Oddbean new post about login | logout Imagine this: The Nostr Purple Check. 🍇 Used by public personas to combat impersonators. Curated by your web of trust. Why has no one done this? #WoT
People are adding WoT features to many apps. It’s still relatively new though. There isn’t a point in a “purple check” but we do need to come up with new UI markers and signals that help people use wot better.
I thought I heard someone mention having problems with impersonator accounts on nostr. Which of course are all over the place in Xitter. But perhaps they’re already being filtered out by the various existing nostr WoT scores. Or just not a problem yet bc nostr is still too niche.
Oh no. They’re definitely here too. Most clients only make it clear who else you know is following them. This is what I mean by needing new UI patterns to help users parse this info faster and easier.
Would a purple check not be a useful UI pattern for this particular problem? If you see a familiar name and avatar + a check on a client that supports it, you’ll be pretty confident it’s not an impostor.
The problem with that is that we had a purple check sort of thing (and still do in some clients) that was based on Nip-05. It is sort of a verification of your name on a specific domain name but people give it too much weight thinking it means there is only one of a person with a check mark. So it’s ended up being confusing. I don’t have any really good ideas. It’s something I want to start experimenting with more soon.
Combination of persistency of the nip-05 (how long without change), your WOT follows indicator (more likely to be the real deal if many of your follows also follow for a long time) + some activity metrics (replies, likes, boosts ratios etc. for not spam —> depth/quality of content)? Similar to if somebody has been on Xitter or IG for over a decade with regular posting and following —> gives higher trust that it’s the real account.
I agree the purpose of the NIP-05 check was always a little confusing. We’d want ti start with: what problem are we solving? Impersonations is not a big problem for most plebs, but it’s a big one (or will become a big one if it’s not yet) for accounts with well developed brands. So some sort of method of social proofing that someone’s claimed brand is legit. https://i.nostr.build/3yev9G7HNGDzGW5z.jpg
Michael Saylor is doing orange check id i think its an unequal fight and same space
The idea of the orange check is that you pay some sats to the platform, right? Like if he owned Xitter that’s what he’d do. Not sure how to do that on nostr where there is no single dominant platform. I suppose zaps could work, although they’re not verifiable (except for ecash, if you trust the mint?) Ideally I’d want the ability to synthesize zaps + other forms of social proof into a single score. Which is how #grapevine works.
I don't think it matters, whether it solves the thing or not, it's basically a sort of "ordinals", protocol, so you can "sell" this as a tool, do the verifications, but the thing you're doing is keeping the chain "safe", increasing the fees. Building other layers on bitcoin. A form of settlement, contract. Grapevine is a form of data processing but has no jurisdiction, so they are two different things.
