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Nostr's usage and growth among active users of the protocol continues to grow, however overall active users are still fairly low. Clearly our core community loves Nostr and understands it's importance. We are all bullish. That said, we need a breakout moment or event if we want to continue to #grownostr outside of the Bitcoin community. We can to recruit streamers to try zap.stream to see it's potential to get paid for their content. We can recruit bloggers to use habla.news and highlighter.com to have their voices heard without censorship. I still feel we need a good Instagram and TikTok alternative to recruit from those audiences.
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Replies (52)

It’s a constant struggle. On one hand I want to use nostr more, on the other hand I want to use all social media less and have less screen time. Best I can do is only use nostr when I allow myself screen time. Breakout will come once well known non bitcoiners start coming here to act as a catalyst. Then others will follow.
↩ replying to Derek Ross
I see your point but I find it a menace to copy legacy media’s (mental) models of monetization by scale. I strongly believe it doesn’t have to be this way. Not yet and if later, hopefully very differently. To #grownostr user base, to make it sustainable, and to make it resilient are all important but very different things. Sometimes they intersect but more often than not they contradict each other. As always: trade offs…
Onboarding for new users is still the challenge. Users are used to logins and pw with another one of their accounts working as a backup. Also, understanding the benefits and how to convert over from platform to protocol theory, the average user online doesn’t understand. If somehow it was made to feel the same and convert their current user experience that might make them feel safe. But npub and nsec can be scary for those not already involved in the crypto space.
↩ replying to npub1wxaz...kf2l
As a new #Nostr user, I didn't realize until I'd gone through the signup process and "spinning up a node" and all of that, something like two weeks later β€” that using crypto is absolutely **not** required to use Nostr. I had no idea! As a #new user, I would have been far more comfortable onboarding, knowing I could leave the whole crypto thing to the side and use Nostr to stay in touch when there's no other way of staying in touch with family or what have you. I could have had time to do more research to see which setup I may have preferred otherwise. I like to research when I have time and evidently, there are several choices to choose from.
β€œwe need a breakout moment or event if we want to continue to #grownostr outside of the Bitcoin community.” Sounds like what Bitcoiners said about #Bitcoin like 10 years ago. The catalyst continues to be bad money. As long as the money continues to print and politicians continue to weapons their currency, Bitcoin thrives. And likewise, as long as the internet companies continue to censor and ban free speech, Nostr thrives. Gradually then suddenly
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There's conventions, conferences, and trade shows for every under the sun. Some of them aren't very expensive to set up at. I'm not suggesting that you specifically become a trade show nomad but maybe some group would be willing to dedicate time to do a 'nostr tour' to various things where ideologies overlap. A budget for it might seem like a hurdle but a well planned itinerary & an inspired team could be enough to open up various opportunities. I don't know. I think about stuff like that a lot because a break out moment is probably going to look very different than most previous, being that nostr is so very different. That idea bounces around in my head a lot. This seemed like a good spot to set it free. πŸ˜…
I think we might need to lower our time preference. Look at the challenges facing Twitter right now…and they have advertising. Our alternative is buying bitcoin with the dollars being spent on NOSTR development. Growth isn’t the goal, quality is.
My two cents. To keep active people around, it's important to make sure their following lists don't get wiped out. Mine got nuked, and I stopped using Nostr for a month. I only came back because I love the idea of decentralized social media and enjoy following Nostr devs' progress.
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The infrastructure is still lacking in MANY respect, rushing to onboard people who aren't ready for it will leave them struggling through a subpar experience and more likely than not give up on Nostr. Good luck getting them to come back after this. Nostr is just like Bitcoin, people are going to flock to it in cycle but it's probably for the best that we don't have a "breakout moment" right now.
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↩ replying to Derek Ross
The UX problems with Nostr clients are front and center and very apparent in contrast with centralized solutions. We know that the current state of key management is unsustainable for larger audiences. There seems to be promising progress in that regard. I do agree that waves of adoption stimulate innovation but "recruiting" people to Nostr feels like "recruiting" people to Bitcoin. It's a pretty perilous endeavour.