Oddbean new post about login | logout I'm not sure I should write down these thoughts right now while I'm not sure about them, but if you are reading this apparently I did. I think nostr may already be doomed for two reasons. And as a result of that, if I conclude as such, it would make sense to start working on a successor protocol. I've been taking some notes about what we should change if we started over, but that's the extent of it, I'm not working on a successor protocol. I'm only working on nostr. So don't misinterpret this note, which just represents some thoughts I've been having. Reason one is the misaligned incentives of note copying. The incentives are to copy your notes to every relay you can, blast them out everywhere, to get more reach. That incentive doesn't go away until and unless all the clients do the outbox model. But they don't have an incentive to change, and there are people who don't give a fuck about fixing this and argue against fixing it and argue for note copying, and there is no way in a free society to make them care. So we can never fix this, and nostr will always be centralized in practice and never what it could have been. That means nostr is doomed and unfixable and we should make sure to start differently next time so this doesn't happen again. Reason two is that the seed culture of nostr was far too monolithic: bitcoiners. What a culture develops into probably depends on how diverse its seed was. It's quite hard to get people onto nostr unless they are at least very bitcoin tolerant. Most people (yes, I think most) are put off by so much bitcoin promotion and related posts. Certainly people can follow anybody they want, and make their own independent cultures, perhaps even on a disjoint set of relays. But this isn't likely to happen due to the law of large numbers - there are far more ways for them to encounter and interact with the nest of bitcoiners then to not encounter and interact with them. These are thoughts I'm entirely unsure about. Maybe I'm wrong in both cases. These are my worries.
Everyone will be a “bitcoiner” in the future
I disagree on both for various reasons. I think nostr can still work. But if the time ever comes to build a successor protocol, count me in.
I think the technical shortcomings of Nostr can be overcome, but not without some growing pains. The design from the get go was inefficient at the data layer, so its no surprise that this bleeds into how events are exchanged to finally be seen by someone. Ultimately people who publish something want as many eyes on it as they can get, unless they are tollgating access at the outset (but even still, the preference is for everyone to know about it). This alone means things like blastr are going to be a benefit for them. On the flip side, people want to be fed quality (signal over noise) in the most efficient manner. I want less posts of the same, and I want one or few places to go to get it. I think some of this is only enhanced by paid services were all parties have skin in the game, vs just the relay operators footing the cost, and client devs giving up their labor for free (no, v4v does not work to cover labor costs). I also agree on the seed culture to an extent. Nostr is still overly weighted to Bitcoin, and its repetitive NPC style postings, and is even plagued by Bitcoin centric features. To date, there are still no zapless polls available in Nostr, cutting out a good mechanism to get quick tallies of peoples choices, and the seemingly forced usage of Bitcoin for relays and services that charge fees can also be a turnoff to those more used to a world where they can pay with a credit card on a recurring basis. On topics, I want to see more of the variety of posts about peoples hobbies and interests, events they've attended or trips taken etc but this still is in short supply compared to Bitcoin and Memes which handidly dominate nostr discourse.
Zapless polls would be a nice feature. I don't see fiat for services being a viable option because the infrastructural overhead required to accept fiat payments. Perhaps if clients or wallets included options to buy sats on lightning we could improve the onboarding UX for normies. I believe Primal uses Strike on the back-end of the built-in wallet. If that is correct, couldn't the option to purchase sats via debit card be a relatively straightforward add?
I know your concern. I'm sure most people would worry about the second point. The first point is not a problem, it is just that you are the faster client developer. Other developers are catching up. The second point I think is the unique advantage of Nostr. I've talked to most of my friends and the people who haven't been censored and the people who hold shitcoins don't care about decentralized censorship-resistant social networks at all. Only Bitcoin holders pay attention. Bitcoin talent is Nostr's strongest foundation. We are now building censorship resistant networks that are easy to use. Just like Bitcoin in 2009, very few people paid attention at first. We're just getting started, but we're already growing a lot faster than Bitcoin. I think there's something else we should be worried about. How can we create a client on Nostr's decentralized network that is different, but better, simpler, and more engaging than traditional social networks? That's the hard part, and that's one of the things Nostr should be breaking through. The average user does not choose Nostr because it is censor-resistant. That's what we need to work on.
if there was a nostr v2 that required outbox in nip01 it would be strictly worse.
Ok, I'll bite, why?
because outbox makes sense for some use cases (social networking) but not all
I think of outbox as "putting stuff where it's supposed to go" which is a little tautological, but basically requires defining where any given note is supposed to go. Not defining a "correct" home for a note basically guarantees failure to find it when it's needed. Outbox as currently defined doesn't cover all cases, just (public) social media.
I see it the same way. Having SOME defined way of determining which relays to use, rather than having NO defined way and blasting. That's all. It doesn't have to be the current NIP-65 advice. But it has to be something. Or else we end up with a network that uses 1000x more resources than it needs to. But I guess I should expect bitcoiners to not care about using 1000x more resources than you need to. 🥺
also for relatively strong protection of privacy for direct messages and for relay developers to control what the clients are making requests for, and there's some serious privacy implications about sending out quite revealing requests to all and sundry actually, you know what, the reason why i think you are not entirely warm to it is because of the problem of propagation of messages that are intended to be completely public, ie, kind 1 TextNotes and you'd probably be right to a certain extent, indeed, i could make an argument that these should be dumped in a content addressing storage system like Blossom or IPFS and become instantly available everywhere yes, i'll agree with this... if the data is MEANT to be public, then it should be. kind 0, kind 1, definitely blaster model works better
requesting it, on the other hand, i think the out-bound should for "public messages" should be indiscriminate but - think about it, if the broadcast of public messages was already broadcast then you wouldn't need to look for them, either... your local relay would know how to find them, the one you pay i've been working on a project that involves building a relay with a massive public "blockchain" based database, and now we are looking to actually do this with Arweave AO, which if you are not aware of it - someone started working on an arweave based relay about 6 months back, but abandoned it, i guess they got a grant, but arweave implements a content addressable, immutable append only storage system also personally i'm much preferring the idea of Blossom, which simplifies and takes the "consensus" part out because why need consensus anyway, it's a broadcast, the data is public, nobody who published it cares, they want it to be public this just isn't the case for DMs, and i've written extensively about the problem of privacy and metadata leaking, while we still can't have a monetised onion routing system where we can privately set up rendezvous points for our private messages without the problem of spam or traffic analysis, i'd rather trust a nostr relay operator who i constantly read and follow please
You’re profoundly wrong on this. On both points. Both points resolve by themselves. Just give it time.
This is the note that I am most happy to be profoundly wrong about.
Have you tried being more of a Bitcoiner?
Well.... Maybe :) Incentives are, also, get more zaps. So one should focus on zappers, which may not be the same as focus on larger reach. And the bitcoiners seed... I think most movements start with narrow focused groups. Makes more sense. I don't see your reasoning as nonsense, on the contrary it's very based. But I don't see your examples as crippling by definition. Generally speaking I see nostr still far away to the point of being inevitable. Can't make an argument about it now.
I'll offer an optimistic take on both of your concerns: 1. I believe that most nostr clients will implement some form of outbox support. All Primal clients certainly will. We are literally a few days from releasing a major update. Once users’ notes are spread out over hundreds (eventually thousands) of relays, client devs will be incentivized to upgrade their clients accordingly. It will take a bit of time, but that’s okay. 2. Nostr being seeded with bitcoiners is a feature, not a bug. To bootstrap a truly decentralized network, we need the initial group of users who understand decentralization and are willing to fight for it. There is no other way imho. The short term price we are paying is that the content is bitcoin-centric, but that’s fine. That will get sorted out over time as the network grows. IMO, we need to lower our time preference and be more patient. Everything is moving in the right direction. We don’t need a successor protocol. Nostr is the one we’ve been looking for.
That is very hopeful and hard to disagree with. Thanks.
I think the monetization of relays is necessary @miljan
I've always thought so too
Why is it necessary?
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
The huge amount of software libraries I can download for free seems to disagree with that assertion. Also, there can be non-profits. They can be founded trough donations, rather than payments.
WELL SAID MILJAN. ONWARD. 🫡
#YESTR gradually, then suddenly.. 🫂💜🍀
Nostr is the next nostr. No second best.
just to add on 2nd point .. we want everyone to care (and talk ) about #bitcoin because Bitcoin is the only thing that reaches everyone .. it is #value .. all other cultures are sub cultures of Bitcoin ..even those who don't care about value :-)
yes, and furthermore I support ever increasing merging of the two protocols, such as we are seeing with mutiny wallet. nostr will bring more people into protecting their labor energy. decentralized communication and money are good for everyone. inevitability there will be AIs and sorting algos that can curate content based on taste and interests.
Agree 100%. Nostr, like Bitcoin, is never finished. And we need to continue building the future we want to see. 🧡 Onwards 🫡
Agreed. We're already seeing people attempt to make non-bitcoin centric. I'm sure we may see other siloed attempts as well. @note1lcu000wx6cjqxzd937dkz82lezprcq0za4ux8wuf5gmud80n9txsh8tvhj
That’s funny. They’re welcome to do this but they’re not going to get any of the bootstrap cohort so unless they can bring their own user base it’s DOA
Ok, it's not technically Bitcoin, but it's still cryptocurrency-related (and a cryptocurrency strongly tied to Bitcoin and supported by Satoshi when it was called "BitDNS"). NIP-05 trough Namecoin or ENS, however, would indeed solve the problem of DNS centralization on Nostr.
YES. WE (MAINLY YOU NOT ME LOL) WILL FIND A WAY.
It's inspiring to see such a clear vision for the future of #Nostr and a deep commitment to its decentralized principles. I wholeheartedly agree that addressing concerns about client support and the initial user base will naturally resolve over time as the network grows and matures. The emphasis on patience and a long-term view is particularly reassuring, as it reflects a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead. I share your optimism and enthusiasm for Nostr's potential to become a cornerstone of the decentralized ecosystem. Let's continue to support its growth and development!
Plus, someone always has to be first. I don't think we mind dying on this hill.
💯 @miljan it is very very early, everyone needs to cultivate patience and allow the experiment-observe-refine cycle so it’s thing, give everyone space and time to build out and experiment with what we already know is ahead, and **have fun along the way** #nostr 🫂
give it some time ya
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Everything will build on bitcoin, so it makes sense that nostr is seeded by bitcoiners..
🫡
I'm just a super-tiny in the primal-nostr, like say 0.0000076%, but I'm loving the #learn decentralized newbie’s! The whole quiet and chill, with that sweet algorithm keeping things weird. ✌🏻And yoooo…enjoy a bit of Bitcoin feed as well. Sure, there's the odd user, but it's okay, innit? We're just here to soak up the knowledge and zapping vibe ☺️. So what if some folks ain't friendly? For true colors, we're keeping it real and rolling. Roll it up n punch to momentum! Cheers to Nostr!☕️
Thank you for sharing your optimistic perspective! As newcomers to Primal, we've been truly impressed by the quality and relevance of the content on this platform. We're excited about the next big update. Exciting times ahead for Primal and Nostr! 🚀
Thanks for sharing these thoughts!! I'm with you on the bitcoiner piece. I couldn't tell you the exact moment or thing I read that brought me to nostr, but I can say the it wasn't bitcoin but rather my curiosity of alternatives to corporate/government controlled means of communication (Instagram, Twitter, etc). I tried ActivityPub for a while but the server I lived in stopped operating, which pushed me to look for other options. The magic with something like Nostr is the ability to connect and post to the relays you want as well as the cryptographic identities. As relay software evolves and more community builders run relays on nostr, we'll start to see more hyperlocalized communities coalesce around values.
I think you are wrong on the second point. I can’t speak on the first, as I haven’t any technical chops. Bitcoiners are extremely diverse, but the most important thing for a lot of them is the freedom and the ability to transact in ideas and monetarily, without any mediation, or censorship. We/they care more deeply about this than most of the general public and that is what brought them/me here. Every network has its base and if the network adds value over time, it can bring in other people. Maybe, the world will never care about privacy/censorship online ever again, but that’s a proposition I will fight tooth and nail over. But I also think if this happens, then there’s no point for nostr or any alternative, because you will never get growth in your user base unless you widdle away everything that made nostr different, until it is unrecognizable from the things you found abhorrent in the first place. Bitcoiners give a shit about censorship, when most of the world doesn’t. Either the rest starts to care, or we’re fucked anyway.
Nostr is dead! Long live Nostr
Nah nah it's not dead. This is just me being very open with my half-formed thoughts.
I can only comment on the #2 I guess as time passes, the culture will inevitably shift. Initially dominated by Bitcoin plebs, the community has diversified over the past year, attracting individuals with a variety of interests who now connect with like-minded individuals. Once we will have a proper search and discoverability it will be much easier to identify and find new people
I think if you had clients that implemented that, like clients that implemented more secure chat we plebs would try them. Could it not be that this central Nostr remains a “loud voice” in your truly distributed implementation? But not the only voice and they co exist? And maybe people move over time for those other features like community implementation in client, secure chat, spam and memory drain reduction through outbox improvements etc?
I just want to say that most of my feed is not bitcoin centric. Ive been on nostr maybe six months but intentionally followed my interests. Artists and gardeners with some foodies thrown in. Are they bitcoiners? Probably but that’s not what’s being shared. All to say it’s possible to be on here and not be inundated by bitcoin notes.
Keep thinking. Keep sharing. Keep building. #Nostr keeps me coming back now because of the incredible people on here. Devs and non.
All social networks starting IRC chat should have been like open gossip model with anyone will compuyer plug in and listen or speak Any other way to MODERATE or control flow via only designated registered relays only means slow backed CENTRALIZATION again technically Ultimately user choose DECENTRALIZE path IF given then TOOL. lets see how outbox model plays out.
It is not Nostr “destiny” to be diverse, nor it is the current tendency. It depends on the early adopters work… Time by itself -as suggested- works in both ways. Nostr can for sure become more bitcoin radical and “known” for hosting bitcoin centric people in which case it’s not doomed but will be the protocol of the bitcoin tribe and that’s ok (which is not the promise/ideal I think but totally possible) It will depend on how welcoming the network is, over time, how much interesting content on other topics exclusive to the network, etc.
You raise 2 good points. I'm not sure about the model and technicalities but I would like to address the other point: What if Nostr is a bitcoiners only club? What if we are in this closed loop echo chamber, with little tolerance for anybody non-bitcoin? The thing Nostr needs the most is to be attacked and to ossify in time. Time will carry enough events (life events) that at any given point a tsunami of people can come suddenly looking for shelter. The protocol allows for them to come in. I doubt that day never comes. Having said that, I KNOW we are not very well like by the general population, and will increasingly be disliked since the propaganda of the fiat-bodies will rely on this exact premise. Just like bitcoin - this all depends on how much freedom is each person's priority.
Also... Theres a good chance humanity will be wiped out in the next few months, years. Noone is doing anything about it, the new generation doesn't know how to fight, the neocons don't have a reverse gear.... I don't see us getting out of this without nuclear war At that point, if there's anything left, maybe personal computers and lora networks running rudimentary relays, may be of some interest.
We will survive nuclear war. I'm excited to see what other currently top-secret weapons will be used. I bet that's why governments are so gung-ho for war, they are excited to use their new secret tech and see how destructive it really is! Wheeeeeee! 💀
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6gg4DA9jbHgCLB1ruEFolM?si=bJak7EVjTA2vaS3Po4ZUQw&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A2MAi0BvDc6GTFvKFPXnkCL just listened to this on my ruck. I’m not so sure now.
Such a great episode. Global strategy on nuclear war is nothing short of maniacal.
I read her book on area 51. She really deep dives, interviews tons of people who worked there. Was so good. Might take a look at the nuclear war one, but sounds depressing.
shook me right up that one - gunna take while to digest it all
Lex's filter of information isn't to be trusted fully. He's an asset of misinforming public opinion at times. fair warning
@jb55 what did you think about that bit how the Rosswell incident supposedly was a Russian craft?
Was wild that she revealed her source to this in this podcast. I put a higher probability to this than actual aliens. I doubt advanced aliens would come all this way and be dumb enough to crash on the planet.
- with clients like yours that only allow to follow people, with no 'trending' or #hashtag feeds, the monoculture or excessive promotions do not matter because the user only sees what he wants to see. - yes, note copying does not scale. Some distributed systems model must be enforced, I am not even sure it exists. But another alternative to doom is to become practically divided into clusters of relays, separated by language or other issues. Not by enforcement of any mechanism, just because everybody who matters about this topic on this language will end up publising in the same relays.
Wait, they're using a nostr client that doesn't follow hashtags? Lol... no wonder they're having a boring experience on nostr. 😂 And what's the point of having a client that can't follow hashtags? Like, it's hashtags that make the experience. It's hashtags that expose you to more people and ideas about a topic than just the people you follow.
I never used ANY social network until the fraudemic forced me to follow people as the only possible source of info. "trending topics" will often reflect whatever pervertion, distraction, or stupidity is trending on mainstream society or even worse, mainstream midia, and does not interest me at all.
I'm not overly technically minded but from the way you put point one, it sounds like nostr has a really nasty drug addiction, metaphorically speaking. And point two is something I've been banging my drum hard about for so long. It's refreshing to hear a bigger name finally saying what many refuse to believe. When there are so many features married to Bitcoin and, as you correctly put it, most people are anti-bitcoin, you drive those people away—closing nearly all avenues of growth. And when that happens and nostr becomes nothing just another failed social network experiment, it won't be around when the world actually needs/wants it. And for all the "Bitcoin/Nostr is inevitable" people in the comments: The arrogance of inevitability forgets the only inevitable thing in life is death.
Language barriers actually help. Apparently there is a thriving Japanese community that doesn't really interact much with the bitcoin nest!
I don't see point 1 as a structural problem and I believe it will be solved in practice. I wholeheartedly agree with point 2 though. I think one of biggest contributors to that could have been "zaps". Before that, nostr and bitcoin were totally decoupled protocol wise. It should never have been a NIP. It forever cemented nostr as a "bitcoiner" thing. nostr:nevent1qqstc7uh2anhmej9qxssrwlwznlh5zk4cws4zv2fcmcdwhze0xduj5cpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3qacg6thl5psv62405rljzkj8spesceyfz2c32udakc2ak0dmvfeysxpqqqqqqzkyehrf
I know your concern. I'm sure most people would worry about the second point. The first point is not a problem, it is just that you are the faster client developer. Other developers are catching up. The second point I think is the unique advantage of Nostr. I've talked to most of my friends and the people who haven't been censored and the people who hold shitcoins don't care about decentralized censorship-resistant social networks at all. Only Bitcoin holders pay attention. Bitcoin talent is Nostr's strongest foundation. We are now building censorship resistant networks that are easy to use. Just like Bitcoin in 2009, very few people paid attention at first. We're just getting started, but we're already growing a lot faster than Bitcoin. I think there's something else we should be worried about. How can we create a client on Nostr's decentralized network that is different, but better, simpler, and more engaging than traditional social networks? That's the hard part, and that's one of the things Nostr should be breaking through. The average user does not choose Nostr because it is censor-resistant. That's what we need to work on.
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The second one resonates with me. I’m orange AF but I’m trying to spread other interests because Bitcoin enabled me to do what i love. The crowd here is narrow minded in a sense and it’s hard to find let say other travel enthusiasts ( just one example). The network effect in the #bitcoin world kinda happened but that’s it. Feels like mastodon: full of lefties crying wolf about Twitter - just from the other aisle.
The greater the restriction the greater the creativity. Bitcoin is not even 20yrs old. Yet in its short life it has outperformed every other asset on the planet. It s achievement is no surprise. It is the first and only real money on the planet. Now that this has been established and projects are becoming busineses, developments will be coming thick and fast. Nostr is one such development. One that enables uncensored communication. Essential for ideas and the free market. The chatter may only be Bitcoin now, but wait and see what happens. Bitcoin is 1% of the entire financial system. We are the earliest of early adopters. Wait until we see the rest of the 7% ers arrive then 37% ers,take up the mantle. Who can can guess what is being discussed when we reach 75% plus adoption ....(sales adoption curves in case anyone is wondering). The changes will be Biblical. Ai, Robotics, BioTech, Quantum Computing and Energy. 5 Industries going ballistic simultaneously. There has never been a time in history like it Coupled with this "Breaking News" the Australian nation is due for a serious shock late this year or early next. Laws passing compulsory Digital ID have been forced through just before Easter. Travel is already being restricted. CBDCs will be next and the trials are mostly completed. The Guinea Pig is primed and most Australians have no idea. I digress but the talking points are coming. There will be bad days at the office; Hang in there - your efforts and those of other developers forging brighter futures, for all of us, are appreciated more than you will ever know. Build it - they WILL come. PS: couldn't resist stealing some CAPS from @ODELL
thanks for your worries 🙏🏽 nostr can feel like a never ending loop of bitcoin/sovereignty related content, but isn’t it so cool we’re all here for the same values? i think proper community outreach helps with discovering other types of content. it really, reallyy, helps to browse universe for pages to follow. just push through the weird stuff and mute lol. for your first reason, i’m not a dev, so i can’t tell you much about helping w the relay thing, but it’s important to put trust that these tools are being built. we just need to support our devs, and inspire more to help open this protocol to what it will be! 🤙🏽
Well that would be ironic. People visiting a non-exclusive uncensored platform where anyone can say anything, feel excluded because 'it's all just bitcoiners'.
1. we don’t need a successor protocol 2. the MISSION is to decentralize TWITTER 3. nostr is the MVP of Twitter’s future P.S. I love bitcoin but for the folks out there think in CRYPTO think in INTERNET this is BIG
what do you think on this? https://greencheck.world/
What was the seed culture of the internet? What is internet culture now?
The bitcoin and nostr circle jerk is wild. If you mute the words "bitcoin", " lightning" and "zap" the content becomes sparse. You can't mute "nostr" without wiping out nostr. build stuff. I like bitcoin, I nostr, but I'd like to hear about other things. I just haven't seen any signs of that happening. I think the alleged TikTok influx was made up bullshit.
while bitcoin monoculture is not great Im more worried it will over time become onlyfans spamming culture and then... die for real for anyone else who isnt constantly excited by this montenous crap. However... please.for the love of anti social engeneerung we see everywhere else ...don't start the usual invites by insert group this or that here. Because if we start pushing various groups to join ... then the wars about meaningless garbage start. and they usually don't end until the platform is dead too. At least with bitcoin monoculture it was a natural one and therefore feels at home.
I understand the worries you may have. Another reason you might consider is that some relays use Cloudflare, Amazon and one other service I forgot off the top of my head. It is already censored if you use any of those three already.
not all events are meant for broadcast (eg DMs) replacing attention and users as the product model required the kind of mindset of bitcoiners and the use of LN we have hardly even seen the beginning of closed groups, markets or DM usage of the protocol yet, it's way to premature to expect a failure at this point shitcoiners aren't even here yet... believe me, they are coming, nostr is on the radar of numerous projects already
If we start investing now on clients that are dedicated to relays as first-class citizens, community relays, niche relays, then things might change and we might see more of these relays popping and more people organizing themselves around relays and less around the big generic feed. The big generic feed cannot die and must not be abandoned, and the outbox model is still a crucial part of having that work correctly, but semi-closed communities around relays is a natural thing that may solve the two problems you raised.
It's likely that clients don't implement the outbox model because it's expensive to do so. And there are no (or at least very few) open-source libraries, APIs, or other such tools that solve the problem in a way that's reusable between clients. I'm working on a solution by developing a C++ SDK for Nostr clients. In time, other devs will likely do the same for other languages. In time it will support the outbox model. Nostr needs infrastructure like this, and we need to find a way to monetize it effectively. There are only so many people who will do the work for free.
that second point I'd an argument I've had about every decentralized social network for the last 10 years. it's also been encoded my profile description since day one.
I disagree. You say nostr is centralized but its not, its distributed with many relays. You say nostr is monolithic (ie: bitcoiners). First of all its not, many people join nostr who dont care about bitcoin or are not interested in it. Also, Bitcoiner tend to understand the concept of decentralization naturally, what better group spearhead adoption? We already have experience with naysayers and who to waste time on or not. nostr is doomed? its the first distributed social media out there we ever head. Dont have so much anxiety about nostr. Nostr will be fine. Worry about getting fresh air and staying healthy :)
Let's start working on a successor protocol. In doing so, we may figure out the flaws that nostr have, or things that can be improved. I have been meaning to write about what I would do if I were to reinvent nostr from scratch, but we can do a proper protocol specification itself. No one needs to implement it of course, it will just be an exercise for us
Generally, we won't even think about suggesting certain changes to nostr because they will be breaking changes, or because there is already another way of doing that thing (even if the new method is more efficient). But if we start designing from scratch, we don't have those creative limitations
My advice: Take notes. Don't work on it. Sure, there are a dozen things I would do differently if starting over including using a different elliptic curve, pushing for binary packets, giving relays identities, negotiating new features in-protocol, event kinds being bitflags, having slightly more composibility in some places, etc. But nothing about the way it is now breaks things signficantly. If you think there is going to be a successor protocol, would you pour your heart and soul into the next nostr project? Probably not. I don't think nostr is broken, so it doesn't require fixing. I'm all-in on nostr, including starting a new project soon.
Reason 2: is a false construct. The seed culture is not bitcoiners. The seed culture is people who understand freedom, open source, and technology. Which is a subset of Bitcoiners *only incidentally*. It is the only seed culture that can be. Anything else would also be a 'false construct,' some attempt to represent what isn't for people who aren't.
