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 Guys, POW in nostr is a dead end!


Yes, I get it, it removes all the spam ... now. But as soon as 5s of ASIC POW can get your spam to millions of users while the equivalent time on a cellphone is 5 weeks, it will be irrelevant.
 
 totally agree with this. someone on javascript client, is like a million times less slower than someone using an asic for same time/investment or coputation. PoW is not a level playing field here. Nostr will grow by trusing some, and ignoring spam. 
 I think the mistake here is thinking everyone needs to mine, like there's some rope everybody needs to jump. PoW will only affect those spamming not legitimate users like you and I.
Why do you think everyone needs to mine? 
 what's your solution? everyone already knows the problem 
 I don't agree with requiring POW in the public key. But it could be added as a one-time challenge when a client connects to a relay. Or on each message (but too much overhead).
 
 With [Nostroid](https://chat.nostr.info/) I'm working on that solution. You only see what was authored by follows of follows of follows ... and what they comment on. It makes the experience of each user sort of invite-only but extended to 10k users or maybe even 1M users.
 
 don't most clients work this way already? 
 I always saw PoW as something that you would need for public non-follow things like explore/public chats/etc. 
 You see likes and replies by non-follows usually. If they reply to you, you see it. In Nostroid that is limited to authors that are followed by follows of follows ...
 
 Dumping my thoughts here:

1. Look at public chat only on relays that filter spam effectively,
2. Spam filtering tools in clients (banning a key will probably be ineffective, but matching content patterns should work)

3. Friends of friends
4. Everybody buy ASICs! 😆
 
 Agreed, aligning the network topology with the social graph is the only way. 
 lmao, no then you’ll just pay one of these asics to do pow for you. 
 who tf is running nostr asics when they could be running it on bitcoin instead. 
 Yeah exactly, you just pow for the highest bidder 
 Mining bitcoin only works with a tiny fraction of all the asics ever produced but those obsolete units might still be good for spamming nostr? 
 I put this together last night: Adaptive PoW using a PID controller.
A client could use this on a global feed to automatically filter incoming events so that the rate of events remains under control.
This PoW requirement would only be applied to non-follows so only posts from strangers should probably be counted. 
 I did not say 3 degrees. Grow it as necessary but keep it "invite only". If new accounts with zero follows can make it into your experience, you're open to spam. If you see only the "closest" 1 million authors, you should be almost spam free.
 
 That's where I need a negative signal, too. Public block lists, ways to disregard somebody's follows or only consider the first 100 follows each, etc. 
 Most of the spam I get on Twitter is from accounts that have not even any followers. Of course you can grow accounts to enter people's social graph but those losely connected can be identified. An impersonator marked as 5th degree contact would have a hard time pretending to be somebody I assume to be following already. 
 testing replies. please disregard. 
 so cool. would you consider maintaining at least one nostr identity that I can follow for updates? 


LeoWandersleb maybe this could solve the fatal flaw you see with POW? could be used for POW subscriptions maybe??
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