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Thanks for this post! We need criticism like this to spark meaningful conversation and for stakeholders to improve. My thoughts: -> Nostr / Bitcoin analogy: Bitcoin the idea, once out in the world, cannot be uninvented just like Nostr with self-authenticating data and optionality in server preferences. In other words, the pubkey network that enables a global marketplace for UX on the same data. I firmly believe that if Nostr fails in its current form, the idea I described above cannot. It is because most if not all apps benefit from a social graph and associated data they can already tap into, and not having to bootstrap themselves from ground zero while users have much more freedom to choose what and who to see and what not. For me it's a no-go to participate in the siloes ever again, once at least one nostr app in a category gets to a point where it's usable, like the twitter clones, #Zapstore or long-form apps like #Yakihonne and #Primal to some extent. It's just a worse UX for me to go back and be handled like a child in some contexts, and cattle to be slaughtered and exploited in others. The idea of Nostr will not be stopped because the idea of cryptographic identities and the decoupling of clients and servers will live on: I could argue that Nostr was not even the first to try to make this idea a reality but it was the first to achieve a breakthrough. Just like bitcoin. -> "Nostr doesn't solve the multiple social accounts problem" : I hear your reservations. People want to talk to their audiences in the right way and form, catering to the specific UX they find useful for that particular message. That's exactly why people many times design new NIPs for a use-case that their app needs, while other times they go with an established NIP already supporting something they want to do. There is really nothing that would stop you from designing the exact UX you want for your audience by mixing, matching and inventing new NIPs on the one hand and rendering the stuff you exactly want, the way you exactly want on the other. A simple example of this is SatShoot's freelance Job/Offer NIPs, and the review NIP I designed for the freelance use-case, based on @arkinox 's work on the Qualitative Thumb System (qts). Another one is the new kind-scoped follows in SatShoot which allows you to start a new professional network that doesn't interfere with the kind3 follow. The miracle of nostr is that while you can do that, you can still use the original social graph to bootstrap an initial web of trust. I believe your criticism in this regard shines light on how nostr apps might do this hard work badly today but this has absolutely nothing to do with nostr the protocol. It has to do with unpolished products. And a possible lack of imagination by product people and engineers. -> "Nostr is not *for* Censorship Resistance": The amount of focus around this mantra is cringe-worthy. I mean the explicit platitudes around this. Nostr is not even the best protocol if you want to emphasize censorship resistance. What nostr is really good at is preserving the established working model of server-client architecture all the while allowing for more optionality and thus more competition and thus better UX. That's it! Nostr came about because @fiatjaf had enough of P2P purism in the first place. But again, people not understanding what nostr is about is no problem for nostr, or myself. I believe there will be people who get it, and they can be my running mates in the ecosystem. -> "Grants come with a price": Absolutely agree. This is why I never applied to OpenSats and never will. I think people have somehow gotten used to believing that accepting money with "No strings attached" is a thing. It is NOT, and this is going to be a lesson for as long as people exist. However, I don't condemn people who have done this. Especially those who could take the time and pioneer solutions on nostr that is very hard without taking some time off the product-market fit aspect. I am not a protocol dev so I naturally want to spend my time designing and developing apps with more specific utility. But this "good for nostr" vs "good for xyz app" is not a trivial dilemma for people with a short to medium term profit motive. I chose to use my own time and savings to execute on my own vision, because I want to work on something with hopes for profits in a few years. If I run out of money, I either get an investor or offer my service to someone who has a vision I can support. This keeps my priorities clear. I wonder what people on grants feel like who are somewhere in the middle area of that "good for nostr" - "good for my app" framework, but I don't want to be one of them. Once again, thanks for sharing this and I wish you the best with Satlantis!

Nostring with a hammer are we? :-)

I like sharing unpopular opinions: View quoted note →

I havent read this yet because Svetski has turned me off with most things he's said in the past, and it's long as fuck. if anyone I know and respect suggests I read it, I'll do so. quoting it anyway both for visbility for the author and to source the potential aforementioned suggestions

As an outsider, lots of learning and food for thought here. Important to make uncomfortable challenges. Would now be helpful for someone to take the other side.

Interesting. Given us a lot to think about. Though I’m curious to see how the consensus of Nostr will respond to this, if any, or not at all I do see Nostr being THE solution, if governments + social media took away our freedom of speech & expression on the internet. Or if we lose our right to privacy/encrypted speech, tearing away our ability to be pseudonymous on social media, thus, leading us to be on Nostr to retain some, if not all, of that freedom. But what if the worst case scenarios never happens? But we still fall victim to the subtle erosion of our free speech with small changes to the term of service policies implemented under our nose, like how inflation does to the dollar with the money printing machine. People will still stick to the legacy social media if their whole lives are on those platforms & they’ll make compromises until it gets TOO uncomfortable, hence, Twitter turning into X & people leaving to Bluesky, which could in turn, lead to another corrupted system. Again, something to think about. Thanks for bringing up the NOSTR UNPOPULAR OPINIONS 🫡 View quoted note →

That was a great read. Thanks for posting. For me personally, all I want is a small, spam-free space where I can read the thoughts of other Bitcoin fans and freedom tech users. I’m not really in it for the whole revolution bit. For some of us, NOSTR is the first social app that we’ve found at all appealing. Facebook was only tolerable via web with an ad blocker extension like Facebook Purity. Even then, weeding through the leftist political rants was tedious. Instagram was fun for watching dog videos but 99% of the content in my feed was from influencers I wasn’t even following, not my direct contacts. Not to mention all of their political baggage, pandering to the various victim classes, the pronoun nonsense and forcing users to pretend that men are women and vice versa. It’s garbage. Twitter I couldn’t even sign up for with all its CAPTCHAs, and when browsing as a non user, all the posts were out of order. It was just useless. But with NOSTR I can chat with likeminded individuals in a censorship free environment. The fact that it’ll never be revolutionary doesn’t bother me. Not every product has to be a blockbuster success. The world needs niche products too and NOSTR is a great niche social protocol.

according to this article bitcoiners were suppressing their “shiny object syndrome” and then came nostr to fix that 😳 dude i’m sorry that your venture didn’t play out as you planned but why shit on nostr and say that bitcoiners are trying to chase a high, smh you’re right it’s a tool, i use it to fix what it can for me and so do others, you tried for your use case and it didn’t work out, find something else but expecting nostr to be a swiss army knife is naive

I joined Nostr to get away from technofascist platforms like Facebook and X.com. For me, Nostr is fundamentally about resisting censorship.

Very thought provoking. What stood out most to me was the part about grants. I agree that the incentives may be aligned in a way that doesn’t inherently focus on the customers. At some point it needs to be monetized into a sustainable business. That means grants eventually have to end.

The map is not the territory. Bitcoin/nostr/protocol is a map.

🏰 FORT NAKAMOTO DISPATCH 🏰 🚨 BREAKING: UNPOPULAR OPINIONS ENTER THE NOSTR ARENA 🚨 🔎 Key Takeaways from the Svetski Manifesto: ✅ Sacred cows make the best burgers. ✅ Critical thinking > Blind allegiance. ✅ The best protocols evolve, not stagnate. 🏰 FORT NAKAMOTO OFFICIAL RESPONSE: 🔥 Healthy debate strengthens Nostr, just like adversarial thinking strengthens Bitcoin. 🔥 If the ideas are solid, they’ll stand the test of time. If not, well… zap wars incoming. MISSION OBJECTIVE: 🚀 Read, discuss, and challenge—because nothing great comes from an echo chamber. —END TRANSMISSION— #SteelmanNotStrawman #FixTheProtocolFixTheFuture #FortNakamoto

I can only imagine how frustrating over-building Satlantis onto Nostr must have been. The better uses I've seen for incorporating Nostr, at this time anyway, essentially amount to allowing you to use your Nostr identity on a site that otherwise is a fairly centralized platform. Fountain doesn't do everything on Nostr; it just does comments about podcasts on Nostr so you get the benefit of your identity behind your opinions, while they get a sane platform that they're not worrying about juggling around a constantly evolving protocol. I get being overly enthusiastic out of the gate, and the urge to treat everything as a nail when you've just gotten a shiny new hammer (just look at what all the AI bros are doing...). I don't personally anticipate Nostr being the dominant method of interaction on the Internet any time soon; I sort of imagine it almost following an arc of XMPP; ignored for decades, and then snuck into far more products to far more users than ever realize they're using it in the first place (even Facebook Chat was xmpp for awhile, as well as Google Talk). I'm not here for the mass adoption; I'm here for the adoption by the people whose interaction I value, who do get that value proposition that the vast majority will ignore. Because if they weren't prone to ignoring it, the big centralized platforms would have been rejected in the first place -- we already had forums, usenet, IRC, email, and the Finger protocol after all, all of which got shoved aside so we could play in some private walled gardens. I'm glad to hear you're a bit more levelheaded these days; you've got plenty of value to produce in the world, and capital misallocation is always a shame. Satlantis is a cool idea, but I don't see it blowing up over night (perhaps at least until that day it does, in a Parker Lewisian fashion). While we like blow off tops sometimes, it's rarely fun to be the one putting most of the money behind it right before the blow-off. Let it grow at the pace it will, and remember you've got more than just a hammer in your toolbox.

I think satlantis has a really good potential and on the right track with nostr. So I will share just a feedback of what I want it to be able to get done and usable as satlantis itself will promote nostr and will do it great, the nostr apps will be what promotes the protocol. 1. Login with nostr is great, login with just nsec could benefit with other nostr login options. 2. I find it much more appealing and easy to navigate and find merchants on it per place than btc map which is great. That said it needs more coverage. 3. The comment section display needs some Wot as the bots spill a lot of nonsense per hashtag so a new nostr user just visiting there will be wtf (see Dubai for example, world news are for elsewhere). 4. When I first checked satlantis sometime ago I actually thought that it could be some sort of combination with nostr airbnb. It is a huge deal to run but users may be more interested in organising events with accommodation (lets all of us go to @fiatjaf 's hostel shed first 🤣). There is a huge difference in bitcoin adoption for these few years so a lot of places will have more to offer. On a practical note what I want to see is place tab with wot feed > scores (possibly including rates from your nostr wot)> Accommodations with btc (same full info) maybe developed in a booking through nostr system > Merchants (that tab is great) > Events (dont worry about that one, when people start to book and organise, they would want to share that travel and clients will be obliged to implement in a compatible way unless there js a radical nip change or something). Btw apart from Nostur thats the first other usable nostr app that shows who followed you as notification 🔥 In short satlantis is not lacking on nostr, nostr is not lacking on satlantis, both need more practicallity. Just only in recent months I see more focused specific app development that concentrates on a specific target market and aims to do it well. That is a nostr business model and leverages above the tool label.

One thing I’d take issue with is the BlueSky example. Users did not flock there because they were being censored on X and needed something permission-less; they flocked there because they had LOST the power to censor others on X and wanted it back for themselves. The promise they see in BlueSky is not greater freedom, but that their faction has enough concentration of power to limit the freedom of others. So there’s no mystery as to why they didn’t turn to this platform. It’s everything they didn’t want.

Bumped onto this post and the 'as-nostr-as-possible' substack. Great reads! Please take my sats. From your blog post I am trying to solve the slowness + crawl ability with a server/client model. I've been told (by Nostr purists) that if the app is not using outbox/relay model/OSS it's not truely Nostr. So glad to read about the concept 'as nostr as possible' approach which is the model i've been applying prioritising user features/speed/UX over ideology. And while the eco-system gets better more parts of the app(s) can be ported to be pure Nostr.

Censorship resistance will soon be a big topic again in all of EU. The DSA will force a lot of people to find something like nostr.