Nostr is a hobby network. It cant really eat any of these giants.
Discussion
I see you challenging the hype, but I also see you building the solution. Why accept defeat? If enough of us work together on it, why would we fail?
It’s like Satoahi said: “No, don’t bring it on”. It’s way too early and I believe it is important to stay realistic.
But I do agree with you: the potential here is enormous as #Nostr can (and will) be used as a base layer for all communications. Being censorship resistant it provides a platform for unstoppable developers, content creators, freedom fighters and more.
It’s like an infinite positively charged loop.
I don't know that I was making an assertion necessarily! I'm too new here for that. More interesting to conduct a pre mortem. Serious question: If we would fail, why would we fail?
The biggest challenge I see is monetization. We’ve got brilliant developers working on the protocol and talented content creators joining. But if they do not get monetized, they won’t be able to stick around. A man’s gotta eat end of the day.
Centralized giants like Google and Facebook offer users pennys on the dollar while selling their data. Unfortunately rampant ignorance of the latter allows this system to work.
We need to come up with some sleek roundabout way to attract and, more importantly, retain users while staying true to the ethos of #Nostr.
Nostr already won.
> But if they do not get monetized, they won’t be able to stick around.
Most "content creators" on Reddit, 4chan, Hacker News don't earn shit, and haven't earned shit on Twitter for most of the time, yet all of these platforms are used.
Videos are different. YouTube hosts many videos which require a lot of effort to make, and are made by teams of highly skilled people, which channels run by company who have them as their main activities. But Nostr isn't a video platform. Most media is merely linked, not even stored in any decentralized way (which would be the purpose of Nostr) and no more "on Nostr" than anything else one types a link to.
What users need is to interact in a pleasant way, as peers, sharing memes and information. I hope communities will succeed, maybe thanks to Reddit being criticized for the excessive moderation, a platform which used to be a free speech open source one.
I was mostly referring to the devs. Content creators can sell merch or monetize in some other ways.
There's an old saying that doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result can be a bit, well, optimistic. When it comes to relays, they've historically struggled with scaling, and the Nostr network relies heavily on them. It’s important to recognize that Nostr is more of a community-driven, hobby network at this point—it’s not in the same league as the giants, much like an ant doesn’t compete with an elephant.
That said, relays still have a place as part of a broader, more holistic solution. Something like #ditto might even show promise in competing effectively. But to suggest Nostr will take over the big players is overlooking its current scale and growth challenges. It's still a vibrant community, just on a different path.
I once saw Jane Sun CEO of Ctrip speak of her innovation lab. She called it "baby tiger program". Why baby tiger?
Because when tiger is a baby, we say "aw how cute". Then when tiger is a grown up, tiger rips your face off.
Nostr may be a baby tiger, but if so then it is still a tiger.
I understand your POV and appreciate your conscientious approach!