We have to be aware of the danger for NOSTR to go the way of email.
Whoever is best funded will likely build the best client and everyone will end up on that. If they choose the advertising route to monetise you could end up with a Twitter like experience.
Curious to hear your thoughts on this. đđź
Iâve been obsessing over this for the past few days, remembering #[2] âs amazing talk in Lugano - legit the best talk Iâve ever heard at a bitcoin conference. unfortunately I canât find any video but he wrote it up here:
back to your question, my hot take is it doesnât matter whose is best or how itâs monetised - it only matters that itâs easy to switch. therefore, that should always be top of mind at the protocol development level. i.e. no âfeatureâ should ever increase the likelihood of client lock-in, even a little, even for one person, even hypothetically.
The analogy is chilling but a good read. I think itâs gonna boil down to clients with principles and integrated with smarts features, business models and use cases that will generate the returns as well as ppl in the team that can look into user adoption Vs. cheap thrills.
Iâm neither a fan of ads not VCs, but
- On adverts - ads are not bad, but when adverts dominate how developers built, tracks users, manipulates users then itâs no good. There are ideas floating around on how the good is absorb and bad hurried.
- On VCs - capitalism is not bad but 99% shitty and milking it at everyoneâs expense but there would be that 1% who would genuinely help developers and builders
But more important, users will eventually dominate social media so slightly different from the email concept above for e.g high influencing individuals and clients can work on marketing partnership, relays can be exclusive.
Relays can also become channels based on interests (aka your satellite/cable tv channel selection packages who know). If there are marketplaces built, clients donât determine which users have access as users own their own IDs, but clients can make it more attractive to use their platform. There are just so many what ifâs right now - still too early and many areas yet to be explored
Nice - the first thing that came to my head after I thought about this was Lopps blog post. Need to watch the Lugano talk
This is a great read and puts into perspective a lot of the âżitcoin debates of the past. Why small block sizes was so important and even why some want smaller block sizes!!
As for Nostr, then itâs not clear to me why it wouldnât end up like SMTP besides the main difference being that relays donât relay notes to other relays (unless they do and Iâm unaware of it). This will be interesting to see how it can develop. Definitely with âżitcoin there are ways to prevent spam that wasnât available to SMTP, so hopefully we can win there.
I do think that âżitcoin and Nostr is a killer combination
Relays aggregating events from other relays is a thing
My SMTP keynote is posted on my web site: https://www.lopp.net/presentations.html
Thanks to the protocol; the best client will never be the only client.
Whether we're talking about a web client, or an app on the PlayStore or AppStore, when a user's experience becomes affected or hypothetically if the developers were to go down the path of monetisation through advertising the user can head over to any other client and take their relays with them.
Even if it happens it will be temporary until some other client copy it without the adds and people will transfer there.
And they will transfer without losing anything which is why they will.
The real threat is what happened to search.
Some services will give you custom algos for discovery. If clients don't let you choose, algos and clients may merge and we're right back to twitter, running their own servers, blacklisting free speech servers from their ultra popular client.
We will only have Free NOSTR if either
1) it's not that popular; or
2) we continue to run free servers in the dace of popular services.
The masses will never be free because they just want to be.
That's fine if you don't mind ads. If you don't like ads, you may opt for a less polished experience without ads. The power of Nostr being an open and permissonless protocol is that it empowers the user with choice.
True, but email is also a protocol that doesn't necessitate advertising. And still most users have chosen to be the product that's sold...
Hopefully the possibilities of micropayments via lightning will create viable alternatives!
#[0]
If the builders have the option to stay independent they might not follow the ads or investor funding model.
But it requires that users voluntarily keep âĄď¸âĄď¸ enough to devs to keep them happy and funded.
"Choose" is the keyword here. Devs will choose what route to take re: advertising, and users will choose which client they're happy to use thanks to the open source nature.
Free market wins.
