Self-sovereign identity (SSI) was a great idea, but a big piece was missing- the ability to natively accept payment. Now, with npubs, that is possible with #cashu and DMs.
Not sure what to call this yet, but it is some sort of socio-economic overlay network that sits on top of, but not dependent on DNS/IP.
Don't ethereum EOAs basically for the bill? A unique identity that is sovereign and can receive arbitrary digital assets.
Fit* the bill
They might have had the right idea, but bound to a platform. We now have it with protocols: btc/ln/cashu/nostr
I more or less agree that protocols are almost always preferable to platforms. Why though do you consider BTC/LN (and even a sizeable network of Nostr relays...) to be protocols but ethereum and smart contracts to be a platform?
Aren't they both as viable to run independently ("speak the protocol"), but both are susceptible to counterparty risk (if the Bitcoin network does something retarded like ordinals, say. Yea you could go nuclear fork the "protocol" part, but you lose the network and therefore the "platform")?
To me, the degree to which users of a protocol actually end up functionally beholden to a particular network is the degree to which it is more of a platform. Nostr itself is perfectly permissionlessly protocol-y. More so than any dApp that ethereum has churned out. Relays begin to blur that line a liiiiittle but they're still on the right side of it in my mind.
