GM ☔️ PV 🤙
It’s May 2025 and there is still not one Nostr client I can recommend to any new user that I know they will not immediately have problems onboarding with.
Discussion
What is wrong with Amethyst?
There’s no iOS version.
That is not an onboarding problem, that is a gae user problem
You are wrong. Next.
Here's my onboarding flow
Me: download amethyst
Them: I have an iPhone
Me:
Shocking that user retention is on the decline.
Is the biggest problem onboarding to the wallet?
No, that’s just one of many.
What is?
safe key backups
no remote signing for mobile apps
not understanding relays
initial relay set not working
figuring out media storage
broken search
content discovery
and yes, wallets, wallets, wallets
Noswhere and NFDB will fix search, content discovery, spam filtering and relays :)
Media: 👀
Hi, I’m a brand new user and nothing you just said makes any sense to me.
As a brand new user you enable Noswhere (which will be integrated into clients, if they are up to it anyway) and you will get a better experiencd
Sorry, you lost me at “you enable.”
enabled by default
Which will be integrated? Into which clients? When? Where do I go to learn about this?
NFDB: A free NFDB relay will be available soon that just works™️
Test it at wss://nfdb.noswhere.com
Noswhere Search: currently down for a rewrite based on NFDB, but again just a search relay
The above will be available for free and will ideally be default relays
Spam filtering and discovery: APIs coming after NFDB. Just a switch you toggle in your client. If they integrate, amyway
Bro, this is all vaporware until proven otherwise.
None of this exists today.
you can literally go and try out NFDB at wss://nfdb.noswhere.com.
if you are talking about *now*, yes, currently everything is shit
most devs think you should just deal with it instead of working on solutions
devs can do anything they want, sure, but claiming their shit is good when they don’t have basic spam filters is insane
or blaming the user “oh why don’t you just use other relays”
Exactly. It’s great that the user is in control of their content, but you can’t blame them for your own apps being badly designed and NIPs not being supported or adhered to.
Most "new users" are technological troglodytes, they don't know what a client is, they don't even know how to change a default setting on their own.
They're hand fed every single piece of technology to them, and have zero interest to explore past the little walled garden they've been so comfortable with.
This is not good.
nostr:nprofile1qqs9xtvrphl7p8qnua0gk9zusft33lqjkqqr7cwkr6g8wusu0lle8jcpp3mhxue69uhkyunz9e5k7qg4waehxw309ajkgetw9ehx7um5wghxcctwvsrrnrxl is sweet bro come on
You can’t activate the built-in wallet if you live in New York and a lot of other geofenced locations.
Ah sorry didn't know
This may get partially solved soon if Primal updates the iOS app to allow NWC wallets, so that will bypass the KYC requirements, but then you still have to take your new user friend through a journey of setting up a separate NWC-enabled wallet, which they will surely forget how to use or even find again.
The price of being early
GM bro 🏴☠️🤟💜
Good morning ✌️🧡
What specific types of problems are they having?
Read the thread, I mentioned it.
Hmm, yeah I see. Each client ticks boxes for some but not all of that list.
I'm quite fond of the "choose your own adventure" method of nstart.me ... not that it solves your dilemma, but it does have immediate key securing features & user choice, which I think helps alleviate new user frustration since it's a mostly proactive flow. Choice (within reason) somehow ties our brains to commitment. 😅
I've heard Yakihonne is a good one for this, pretty sure its on apple too. Built in wallet.
After a 48 hrs deep dive in bunker you can get it done, maybe the new user hang here for another week
🤣
Snort.social is pretty simple IMO.
I'm an Amethyst/Amber guy myself
It needs to be a mobile client because people don’t want to use web pages on their phones.
Gm, Dan woke up and chose violence today 🫂💜🤙
I chose reality. I really have no way to onboard someone without a guarantee they will have issues that I’ll have to help them fix, and it might even mean ditching the initial client I told them to use.
Both on iOS and Android?
iOS, Android and desktop. Each have their own specific problems, and like I said, there is not one client I can recommend to them without knowing their phone model or platform that I can be sure they’ll understand how to use or not come back to me with problems.
Fair enough, we're still so early. 🤙
I would suggest jumble or Yakihonne but I forget their on boardings
Jumble is great, but it’s early days, and there’s no native app.
Yakihonne has the best wallet onboarding so far, but the UX is not without issues, and it’s more geared to long-form notes and I generally try to onboard people to short-form clients to start.
What do you mean by early days?
The client just launched and is still missing some features. It’s also web-only.
Which features you are missing?
For starters it has to be a mobile client. Web clients are fine for the second stage, but it’s not what most users are expecting, and you have to explain key signing browser extensions, which is a difficult onboarding process.
Cody knows. I have been providing feedback. Jumble is a really nice client for the web and I use it every day. That said, it’s not what I’d use for onboarding a new user yet.
Absolutely, people definitely prefer using native apps on their phones, haha. For starters, I think just letting them use ncryptsec is good enough. The important thing is to help them start using it first, rather than expecting them to understand decentralization and encryption right away.
Are you referring to #nostr nostr onborading or specifically zaps via lightning and weird state laws that inhibit said new user to onboard to a lgtn wallet?
That’s only one piece of it. There’s so much more.
Thanks, i read the comments after posting. LOL
Hmmmm, onboarding to a new protocol will always have overhead that the user has to pay upfront (learning about relays, media uploads, finding and connecting with frens). Like switching companies even if its the same job title and responsibilities etc.
For a short proposed solution:
Damus, primal, amethyst
All trade offs … but Mac vs Windows has trade offs. Texas gun laws vs NY gun laws have trade offs.
It’s just that I see it a lot from different perspectives and it makes sense why almost nobody joins or sticks around.
Those who see and choose the hard path, know its the right path.
Those who choose the easy path find out the hard way….if not eventually in time.
Nostr is running at quite a loss though.
You can bring a horse to water but you cant force it to drink. Focus on the horse thats thirsty.
We should meet ppl where they are at,… yes improve apps, but we should not waste time on workarounds for state policy or gov regulation. That type of work lives in the legal system thru reform and repeal. Then the apps work as expected.
I just mean that Nostr does not have infinite waiting time. Without a lot of new users—and I mean a LOT—and a high enough percentage of them contributing financially, then Nostr as we know it may cease to be in a few years.
In such a case it'll not go away entirely, of course. But client devs will find other work, AWS bills will go unpaid, business licenses will expire, clients will break down and go offline one by one, and so on. There might be a few hundred people left using whatever is still usable. You know, the fallout scenario.
Is this a realistic fate? It sure could be, and it means Nostr can't be too presumptuous about having years and years of comfortable runway during which to wait for all these people to somehow (not sure how) come to their senses.
Thats the art of marketing 💯
Not my area of expertise if you can tell 😅
:) True true. Though nostr:npub1aeh2zw4elewy5682lxc6xnlqzjnxksq303gwu2npfaxd49vmde6qcq4nwx makes some good points I think about what happens after you market someone in.
People aren’t going to “come to their senses.”
Either stuff is built on Nostr that people want to use or people won’t come.
The beauty of the protocol is that every new app can add marginal utility to the User. So maybe it’s not a Twitter replacement, but a Twitter substitute + fountain + zapstream + lightning wallet and that provides a User enough value to stick around.
We need more apps, not more Twitter clones in the hope people migrate here for the same experience just with less censorship because that isn’t a 10x worth it.
I think you're right about the Twitter clones not being the thing. Even Primal seems to be dropping strong hints that the future as per Primal's business plan lies in longform. (Which fair enough to them, I think longform on Nostr could be quite good if given enough love, which to date it has not been given.)
But otherwise there is a big difference between a lot of apps and a lot of apps that *work*, see meme.
Sure, abandonware will proliferate on Nostr.
But there should be a lot of plug and play type infrastructure coming eventually where it will just be easy to build on and piggyback from the identity system.
I don’t know what will be built that will work to gain a following, but interoperability lowers the bar for new entrants so the likelihood of something sticking goes up. More apps is more at bats. There’s no guarantees obviously but for devs there’s no better options for bootstrapping out there today.
🤙🤙🤙
Good reality dose. Perhaps we're hitting certain laws of protocol physics here. Can you imagine the situation being much different come the end of the year?
Onboarding should be by email or login with Google. Things that people are familiar.
No one has solved this in a way that guarantees key security.
What about this? https://www.privy.io/onboarding
I don't trust anyone, haha.
You don't need to trust.
Why not? How does it work? Got any diagrams?
This looks pretty tight to be fair, good concept.