Traveling by train in Germany is a nightmare. Decades of stagnation thanks to government intervention. Feels like the whole system is on the brink of collapse. Everyone’s just frustrated. The new normal: there’s no chance of arriving on time or without headaches. Wish me luck.
Who is John Galt?
The best moment in time is always going to be the one you currently have
The present moment.
Reality is that the present is all that will ever exist.
There is never going to be another experience that isn’t happening right now;
So the best time is literally always here.
https://m.primal.net/LHKC.jpg
Radical community nostr client update:
I love how multiple projects and developers have reached out regarding building a community-based Nostr client. There are a lot who agree with closing the whole nostr ecosystem from the people joining on this particular client.
But I want to share some of my learnings and concerns to further the discussion.
It seems that NIP-29 provides a way to create groups and build a community-based forum.
However, a developer mentioned one caveat: it is built in a way to prioritize the Members. The arguing is that members invest in these communities, but the owner retains ownership, which, of course, makes sense for the owner.
But NIP-29 groups are designed to be forkable, which is intended to solve this ownership issue. In theory, members can fork the group by copying content to their own relay. This is good for edge cases where the owner goes rogue, but I suspect there will be grifters who might copy a community just to steal it.
I don’t fully understand the technical details. But from a creator's perspective, these owners have been building their communities for years, and people follow them for a reason.
I think no creator would ever use a community platform if they couldn’t own it. It should be the equivalent of owning an email list. This client should enable a person to act as a multiplier, reaching thousands of people. This particular use case of nostr is aimed at creators, only indirect to his followers. Fans can opt out in various ways, but forking a community that a creator has been building for years is a non-starter for them.
The need the power and own the community and can do with it what they want.
If you truly enjoy an email newsletter, you trust the decisions the person makes, even though you have no control over what they do with it.
If he fucks up go to another community - someone you trust more.
Most creators have a good incentive and long term focus on their communities (fuck the people who dump shitcoiners and grifters) real creators care about their people following them.
That’s how it was explained to me. I don’t understand the tech deep enough to answer the first point.
Second point is that in any other tech they don’t truly own it. Nostr is able to do that. Only way to own a direct communication to your fans is via email. Everything else is a walled garden. So utilizing nostr for facilitating this is my point. That’s why I state it’s radically different than what the nostr ethos is about. But this would still only be accomplished by using this tech
This is my RADICAL approach to how I would build a community-first Nostr client:
First of all: remove access to the entire ecosystem once a user logs in. (I know this sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out).
This is a community-first approach. Once you're onboarded by a creator, you don't want random Bitcoin or footstr content on your timeline. You came to interact with the community. In the beginning, give users as little choice as possible when it comes to interacting with the protocol.
All they see and feel is the core function of the client: COMMUNITY!
They didn’t come to grow their own community or make new internet friends—they came for the artist, the YouTuber, or whoever it is they care about.
So give them time to slowly get used to the new interface and focus on enjoying their first experience. How do we do that?
From a product and UX perspective, this means thinking about how users interact with the platform and designing an intuitive, engaging experience.
Based on conversations with my friends, here’s what they need:
User-first approach (duh): Users own their data and private keys but don't know that at first. The experience starts as a simple username-password login (NIP-07).
Onboarding: There needs to be a paywall (both fiat and BTC), with as little friction as possible.
Forum-style discussions: Organize content into threads/topics so users can easily participate in conversations.
Threaded discussions: Each thread allows for nested replies, much like Reddit or traditional forums, enabling deep, organized conversations.
Tagging system: Let users tag content by topic or interest to make navigation easier.
We don't want to overcomplicate things—just keep it simple. Make it a basic forum where they only see content from their community.
Voting/Engagement system: Introduce upvoting, reactions, or comments on posts—this is easy.
Now comes the magic of Nostr... with zaps (tips) or the ability to send money back and forth, users slowly realize that this is actually different. (You see? We’re getting there gradually.)
Moderation tools: Yeah, I know this sounds lame, but some creators wouldn’t want their forum spammed with footstr pics (sorry, guys). Allow some users to moderate discussions, flag inappropriate content, or create private spaces within the community.
This is the basic community client mvp. It would be enough for some creators who care about freedom and want to build a community on a self-sovereign level. The rest comes later down the road.
Private and public spaces: Offer both public forums and private groups where users can control membership and discussions—more options for the user.
Leaderboards: Show the most active or helpful members based on engagement, contributions, zaps, or participation.
Reputation: WoT, yes baby—now we're getting closer to the full Nostr ecosystem.
Achievements: Gamify the experience by rewarding users with badges or other forms of recognition for their engagement.
User-controlled feed: Implement a home feed based on the relays and topics the user follows - this is where I would open up the whole nostr ecosystem (how? I have no clue yet).
Analytics: Give admins and group leaders insights into community engagement, most active users, and popular threads.
User feedback system: Allow users to provide feedback on discussions, groups, and content, enabling continuous improvement for the content creator / community owner but also for the client.
These are my first thoughts.
After brain-dumping all of this, I realize that this almost works as a white-label solution for creators.
So… does this make sense? What do you think?
I know it’s radically different from opening up the whole Nostr ecosystem to users, but I want to experiment with this. Based on conversations I’ve had, people would be overwhelmed by too much too soon.
This also solves the problem of onboarding people and letting them follow random accounts. Here, they follow people with similar interests and those they already trust, which reflects trust onto the protocol as a whole.
I’m not sure if this will eventually lead to users discovering the full beauty of the Nostr ecosystem, but hey—that’s for later down the road. At least this is running on nostr in the backend.
Also, I have no idea how to code any of this. But I want to make it happen. This is me starting an open conversation.
Let’s see where this takes us and how we can make it happen together. 🧡
The last days were a reminder for myself that time with your loved ones is the most precious thing in the world.
I try to live by this every day.
1) I try to focus my social media usage to connect and communicate (aka spend time) with people I dearly love but are far from home
2) I try to stack sats not for having more sats per se but being able to use them to spend more time with my family
3) I try to be present in the moment when meeting new people or having a conversation to truly get to know them
4) I try to be thankful for every second someone spends with me and not uselessly waste any of other peoples time
Time is so incredibly precious…
I regularly suck at living by theses standards. I need to remind myself more often about this… GN 🧡
Who’s spearheading the nostr UX development?
Are there any grants focusing on this?
Are we already at the point from a technical perspective or is all what we’re talking about coming naturally and this is just sooo early?
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Uncomfortable Nostr Reality check:
I've tried to Nostr-pill all my YouTube friends (some of them have incredible amounts of subs), but none of them care about the censorship resistance or decentralization. Even though they know Nostr exists, they have no incentive yet to come here. Their audience would follow them anywhere, but they need the tools to create community communications.
It's a sad reality, but it all comes down to usability, UX, and ultimately the easiness of paying and signing up for the community. None of these can afford to have a sign-up problem or issues with someone being interested in joining the community/their platform. It needs to work flawlessly and feel and look professional. Some of them charge $3-5k a year just to get access to this closed space, and people are willing to pay for this.
Another big pain point is community management. All of these YouTubers create these platforms to help their audience have a safe place to communicate with each other and build their own tribe.
Nostr is capable of facilitating all of this - we're just not there yet. We need to somehow invest so much more into UX and design.
All of this will come when the time is due. So, knowing that all of this is possible and that ultimately, Nostr will be powering most of these via the social graph, is what makes me extremely bullish. But also, let's not get ahead of ourselves and expect them to come already.
The UX and features are not there yet for these people. I am more than happy to help anybody trying to make this a reality. I want nothing more than having these people join Nostr. But I also totally understand their pain points. So, if you're a dev or a company working on this, please feel free to reach out - I can tell you all the issues they told me. Or just tell me how to best do this; maybe I can jump on a podcast so the issues are open-sourced for the whole community to hear.
#nostrdesign #asknostr
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