Signal had a protocol spec from day 1 with nearly all basic requirements of a messaging service. Nostr has 2 NIPs, neither of which have been well thought out by someone who understands cryptography. NIP-17’s spec mentions “optional forward secrecy” but the author doesn’t seem to understand that forward secrecy means something in a cryptographic context or how it might be achieved. And if you have forward secrecy, why would you make it optional? Most messengers people actually use have forward secrecy as part of the protocol, with no way to opt-out. Signal, WhatsApp, FaceTime, and Facebook messenger. The only messengers that arguably do not have it are Viber and Telegram, the latter having it optional for its “secret chats”.

“Things just move slowly” is a poisonous phrase in terms of making a widely adopted technology product. And it is less about moving slowly and more about people just going in completely different directions. Right now if things were moving faster, the ecosystem would just fragment faster. There’s not even an attempt to put developers on the same page or curate NostNostrents towards a reasonable standard. It’s a clusterfuck.

Ideally, people would be seeking to copy White Noise, as it properly uses Double Ratchet (much like Signal and WhatsApp) instead of NIP-17. But even everyone agreeing to use NIP-17 would be better than the current situation, which is a multitude of incompatible methods that vary by the whim of each client’s developer.