Oddbean

In bitcoin’s early years, a lot of people debated the theoretical functioning of it with a critical lens, but then in practice it just worked and bootstrapped for the next 15 years and counting. It was simple and elegant enough to work despite being rough around the edges, caught all the right types of mindshare, and grew. Nostr has a similar pattern so far. Lots of people critique it. And galaxy brains are trying to build more complex alternative digital identity schemes without much shipping. Meanwhile Nostr is out in the field bootstrapping with users and developers and companies. https://m.primal.net/JVYY.jpg

honestly, after nostr now i have to try and decipher the documentation of bluesky :bluesky: and fartscape 💨 it's actually got really nice, straight forward, and organised documentation, and most importantly, concise and exact anyone who thinks the other things are ever gonna matter just doesn't understand how this stuff works

The old comments about how similar this space (BTC and Nostr) is to the early days of the internet, come to mind. Network effects are so hard for us to grasp. In the beginning it seems quirky and quaint, then suddenly it’s on everyone’s lips and it’s the ‘next big thing’. But the ‘suddenly’ part is actually years of hard work by people from all over contributing, sharing, helping and building. It reminds me of professional sports. By the time we, as the general public become aware of a new big name in sport, I can promise you it’s not because he or she decided yesterday to start training. The people that join in 10 years time will swept up in the network effect of this ‘new’ thing.

Nostr is great, I love the pros to it, but as someone who knows nothing about Bitcoin/crypto it’s: -annoying to see the majority of content being that -hard to setup the zaps thing (I did it ik but I don’t understand it that much). Also i think if Nostr grows: -people need to TRULY understand that their private key needs to stay safe, as it’s new tech for most -deleting posts/notes needs to somehow be implemented, it’s fundamental at this point

I recently joined just the other day and I think you make good points, except for the deletion part. I think the reason why people feel like deletion is necessary is from decades of using the other social media. Deletion on social media is almost like an indirect form of censorship. Nostr right now is a verifiable public record. Being able to delete something from a public record alters that history and can remove accountability for what was written. It also allows people to selectively curate their online presence, which is a huge and super fucking annoying issue with every other platform. Doing that can be something that contributes to controlling a specific narrative. By sticking with this system where if you posted it, it can be attributed to you via your key pair, then we maintain full accountability for all things written at all times and nobody can escape it, no matter how uncomfortable it might make them. A better solution could possibly be allowing edits, and then the edits are chained together to where the edit history is fully maintained and viewable at all times. This is something I kinda want just because I hate making dumb typos 😄

Oh yeah that’s a good point I guess, because editing would be very useful for sure, yeah it’s mainly typos that I make and stuff. But once I think I accidentally shared my fill name here and I can delete it 😅 Is what it is. But yeah I totally agree with the edit button 👌

I think you make some good points. I have a few comments: -Bitcoiners are kind of a seed for content here, but I agree with you that it's a lot. That's part of the reason I post random shit about Egypt and other random stuff over the past year and a half. A new social ecosystem requires some diehard people, but also needs certain roots for broader involvement. -The inability to delete is a feature, not a bug. Once you sign a note, it's out in distributed relays. However, incentive-wise, I think high-accessible perpetual notes will rely on some form of economics or payment. Over the long term of time it will likely be unseen or outright deleted if a small account posts something they don't particularly endorse anymore. -I think zaps will be an onboarding tool for bitcoin. Existing bitcoiners will be like "yeah I know what those are" but new coiners will be like, "wait what are these?" and it'll be a learning experience. It's a friction point, but potentially a good one. Also, some Lightning/Ecash wallets can be dollar-denominated. -I think key management is probably the hardest long-term part. Even for power-users let alone newbies. Because with power-users we might understand it better, but also our stakes for fucking it up are higher.

point two! yes, that's partly why i wrote a basic access-based garbage collection algorithm for relays so they can run on some fixed sized disk space limit and maintain that, while opportunistically retaining indexes before they take up the free space of the high water mark that triggers throwing out least recently accessed - and yeah, keys... the concept of controlling your sovereign key secret is gonna take some serious marketing to get people to learn it it's not hard, the whole crypto scene gets it but we need the normies too, so how do we induct them without financial incentives ahhh, you see, that's the reason why people learned to use elliptic curve crypto keys in the first place so there is a common interest between the security model of nostr and the necessity of associating the protocol with secret keys and payments

Yeah that’s a good response, I saw @jack say that Twitter was like this in the early days, but instead of crypto/bitcoin it was tech reporters in SF (IIRC). Yeah, maybe there’s a way to set in stone that after a certain amount of time a post can be deleted? That’s built into mastodon, and I bet that could be a part of the protocol here… in that (for example), “Delete this note after 1 month”, then the relays know after that amount of time they should hide it. I guess it’s a learning experience, but I mean people over on Mastodon & Bluesky are finding onboarding hard (which is why they’re finding it hard to get new users) just because it’s different, and they don’t have all these separate things like different wallets, etc.. I just think it’s gonna be pretty hard for the general public to move here and not fee overwhelmed, I don’t think you should have to go on YouTube to watch a tutorial on how to use this (imo). But I also think a GOOD client with a very good onboarding process could sort this out a bit.. Yeah it for sure is, I just keep my private key in a password manager 👍

The majority of content on here is Bitcoin-related because the builders of this protocol and the clients running on top of it are Bitcoiners. However, don't forget that Bitcoiners are just regular people. They have other interests and hobbies, apart from #Bitcoin and will interact with other kinds of content, be it sports, travel, photography, food, etc. Like @LynAlden said, she posts stuff about other things than #Bitcoin and so do many other Bitcoiners. You just need to curate your feed and tell others about #Nostr. I had my girlfriend join, because she's an artist and likes to take city photos, and she was surprised how quickly her posts received not just likes, but zaps. People will get hooked, when they realise their content can be monetized without permission from anyone. Not saying people will replace their jobs, but it's better than what they get now on the cancerous social media platforms available. Just my 2 sats...

Its rare to be the vangaurd of something with so much potential.. nostr:nevent1qqsflrsgjc6dc20ju286a87gms2zcwygxq2k4h9zwfv2kahp0t3ulasppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsw4v882mfjhq9u63j08kzyhqzqxqc8tgf740p4nxnk9jdv02u37ncrqsqqqqqp5eefmt

This has always been the way I see it and why I have gravitated toward these protocols. There are some that despite all the "theories" and claims of "it should be done this way," #nostr, #bitcoin and now #pear just seem to work. Theory is fantastic, and it's always fun to think we can build some huge, complete, dynamic system out the gate. But i feel like I've now seen over my life too many times where something that the thing that starts with the simplest beginnings and just works, that learns and evolves and reacts to how people use it as it grows... systems that make that choice seem to have a staying power and ability to adapt that cannot be countered. nostr:note1n78q3935ms5l9c50460u3hq59sugsvq4dtw2yujc4dmwz7hrelmqm3k60k

in my opinion Noster is controlled opposition I've seen a bunch of things get deleted off here so it's not really truly decentralized in my opinion it's a honey pot but the message is more important than the man they allow certain things so they can entrap people and entrapment is illegal for all the glows out there you're committing crimes and also your purging yourself when you are doing the crimes that you say you're trying to stop please please keep doing it because you're just going to make more people awake make more systems that are stronger that you can't actually subvert and control good luck glowies