Oddbean new post about login | logout In all seriousness, where do you see the future of Nostr? So far it would seem that the growth has slowed down and we are just flat. Many apps has been created but only few are maintained and not dead yet. What are we missing here? Did the novelty start wearing off and we are just lacking anything that normal user would see as worth exploring here? 🐶🐾🤔🤔🤔
Onboarding is still clunky There's no real incentive for normies to come onboard
Fair. 🐶🐾🤔
There’s not enough content and that’s our biggest issue I think. Not technical issues, though there are plenty. Not onboarding, though it’s lacking.
The onboarding is what we need to do better with I think, more resources and better onboarding experience.
Nah, it’s not possible is all.
What's not possible? Onboarding people?
There’s nothing to onboard them to. No interesting content.
I think there is, but I agree to an extent.
Bulk of people join either for people or for content. We can write off 1, because we know their people are not here. So we’re left with 2: content. If it’s lacking, they leave. And they are leaving. Not rocket science. 🧪
All good points. So we need content creators but they do not have insensitive to come here because there are no people to share it with. Catch 22 problem 🐶🐾🤔
Agreed, and content creators need to be able to have benefit here first
Yes, but hard to do when some random and irrelevant projects consume funds to just implement duplicate something, while basic needs are left to fend for themselves 🐶🐾🫡
Decentralization isn't very good thing if a common goal is there.🤔 A lot is about the money. Nostr brings zaps, which is great thing, but again catch 22. Maybe the image needs to change, or at least its advertisement, to bring in more paying plebs and more influencers doing it for money. For most Nostriches it's a tough thought to digest - people are mostly sheep and will pay to follow their stars, but not think and move by themselves, and it's ok to share content and work for a lot of money.
Yeah it’s bad positioning imo. Need to try different angles.
Can we make better incentives? As this is kind of a catch 22 problem, that: Content creators are not coming because people are not here. People are not coming because creators are not coming. We might need an incentive for a certain group of people, who will be the incentive to the next group of people. It does not matter to have bad onboarding if they have no reason to come or stay.
This is a very interesting thread. I agree with a lot of points here all over the place across bits and pieces of replies which I won't collage together and repeat lol:) It is promising that these glaringly obvious points are being faced with more seriousness. I think in the past they've often been brushed aside with 'nostr success is inevitable' type posturing.
This might help 😉 : https://m.primal.net/HnUB.mp4
We have plenty of ads, they do not help the retention 🐶🐾🤣
Yea retention is a tough one
I agree, hopefully it's something we can improve enough on till we hit critical mass and network effects kick in but as of now it feels like we gotta ride it out.
ya, this is it.
Could someone write a set of browser plugins which would add a 'share to nostr' button to twitter etc. Popular twitter feeds could then selectively post their content to nostr and be incentivised by zaps. Automatically tagging these posts with a filterable tag would enable people to either block them (I would) or deliberately follow the tag (people onboarding from centralised social media, looking for the type of content they are used to).
It definitely does seem to be slowing down overall, a lot of new projects, but a lot of abandoned old ones too. Something that needs fixing if we are going to be a serious solution.
A lot of half baked solutions to the problems that did not exist in a first place, is what I would describe current Nostr development direction 🐶🐾🤔
True, and people are trying to build complex apps on Nostr when when we don't even have the fundamentals down yet.
Yes and yes, and nobody cares or has strong vision to drive it all. That’s the problem with decentralized things, that’s why they rarely work 🐶🐾🫡
Agree, if the money is gone/non existent, the drive often is too. Also I feel like people have lost excitement in Nostr. I remember we were all excited and hyped up back then, now many are leaving and many projects are being ghosted.
No incentive to maintain them. Simple truth. It is a hard work, no different from any other job where you need to do things that are boring and unexciting 🐶🐾🫡
nah, it's just summertime
With the exception of a few (e.g. Amethyst, Primal, ... ro name a few) people create something without thinking about maintaining it for years to come.
That's cause both are funded and paid pretty well. 🤣
So those without such funding are doomed from the start? Noted...
I think a big hurdle is that people don't understand why it's fundamentally different and better than what they're used to, many people don't even know it exists! That's why I made this short video, to try and plant the seed of curiosity: https://m.primal.net/HnUB.mp4
People are very good at understanding value - and even better at parsing the fluff they don't care about - like decentralized nature or big tech overreach etc. These things concern big voices or developers - not normal users . The only thing that is helpful to normal users (so far) is #nostr offers a single sign on - but that becomes useful only when there is more to nostr than pure social or social-esq apps .. spreadsheets , documents , commerce , travel , research , dating , gambling .. which means nostr must be a creators' tool before it becomes consumers' Thus there is no good reason to promote it to end users as of now .. if you build good they will come ..
That said - the properties of nostr are very useful for developers .. so you will see lots and lots of new developers choosing nostr as their only platform for creation - that will automatically create an influx of new users over the long arc ..
Growth didn't slow down. It's negative now. What's a normal user? A greedy boring dim-witted one trick pony who thinks they're great cause they just found out about something released in 2009? What's missing the most? Support for other cryptos and not the pile of shit lightning. Spam prevention systems. Bug bounties. Better clients. The number of users who are really interested in censorship resistant communication is small, so Twitter scale is a pipe dream. Still there is demand. Fuck the social media shit. Uncensored e-commerce is lot more useful. Fedi got funding by hosting furry porn. That's another possibility. Do you want it? 😂
Still not buying Doge
Why not? Make Elon happy. Doge > bitcoin
Fuck Elon
This nigga gets it but.... https://image.nostr.build/d474429af91e62cada5cb6ff9c6c8dc7c25aa7820d4b8502403f2f1d174d1df2.jpg
Many NPUB were created but just few kept posting and using #Nostr. Discoverability should increase (I don't know how), devs should work more togheter to leverage their work and client users across the entire protocol. Any client should be able to watch directly zapstream, to create live streaming, to easily upload content, manage your lists and feed, connect with all kind of #lightning wallets and #ecash and #cashu. Cross post between nostr and other platform and vice versa should be easy on and for any client (share link - whatsap, TikTok, X, Nostr!) Creators should push and Nostr creating contents only available here, or posting it here first, and wait it to be shared somewhere else by others.
Hmmm, all good points but without insensitive none will work unfortunately 🐶🐾🤔🫡
Then we should explain better the difference between incentives creating content on other platform and creating them on #nostr. The protocol effect, the final settlement and uncensorable possibility of monetisation of their content with #zaps, the possibility of being completely free.. What I do worry is that Content Creators and influencors don't have a real need for Nostr.. they live thanks to the Algos and most of them created their figure and content bsed on how algos work. They probably are afraid or aware that will not be possible here, not that easy. Like fiat minded people benefitting from the cantillon effect, it's easier to them to just keep doing what they already do. New characters should arise from Nostr and going viral outside and bring attention to it.
It will happen the same way internet news is destroying television and newspaper news. All of that legacy infrastructure will kick and sputter for decades, with the loud ones inflating its perceived importance, as the ones doing it the right way, and serving the greater needs of the base more fully, gain credibility among thinking people without any need to waste energy on prosthelatization and perception management at all. Lengthen the time horizon.
Yes, I completely agree with this view 🤙🏼🍀
I cant even use zapstream to stream. We need more clients of given kinds, not centralization to one
Absolutely, but we need those clients to be able to easy communicate and interact one to the other and increase the protocol effect
What’s the issue with zapstream?
Last time i tried to configure stream settings it was stuck on something with nostrnests.com/account. Some odd edge case that seems to only affect a few accounts i hope.
Without bots to trigger you SM is boring.
SM? 🐶🐾🤔
Growing an open protocol takes time 🌱 so much time it may seem like it's at a standstill, people may get impatient, that's ok. Nostr will still b there and growing. Many things still to fix and build before nostr can onboard a million users and expect them to stick. Many of these things are known and being worked on. Anyone who is here now is helping this process and I think that's awesome. 🫡💎
Nostr will explode when a client offers proper UX. Nostr is just the server. Right now, content distribution is utter shit. No algo. No notifications. No client cash flow. It's a client-side issue, not a protocol issue. Whatever client solves this will both win, and #grownostr as a result.
I’ll respectfully disagree that it is not a protocol issue. It is hard to scale a core infrastructure, and it is not possible to have a large number of people together here and reachable. Many relays does not mean many people, when they all have to be on one to even see each other 🐶🐾🫡
That's client side though. A good client aggregates then displays content. From what I can tell, Primal certainly does this and caches on their own. It's then up to the client's algo to parse through that giant mess of events to generate a feed for each user. Step 1 and 2 are already done. Instead of doing the final step 3, they go build donkey shit. lol
Although bitcoin is everything to me it's not everything for everyone. So, it needs to have other non-bitcoiners present without being run off by rude people who demand bitcoin only. Double edged sword. But it's the only way to have normies join and adoption rate increased. People will need to be more acceptant of others who aren't exactly the same as them.
Well, in my mind Bitcoin === material thing/currency/money. Imagine joining a social network where all they do is talk about money and how great they are. Not fun or a place where I would want to spend time. That is how normies would look at Nostr and ignore it 🐶🐾🫡
It already has that label and people are apprehensive. Especially those who have yet to comprehend the difference between bitcoin and crypto, but lump them together. Prime example of a recent interaction on Mastodon: https://image.nostr.build/acb078ce41034610f5aea936c45e2b5b805e91176b81f3f2aacf533b511784d7.jpg
my wife simply wants to be where her friends are and the people she follows are. None of those people are on nostr, and she doesnt give a fk about any of the freedom tech stuff. youll only have a chance of considering nostr if you meet one of those. try and think of why you first signed up for twitter, fb, etc. if you are me, you joined cuz you thought you were missing out on something. Nostr as it exists does not offer enough to generate that feeling that people are missing out on anything. with that said im here til the bitter fking end or voctory 🤙
victory* 😮💨
I never signed up for any social media myself, and was not feeling like I was missing out. Hard for me to relate I guess 🐶🐾🤷♂️
you are an exception then, good for you 🤙
What is missing is a use case. Facebook launched groups very quickly, where people could communicate and organize. we don't have that yet. we need something like that.
Coracle has private groups, with calendars and marketplaces. If you're interested in that, please use them, report bugs, and tell other people to get on board too.
oooo, shiny
The problem with everything apps. I have a client I like and don't want to switch. I could use a nostr calendar app though. I would also be interested in a marketplace app.
Yeah, the balance is interesting. There have been attempts like Spring to wrap specific apps into a mega-app, but it doesn't quite work for me. Maybe a good approach would be to establish a set of design guidelines, a framework, and assign different micro-apps to different developers. But that would require more coordination than I think we're up to at this stage
A use case? Nostr is mostly a Twitter clone. Mastodon could do it, why can't we?
I'm 100% sure we can. But this is not about us, the people who are already here. This is about the 99.9% of people in the world who are not here yet.
They people here are already leaving fast. See https://stats.nostr.band/ Nostr clients are terrible for the user and it's too much work for the common person
Many alternatives to Twitter now. Also social media fatigue in general. It feels like nostr will likely have a close-knit community of users in the future too but wide adoption not sure? 🤔It's a niche
99% of people are straight stupid...there, I said it. They want "popular" and "mainstream." You cannot fix stupid and you cannot push rope. Most people cheer for cartoon characters in politics on TV. Sad but true. Seriously, people still eat soylent green at McDingleberry's and Taco Hell! They cannot wise up.🥲
That was not the point of my note. Other’s stupidity is none of my business, I mind my own. 🐶🐾🫡
I think we're in the refactoring dulldrums, is all. Never been on a big project that didn't stall out and rework, at some point, because some of the stuff didn't scale well or some of the founders got bored and wandered off. Projects are already deep into maintenance and some experimental types refuse to do maintenance and have nobody in the team to pick up after the Proof of Concept stage. I think we're going to have fewer projects, going forward, but they'll be larger, more seriously run and better-supported. And stuff will be less buggy.
Great observation! 🐶🐾🫂🙏🏻
Don't you think that users also underestimate how much time is spent on system admin and DevOps stuff? Or trying out a new tech stack? As soon as you try to scale something up, without losing performance, development slows down, dramatically, because that's when you have to Do Hard Things and Try Stuff Out and Test Test Test.
99% of developers do not know how things scale or how to scale, therefore making poor design decisions along the way. 🐶🐾🫡
As one of the 99% I take exception to this note because you didn't tell me what my poor design decisions are and how to avoid them.
I personally think Nostr picked all the wrong primitives, but have to admit Json at least makes it easy to adopt.
i'm pleased to say that in my work progress is going well but it is well into refactoring stage now... just had a massive leap forward with bulk iterations of the database, the time for completing a garbage collection count pass escalated to basically infinity after a couple of gigabytes of data but now i have got a counter that runs in 10 seconds on a 15gb store i can see how i might even be able to do reindexing, fast data backup, and in the near future full text indexes and even maybe go the next step to graph database and design a better search API filter searches are just the most minimal required index and search API for nostr, it will have to get a lot more advanced to provide the necessaries such as which you are constantly ruminating about
Yeah, the pareto principle is brutal. Want to get something more than 80% done? Enjoy your 5-10 year long grind! I am currently entering this phase with 15k lines of code, and am just trying to balance protocol support, UX improvements, new features, and bug fixes. It's not as fun as it was at the beginning, but that is absolutely ok, this is what I'm here for.
There's no network effect (outside of Bitcoiners). Censorship worries re/ more popular platforms have diminished since the COVID hysteria. UX is clunky. There are no outside incentives for posting here. People still seem to prefer likes to zaps. But nevertheless, there are tons of talented developers working on stuff here. There's at least some investments. The very fact that it is a protocol, not a platform is a huge one - if/when interoperability with the rest of the Internet improves and some of those cool things that are very obviously WIP now get polished - and - especially, if there is a big censorship crackdown / data leak or any other black swan within the current mainstream social media landscape - #nostr will surely become a force to be reckoned with. IDK. I'm a bit disillusioned as well, but still bullish in the long term. At least, there's no better alternative IMO.
we're so early. e2ee dm's with the ux of telegram or signal is a huge use case to me, e-commerce, there is so much more potential than social media. a rising tide lifts all boats ⛵️
Nostr needs more non-bitcoin related stuff I guess.
Yes, I too feel bored by it after a year. It's still the same reassuring stuff. We need richer content, more shitposters, more girls sharing some female content. But since I noted women here complaining about being harassed over their girly stuff, Nostriches might be willingly killing their own thing.
Shall we start using the invite-obly relays technique? Let's suppose that I have a relay: I'm willing to accept new pubkeys to use my relay only if they're invited directly by one of my already-subscribed pubkeys. Lets's put a 2 or 3 maximum invites per pubkey. In this way we would have a relay in which only "known people" hang out, no bots, no fkng harassments. Just a trash idea maybe, because content discovery would be much restricted.
For me you basically described a Telegram group with extra work🤔
You'r right, fair enough
I'm lame just as any normie and kinda cherish my stupidity. It's easier to think like a buyer without larger knowledge. It must be hard for any dev to declutter their language and thinking to reach normies and their level of prioritizing - which is stupid and dumb👀😆. But with buyers come money, client is always right etc etc.🤷🏻♀️
My opinion: I don't think we should limit the future of Nostr to just the social network side. Social Network is just one of the use cases of Nostr. With me, Nostr is an open protocol for building apps. What makes an app built on Nostr unique is that the app doesn't need to rely on a local database, and the developer doesn't need to handle account management. The killer feature is that users only need one account, then they can use all the apps in the ecosystem without creating other accounts. Developers can build a chat app, a note-taking app, a marketplace, or just use NIP-78 for Redis replacement (key-value storage). To be honest, if I treat Nostr is for social network only, there don't have any bright future. Besides Lume, I'm also building a game store similar to Steam or Itch.io and a few other small apps on Nostr. I hope this will gain more attention from developers and other normal users to Nostr.
I think it is a combination of issues rather than any one thing. Technical issues, UX issues, limited range of content and content discoverability issues. I think the biggest issue though is that most “normal” users don’t really perceive right now that there is a need for a decentralised, censorship resistant protocol. They have no understanding what that actually means and don’t really give much thought about the issues with the centralised platforms. They are using Facebook just to share photos of their kids or watching and posting stupid videos on TikTok. They have never had issues with censorship so why would they even think about using Nostr?
IMO the general social media user has forgotten how to use apps like forms and bulletin boards. They have gotten so used to the algorithm feeding them, or gaming the algorithm in order to get popular that they have forgotten how to just talk to other people online I don't know what the solution is, or even if there is one... I'm just a dev I just build the apps
It’s like saying that most people forgot how to ride horses and take care of them. You must realize that a single human being is not evolved to communicate with more than a small circle of individuals. 🐶🐾🫡
i can see ways in which things are gonna change in the future, because of forces much greater than the surveillance/manipulation state agencies that run and control most of socials, will push people back to IRL social, and from this restart they will choose #nostr
May be hope you are right
i'm almost certain that their microwave radio tech is gonna be hammered repeatedly in the coming decade to the point where consumers and companies using the tech will be forced to retool everything we just had auroras at a level that only previously happened during the carrington event and a second event in 1921 that took out a lot of stuff, based on solar events that are orders of magnitude weaker, which means that the earth's field is weakening and that means small blasts = big problem and getting worse as the downtrend continues, we are at the elbow
most people hate bitcoin and crypto and probably don't see why they need another twister esquire app
Until twitter IG and TT start mandating ID
Do we need to overtake the world? I like Nostr the way and scale it is. I don't care if everyone from X migrates
Personally, diversification is what I feel like is still missing. The coinage here is ultra strong - makes sense, considering how and why this started, really. But the prejudice towards crypto is /real/ - and a real problem also. The current audience for Nostr is techbros and coiners. Unless we find a way to diversify and slightly de-niche our platform, it will stagnate. The past months, a lot of focus was put on wallets - and I get it, Lightning was one of the core parts of Nostr and the improvements there - such as with zap splitting, the whole system of zap.stream and whatnot - are amazing. But wallet's aren't "cool", yknow? They're "neat". Also, missed opportunities. - Reddit: Nostr communitys hardly work. If we had implemented a better system than kbin/lemmy, we could've literally exploded. - Yuzu: The decentralized nature of Nostr would've been a great way to let the Yuzu fork maintainers stay under the covers and keep delivering their software. They don't know how to do CI/CD on a node only accessible through tor; but we could have helped. I tried my part on Reddit to invite them, including via DMs, but I was usually ghosted. We need to be "louder". Not obnoxious, but able to be heared. I love Nostr and I definitively intend to stay and build on it - but right now, I don't see any of my artist friends joining (peeps designing their OCs, furry artists or just general painters that I know) or any reason why someone trying to go away from Twitter to not just join Threads or BSky. Threads can talk to some Mastodon instances now and BSky lives off of lofty promises - but their client works, is /ridiculously/ fast (click "Follow" on BSky, Snort and Primal - you'll see what I mean) and currently has no real stigma to speak of. Nostr is full of coiners. People are wary of coiners. Sucks and sad but... yeah, its a thing. :/ I realize this is far more than "just my two cents" but... eh, this is why I nostr; I can just rant for ages! :D
It may be that Nostr's chief source of potential is in the "other stuff," but that has not been explored as thoroughly as the microblogging space. Devs will get there, in time.
Have you never heard of Mastodon?
I've *heard* of it. Why?
It existed for a long time. Over 1 million users Somewhat-decentralized Better user experience than Nostr by far Better backend and frontend tech Try https://poster.place to see sample
Mastodon isn't it. It has a bunch of inherent problems that can't be rectified. The fact that you are attached to one server for instance. It recreates the problems of email in social media.
Frankly, I fuss over the future of #Nostr. Onboardung is still clunky, so normies see Nostr as a bitcoiner thing, much like we see Farcaster as a weird crypto thing There's no incentive for normies to switch from Twatter or BlueSky #grownostr nostr:nevent1qqswkgc098mxgx7c0960um8zl07k7f7e6z0qnw4d2zvk80mrlch5deqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qygy0k9qtf6xaa7tuujuzr5j8y79p5s6nxcnz8ajqy9yykde0jjqqpspsgqqqqqqsy9lhjg
Provide coverage, users will come, everyone has their own pace of understanding
My assumption has always been that this is a 10+ year project with a tiny chance if success. We are doing incredibly well.
No, that is wrong. The Fediverse had way more success in a shorter period. They provide a better user experience
Fuck the verse, soap opera was great
I think the "honeymoon phase" started to wear off, and if you don't see the result you expect, you can get discouraged I think. Just my 5 cents. Also I guess we are not supporting each other enough to make it worth it???
Slowly then suddenly?
Out of the top of my head, I think there are two types of social network users that help a network grow: 1. The ones that look for content. Either out of interest or out of boredom. 2. Attention seekers that need for first kind of users either for their personality or out of economic interest. Once a critical mass of those two groups is reached, the network will thrive.
Content and community is currently missing from nostr. Once there is a diverse range of content and communities grow, nostr will grow too. It will take time!
Social media is incredibly sticky. Unless people feel pain only those hardcore decentralization and privacy people, like bitcoiners, are likely to switch. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but just my honest best guess.
Even on 5G, #Nostr is slow. There is no use case for the commoners.
Literally https://i.nostr.build/jYqoV.png
Wendy’s didn’t come here.
What's with the focus on growth? People mess up beautiful things.
being relatively new to nostr ... i came to see what the interest was. stayed because of all the great minds. sure there is a lot of technical stuff but it doesn't take a lot of work to figure out the gist. if it does - ask. the passion to share, develop and make things work here is exceptional. will continue to stay because i want to be a part of the change too. if i maybe so bold, maybe it's worth waiting for more who want to make a difference than simply make a noise. content is king. thanks for asking GM 🙃
Crushed under it's own weight trying to become an everything app. I'm probably one of the few people who think nostr should have never grown beyond a Twitter alternative. There are already protocols that exist for a lot of added usecases that have been added. I don't think I'll ever enderstand the obsession with trying to add every feature under the sun to nostr.
