Nostr Web Client

After the first few days spent intensively on Nostr, I have a strong stagnant feeling about it. It looks like 10-25k active people and hasn't changed much in the last 2 years. I'm sure a lot of new people have joined, but I also see a lot of people who have stopped being active here.

I see constant inflation of more and more projects... but they're only created for that small group of a few thousand people. The UX seems almost identical to when I tried it 2 years ago.

It looks like people here don't want it to grow - otherwise I cannot understand why it's not growing. I really don't know what to think about it.

Chad Lupkes 3w ago

Well, let me ask this. How many advertisements have you seen? How many bots? How much of your time on Nostr has been spent scrolling through stuff that you really don't want to see?

You first joined in May of 2023, and I can see everything you posted along with all of your replies. You didn't believe the Lightning Network was a successful project, and didn't think it would be. Do you still believe that?

You came back 6 days ago and immediately launched into what you think is wrong with the protocol and why other options might be better. I've engaged where I feel that my reply might add value, and live my life. Our networks are ours to build, nobody else can do that for us.

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Discussion

tree 木 3w ago

I am here because I believe that Nostr is probably the only network that can help combat authoritarianism. But for that to happen, it needs to grow. I would like to help, but in order to do so in a meaningful way, I first need to understand what is actually wrong.

RE LN - I was skeptical of Lightning in 2023. Still am. It remains too technical for mainstream adoption. Because of complexity it tends to centralization and forcing people using custodial wallets and centralized middlemens. Monero, Zcash, stablecoins etc. are much more human-scalable and easy to use.

Globe99 3w ago

"I would like to help" -- want to run a Mastodon bridge? 😄

That's a way to instantly juice the scale and reach of Nostr.

nout 3w ago

We already have a bridge to mastodon and in my opinion it sucks for everyone involved.

Chad Lupkes 3w ago

A bridge of information without a bridge for capital keeps communities in silos.

What if a zap on Nostr arrived on Mastadon in whatever currency or chain that the user wants to store. I think Bitcoin is the best, so that's what I would choose. But everyone should have their choice.

Globe99 3w ago

We "have" bridges, but they're functionally broken, as I've documented elsewhere...

When they work, I've had a lot of good interactions across them.. as have others that I've talked to.

They are super easy to filter if users don't want to see them. But it'd be great if they actually worked for the people who want to use them.

tree 木 3w ago

Yeah, I'm not a fan of bridge either. It's tempting, but it means you have some middleman who has to run the bridge. Making a bridge so that it's really usable (bidirectional communication) is extremely complicated.

Globe99 3w ago

Well right, the Mastodon side of the bridge has to act like any other Mastodon instance, meaning that whomever running it has to have a "moderation" policy (or even no policy, which is a policy in and of itself).

You could (for instance) only relay posts based on your Web of Trust... Which would be a transparent "moderation" policy that you could advertise to both sides of the bridge.

But it's definitely a way to bring in lots of users who care about things other than Bitcoin... 😁

Chad Lupkes 3w ago

Well, nobody 'controls' Nostr, it's designed to be beyond anyone's control. What I'm seeing is a free for all of development where anyone with an idea and the skills is trying their hand and trying to tap into the streams. There are thousands of apps out there that could be forked and brought into the Nostrverse, which is fun to watch.

But, what I'm also seeing is a lack of overall vision. Most people are trying to identify market niches and building what they know, and very few people are looking at the overall structure and trying to encourage the building of foundational layers that themselves can be built upon. I'm sure if anyone IS doing that and they see this, I'm probably wrong, but all I have is my own eyes and my own limited feed. And that would absolutely prove my point.

Nostr, at least to me, is a information sharing application layer. The principles are strong, with distributed storage and retrieval of posts and content. What it lacks is not people, but a reason for people to come to this network instead of the ones that they are already using. In the old days we'd be talking about a "killer app", which is why I think so many people are trying to do just that. I think differently, and what I believe we need is a "killer foundation", something that Nostr can utilize, add to and become part of.

I have A vision for how it can do that. I just don't have the skills to make it happen.

tree 木 3w ago

I think most people don't use reasoning when changing social networks - they follow friends, vibes, and whether they feel welcome. Technical features matter less than cultural fit.

Yes, Nostr is technically great and I think it's ready to grow. But if it doesn't actually grow, then the technical excellence doesn't matter. You can build millions of apps on top of a solid foundation, but without users, it's just wasted effort.

Chad Lupkes 3w ago

I joined Nostr because I wanted to be on a platform that could not be stopped by national borders. Most of the people in my other social media circles are focused on their networks, not the world at large.

Fenix 3w ago

You have a noble belief but I suggest you to change a little bit to see not a solution for a problem that they want you to keep fearing. You have Nostr giving you the keys for your cyber data mouth, you sign what you say and nobody can’t tell you anything different about that. Fight against authoritarianism is a lost cause, you’ll fight against a dead body, while your problem are those individuals feeding you fear with an imaginary hand, here you get cover. When dead body authoritarianism became more friendly will you back for the social media corporations hand? Where you have no mouth.

tree 木 3w ago

You've got it backwards. Authoritarianism isn't a "dead body" - it's metastasizing. Every minute brings new regulations, new surveillance, new "safety" justifications for control. The merger of state and corporate power isn't authoritarianism dying, it's evolving into something more total and harder to resist.

Fenix 3w ago

State is a corporation, ever was. Individuals claim you have to follow their rules, claiming they have the authority from a dead body. You can’t show me state, it not exist, authoritarianism came from these individuals. Fear is a strong weapon.

Chad Lupkes 3w ago

Nation States are contracts, given jurisdiction over land by international convention. Plant a flag, claim to control the rules, nobody else can claim other rules within your sandbox.

Corporations are contracts, given jurisdiction over a copyright/patent/trademark by nation states, and enforcing that jurisdiction in order to accumulate capital to give to shareholders.

Authoritarianism is when claimed authority becomes self-perpetuating through the abuse of capital, the forces that control and amplify the movement of information.

When governments take over business, we call it communism sometimes. When businesses take over government we call it regulatory capture. Both are fascism, and both lead to authoritarianism.

The only defense against this is a combination of rights that must be demanded. The right to exit, taking control of our capital outside of the influence of either nation state or corporation. The right to fork, taking control of the rules that apply to how we interact with others. The right to verify, giving us the truth from the source, not claims from people we can't trust. The right to sustain, protecting our foundations from those who would extract for their own profits.