Nostr Web Client

I value order, efficiency, and reliability. I don't value simplicity or chaos quite so much. My effect on the nostr protocol has mainly been proposals to improve the reliability, efficiency, and orderliness of it, and the pushback has come mostly from people that like the freedom that the chaos gives them.

Some examples

* long ago I proposed that relays remember when an event arrived, and clients could query "all events that arrived after I last asked" to get a perfect next batch.

* long ago I proposed gossip/outbox model which specifies where events are expected to be, while many still choose very different and innovative ways to choose and use relays.

* I've been pushing for DHT usage to be more fully distributed and uncensorable, and to allow people to kickstart/bootstrap without knowing any relays or any nostr people. We get 99% functionality without it and so as you could imagine other devs don't really embrace the idea. I'm the guy who is never satisfied with 99%.

* I've wanted a rigorous standard that doesn't change

* I've wanted a binary protocol to juice up efficiency by avoiding JSON parsing

I feel like the black sheep in this regard (hence my avatar) because I gather that most nostr developers (and users) more highly value chaotic liberty.

Chaotic liberty is a great space to innovate in. But it is not a good space to build a solid user experience which requires a firm standard and compliance for interoperability. Hence I see hundreds of only somewhat compatible half-ass nostr applications that generally scare users off (which one? why are so many of them broken? and so different?).

This is all fine. But it means I'm not seeing nostr as the protocol that becomes the social media framework that the Internet eventually adopts. I see it more and more as a playground. Which is critical and innovative and wonderful. I just don't see how it can also be a stable user experience that draws in lots of users and creates substantial network effect value.

Mosaic is where I scratch my itch for order, efficiency, and reliability, and my attempt to create a solid user experience. I will be working on both Mosaic and nostr. Mosaic risks being too idealistic, the "betamax" of social media, but it is a risk I'm taking. Take joy knowing that I won't be bugging nostr devs as much about the chaos.

Should I post this or edit it more? Fuck it. I saw a meme that said to just post it.

Anthony Accioly 6mo ago

I'm with you on the whole "organising Nostr chaos" thing... That's basically what I try to do as well. Much less successfully than you, though, as I don’t even propose a lot of stuff... More like try to fix existing standards and tooling in a minimal way.

Still, I care about a lot of the same things as you. Actually, I care to the point of pestering you multiple times about the NIP-05 vs NIP-65 bootstrapping ambiguity, and pestering, well, just about every dev on Nostr about implementing proper Outbox model support, leveraging DHT to avoid centralisation on the bigger "indexer" relays, sending the right kinds to the right relays, supporting NIP-17, NIP-29, etc., etc., etc. I also like the idea of more formal contracts, and possibly evolving beyond signed JSON over websockets.

I think a lot of devs on Nostr are thinking along similar lines. We (or at least I) just lack a good way of reaching out to each other. I don't have a "Gossip" or "Nostr bootstrapping" forum to reach out to you, no NIP-29 group, no IRC, XMPP, Matrix or whatever that I can join to discuss this kind of stuff. I’ve got too many notifications on GitHub to even bother. And as much as I love pestering fiatjaf, Vitor, etc., there’s only so much that can be done via Kind 1 or DMs theis way. I think if we can put some effort into organising communication channels beyond PRs and comments, we’d stand a much better chance of driving this kind of effort forward.

I don’t know much about Mosaic, but it sounds like a heck of an interesting greenfield project. All greenfield stuff is amazing, beautiful, and promising. Nostr has this “ever-greenfield” attitude, which I totally get. But the fact is, there’s already enough "legacy" on Nostr. We need to start managing it like every project that’s survived a couple of years beyond MVP. Get the communication structures in place, and the right people will come together to drive the architectural changes you’re looking forward to.

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Discussion

Mike Dilger ☑️ 6mo ago

I'm not sure if a chat forum like xmpp/matric/irc is better than kind-1/1111 for this. I like the threading here. But more idle temporary chatter could be good too. nostr chat isn't half bad, there must be a room for this and if not we must make one.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 6mo ago

or maybe it's on telegram and I should reinstall telegram.

Anthony Accioly 6mo ago

The problem with Kind 1 is that a lot of people in other timezones won't read it.

I've tried Kind-29 and managed to lock myself out of my own community lol. Also, I haven't felt a lot of enthusiasm from other folks to play with NIP-29. 0xChat Signal like LMS stuff sounds exciting. nostr:nprofile1qqsf03c2gsmx5ef4c9zmxvlew04gdh7u94afnknp33qvv3c94kvwxgspr9mhxue69uhkscnj9e3k7unpvdkx2tnnda3kjctv9uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0g4rts7 is also working on a Slack / Discord like thing with Flotilla, but it's still at early stages.

I'm happy with whatever tech you folks pick, Nostr or otherwise (although I would prefer Signal to Telegram and XMPP, IRC or Matrix to both of them). But lets start creating those groups/ channels somehow. It has been hard to keep up with what all of you folks are up to.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 6mo ago

We used to talk on Telegram. One day I burned my account because I suspected Ukraine was using it to crash my computer (only because of the repeated coincidence of when it crashed and what pro-Russian telegram channels I was reading). I'm not sure if other devs are still over there. XMPP is so old now - I've used it in the last year but it seemed rough. I have signal but only on my phone where I can't type efficiently.

hodlbod 6mo ago

If there's any activity on telegram, I'm not aware of it. I left the nostr group long ago. I do have a flotilla instance set up just for this purpose, which you can join at relay.nostrtalk.org with the invite code `nostrtalk`. Not much is going on there, the conversation is too fragmented across different sub-protocols, but it's something.