosity is tempered by the fact that most of these other cryptos are not actually that interesting. You can spend years studying Bitcoin and understanding the ceaseless and interconnected ways that it impacts the world. Most crypto tokens (etc) are just not that interesting under the hood, or that impactful. On the other hand, private-public key cryptography — actual crypto — is fascinating. The power that it gives to individuals cannot be understated, and it’s highly likely that many implementations of this crypto will add value to the world, over the coming years. It just doesn’t seem like it needs a blockchain to do it. (Example: Nostr). The actual “reason” or “use case” for blockchain tokens, in most of these other projects, is that it gives the founders and VCs an fast route to make tons of easy money (at the expense of under-educated retail investors), and it’s pitched as “needing a money for the project” when Bitcoin/Lightning would work fine and is actually decentralized, actually, permission-less, based on real-world proof-of-work, and all-around un-fuckable.

Basically agree with most everything you've said here. Blockchains are great for *global* double-spend. And the classes of concern where double spend are relevant are money and other forms of asset ownership. Bitcoin as money and [ethereum or whatever else] as "the other, arbitrarily complicayed complicated things you could own" makes sense to me. But I also think thst most "ownership" should be in-network in voluntary patchwork subnets, not "global" - so a lot of that also doesn't need blockchains.

"unified" is optional in my view. At least for namespaces. I think there is a lot of value in subnets being able to define their own names - like DNS, for instance. That should be local to a subnet. Nothing stopping multiple subnets from all using the same DNS provider, which would make it _something like_ global, but another federation of subnets could have their own DNS.

Oh man. I really wish I understood what you are saying. But my vocabulary is short-circuiting. Maybe, you'd be down to chat sometime and explain some of this in layman terms for a noob. Mostly, it's because I struggle with the reality I am realizing things are playing out where I am aware and witnessing really caring irl individuals with desire to make a difference in the world start, support and grow web3 projects in the last few years... While I've gotten myself organge and purple pilled the last year... And now I feel conflicted and trying to figure out the bridge or gap between these two worlds as I don't want to dismiss entirely what I know to be very heart based and caring initiatives by irl caring intelligent people with diverse real world experience bringing together community and earth wellbeing as a focus but I now also feel resistant to because they are not utilizing Bitcoin which in my understanding creates the rug-able vulnerability.

It’s not that everyone who works in crypto/web3 is a scammer. In fact, many are probably good-hearted and motivated people. The problem is that the vast majority of these project are backed by founders or VCs who recognize that they can get an almost immediate exist strategy by using a blockchain and a token, with lots of feel-good buzzwords, to “raise money” which actually means printing crypto for free, dumping it on retail investors in exchange for a massive fiat stack, and then not actually building the thing they said they would. (Look into ICO craze). It’s just that the “blockchain tech” is a poor way to build these projects — decentralization and “democratizing [insert whatever]” don’t require a blockchain, as evidenced by Nostr — but these crypto tokens are an excellent way to “part a fool from his money” and that is almost inevitably what happens. Cryptography is absolutely a tool for decentralization/democratization. Financialized crypto tokens - not so much. “Follow the money” and you’ll find the incentives behind the seductive stories.

Sorry to hear that 🫂 it’s a painful (and powerful) lesson. A friend got wrecked with FTX, despite numerous attempted warnings. Not a “lost my life’s savings” story, thankfully, but painful nonetheless.

No NFTs but I can imagine a client that shows any note with art that you’ve zapped. I guess you couldn’t resell it but it’d be cool for a digital gallery. Image storage is still a problem. You’d need to have text on the note that can be interpreted as an image.