Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying "it can’t be done" are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.
- Puck Magazine, December 1902
"Should every nostrich run a relay?" is a very different question from "should every Bitcoiner run a Bitcoin/lightning node?" due to the differences in guarantees.
I think every nostrich should run a relay IF THEY REQUIRE PERMANENCE for their historical notes. What do I mean by this?
Relays should be considered ephemeral. They are under no obligation to store your data indefinitely unless you enter into an agreement for that (paid relays.) Relays can go offline at any time and take your notes with them. This is why clients connect to many relays by default, for redundancy.
I run a relay for myself that only accepts notes from my pubkey. If my third party relays change, I'll just push my old notes from my personal relay to new relays for them to be indexed.
Nostr can't scale from the perspective of expecting every nostr client to connect to thousands or millions of personal relays simultaneously.
These are similar questions as lightning centralization issues due to how liquidity works.
It's a trade-off between how many relays to which a client should reasonably connect vs what level of relay distribution is sufficient for censorship resistance.
"Nostr will fail unless everyone runs their own relay."
Nostr isn't designed to scale in that manner because it doesn't have routing like lightning.
This claim is similar to saying Bitcoin fails if everyone isn't running a node. While it's preferable, it's by no means necessary.
It need not be perfectly decentralized, just sufficiently decentralized.
Whether that means dozens / hundreds / thousands of relays is up for debate.
We should also expect nostr to "fail to scale" (referencing the Andreas Antonopolous talk) as it experiences growing pains. There are surely multiple paths forward for scalability.
I've heard some folks with large X followings claim nostr isn't worth their time because adoption is low and not growing fast enough for their liking.
Seems shortsighted to me. I consider investing in social media to be similar to financial investing - it's about time in the market rather than timing the market. Much like how most of Bitcoin's annual gains occur during 10 days of the year, I experienced a similar phenomenon on Twitter.
Choose to be a laggard nostrich to your own detriment.
We need to make more base layer Bitcoin protocol improvements so that the nostr:nprofile1qqs977hqgydje4pk9e9qu8yqx6a3u767qq46m3vl9aynxl9peqf523cpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqgjwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcyg5shh industrial complex has fresh topics to discuss.
It amuses me to no end to see Bitcoiners acting like Buttcoiners with regard to nostr.
I do wonder how much of this can be attributed to maximalist culture making people more close minded and pessimistic.
I'm not interested in all the ways nostr can fail.
I'm interested in all the ways it can succeed.
Of course, but claiming nostr is doomed due to X is shortsighted. It's thinking adversarially without thinking optimistically.
Buttcoiner thinking is pointing at a problem and immediately claiming it's unsolvable.
I've thought about and written about the culture at length.
From what I've seen, actual builders rarely play the toxic maximalist role. And to date, nostr vibes have been overwhelmingly optimistic with fairly low adoption by toxic folks.
I'm a maximalist too, but don't tell the toxic puritans! 😏
Unfortunately some maximalists hold the belief that you're not allowed to explore any new technologies that could somehow be considered competition to Bitcoin.
Reddit and Twitter were both better when they allowed competing third party clients.
Nostr will always be better because there is no first party client.
In recent weeks I've started getting a ton of messages from "crypto marketing agencies" offering to get me social media coverage, AMAs, podcasts, etc.
Not sure if this means the market is heating up or if it means the market is dead and these folks are getting desperate.
I tried to use Reddit 3 times today and got censored every. single. time.
1. Submitted my buttcoin.me site to /r/Bitcoin and it told me my submission was removed by moderators with no specific reason given.
2. Tried to comment on the /r/buttcoin thread about my project but I was banned there a decade ago. Created a new account and commented but it got shadowbanned.
3. Tried to converse with an /r/buttcoin moderator who was posting typical buttcoiner trash on /r/ethereum only to find out entire thread got removed.
Reddit is such a waste of time.
Today I'm raising some concerns based upon observations of a withdrawal I recently made from Coinbase. I suspect the issues I'm pointing out apply to many exchanges and custodians across the ecosystem.
https://blog.lopp.net/problems-with-coinbase-withdrawal-fees/
I haven't bought a new laptop or desktop in 6 years and don't feel the need. Seems that since 98% of computing happens in a web browser now, local computational power is less important.
On the flip side, upgrading phones every couple years is still important because the hardware and sensors keep improving substantially.
American presidential terms are 4 years and now we're spending 2 of those years worrying about the next election.
During those 2 years we spend $17 billion and drive half the country into frothing madness, but thanks to the electoral college it always comes down to the same 50,000 voters in the same three states.
I've been doing weighted calf extension exercises 3 days a week for a year now.
What I'd like to know is if the time will ever come when I can walk normally the day after.
It appears that two of Bitcoin's biggest critics have pivoted to hating AI and even set up a site dedicated to it.
What a miserable existence. Haters gonna hate 😏
https://pivot-to-ai.com/
When was the last time you saw a politician take credit for something that would have happened regardless of their existence?
When was the last time you saw a politician accept blame for something that their meddling screwed up?
When I can. My perception is that it's good to do first thing in the morning, and probably not great to do close to a strength training session. Sauna seems a better idea for that.
The joys of maintaining sovereignty in cyberspace.
Realize my self hosted ghost software is over a year old and not generating embedded tweet previews for the new X domain.
SSH to the box, do a backup off-site, and run the ghost update command.
Get told I need to update nodejs.
Realize my OS is over 2 years out of date.
Attempt an update to latest LTS release.
Get told there isn't one available despite it being released 4 months ago. The hosting provider's apt repositories must be stale.
Screw that, manually update nodejs by pointing to a third party repository.
Run the ghost update command. Get told I updated too far, even though the new ghost version supports node20 my current version needs node18 to execute the update.
Downgrade to node18.
Run the ghost update command. Upgrade fails with a database migration error.
Read documentation about resolving the error. Run troubleshooting commands to no avail.
File a bug report with ghost and walk away.
Got recognized in meatspace for only the second time outside of a conference.
This fellow was a Wall Street trader who learned about Bitcoin in 2016 from his colleagues and managed to accumulate a good stash.
He decided to quit Wall Street and is now living his best life working as an adventure guide.
He's not on social media. He doesn't talk about Bitcoin to anyone outside his family. He's one of our many sleeper agents scattered across the world.
11 Israelis visiting Costa Rica were attacked by 8 men who overpowered their security guard and robbed them of $700,000 worth of bitcoin. Analysis of surveillance footage leads investigators to suspect the robbers are current or former police.
If true, this wouldn't be the first time corrupt cops have wrench attacked Bitcoiners. 2 Vietnamese cops and 5 accomplices were charged for a wrench attack in 2021.
https://www.teletica.com/sucesos/asaltantes-de-turistas-israelies-sustrajeron-unos-700-mil-en-bitcoin_364777
Oh yeah I got you, bro. You want to talk to nostr:nprofile1qqs977hqgydje4pk9e9qu8yqx6a3u767qq46m3vl9aynxl9peqf523cpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqgjwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcyg5shh
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Notes by Jameson Lopp | export