When people open an item I sent them, they look at it and use it and throw the package away. On the off chance someone tries the QR code and are directed to NOSTR, their reaction as a normies will be "wtf is this" and leave. No one does the 2nd step to get an NPub. If they are normies is what I'm saying.
What if products had a Nostr *NPRODUCT* instead of the usual GTIN (UPC/EAN/JAN/ISBN/etc) code?
- Manufacturers would own the digital identity of their products, for free, without be locked in the proprietary GTIN (UPC/EAN/JAN/ISBN/etc) market;
- It would be possible for buyers follow a product they own and be alerted about production problems, updates, news and suggestions;
- Nostr e-commerce/reviews apps would have a better integration for products, with a news live feed from the manufacturers;
- Manufacturers could offer a specialized customer support via DM using the product profile;
- Manufacturers could promote resellers, and possibily onboard them on Nostr;
- Manufacturers or sellers could cryptographically certify the purchase of a product to issue a warranty;
Identity attestation is easy, the nproduct is stamped as qrcode on the product or its packaging.
Let's introduce NIP-88, a PR about products classification:
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1225
Comments and feedback are welcome!
Discussion
The qrcode is just the correspondent of the current barcode, it is not used as marketing tool to bring the user on Nostr (but it could, if the user is already on Nostr and has a client that can scan profiles). Or it can be a "composite QR code", that contains both the nprofile (so the pubkey) and an url to a easy browsable resource.