Nostr Web Client

Unpopular opinion, but here it goes: UX is the most important problem we need to solve for Bitcoin Privacy.

We can hate on KYC exchanges all we want, but they've got UX nailed down. We cannot expect privacy to become the norm when I have to take an hour out of my day to make a P2P trade.

Now that CASPs will start delisting privacy assets like Monero and blocking coinjoined btc with the EU's new AMLR, we're being stripped of using regulated exchanges even semi-privately. This makes P2P exchanges like BISQ Network even more important, but its of no use to regular users when you need an introductory course in computer science before understanding what's going on in the app.

Privacy will only become the norm when we make it usable for everybody. **If you're a UX designer, copywriter, or in any other way have expertise in UX design, please consider contributing BISQ:** https://github.com/bisq-network/bisq

ℹ️ If you're not a developer, contributing to GitHub projects can be scary. It really doesn't have to be. I can't tell my asshole from a python script either, and if I can do it, you can too.

Here's how to get started:

If you find a UX issue in the BISQ app that could be improved, start by opening an issue in the BISQ github repository. Give it a clear title describing the problem you want to solve.

Add screenshots or videos to your issue showing what the problem is. If you can, add a proposal for a potential solution. Bonus points if you can add wireframes, layouts or clickdummy documentation. For reference, see npub1zqsu3ys4fragn2a5e3lgv69r4rwwhts2fserll402uzr3qeddxfsffcqrs 's work on eNuts: https://github.com/cashubtc/eNuts/issues/341 (I don't know how to tag people here but you get the idea).

In open source projects, questions are your friends. I've spent countless hours asking every dev i know absolutely insufferable questions, and I still dont know how the fuck to get out of VIM. Everybody starts somewhere, and most people are happy to help.

If you already know how to use git or github and can code a little, ask where you could find the corresponding code for your problem in your issue and offer to do a PR. If you can't, ask what assets would be needed to implement your proposal. Remember that people are nice and generally happy about new contributors, even if you're a beginner.

If you have any questions on contributing to open source projects as a non-coder, feel free to reach out anytime. My DMs are open (I think).

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Discussion

Amanda 1y ago

🔥

sommerfeld 1y ago

Not taking a selfie with my ID and having my PII breached and sold in the darkweb is the best UX.

Devon Olsen 1y ago

an excellent point, there are a myriad of other things requiring a person's attention as they seek to survive in thus Fiat world. I know for myself I just don't have the bandwidth for anything that's not intuitive ux

GFY 1y ago

COMPUTER SCIENCE DEGREE? YOU COULD'VE LEARNED ROBOSATS IN THE TIME IT TOOK YOU TO WRITE ALL THIS HUE BUFFOON

GFY 1y ago

SORRY THAT WAS RUDE, I'M THE BUFFOON I HADNT READ YOUR E ENTIRE NOTE

BUT YEAH TRY ROBOSATS THEIR UX IS PRETTY DARN GOOD (UI COULD USE SOME WORK). BISQ WOULDN'T EVEN LOAD FOR ME LAST TIME I TRIED 🤣

boston wine 1y ago

All good points. Throw nostr:npub1p2psats79rypr8lpnl9t5qdekfp700x660qsgw284xvq4s09lqrqqk3m82 on the list as well.

Joel 1y ago

nostr:nevent1qqsr6n3z8k7ehy0g38v5ttsnkxvylv3dll08dzp9wnrajxzpt3hancspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzpk9xancv89h24rme53yhl6dh0hyhwce528eu5hrrfcsgvkg3vermqvzqqqqqqyngr2ut

wertyyryyr 1y ago

Robosats has a better UI than bisq and a promising mobile app

humblepardon 1y ago

I don't think privacy will ever become the norm. Just look at how normalized surveillance via credit card usage has become, simply because it's more convenient.

The important thing IMO is at least having the ability to have privacy if you want it, similar to being able to use cash in real life.

And buying BTC without KYC information is nice but doesn't really scale if you want to buy a lot. It will likely always be a side show.

Brian 1y ago

It would become the norm if it was more convenient 🤷 most don't give a shit about privacy though.

mrdot 1y ago

Non KYC is already more convenient arguably

Because Bitcoin is something new people are just way more accepting of additional hurdles and privacy intrusions instead of realizing that there is a more convenient non KYC alternative

Brian 1y ago

What's the more convenient no kyc alternative?

mrdot 1y ago

Peach! But generally speaking waiting to be „verified“ or not being allowed to buy due to some other restrictions from KYC exchanges is not convenient at all

BE 1y ago

Great points! And, good practical advice on how to contribute without being a technical expert. Thanks.

Lighthouse 1y ago

Robosats has pretty good UI, I like it a lot

Bisq 1.0 was sort of confusing but ok, haven't tried 2.0

Agora desk also a little dense, but ok

21 Stackage 🦡 1y ago

I think Bisq 2 is addressing UX, and if they stay on course, it'll be as easy as Coinbase, minus the naked mole rat. Definitely important to point out that people don't need to be a software devs to contribute to software projects, even outside of the bitcoin space

Alex 1y ago

btw, to get out of vim: open a new tab, type:

ps ax | grep -v grep | grep vim

on the left you'll see a number that looks like a price of something in sats, that's the PID. And then just:

kill -9 PUT_THE_PID_HERE

Lyn Alden 1y ago

Success in trading comes from mastering the right strategies, not mere luck. the play out of bitcoin will always be exciting hyper inflation intend to damage emotions, the time is now take your stach (portfolio) to the next level, join the RCL and 100x your portfolio, learn portfolio building using passive tools for long term accumulation.

Source: https://t.me/rebelcapitalistshow

Derek Ross 1y ago

I didn't know this was an unpopular opinion. Oh well. I have never cared about popularity contests. I fully agree with all of this.

Derek Ross 1y ago

I keep saying technology works best when it fades into the background for a reason.

nostr:nevent1qqsr6n3z8k7ehy0g38v5ttsnkxvylv3dll08dzp9wnrajxzpt3hancspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygxc5mk0psuka2500xjyjllfka7ujamrx3gl8jjuvd8zppjez9ny0vpsgqqqqqqskclz77

jared 1y ago

Best way to get out of vim is to stay out of it in the first place 😉

vi: ESC, :q!

nano: Ctrl+X

Pepe NOSTRos 1y ago

lemme guess. emacs?

jared 1y ago

Please no. I shudder at the thought.

Pepe NOSTRos 1y ago

vi? nano? what flavor of masochist are you ser?

jared 1y ago

sysadmin earlier in my career. I got used to vi because it was always there and always works.

I eventually learned nano so I wouldn’t have to explain to other people how to use vi while troubleshooting over the phone or shoulder

Pepe NOSTRos 1y ago

cut my teeth on vi on AIX invoking smitty . . . hehehe hey fren

MAstr 1y ago

Funny,

Reading the first line my first thought was...

yeah...

Bisq

Mallard Beakman 1y ago

I mean I was able to figure out Bisq, and I'm retarded. The hardest part was troubleshooting my Start9 node.

Jones 1y ago

Bisq have already proven to be captured a long ago.

If u dont ever learn keep using it. U will eventually learn that those disrupter that are in btc are all trusted member of bisq aka NSA, FAA or blok...hum..cuckstream. Enjoy getting ur infos share among ur rat spy local gov (yeah i dont like them...i dont like people calling themself good if they arent)

if u read this make ur call. Warn have been pass.

https://void.cat/d/Sj7V72aLw4HgkPzM55GQ9F.webp

Water Blower 1y ago

Same goes to Nostr vs closed platforms

adc26cf2... 1y ago

Depends on the app. I think Primal is the best when it comes to make it easy for newbies.

deeznuts 1y ago

Yep. 100%

Orange🍊Man👤 1y ago

The next frontier for #bitcoin is UX/UI improvements to refine the protocol for everyone's use.

Eggs/n/Jakey 1y ago

in vanilla...

Ⲇⲍⲟⲅ 🥷 ⚡🏴‍☠️ 1y ago

Agreed 😉

ShiShi21m 1y ago

Robosats is reasonably good 👍

Grafton @ Vexl 1y ago

Vexl is beautiful UX

waxwing 1y ago

It's a common perception that the problem with things like Bisq (P2P trade) is UI, but it's not.

First, it's crucial to distinguish between P2P trade of fiat for bitcoin and P2P trade of 2 different cryptocurrencies, because they're entirely different animals. I'm only going to talk about the former, because that's the one that really matters, and that's the hard one.

Problem 1: because of the ethically odious AML policies there is substantial real risk from counterparties. If you are receiving dollars/euros into your bank account without first doing a full scale police level investigation into your counterparty you are potentially violating AML and this could impact *your* bank account. Even if you did such investigations, if you start doing multiple such trades your account can easily get flagged and frozen. Nothing I'm saying here is theoretical, it really does happen, a lot.

Problem 2: The process of P2P fiat trade is *intrinsically* not convenient and doesn't give *traders* what they want, which is why it doesn't tend to have volume, and volume is a necessary component for convenience (low spreads, quick matching), to the extent that ordinary users just give up (when you see 15-25% spreads you tend to give up, that is not because you're a lazy user who needs good UI). It's true that e.g. in Europe you have SEPA and very quick bank-to-bank is possible, but it's very precarious and ironically, when problem 2 is solved, problem 1 just reappears quickly anyway.

Problem 1 is mostly solved by avoiding banks and using cash or cash substitutes in *small* amounts only. Localbitcoins had this perfect in the early days, but they got "done" at some point, and sold out to KYC only. I would even argue that a cash-only localbitcoins substitute that's Tor-only might be the best we could do ... if things get tough enough for people I could see them putting up with this inconvenience, but of course this is a world away from the volume you get from degen traders sitting in their bedrooms, who just want braindead point and click. But old localbitcoins for cash *did* work, though it is subject to stings by LEA, you only have to exercise minimal common sense to avoid the law coming for you. This is not a "solution" for 6 figure trades though ...

Problem 2, I don't think it really gets solved, if anything it'll get worse over time, as banks for the last decade have only moved in the direction of making conversion of fiat to bitcoin more and more absurdly difficult.

I was chatting a lot with Manfred Karrer right at the time he invented Bitsquare, I even managed to convince him not to use MAD 2 of 2 multisig, so you can blame me on that, and I tried it in the early days. It was honestly decent in UI even then (yes I know it *looks* complicated, but I mean, try using Interactive Brokers interface to trade stocks, it just takes a little time), and I'm sure it's way better now. IMHO, The problem is not UI.

Flix 1y ago

LOL. I kept trying to convince him to use MAD 2-of-2 at the time 😄. You won.

You were probably correct about that...

Flix 1y ago

I still think that there could be room for BTC-fiat MAD 2-of-2 trade protocol... especially for small amounts with an instant payment method.

For BTC-altcoins atomic swaps are just superior to any multisig... as BTC-BSQ swaps have shown.

L0la L33tz 1y ago

I fundamentally disagree with this for several reasons.

First, re counterparty risk, this is what reputation scores are for, and in my experience they work fairly well. Second, I think we are speaking from extremely different perspectives here. When I dont have a means of payment (say bc my bank blocked my account), I really dont care weather I'll pay a premium on my tx because my plan is not do engange in degen trading but to have money to live. Comparing a P2P marketplace necessary for people to transact in private (or even at all) to broker interfaces is not the right approach here imoo.

The point is also not that people are 'lazy users' – of course its nice for stuff to work at the click of a button, but the point is that people can easily be overwhelmed when facing complex systems, keeping them from using them at all – not because they are lazy, but because they dont understand them, which then also speaks to the liquidity issue.

Lastly, and again speaking to perspective, Im not talking about people doing six figure trades here. Im talking about people who earn their income in bitcoin or have no other means of payment and need to pay their bills, who will be facing complete financial exclusion unless they are willing to submit themselves to full surveillance tyranny.

rafael_xmr 1y ago

I agree. When I think of how I would make a p2p dex platform, the app would be just a map, like https://btcmap.org, then users would create trades based on location, and the users are expected to take a trade, go to the location, and exchange the asset (BTC, XMR) for cash, face to face. Not only this simplifies the experience, also solves the issues of trusting digital transfers, banks, etc, and could probably be gamified to look like Uber, Pokemon GO, then it's just a matter of having the app on your phone, and being like "I am going to the mall, I wonder if a XMR trader will be there so I can just take some Monero and after trading make my purchases with Cash there" or vice versa, with the goal to also build strong connections closer to you as we never know how many around us actually want to participate in the same system or not

waxwing 1y ago

A separate response to a separate point:

> UX is the most important problem we need to solve for Bitcoin Privacy.

Disagree. The most important problem we need to solve for bitcoin privacy is to make it cheaper than non-privacy. Everything else follows.

(that's why focus of base chain modifications should be on changes that make higher layers achieve functional payments for all users with low costs, because decent privacy is completely natural at higher layers, whereas at base chain layer it's quite unnatural)

L0la L33tz 1y ago

I agree, but we're already doing that with CISA

waxwing 1y ago

CISA for privacy is a very non trivial issue. As Chris Belcher always used to point out, the simple argument "coinjoins become cheaper with CISA, therefore CISA promotes cheaper privacy" is mostly just not true, because coinjoin promotes "A is paying B, C is paying D" to happen in one transaction instead of two, but that batched transaction doesn't *by default* offer any additional privacy, because they will not modify the structure (in particular the output amounts) in a way that obfuscates the transactions. Now there are definitely counterarguments but I think that's more true than false.

And whether you get into those counterarguments or not, either way, CISA is clearly a net positive in many senses, and *at the very least* shouldn't make privacy worse (in this, I am disagreeing with https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/cisa-and-privacy/824 for example; it seems most people there argree with me)

Still, let's not jump the gun. CISA doesn't yet exist unfortunately.

L0la L33tz 1y ago

Im not sure I understand your argument re cjs, is it that CISA makes batching in general cheaper with cjs being a byproduct, meaning that private txs would have no economic benefit over batched txs and, assuming cjs will continue to be centrally coordinated in a fee model, cj txs continue to be less economically favorable to non-cj txs even with CISA?

If I understand this correctly I agree that CISA doesn't technically address your OP. Practically I think I disagree if we assume that the tx gets cheaper the bigger it gets with full aggregation – reaching sizes of 400+ inputs will likely mostly be unachievable for single signers, so i think cjs practically would have an economic benefit over non-private txs excluding fees (at least until there is non-private CISA collaboration).

Do you have any proposals in mind that would explicitly make privacy cheaper than non-privacy?

waxwing 1y ago

> Im not sure I understand your argument re cjs, is it that CISA makes batching in general cheaper with cjs being a byproduct, meaning that private txs would have no economic benefit over batched txs and, assuming cjs will continue to be centrally coordinated in a fee model, cj txs continue to be less economically favorable to non-cj txs even with CISA?

Yes. Except, I don't think the coordination (centralized or not) really plays a role in this analysis. It's just that subset sum analysis works if there is no ambiguity (simplest example: inputs: (3, 7) and outputs (2,0.5,3.6,3.4)); while in theory (see Bell's number) there are always a huge number of possible interpretations *in theory*, but in practice 2 normal payments are overwhelmingly likely. The "counterarguments" I mentioned, mainly I'm thinking of at large number of utxos consumed, ambiguities start to become common. As for the last sentence: cjs are not really less economically favourable, they gain from CISA in the same way as another large tx does; the point is more: if the coinjoin is of the form of a batched payment it doesn't do anything much, whereas if you create an extra separate coinjoin in the right form to promote privacy it's an extra cost; with CISA it's just a smaller extra cost.

(Might help: i define coinjoin as any single transaction that cospends inputs of more than 1 party. see e.g. payjoin).

> Practically I think I disagree if we assume that the tx gets cheaper the bigger it gets with full aggregation – reaching sizes of 400+ inputs will likely mostly be unachievable for single signers, so i think cjs practically would have an economic benefit over non-private txs excluding fees (at least until there is non-private CISA collaboration).

Right that's another way of looking at it; if as per above coinjoin = any cospending then there's clearly a benefit to doing it, but my point is that isn't by default a "private tx". Maybe "somewhat private". By the way curious historical fact the first version of public coinjoin was by blockchain dot info and they used exactly this model, centralized, and without CISA of course - just take everyone's payments and throw them into a single big transaction. People were pretty ignorant back then 😄

> Do you have any proposals in mind that would explicitly make privacy cheaper than non-privacy?

Almost anything offchain gets this by default. *More* private and *less* expensive. LN, Ark, sidechains, rollup models etc. I remember years ago talking about this as "cutting the gordian knot of bitcoin privacy", because by default privacy techniques tend to use more space - see coinjoins, see confidential transactions; there's a natural way to create privacy by obfuscating by *adding* data. The difficulty is (1) to make offchain work *securely* is very difficult and (2) L1 always exists and so things like coinjoin IMO will always exist in some form (some level of obfuscation) but it will be at large values/sizes. As for what *that* might look like yes CISA could be involved but there's lots of ideas out there, I like a model I called "coinjoin done right" (there's a talk on youtube with that title, btc++ cdmx), based on coinjoinXT, basically trying to make coinjoin steganographic so they can't be flagged, but people are branching out and trying various things. See e.g. wabisabi for payments in coinjoin, see e.g. nothingmuch's recent work. Also just channel dual funding by nostr:npub1e0z776cpe0gllgktjk54fuzv8pdfxmq6smsmh8xd7t8s7n474n9smk0txy et al. is a huge step forward

waxwing 1y ago

Should be 2.5,0.5 not 2,0.5 duh. Meant each input split into 2.

Cyph3rp9nk 1y ago

I don't think you have tried Robosats.

It has everything you ask for.

nostr:note1848zy0danwg73zwegkhp8vvcf7ezml77w6yz2ax8myvyzhr0m83q8evsd5

zizu 1y ago

Thank for this , wondered whether it was only me who questioned kyc on primal. Agree spending time on p2 very exhausting. I keep fingers for talented devs who may find the way.