Nostr Web Client

I respect your opinion but couldn’t disagree more. Actually, I’m on a one-man war against Nostr’s real, palpable incentives.

People are just bad at prioritising what truly matters. Most people on Nostr will give grand speeches about freedom, anarchy, and building your own roads, then proceed to zap bitcoin memes and behave exactly like they would on Twitter, Gab, etc. On average, the palpable incentive is to keep Nostr as a safe space for the Bitcoin Twitter bubble.

Funding developers who aren’t aligned with, onboard with, or sponsored by the BTC Twitter use case is what Nostr needs in order to evolve. This goes against the same incentives that brought many of its users here in the first place. To stay relevant Nostr needs to outgrow its early-day priorities for the greater good.

I don’t use Keychat, and to avoid falling into the human tendency of criticising what we don’t understand, I won’t say a word against it. That said, based on the project’s own landing pages, their scope seems to be to become the "everything app" for Maxis. So, by definition, I can’t see it as much more than a beloved niche tool.

I’m not disagreeing that ultimately Nostr may exist as an experimental protocol for Bitcoiners, a transitional evolutionary step toward something better yet to come.

That said, I don’t think my points above are wishful thinking or addressing some utopian, unsolvable problem. We just don’t like to face the reality of our real problems. As I like to say, there’s no technical solution to moral problems. Ultimately, people have to choose... And for the vast majority of Nostr users, there’s a lot of theoretical talk and very little to show that they’re ready to actually build and fund a real alternative.

By definition, they’ll either buy or be the product (here or elsewhere) regardless of the technology powering it. Once people truly understand this (and I mean really understand it, beyond grand speeches and doomsaying), hopefully healthier palpable incentive like owning your data and controlling your feed will be taken seriously. And there's no other way to take it seriously other than voting with your wallet and time.

As hard as the technical and organisational problems are (and yes, Nostr has a bunch), the real challenge is getting people to truly understand why we should build something like Nostr, and to have genuine skin in the game.

Garbage nsec 2mo ago

Keychat is indeed niche. But it is an example of how payment for every event sent can work in practice, and how an app designed on that principle would approach UX. If nostr had financial compensation baked in at the protocol level then all apps would have to make the choices they've had to.

I don't think people are bad at prioritising what matters. People are generally quite good at prioritising what matters ... to them. What trade offs matter to them. This often means they're bad at prioritising what matters to others, but such is life.

I agree with most of what you say about nostr attracting a generally self-sabotaging crowd in terms of being able to grow to any serious size. I don't know if nostr 1.0 can make it past 50k daily actives to say nothing of 100k to say nothing of 1 million, to say nothing of 100 million. It's hard to get across how small nostr is. Bluesky is over 100 times smaller than Threads, and nostr is over 100 times smaller than Bluesky. And nostr hasn't really grown in 3 years. And there's no indication it'll grow by any real degree in 2025 (it'll likely shrink). Or in 2026. And nostr is bleeding $1m a month in grant funds, which is a little unfair to all but the most sanguine of donors, they should be seeing their donation flower by now, with daily actives up to least 50k. (I mean maybe they're all all very long-term and chill about numbers, but if I was a donor I'd be looking at the numbers regularly.)

As with anything there could be a deux ex machina in the works. But overall I think there are great lessons learned and a nostr 2.0 stands a much better chance at success.

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Discussion

Anthony Accioly 2mo ago

As we are mostly in agreement, I'll tackle what I see as the root disagreement here:

> I don't think people are bad at prioritising what matters. People are generally quite good at prioritising what matters ... to them. What trade offs matter to them. This often means they're bad at prioritising what matters to others, but such is life.

This is the core disagreement. I honestly think that people suckn at prioritising what really matters. They suck at event knowing what should really matter for them. They are great at prioritising what is convenient, familiar and sounds "proper" in the circles where they want to feel accepted. If folks where good at prioritising what matters we wouldn't have a society of mostly phone addicted, overweight, infertily, depressed folks struggling with anxiety and existential dread slaving out to look a bit less desperated tham they really are.

And yes, I think we need to be annoying and remind them that eating their brocoli and being mindful about their data and the software they use (plus who is pulling the strings behind the software they use), even if they think they "know" what is good for them. At least as long as the fast majority of people, including Nostr users, don't act according to their supposedly values.

Garbage nsec 2mo ago

Yes, looks like we agree mostly.

I think people prioritise the things that matter to them in a way that's quite efficient. The key is that what matters to them is often not what's good for them, but that's a whole other story.

Where we diverge is that I think the reminding them to eat their broccoli part is hopeless. That never works.

In Japan people walk a lot because they have to. Cities are designed to force people to walk. It's not a decision anymore, and therefore trying to influence that decision with this motivational speech or that grumpy diatribe is irrelevant, you don't have to waste time and energy doing so.

Nostr 1.0 is designed like a US city. Walking is highly optional, and in many ways discouraged. Therefore all you've got is motivational speeches or grumpy diatribes. And, just like in a US city, the few people that do walk a lot each day are very show-offy and righteous about it. Because it's something that makes them stand out, and when you have something that makes you stand out you tend to want to show it off. I mean imagine a Japanese city-dweller being righteous about walking a lot each day.