Oddbean

Sorry I wasn’t able to continue the discussion after my wife got home from work, and the rest of the evening was family time. Here are a few thoughts I had on the topic through the evening, in no particular order and probably not formulated fully. - It may be more appropriate to discuss Twitter in comparison with Nostr clients, and Nostr itself in comparison with the Internet. It’s not exactly the same, though, since an “Internet user” is not ubiquitous across all apps on the Internet, whereas a “nostr user” can be found essentially anywhere across nostr by any client. - Twitter’s user base grew because Twitter continued to exist and be useful, and that required revenue to sustain. Even though it was rarely profitable, it existed because of revenue primarily from advertising and investors. - Twitter did capture a substantial amount of end user economic activity, if you look at the correct subset of its end users: advertisers. The “average Joe” end user (you and me) were the audience for the advertisers. Nostr clients could go that route, but I fear the outcome if and when that happens. - Twitter also captured some other user economic activity by incorporating profile tips, and Super Follows (now Subscriptions in X) that allowed people to support their favorite accounts/creators financially. - If you consider the Internet as a whole in comparison to Nostr, then economic activity becomes even more important as entire industries have been built upon it. - Payments on the internet have long been a problem, due to the centralized nature of legacy payment networks. This helped create silos, required KYC, and facilitated censorship. Bitcoin and Lightning fixes this, and without them nostr growth will be limited/handicapped by the incorporation of other more-permissioned payment systems. Probably some other thoughts too, but this is getting lengthy. I think we agree that commerce on nostr is important, although we seem to disagree on the extent to which end user economic activity is important. I’m glad you bring the topic up. Where the economic activity on Nostr occurs is an important issue, because I believe that where it occurs, or between whom it occurs, affects the incentives around the design of clients, relays, and perhaps the protocol itself. Any company or person building a business on Nostr, whether a dev or creator or merchant selling physical products, will have to serve the interests of those who provide their revenue in order to stay viable. It’s up to each company/person to decide who their real customers are, and to serve their interests.