Whoever wins between #nostr and #pubky, I can’t lose since I’ve got both. The nsecs are the same in each systems. It’s like having both an Android and an iPhone; either way, I get the best of both worlds. But then it hit me – we just recreated walled gardens all over again. Why can’t these systems work together seamlessly? How did we end up back here, building fences instead of bridges?
Why did no one make an open source Monopoly game? Hint: on nostr!
Released in April 2023, the game hit $1 billion in revenue after seven months—and another $1 billion three months later. It's now at $3 billion in revenue, according to Hasbro's latest earnings. The game has reached 150 million downloads and has 10 million daily active users.
Easiest way to kill nostr is to turn it from a simple 2 page spec that is loved by developers. Into a complex 40 page spec that no one fully understands. But, nobody is crazy enough to do that, right? Right?
It was Steve Jobs that said "increase the simplicity by 10%, and double the adoption".
I'm sure a very complex solution will work (bear in mind solutions are never complex in the mind of the developer that implements it), but the adoption suffers exponentially.
Git is well adopted and that is quite important.
I think you might be slightly dismissing the complexity here, we've been working on this for 10 years at MIT and with solid. These are hard problems with many edge cases. But I dont underestimate your ability to solve hard problems. If you get it working well, will use!
A Chat GPT bot to analyze text for propaganda content, according to the Jacques Ellul taxonomy. By no means perfect, but not a bad start. See "Proper Gander"
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-dNdvcTUSc-proper-gander
Agree bluesky DIDs are poor, but nostr has done pretty much nothing on structured data in the last 4 years. We could have been so far ahead, but every effort is kicked into the long grass.
You are correct to be a skeptic. Takes a lot of learning to figure out the good bits. But better than strings with string meta data, stringified json, and magic numbers that are rationed out be a central authority. Never thought nostr would get this centralized.
They’re free and available to everyone. Because each name is tied to a pubkey, there’s a unique one-to-one mapping, which means there’s no competition for names (aside from vanity generation). The DNS system is fully operational and can be utilized by anyone in Nostr, as long as it’s supported. Nomen is a solid solution too, and it can be layered on top for those who want it, adding even more options. Think of it as the icing on the cake!
Extremely complex and reinvention is favoured over reuse. Given that it performs pretty well. But I think negentropy will be a nightmare, for complexity reasons, for legal reasons (e.g. user consent is important in many countries).
I think strfry is so complex it will utlimately it will split nostr into two networks, as one group chase a magic bullet with untested mad science. And the current network that works quite well but is missing a clear growth strategy. You'll end up with a bit of a mess.
For 1 micro satoshi (1/1,000,000) you can store 1kb of data on a censorship-resistant network (bittorrent) for 1 hour. It turns out that can be a very useful thing. Creating an economy at the granularity of micro satoshis, means you are able to price anything. Means you can create markets for anything. Few.
I have used a an impartial bot to analyze this post for propaganda content. The table is below (two entries did not fit and were left out)
Covering the initial point. Nostr and Pkarr actually do align on private keys, and also on pubkeys through mutual signing, so the pubkeys work together fine. The added complexity is invisible to users, who just get more features, options, and resilience against censorship. A win for everyone and the open web.
nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqwlsccluhy6xxsr6l9a9uhhxf75g85g8a709tprjcn4e42h053vaqy2hwumn8ghj7erfw36x7tnsw43z7un9d3shjqpqcuasc677efz5lk7hl0x3vgrc2xu7kx6g39s9fguwf73y5u9uyxzs0kd83l
https://image.nostr.build/839665475cfe4c3d9e7a2ff79a0092064e145b8387c56b86ef756814b76d9397.jpg
Bitcoin was not built for any one reason. It had a number of different properties, without knowing which, if any would take off.
Of all of them, the SoV use case, was perhaps the most unlikely. But it ended up being the one that caught people's imaginations. Nobody knew at $7 that it would go to $70,000, but that's what happened. Amazingly.
Now, an important thing. Given that is how bitcoin has developed, there is a social contract between those that build it, work on it, maintain it, and the user base. We have to respect the way in which bitcoin is used. And that is primarily as a SoV.
Anyone that is NOT doing that is simply flexing, and putting their own ego before the project. These are the dangerous people, because they will bur the thing to the ground if they dont get what they want, far more than any competitor.
As you rightly state, bitcoin is for everyone, and that gives them the freedom to do what they want with bitcoin. Anyone saying otherwise is an attack on bitcoin.
I have a basic bot which impartially analyses posts like this. Output is below.
Read the docs at : https://pubky.tech/
Thank you for sharing your thoughts
Regarding (1) that is not quite right. Pubky functions as a censorship-resistant, decentralized DNS, utilizing the extensive 20-million-node BitTorrent network. This allows users to associate DNS records with their public keys (or "npub" in Nostr terms), which is a significant step forward in censorship-resistant network. Instead of a few relays providng censorship-resistance, a few million nodes do.
nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqwlsccluhy6xxsr6l9a9uhhxf75g85g8a709tprjcn4e42h053vaqy2hwumn8ghj7erfw36x7tnsw43z7un9d3shjqpqqqqtsufjm9mfmz4nzjvn2nej78q68jcl0eqmgz3zen8cnw3rez3q8ajup9
https://image.nostr.build/e7cf7940b75de31a9f71a9093fa50f296266a8c09c6d4dce6c8c6e08fcb1b05b.jpg
Ah ok, good point. Some of it is still very early, it's only week 1 really. A few of us are in their chat room. They are very good with helping developers w/ Q&A
https://t.me/pubkychat
There is a social contract with the user base, most of whom are using it as a store of value. Some might not like the SoV use case, but it happens to be dominant. OP_CAT combined with OP_DUP can exponentially increase the memory usage of all the nodes, up to a limit. As memory is more expensive than disk, it's a bit like a block size increase in terms of using resources. Question is whether the use cases justify the risk, and also the risk of a contentious chain split. I am sure many of bitcoin's enemies would stir the pot there. OP_CAT is already enabled on liquid and no one uses it. I think they should show the user base how amazing it is in demos, and if the users say, "wow", that is a better argument.
This is exactly what the drivechainers did. But they only had 2 million in funding. I think OP_C*T is more like 10 million in funding. They will use any psy-op in the book. Dangerous people.
Appreciate the perspective! The strength ratings are meant as a guide to highlight key points in the analysis, but they're not absolute. The goal is simply to give structure to the insights, which anyone can interpret as they see fit.
I used an impartial bot to analyze the note above for propagandistic content. See table below.
While there’s a good point about the increase in TLDs, global names clearly have utility, as shown by the fact that people are willing to pay for them. A system that provides a level playing field and avoids large price increases (like those seen with ENS) would be ideal.
One possible approach is to let users choose their short names, with a tie-breaking method if multiple users want the same name. Bitcoin's UTXO model could be well-suited for this purpose, though Namecoin faced challenges with implementation.
https://image.nostr.build/559492aca9aa4e481912909f5996165595499136968630958ed2ab1ae1ea9583.jpg
A better question is to ask yourself what nostr solves.
Nostr sends notes, and other stuff, from one user to another, using relays (web servers) in realtime.
This is better than the status quo, because if one relay goes down, you can use another, and you (hopefully) have not lost everything.
#pubky is provably censorship-resistant DNS. It has millions of nodes, and 15 years of track record, most famously via Bittorrent mainline.
Censorship resistant DNS is a big idea because it allows anyone to express themselves. To stop it you would have to take down 20 million nodes (as opposed to 2-3 relays) and then 100s more would spring up.
Each project does different things. Nostr improves on the status quo by relaying notes. Let nostr be nostr.
#pubky solves a big idea which is to decentralize DNS, which has become the acchiles heel of the web. It also gives access to dozens of massive nettworks (e.g. git) many bigger than nostr already.
Since they both use the same private key users can have one or both if they choose. There is a powerful intersection that some of us are now exploring. My mind is blown with the possibilities.
But you can have both, by each signing the other, and infrastructure for signing is mature in #nostr and #pubky. So you just need something like NIP-05 for pubky.
Nope, that is short names. This is pubkeys. Imagine every user had uncensorable DNS for their npub. For free. You dont need an auction because pubkeys are unique to the user, and the user can prove they own it. Imagine you could click on a user npub in your client and it will take you to their own part of the internet they control (opt-in) could be anywhere, including Tor. A place where they can express themselves and excercise free speech, on top of nostr. And there's no way to censor it. It's much more like dnstr, zerobit is like namecoin which is harder problem.
https://dnstr.org/
Havent ready it all. But how do you get a short name, what's the tie-breaker if two keys want one short name.
I think pubky is very sensibly only tackling one thing at a time.
And how is the DNS done? Is it censorship resistant?
Will, one thing you will love about this is: I said it's "free", but actually not quite, nothing is free. But I have analyzed the cost of sumbitting a DNS record, and it comes down to about 1 micro sat. Imagine doing something pretty useful for 1 microsat, and how granular an economy you can make. Then we start to price everything in microsats, get a full ultra micro economy gong where the units do something useful.
Got it:
> ZeroNet will then use the BitTorrent network to find peers that are seeding the site and will download the site content (HTML, CSS, JS...) from these peers.
But that is the whole site, not the DNS record, so probably wont work too well.
Nice effort tho, thanks for the share!
#pubky, like the internet, is a layered solution, designed to scale.
Nostr does one thing well, transmitting notes and other stuff, from one user to another, using relays (which are web servers).
Pubky tackles DNS, which nostr could import to allow every pubky to own a their own piece of the internet, in a censorshp-resistant way. This would be great for users, but, understandably, a bit scary for others.
Pubky can also use web server, and they could use nostr relays, or even tor, because it's a layered solution. It's not really in competition.
Pkarr is about using the right tool for the right job. It's more like the UNIX approach of dong one thing well. When things are combined you get a system greater than the sum of its parts. Nostr should also take the approach of doing one thing well, relaying notes from one user to another. Some nostr devs are trying to do things with nostr, which impressively work, but dont scale, because they are 20 years behind the state of the art. Use the right tool for the right job and users get the best of all worlds, the apps hide the UX from them, and they just get amazing features.
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