Nostr Web Client

Nostr lacks decentralized discovery, although with some open mindedness it can be added easily, and I did some work to prove it can scale (120,000 users records kept alive on Bittorrent DHT with one 4cores vps) see more at github.com/nuhvi/pkarr

But I am curious, if you do have decentralized identity with Pkarr, and you can add that to Matrix protocol, to patch the need for identity servers, what else is going to be missing from Marrix, it is also signed events protocol, but with a lot of time to mature and state of the art encrypted chat rooms with moderation and access control.

What is your best argument against Matrix? Also how long can Nostr stay simpler than Matrix if it is going to have all these features you mentioned?

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Discussion

Melvin Carvalho 2y ago

Matrix is federated. You dont own your own identity.

Nuh 2y ago

That is my point, the same solution for Nostt discoverability would allow you to own your identity in Matrix or at least a fork of Matrix clients: I.e using the DHT

Nuh 2y ago

do me a favor, check pkarr.nuh.dev, and see if you can imagine using that to turn Matrix into a federated network with sovereign identity (like Bsky but with open DHT instead of consortium), and avoid reinventing that wheel

Melvin Carvalho 2y ago

> Nostr lacks decentralized discovery, although with some open mindedness it can be added easily

Let's build it!

Blake 2y ago

A way to leave and read reviews for relays before joining would be cool..

s3x_jay 2y ago

Your comment made me think of the labeling system I devised this weekend (which will get put up as a PR later this week).

An unstructured, 3rd party label of another person's profile is basically a review / recommendation of the other Nostr user. It's broader than just recommendations for relays, but every relay lists the npub of the Nostr account that's responsible for it. The relay reviews could be put there. (Though they'd be mixed in with other reviews for that person/organization).

https://github.com/s3x-jay/nostr-nips/blob/master/68.md

Nuh 2y ago

I am doing my part at pkarr.nuh.dev, soon I will build proof of concept for a client that leverages that identity, but in the meantime I need to actually get people to care

229a11e3... 2y ago

Can you suggest what requirements should be addressed by a useful decentralized discovery system? Or, if you know of a doc(s) that already outlines them, can you provide a link to it or them?

Nuh 2y ago

1- self authenticated records (data is signed, no need to trust the resolver)

2- permissionless (anyone can submit their data without negotiating with a small set of gatekeepers)

3- censorship resistant (taking down nodes or forcing them to censor some data doesn't disrupt discovery)

From an evolutionary perspective, Bittorrent DHT is the Bitcoin of decentralized discovery, it is the one system that was attacked the most by businesses and governments and it emerged from these attacks and out lasted them.

Nuh 2y ago

We can build an adhoc DHT from Nostr relays, or even try to host the entire set of profiles of everyone on every relay, or implement gossip protocols between relays etc.

But all of these solutions are both unnecessary given that Bittorrent exist, and using relays for discovery contradicts their inherent interest of keeping paying users from migration.

Finally, decentralized discovery is useful for applications that doesn't speak Nostr at all, or doesn't want to use websockets etc. They still would benefit from a DNS interface backed by a permissionless distributed registry instead of centralized servers.