Oddbean

Not really. Here’s my take: A quote from the post states: “As the number of users has now climbed into the millions, system designers have resorted to the use of supernodes”. So the problem with superpeers is that they are introduced by the protocol designers, often within a single ecosystem. There is little to no chance for a regular user to spin one up. Let’s take a look at #bitcoin p2p trading as an example. You’ve got several platforms to trade, such as Hodl Hodl and Bisq. They facilitate coordination and help you find a peer to trade with. These are centralized. Then you’ve got truly decentralized p2p platforms. Like @simplex chat. But Simplex does not provide discoverability: you’ve got to connect to a peer first to be able to chat. When we talk about social media, we assume discoverability - being able to broadcast, and get access to posts from users we didn’t connect to (yet). Until #Nostr came to life this could only be achieved via the increasingly centralized coordinators. With Nostr users now can connect to any relay of any size or even spin up own relay at near zero cost. Moreover, users can connect to multiple relays, ensuring redundancy. While we do see more users flock to some popular relays like Damus, Snort or Primal, they don’t have to and can be connected to smaller ones and still be discoverable. Bottom line is: The fight for decentralization and censorship resistance is never ending, and Nostr is the best chance to win this fight at the moment.

> I was actually afraid my note wouldn't be broadcast. You’re actually pretty well connected 👍 > So, any relay in a way simply passes and (temporarily) stores messages? Yep. You can setup your relay to do different kinds of things, but basically yes, the original purpose is to fetch notes and allow other users to see them.

Cool! With regards to `other things`: this is where one could set up a paid relay with advanced filtering, or even build an app which doesn't resemble Twitter/X but allows for other use cases such as voting, version control, prediction markets, etc.?

Well, relays are one of the pillars of Nostr. Clients (or what most people call “apps”) are another part of it. But you’re generally right. You can have a private relay that only stores your notes as a backup and does not rebroadcast anything. You can have a read-only relay that fetches info from rss feeds or Mastodon or other sources outside of Nostr and broadcasts it to Nostr users. There are many more options, virtually limited by your imagination only. And yes, there are tons of “Apps” out there. The main thing to realize is Nostr is a communications protocol, not an app. It can be used to exchange any kind of information. I’ve written a series of posts called “A Million Tiny Worlds”. I urge you to have a look. https://habla.news/tony/productivity https://habla.news/tony/multimedia https://habla.news/tony/stats-and-data

Thank you, I will. Maybe a last question. I see the zap economy here, I am still trying to learn how it was developed and integrated within the Nostr protocol. Is it a NIP-X? Do I automatically have a wallet associated with my keys? Let's say I have some BTC on my Bitcoin Wallet - how can I transfer some of it from there to here?

It is a NIP, but I can’t remember which one. You need a #Lightning wallet. Lightning is a second layer protocol on top of #Bitcoin. As I believe you’re new to this, I’d suggest something simple like @Wallet of Satoshi to start with. It can be topped up with onchain (regular) #bitcoin, funds will be converted to sats on lightning network. Later if you want to withdraw back onchain, you can do it by simply sending sats to you bitcoin address. You can connect the wallet in the settings of your Nostr client (app). This will allow you to send and receive #zaps directly to your wallet via Nostr. See my #welcome guide for the best practices for a newcomer: https://habla.news/tony/welcome-to-nostr