This is crazy to think about.
If we can get just a few hundred Muslims on Nostr, each connected to different relays, all zapping each other daily, you start to see the beginnings of a circular economy in cyberspace. But unlike fiat-based circular economies, this one would revolve entirely around high-signal digital production, essays, podcasts, memes, vlogs, art, code, shitposts, whatever. Each zap becomes like a form of digital patronage or an act of value exchange between sovereign Muslims operating outside the reach of banks, governments + corporations.
This could easily evolve into the seedbed for how real world capital begins to flow through Bitcoin. I havenโt even fully wrapped my head around what that means yet, but the implications would be that Islamic banks would either fade into irrelevance (as they are already) or be forced to adapt to the new culture we establish here on Nostr.
It's the first prototype of a financial ummah in cyberspace!
Always need to zap more! Nostr is our economy now so we need to use it to understand how we can support and grow it.
I can say from just running numbers on the activity of #NoorNode this past few months wr have about $80-$100 circulating in the muslim community here each month. It's a good start but obviously we can do better. I do understand that 1k sats might mean significantly more to someone in Africa or Asia than to mtself in America but if every Muslim loaded just 1-3k sats to zap each month I know we would immediately double or even tripple the liquidity of our circular economy here.
This can scale to funding charitable goals which is something we should think about as Ramadan approaches. We should make this the most zapped Ramadan ever!
Bottom line is that zaps are a very real way to show where value is. If you've been here a while and you're not zapping it shows you don't find much value in the community here (and if that is the case I'd love to know why). Zaps aren't just your way to show appreciation (and yes, you can do silent zaps), they are also a kindness and sadaqa.
View quoted note →