Last week I posted about "Nostr struggling" and while there were many good responses, it seems to me that a bunch of people misunderstood my premise.

I'm going to clear that up here and expand on the idea a little further.

First of all, I'm a Nostr bull. I'm sold, and I know how necessary this is. I'm still recruiting souls from twitter: 

https://x.com/SvetskiWrites/status/1828403019081269661

Secondly, I know that Nostr is SUPERIOR, technically speaking - and while the apps might not be as smooth, and some of the UX might be buggy, the substrate were working with is fundamentally better than the status quo. 

nostr:npub1wmr34t36fy03m8hvgl96zl3znndyzyaqhwmwdtshwmtkg03fetaqhjg240  did a fantastic job of explaining that at the recent nostr:npub1nstrcu63lzpjkz94djajuz2evrgu2psd66cwgc0gz0c0qazezx0q9urg5l conference (I suggest everyone watch that if they haven't - and I'm still bummed I couldn't make it).

There are so many NIPs, and so much tech shit going on, that nobody else stands a chance really. Elon might have cool AI, but we have nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft  that can produce more prototypes than all the AIs in the world, combined.

That being said, my reference to "struggling" was not about the technical side of things. It was about messaging & go to market.

I speak to people every day about Nostr. I live in Brazil right now and travel on a regular basis to at least 10 countries each year. When I speak to people, they don't really care so much about censorship resistance, or Bitcoin (interestingly enough, two things Rabble also mentioned in his talk).

What they want is a place to connect, that's COOL. 
And that's a VERY HARD thing to do.

 nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m  and the guys did it with Twitter early on, and so did the Instagram founders - but for every one "hit" - there are another 1000 well built flops which people just didn't find "cool."

Right now, the messaging is more doom, than bloom. More "you need this bc government gonna get you", and less "this is where the cool kids are at".

Now...I understand that this is gonna take time. All good things do. But if we're going to attract more people, the conversation needs to evolve.

I wrote a piece a little while back called "Social as a Service" and framed Nostr more as this substrate for a Universe of new applications. Once again, Rabble echoed this in his talk and leaned into the "Social Protocol" angle.

I personally find this more compelling. More white-pill, and more appealing for the purposes of growing a network. People need to be pulled, not pushed. The latter can work in bursts here and there (as we've seen this week since the Telegram debacle), but it's not sustainable growth.

nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a has been doing really good work with her framing, and I think her 80% bloom / 20% doom approach is a good one.

nostr:npub1c878wu04lfqcl5avfy3p5x83ndpvedaxv0dg7pxthakq3jqdyzcs2n8avm has some good framing too with the “city” analogy 

_______________

Thinking out aloud, maybe we just need more angles. I guess the Bitcoin people are still going to be attracted by "government gonna get you" - and we're FAR from saturation in that dimension. So maybe the right approach is the have that conversation with THEM...but a very different conversation with others.

Ultimately, I hope to see more go-to-market initiatives that are user-oriented, and get people excited about Nostr. We saw that at the Nostr booth nostr:npub167n5w6cj2wseqtmk26zllc7n28uv9c4vw28k2kht206vnghe5a7stgzu3r  that nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424 kicked off, and that nostr:npub1hz5alqscpp8yjrvgsdp2n4ygkl8slvstrgvmjca7e45w6644ew7sewtysa is now working on.

We've got some plans for later this year at a few conferences as we unveil nostr:npub15xd2mmjnh3caykh77djsv73e0zkrp42jp5mwerx8f4m6su40wdvss7t3l3 

I know nostr:npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8 and @fiatjaf are doing some podcast stuff, which is excellent. Also nostr:npub1693220pmp0a4c04a0p7hkz874vsxkyfrvtk2yk4zjyj3e4c0ugjs3r4j0c  is doing a Nostr book.

I'm starting to repeat some of what I said last week, so I'll stop here.
Ultimately the point is this:

Nostr is not struggling "technically" speaking. 
But it's not yet found a compelling enough SPACE in people's minds, outside of the Bitcoin community. And it's not found a narrative yet that's compelling, beyond the "government gonna get you / big tech gonna ban you".

When we find that, I expect things to really begin taking off.

Thankyou for coming to my TED Talk 🤣🤣🤣