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For two decades, we accepted a bargain: let Apple and Google verify every developer with government papers, and they will keep us safe from malware. The bargain was always a lie. Fake apps still steal millions while real developers get banned at the whim of bureaucrats in Cupertino and authoritarian censors in Moscow. @Zapstore, a Nostr-based app store, offers a different model: one where developers sign their own releases, users verify through social trust, and no passport is required to publish code. This is not a feature request. It is a return to the original promise of the internet. And nobody can stop us building it.
Max Hillebrand's avatar Max Hillebrand
No Papers Required: How Zapstore Breaks the App Store Checkpoint
Developer KYC creates chokepoints that authoritarian governments ruthlessly exploit. Zapstore restores permissionless software distribution using cryptographic identity instead of government papers.
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Replies (18)

Does the social trust scale though? Once you get to a point of say millions of users, there will be many cases where none of your friends or web of trust even uses the apps you want to try. And then you’re back to square 1 - blindly installing whatever and hope you don’t get taken advantage of.
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↩ replying to Karnage
Then in the worst case we're back where we are now, 500+ 5 star reviews from random strangers. But with the benefit of an open WoT graph your client can analyze and take out the bots. And most likely there will be some celebrity you trust in that group. It already works great now with our tiny community and I think it will work better with more users and a more interconnected graph.
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↩ replying to Karnage
It's not evident yet but there are two layers of curation: relays and users. The relay (app catalog) is the main curation mechanism. The Zapstore relay may decide to remove certain apps in the future, but that does not matter, the whole point here is having the ability to manage your own app catalogs. (In the alpha version right now this is already possible) WoT will also be used to discover/recommend app catalogs. User-level curation is talked about more because (a) it's innovative, (b) it's prominent in the UI, (c) in practice there's a single relay right now
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↩ replying to Karnage
Please keep taking about this, Karnage. More of cautious-style thinking and we'll be able to build apps that can scale. The tiny community here is great, but what about frens and family, IRL normies you know and such. Can't bully them to all to move to our apps, can't guarantee the apps we ourselves are using are as safe, can't use their Oligarchal apps - quite the modern day dilemma. 🫥
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↩ replying to Zapstore
Hey hey, so we replied to Karnage coz we were agreeing/encouraging the premise of his skepticism - that's it :)) It wasn't a commentary on Zapstore or any particular app per se. We're struggling with the larger tech stack migratory problem ourselves + worried we'll end up making the same mistake by putting all our 🥚🥚, for example, in the Proton basket or some such. You can see we post about #FreedomTech and #PrivacyRefuge on our profile too. But please, feel free to pick someone comment most relevant to you and do a thread/read/media-rich Note on the topic, adding relevant hashtags, citing some references if you wish. We can all repost, reply and push the narrative forward 🤓
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↩ replying to frphank
"The company also announced that it is developing a "new advanced flow" for experienced users with a higher risk tolerance who wish to sideload unverified apps. This new system will provide warnings about the associated risks but will ultimately allow users to make their own choices."
BleepingComputer
Google backpedals on new Android developer registration rules
Google is backpedaling on its decision to introduce new identity verification rules for all developers, stating that it will also introduce account...
↩ replying to Zapstore
My users install the apps that I give them not because they have a "high risk tolerance". They are totally clueless tech newbies who have a very low risk tolerance. They install my apps because they personally trust me. These also not "hobbyist" apps. They're professionally developed (by me, the professional) mission critical must-have apps. I wonder how socially inept people at Google are and what their view of people and society is that they believe anyone would trust some faceless multinational corporation over personal relationships that have been painstakingly developed over the years.