Nostr Web Client

things i realised while developing nostr:npub14a3s46a8mr8kar9duvfzd2gz8sntjxcykwslyx84dfnexfzfdzhqz4ejtd for last 8 months on nostr.

one thing i have realised.

- Not a lot of dev resources online other than GitHub read me and handful of very basic videos.

- Telegram groups are your most accurate source of information.

- By the time you get hold of NIPs and get busy developing your app, either new NIPs come out or previous implementations change without any major announcements. unless you are actively monitoring nostr social feeds, no specific newsletter you can subscribe to mentioning the changes in NIPs you are interested in.

- Help is hardly available. No volunteers, No major Sats contributions, cant run ads. Even if there is no backend, hosting relays or creating something meaningful is gonna take a toll on your pocket.

- Community is helpful. Some people really love to test your ideas and give suggestions (like nostr:npub1r0rs5q2gk0e3dk3nlc7gnu378ec6cnlenqp8a3cjhyzu6f8k5sgs4sq9ac ) but otherwise, its you and your own vision of a service.

Overall, No guarantee of if its gonna work out in the long run or not.

Creating on nostr is supposed to be more fun. That’s why we are creating on nostr and not a centralised API driver another app like billion others. However that really seems to be getting tougher and tougher.

I do not wanna lose hope. Some apps really have made their names and i feel glad everytime i see a new app rocking on nostr and utilising its potential to build cool features. however, it seems i took a bite bigger than i could chew. I am not gonna stop though. Even if the chewing takes longer, i am in it for the long run.

When has it not worked in the end after all right?

#HappySundayNostr.

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Discussion

inventor 1y ago

Correct assessments.

il_lost_ 1y ago

there are other clients that are doing this,

swamstr com

slidestr net

lumina rocks

imagine if they were 4 in 1

the axiom 1y ago

who promised you it was going to be a paradise?

sarakeshtix 1y ago

I am just cribbing. 😌

HoloKat 1y ago

What’s your biggest challenge currently?

sarakeshtix 1y ago

I have been working on a custom algorithm for 2 months to give me the trending memes or trending content of any tags.

i have built the core of it but deploying to aws and having another server running continuously to fetch data from nostr events in real time would be my biggest challenge techincally.

Lots of front end bugs and features pending that needs to be done.

Getting too lost in thoughts of how should i market it. should it be nostr peeps or should I build it for everyone and then come up with a way of teaching people on how this app works!!

Matt 1y ago

Seeing people talk about unexpected NIP changes is the major reason I don't plan to bother with developing on Nostr.

I'm simply unwilling to constantly chase changes that wreck my work. Backward compatibility or fuck off as far as I'm concerned. Constantly changing the rules in the middle of the game sounds like hell.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the complaints, but this has been my takeaway as a developer who considered it.

nostr:nevent1qqsf3h25yl9h2dqk2ez77w809rv7mmkl7d586pt0j7aua497w7rd58qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzq9ek9cmwhc4fgwjscf389l3uzqtlthrzwc3w3sj96jjky2q3tg8eqvzqqqqqqym9w8we

HoloKat 1y ago

This is a sneak preview of bootstrapped startup land - long hours, zero rewards for a long time, burn out, little hope. Even if you do manage to monetize, it may not last long - a competitors swoops in, a new tech, an algo change, search engines get angry. There are thousands of well-built, well-designed software that go nowhere, collecting dust. Most of it is due to lack of marketing. Nobody knows they exist.

Building is nothing special. We worship devs here, but what we should really be worshiping is a dev who can pull the necessary marketing strings to get eyeballs on their product that solves an actual problem.

And this is the easy part. The hard part is doing all of this on nostr / lightning / bitcoin. You need a large enough user base paying your asking fees to justify working on the thing and bitcoin narrows this market quite a bit.

Then you have to consider whether you're in b2b or b2c. It's a lot easier to get people to pay in b2b at the right price point (usually under $100/mo). Jason Cohen writes about this a lot if you look up his blog (asmartbear)

As they say, first time founders focus on the product, 2nd time founders focus on distribution. You've got to learn quickly, make adjustments and try again.

The worst part, is that nobody is going to tell you whether you're on the right path or not, because they have no fking clue and know it. They might be inclined to say "this won't work" but there's always a chance when something does work and it's really up to the founder to make it known and used.

In the bootstrapped startup scene there's this movement of doing dev week / marketing week - rotated. One week you focus on the product, the next week you focus on marketing. Marketing doesn't mean spamming links everywhere, there are many types of marketing activities - but you have to get the word out or else you'll be part of the thousands of apps that is built, solves a problem, but nobody knows about.

Shawn 1y ago

You nailed it.

HoloKat 1y ago

🙇‍♂️

sarakeshtix 1y ago

so well put nostr:npub1r0rs5q2gk0e3dk3nlc7gnu378ec6cnlenqp8a3cjhyzu6f8k5sgs4sq9ac . but everytime i think of marketing, i feel the product just needs one more feature and one more fix. I am not sure if I am at that stage where marketing would be better or continuing to build would be.

So many features in my mind that i need to implement in order to make it a day to day useful nostr app and I dont think i am there yet. maybe half way but definitely not all the way. What do you suggest?

HoloKat 1y ago

Adding features can be a marketing activity too.

Happy to chat to bounce ideas. What I said in one of my notes (last week I think) is what I’d work on personally. I tried searching for a meme on there and I couldn’t find it.

Andrew 1y ago

> By the time you get hold of NIPs and get busy developing your app, either new NIPs come out or previous implementations change without any major announcements.

Here's an RSS feed tracking closed issues in the NIPS repo:

https://openrss.org/github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed

sarakeshtix 1y ago

I wasnt aware of this RSS.

tysm 🙇🏻

Josua Schmid 1y ago

What the heck? Is this just pouring your unfiltered mixed feelings into the public? Or are these actual points collected carefully over the last 8 months?

sarakeshtix 1y ago

Mix of both.

Boog 1y ago

👏👏

The Beave 1y ago

This is what nostr:npub1m4ny6hjqzepn4rxknuq94c2gpqzr29ufkkw7ttcxyak7v43n6vvsajc2jl's crew is working to solve.