What’s needed for a nostr messaging app to successfully replace whatsapp/imessage/etc?
Discussion
A good interface for groupchats
Mass adoption would really help but cross functionally. If I could message a friend on iMessenger from my Npub and they weren’t required to have one then it would spread
Is it a reasonable task? Signal seems to be doing a pretty good work.
Current problems:
- Nostr private messages encrypted, but the recipients are not. People can see who you are chatting with.
- Whole history compromised if recepients nsec key is revealed.
- No media sending. All media is currently shared in nostr as links to a hosting service.
Great input and def good to know what can hinder mass adoption so that fixes can be implemented!
I love signal but the user adoption has been slow. A few things I’ve been curious abt on signal
1. Who their early adopters target market is - it’s a bit fuzzy atm
2. How’s the cost structure broken to - ie what’s the % for infrastructure etc - signal’s $10M sustenance cost per year is high given it’s purely dependent on donations and donors has no interference (as opposed to wiki)
3. There’s a shitcoin Integration? Why not Bitcoin? And adapt lightning ?
4. Is signal swinging more towards whatsapp or telegram ? Might make sense to open up to telegram mode where devs can build communities on it. Wasn’t sure why effort builders swung into “stories.”
I think signal has a lot of potential and if the growth strategies are clearer, it will set precedence on a lot of things
The shitcoin aspect was new for me as it is not advertised in finland. I had to delibrately search for it in the app.
Clearly a broken insentive structure.
Yea. They could consider integrating with web5 for their payment models and open up for dev community to build on it. That’s an open space Bitcoin ecosystem. And target working crowd like Apple did to onboard early users. Not sure if any of this is helpful for #[2] lol but good luck! I absolutely love Nostr and always rooting for devs / builders
Lots of super insightful comments here, thanks guys!
Easy onboarding for various target market, clean/minimal UI
This would be a game changer #[0]
Access to citizens in countries like Iran without regime interference
Sorry if I’m out of the loop, have Irans government been blocking access to Nostr clients and whatnot?
Voice and video?
I am also thinking about this topic.
I think a good way to think about is, to check what are the missing points of other already available apps, so we can build on them.
Weird, lucky market dynamic.
I can barely get friends and family onto signal.
Private and encrypted channels?
Notifications and encrypted (small) group chats.
Developers stopping using Telegram and moving here. There's no reason for them to keep using Telegram
I agree, also thank you for the zap!
Nostr is not designed for that, lacks forward secrecy and privacy