Is nostr a good idea? What’s the evidence for that?
Discussion
Nostr has no bans, can be improved to fix its problems, and currently works better than anything else I'm aware of
In what way it works better than anything you aware?
Blossom also has not bans in the same sense the nostr has (redundancy of relays)
Blossom also can improved to fix its problems (it’s an open protocol)
But BitTorrent already had no bans before blossom except with a design that should work and does work instead of one that seems pointless
there are multiple differences between the design of blossom and the design of bittorrent. but the most important are probably:
- Responsibility model: BitTorrent relies on random volunteers to keep your personal content alive forever. Blossom lets you take responsibility by choosing and paying for your own hosting providers.
- Content survival: Your vacation photos work great on BitTorrent if millions of people want to seed them (they don't). Personal content dies when seeders lose interest. Blossom keeps your content available as long as you maintain your servers.
- Economic sustainability: BitTorrent depends on altruism at scale. Blossom uses proven hosting economics - you pay for what you need.
BitTorrent has existed for 20+ years but zero Nostr clients use it or considered using it for media hosting. Blossom is new and already has multiple clients and servers adopting it. what is the reason for that in your opinion? they are not familiar with bitorrent?
Stopped reading at "responsibility model"
BitTorrent seedboxes exist
Learn to fact check your AI or rely on your own knowledge if research is too hard
Interesting. Wasn’t familiar with that. Still - why do you think clients and serves are adopting blossom and not BitTorrent? What’s your explanation?
Maybe web browser compatibility, maybe just grifter mindset wanting to generate the profit of a seedbox without delivering the same quality of service
I don’t think “grifter mindset” is very common in the nostr developers ecosystem. To my understanding people are motivated mostly by technological passion and freedom values.
So I tend to think the reasons are mainly in the engineering realm.
That's ridiculous considering the level of lightning integration in the nostr ecosystem
Not even freedom valued enough to have more clients with Monero tipping
Maybe it’s because they find lightning to have more demand?
Demand by users. Not by buyers. As far as I understand no one currently making big bucks out of lightning in nostr
What’s the difference actually between blossom and seedboxes in your understanding?
BitTorrent should and does work well, blossom hasn't shown the same
What does it mean “it hasn’t shown the same”?
It works just fine for me. It’s just simple file hosting with hash addressing and mirroring.
It hasn't been tested by the authorities heavily targeting it the way BitTorrent has and it doesn't seem like it would hold up as well
I don’t know if “being tested” by authorities is one of the main objectives in this stage. And anyway I don’t see why it would be less effective in that aspect.
Blossom is much simple architecture. Basically the simplest approach apart of regular file hosting. This is major advantage. You basically get redundancy, censorship resistance and verifiability with almost no cost of complication. Maybe BitTorrent and seedboxers is also easy to integrate. But I don’t know. It seems more complex.
Seems to me like it just won't work in a context of real censorship resistance
Because
There's no reason it would work
It's basically not even p2p
There’s no reason nostr would work. It’s basically not even p2p
Yeah it's pretty broken, p2p version is one of the next vital improvements
Because
People like to have their posts show up for other users
Yes. That’s a great feature that nostr has
P2P nostr will have it more fully
Why?
Harder to stop users from getting posts delivered from/to each other's devices, harder to stop users from noticing when network isn't working good
Maybe. Nostr may adopt some p2p elements one day. P2P is way harder. That’s way nostr is not based on that (although it may get added one day). I think the same thing goes to blossom / BitTorrent question. Simplicity is important
Using what works is simple
BitTorrent works
Nostr almost does and nothing else is closer
Blossom also works. And Probably simple to integrate to nostr
Again, seems like it won't work when it's tried in a high risk context
There's enough demand for apps with Bitcoin and doggie coin support