A couple thoughts on badges after playing around with them yesterday. When I first heard about badges my initial knee jerk reaction was to equate them to NFTs, and since NFTs are just scams used to steal money from idiots, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of badges if that’s what they amounted to. Yesterday, badge chatter on Nostr went from zero to 100 in no time, so I wanted to see what it’s all about, and figure out whether I needed to recruit #[0]​ and go all gorilla warfare on badges?

I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that badges do not equate to NFTs, because there is simply no “T” (token) involved. There is no blockchain masquerade, no token being minted and sold or traded. A badge is a signed Nostr event, not much different than this post with a meme attached to it. That doesn’t mean badges aren’t dumb in many cases, but dumb is in the eye of the beholder. Badges are more like passport stamps, membership cards, post cards, stickers. I can think of some fun, dumb, and maybe even useful ways they could be used.

In some ways I think Nostr badges take what could have been useful about NFTs and, by removing the scammy token aspect, are actually useful for certain things. Not a replacement for ⚡️zaps⚡️ but badges aren’t entirely useless.

Just don’t be offended if someone doesn’t accept every badge you offer them. The gesture counts, but not everyone may like the taste of your digital fruitcake 😂