Thread

Back in the 90s, Adobe had a project called Camelot. The idea was simple but radical: make documents portable so they’d look the same no matter what computer, printer, or operating system you used. That’s how we got PDF — the portable document format. It went from an internal hack to the global standard for documents. Nostr is sitting at a similar moment. Right now, our records — posts, payments, signatures, attestations — are scattered across silos and platforms. Each one has its own quirks, its own lock-in. But with Nostr events, we’ve got the chance to create a Portable Record Format: Universal → any event can be relayed and read anywhere. Portable → your records aren’t stuck in someone else’s database. Faithful → signatures make sure the record is intact and authentic. Standardized → like PDF became an ISO standard, Nostr could become the open standard for records. PDF solved the “what you see is what you get” problem. Nostr could solve the “what you sign is what you share” problem. Portable documents changed everything. Portable records might do the same.