Is nostr perfect, not yet. It has managed some flight compared to most other efforts, probably thanks to its extreme openness, the protocols simplicity (go read the implementation possibilities https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips ), and because it’s inspired by bitcoin (although importantly there is no underlying blockchain) there is an initial user base of people with bitcoin as their cryptonoun. This initial user base is also nostr’s next biggest hurtle. Not everyone cares about magic internet money the way some of these early adopters do, even if someone might find an appreciation that the lightning network is a perfect protocol based solution for tiny little micro payments on the internet. They seem to not understand that winning would make being a bitcoiner nothing special about their personality.

The other major player in this space at the moment is at protocol, from a company that spun out from twitter called bluesky. I used to be really bullish on atproto until recently. They do promise an open protocol, but they seem to be gate keeping this protocol in an effort to maintain the reputation of their flagship client by promising moderation from day 1. I have yet to be able to get an invite code to test out what they have, and the protocol itself is not production ready, so unlike with nostr, I can’t just go spin up my own instance yet. The idea of repos is much more complex, I will conceded at initial look it seemed to be preferable to writers or content creators who want to own where they are publishing. However, There is nothing stopping reason from spinning up a reason relay today, the current line up of nostr clients will rebroadcast that content to other relays, so until someone builds the tooling for pay to read (something analogous to Patreon/locals/a subscription on a website), this content will rebroadcast to other relays, but I’m sure this is tooling that will exist here soon and enable those who do want to not just own their content through keys and signatures but control where their content lives that ability.

At scale any protocols offer a huge opportunity for people who have a app idea that includes a social element and from launch already have a user base. for the

legacy new media companies, it’s a pool of content they can instantly tap into. Hopefully someday a protocol like nostr will enable a granny to stick with Facebook and message her grandson on Twitter, the way she sends him emails from yahoo to google with out learning that newfangled gmail thing.

Nostr is moving fast and breaking things, for the liberty minded it’s a great place to be, it can also be the safe space some are looking for, if they are willing to trade the ability to impose that on others for their personal utopian safe space.

At the end of the day, it’s so simple to build on and truly open that it just might work.