I have noticed a general trend among kids to prefer apps with more extremely ephemeral content -- like pictures that disappear fast. In chat apps, there are also temporary messages.
While we know that once something is on the internet, we cannot guarantee it will be deleted, closed platforms with closed source apps can for sure mimic that kind of scarcity.
How can we replicate that behavior in a decentralized protocol?
cc: nostr:nprofile1qqsr9cvzwc652r4m83d86ykplrnm9dg5gwdvzzn8ameanlvut35wy3gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3qamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwa5kuegpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqcu9929 nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qythwumn8ghj7anfw3hhytnwdaehgu339e3k7mf0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tch2deau any thoughts?
We can just add an expiration time to each post.
Could you guys help me create a NIP? I’ve written a more detailed post. I might be naive, but I believe we can create something that resembles a temporary event. I am going open a PR but I'll need help (I hope to not feel ashamed haha)
It already exists. It's NIP 40 https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/40.md
It's no way close to that nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qythwumn8ghj7anfw3hhytnwdaehgu339e3k7mf0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tch2deau
Why? Just do an `expiration` tag with now + 1 second and boom the event is gone before its even downloaded from the relay.
We can't.
Information "wants" to be archived.
I don’t know much about cryptography, but there’s probably a way to craft an arbitrarily weak private key that wouldn’t take much effort to break. This key could then be used to sign “ephemeral events.” If we want to mimic an ephemeral message lasting X seconds, the ephemeral key should have a corresponding level of difficulty to break within X seconds (not necessarily linear; this is just a simplistic example). If the message should "last" 10X seconds, the ephemeral private key should be 10X weaker, and so on.
In many cases, denying authorship is more critical than simply deleting an event.
The good thing about this approach is that, after sending an ephemeral message (that may have a timestamp), as time passes, it becomes increasingly harder to assert with confidence that I was the original author.
That's a good idea. But OpenTimestamps ruins it.
A lightning payment or p2pk cashu token behind proof of work is an interesting concept that could provide an incentive to "expire" a message
It doesn’t need to be timestamped
The other day I was reading about ring signatures. I don’t know if they work for Nostr private keys, but if they do, we can use two private keys—the sender’s and a random one—in a ring signature. Then we can reveal an arbitrary part of the random private key in the “ephemeral message” so we can control how difficult it is to guess it.
The thing with time-stamping is you can't prevent someone else from time-stamping your data. If someone can prove that the signature existed prior to when someone else could have cracked the key, that's evidence that the signature wasn't faked.
You guys are much smarter than I am, but this was my best effort to express what I’d like to see in Nostr.
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1595
cc: nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s (that will probably my first and only NIP, I promise)
Sounds pretty interesting, but I'm not sure that solves the problem you were talking about above. And I imagine that in practice it wouldn't work for whatever implementation reasons and game theory, but this is just my pessimism speaking.
In general it works in direct chats and small groups when people trust each other and the feature like in Signal is to make it technically possible for well meaning and honest people do delete data. But it can never work in public posts or big groups because you cannot ever stop anyone from eg taking a screenshot
