Been looking into following zap data around the Nostr network as a latent web of trust/value. Still excited about the idea, but it turns out to be less trivial than I thought.
Basically, you can't just ask relays for zaps from or to specific accounts, because of the way NIP 57 works. To answer questions like "what zaps has Logan sent in the past week", you have to first get "all the zaps" (or as close as you can get on Nostr) and then *locally* filter that data down based on senders, recipients, etc.
Time to write a zap caching server! 😓😅 Unless there is already something out there like this? Anyone know of a service which aggregates zap data?
Objective truth is as dead; there is no global view. We must begin to answer questions by starting local and crawling through social graphs.
So you get a weird link from someone named John. You have a friend named John. The question isn't "Is this the real John?" - a question based on the dead concept of objective truth. It's "Is this the John I know?" - a question answerable by starting local and traversing social graphs.
I think most conceptions of WoT rely too much on (and handwave away) users putting the needed data into the system, in terms of explicitly marking nodes as trusted.
I think we need to start looking at using zap data as a latent web of trust (or rather, web of value). I've written about it this here: nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqyhjp3nd83hxklumz9elp6gmth2zrhr804hrcrktpmplygwtw4jjqqxnzde38q6rwwph8qcrvdpjwz7qav
I wonder how much more quickly we could have gotten over the Covid bullshit if people had been using something like Nostr instead of centralized platforms.
Hey @pippellia!
I agree that a key here is spontaneous user action. Zaps are a great candidate, because it doesn't feel like work; it feels like a thank you, and we already see people doing it. And within a network with zap trails as a primary content curation technique, it would feel like an upvote as well (though local, not global) . This is why I call the zap network a "self-cultivating" neural net - we don't have to solve the problem of "who creates the graph", because users are already clearly primed to engage in the actions that generate the data the algorithm needs.
By the way, I resonate a lot with your writing on "There is no global", and love the framing that the idea of "global truth" is as dead today as God was dead in the 19th century.
The last part of your piece is a bit too math-heavy for me to follow easily, but your bullet pointed description fits.
I've been resisting getting on board social media for years, even though it was always touted as the "right thing to do" in terms of marketing.
But with Nostr, it feels different. It doesn't feel like I have to make a deal with the devil to start to connect online.
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