If #ecash wants wide adoption, users will need easy discovery of trustworthy mints, even niche ones, serving local communities.

This discovery cannot rely on centralized parties, the obvious and only choice currently is Nostr #WoT .

It is to verify not just that mints haven't rugged yet, Nostr can provide data on:

- Uptime Reliability

- Zap volume

- Data on all audits so far

- ... and kinds of signals of trust

Of course this can be provided live which comes very handy!

This way new users can discover possible new mints and make responsible decisions which to trust.

On the other hand, current users are the watchful eyes over them, vigilantly enforcing the trust that mints were given.

Bitcoiners often make the mistake of only thinking in terms of one system, one protocol, or maybe bitcoin and its layer 2s at most.

What nostr brings to the table is a social protocol orthogonal to others like payment-protocols but very much complementary.

Ecash has trust issues, and Nostr mitigates these in a simple way.

Never underestimate the power of the authentic social layer, tied together by cryptographic proof.