We might need a client just for this. Amethyst can send the invites, I can only point to the App in Android. iOS users should get another app and web users a third option. Maybe the Amethyst user can recommend a few options for them to choose from on a website.
Discussion
Maybe a simple client that explains what Nostr is, points to a few options of clients, maybe even a few relays. A true on-boarding client.
That’s the problem. People don’t care what Nostr is. They only care if they can follow their friends, family and favorite celebs. Until they can do that, no amount of onboarding effort will matter. And yes, of course that’s a chicken-and-egg problem.
And I hate to say it folks, but all the different clients makes it even more confusing. 99% of people just use the default web browser that comes with their device. They don’t even know what the app is called. Nor do they care.
When iOS and Android each come shipped with their own default Nostr app, and it’s just called something super generic like “Social”, then we’ll start the real adoption.
Or, ya know, we just convince Taylor Swift to move 100% to Nostr. That’d work too.
nostr:npub164q45vfa8prpl7f63stsl9qm9n22v6julkasjdqxjc8kevchsj0sp42rl3 you were asking for progressive non-bitcoiners to interview? Go after Taylor Swift.
I agree. But anyone coming into this field should know what a private key is and how to keep it safe, etc. I will leave to the onboarding client to choose how to best explain this to people, if necessary.
Dude, they barely know what a password is and they certainly don’t know how to keep it safe.
Adding onto this, the only thing saving them is that they can change their password. Now you want them to have something like a password, but much longer and impossible to remember and oh yeah, if you lose it or it gets stolen there’s no way on heaven or on earth to change it?
Nope.
We don't have any other option right now. They have to store a private key.
I agree with a lot of what Shawn is saying. I like nosta but I think we could also have a less thorough version of that. And Shawn, you bring up many good points although with a bit of defeatist attitude. I do agree that we have many challenges here, but also think we can bridge them somewhat, even if imperfectly.
For one, I don’t know if we really need to explain nostr at all. This could be a progressive discovery function and a thing you learn along the way. Clients could build their own brands. This could alleviate some confusion. Users can slowly ease into concepts along the way.
I don’t agree that people don’t know what passwords are - I think everyone does by now. People also use password managers, key chains and now passkey. Yeah, we’ll get a bunch of people who lose access but maybe we can work out something down the road. In the meantime we can make used of what’s available.
It’s good to hear sobering feedback but let’s not interpret it as the end of the road. With other issues in the table, password are the least of our worries.
I’ll design what I think would be a good “low effort” version of nosta and we can always test both.
For web clients I don’t see a need for this. It’s one splash screen to greet a person and off into their own onboarding flow.
I’ll conclude by agreeing with Vitor that there are concepts people have to learn when coming here that cannot be abstracted away any further. We can ease the learning but learn they must.
If this sounds too difficult, sit back and let me worry about it :)
I do like Nosta, but I can't see it as an onboarding client. It's too much graphics. We need simpler things.
But we can always have competing onboarding clients :)
I agree. I thin the ideal in-between client would be unbranded / more generic. It’s a good option to have but for different needs.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound defeatist. I think this is a huge opportunity to improve UX.
I’m encouraged by the work nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft has done with nsecBunker and whatever he was hinting at today:
nostr:note1qmuakk7f6zr3h8x0ng7ryc8rw2f2vjdr2ka74ayvh4lxr4hrk3jswxuqcp
And to be clear, I love the architecture of public/private key authentication. It just needs a little abstraction to make it less threatening. For example, here’s how Apple handles it:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102195
Apple of course has the ability for deeper integration into the device than normal apps, but maybe we can learn from this.
Look, if someone were to implement Nostr across their entire company, it would need to integrate somehow into their existing IdP. (Active Directory, Okta, SAML, OAuth, whatever.)
They would need an interface to create (or maybe import, or not) their npub and nsec. And maybe change it somehow without losing history. Generic departmental accounts would need to exist where the person using it can’t access the nsec.
And then it needs to be stored and accessed easily when people need to use it. But be able to have their access to the departmental account revoked when they leave the company or even change jobs within the company.
Maybe nsecBunker can help there, but I admittedly haven’t dug into it enough to see where it meets this.
I agree with Shawn. Here are my thoughts from regular person's perspective. I am here to connect and be social because I quit using FB because of their censorship policies. If my hubstr didn't walk me through all of the steps, I wouldn't have bothered. I am not a techie, nerd, or geek or whatever qualifications that you have to have to understand how all this works. I am just a girl that wants to share her life stories with other like-minded people, preferably people that I know in real life too. And I have a basic understanding of how nostr works so I know there can't be censorship, so I have a big appreciation for that. I just happen to be married to a Bitcoin junkie that is in to all of this stuff and could set it up for me. So until it becomes plug-n-play, it is going to be an uphill battle to get more people.
You're going to lose people, IMO, if they have to jump around from client to client trying to get through the onboarding process. Clients should just include onboarding.
You -> Amethyst or You -> Nostr? I don't care if Amethyst loses people.
My issue is that the receiver doesn't have a Nostr app pre-installed to load the link that we can send. So, it has to be a web link.
Even if we send a link to download Amethyst, there is no way to add extra information to pre-load in the app when the person opens it up for the first time, losing most of the benefits of a friend-based onboarding.
It's not about Amethyst losing and another client winning. It's about a seamless experience. That said, doesn't Nostr.com essentially have this already and act as the onboarder with njump and clients being listed for users to choose?
Couldn't we use referral links that are deep linked into Amethyst with a URL handler?
amethyst.com/?friend=npub1234
I can test but I don't think deep links work if apps are not installed first. It will likely go back and forth between the browser and the app (first to install and then deeplink to onboard). And if that is the case, then it doesn't make sense to be an Amethyst link, given that people can choose Nostur or Snort, etc, if they are not on Android.
BTW, I am not saying that Amethyst won't have onboarding, on-boarding a friend requires some flexibility on the client choice.