Nostr Web Client

Agnostic Nostr Initiative (idea)

Mission: Break Nostr out of marginalization by building tools normal people actually need, with zero ideology required. Make Nostr the sufficient alternative to centralized platforms people already use.

Core Principles

* Utility Over Ideology - Build what people need. Twitter alternative, yes. But also Git forges, event platforms, newsletters, music tracking - anything where centralization is the problem.

* Zero Barriers - Custodial onboarding. One-click signup. Abstract everything. Make it feel exactly like signing up for any other app. Users shouldn't need documentation to start.

* Normie-First - If non-technical people won't use it, we've failed. No relay management, no key backup anxiety visible to end users.

* No Purity Tests - We don't care about protocol purity or ideological alignment. We care about tools that work for everyone.

Core: Social Communication

Dead-simple X/Bluesky/ActivityPub alternative with great UX:

* Features normies expect (quote posts, bookmarks, easy media, working search)

* Algorithms that surface interesting content (yes, algorithms)

Essential Alternatives

* Git forge (GitHub/Tangled alternative)

* Event coordination (Meetup.com alternative)

* Music tracking/social (Last.fm alternative)

* Long-form blogging (Medium alternative)

* Newsletter platform (Substack alternative)

....

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Discussion

tree 木 2w ago

These alternatives must be taken seriously as real products, not weekend experiments. While any project can start as a one-person exploration, achieving mass adoption requires committed teams treating this as professional work.

That means proper design, user research, maintenance commitments, and sustainable funding models. A half-finished Git forge or buggy event platform reinforces the "Nostr isn't ready" narrative.

We need builders willing to form teams, dedicate real time, and ship products that compete on quality with centralized alternatives - not just "good enough for Nostr users". The goal is products normal people choose because they're better, not because they're ideologically aligned.

brito 2w ago

Event, blog and chat/messaging is being done at geogram along with a few other apps: https://github.com/geograms/geogram-desktop/tree/main/docs/apps

To test, just head out to the release page and install the Android binary there. Users don't even know NOSTR is being used underneath.

Around March should be ready for public adoption, at the moment plenty of new ground to be stabilized.

tree 木 2w ago 💬 1

Looks nice! I'd love to try

Few hints: Find collaborators - you can't scale this alone. Talk about your visions and targets. Document publicly as you build, it creates momentum and attracts contributors. Look for funding early so you can focus full-time instead of building in spare moments. And do actual marketing - not selling out, just making sure people know the tool exists.

brito 2w ago

You are welcome to already try it.

Those tips are accurate and being worked upon.

HoloKat 2w ago

Looking forward to see what you come up with!

tree 木 2w ago

Yeah, I'm not the best project leader or programmer, but what I'm good at is connecting the people and help to bootstrap interesting ideas and directions that others usually don't see :)

SondreB 2w ago

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8qunfd4skctnwv46z7qg6waehxw309aexjcn09ejh2tnwdaehgunfvyhxzurs9uqzp5daxvenwv7ucsglpm5f8vuts530cr0zylllgkwejpzvak0x2kqmehusjv was built with this purpose, to grow the user base on Nostr. It does everything you list in a single app, simply because I'm a firm believer in "super apps". The ideology of one specialized app for one single purpose is not what users want or need. Unreal Engine has more and more features embedded into the editor, reducing the need to learn multiple tools to do your tasks, which is mentally exhausting.

Back in the day when we built Windows apps, we all copied what Microsoft did (especially the file menu). This was to reduce mental load on the users.

These days, everyone is doing their own fancy UI ("thanks" to AI), as a way to get the attention of users.

Nostria is built on Material Design guidelines, making it feel like "home", for anyone on the Android ecosystem, while also introducing some Apple design cues.

It is a solid foundation for future development, it's basically just me developing it and the quality is almost there for wide adoption. Few more tweaks and improvements, and then get the final Play Store approval. Been waiting 4 months for that.

tree 木 2w ago

This is awesome work! The UX benefits of consolidating functionality are real.

Though I have concerns about super apps as a concept - they're kind of an authoritarian's wet dream. We see this in China where they become centralized control points. Even with non-custodial architecture, the more functionality you concentrate, the bigger the target for capture.

The complexity creates maintenance burden that makes it harder to keep things truly decentralized and neutral. More features = more attack surface, more dependencies, more reasons for compromise.

Not a critique of Nostria specifically - clearly valuable work. Just thinking about the broader architectural tradeoffs between super apps versus more composable, specialized tools.

SondreB 2w ago

It for sure is easy to fall into the trap of just making some centralized services and you have "lock-in" and user migration/export becomes hard or impossible.

I do my best to keep Nostria as compliant to the protocol and stay away from centralized services when possible. It creates extra challenges to ensure good UX and be decentralized, but I've built this for so long that I know a few tricks.

There is a Game API for stream details, Notification API for managing web push notification settings, Account API to check Premium status and last one is Image Service, which compresses profile photos (can be disabled in settings).

Sebastix 2w ago

https://nostr-ux.com

Your ideas are great but mostly not protocol related. When you enforce these by the protocol, it gets less neutral.

Heuristic 2w ago

nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tcqyqt79zylhgqsy8gy3gfl6zappzknrsuryc54gcxzre5ug0agl0j32r5td2a will be interesting to see it release. I made an account on browser just now to check it out. I am interested to talk to a dev about a client I will create. I like nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcqpqyfg0d955c2jrj2080ew7pa4xrtj7x7s7umt28wh0zurwmxgpyj9sldm58v , but there are some things about it, specifically it being off protocol realistically, that I don't like. This client would have that integration as part of it. But the UX/UI on wavlake is solid. I released a track on there to see what its all about.

https://wavlake.com/album/cf2d1559-8c0a-45a1-9320-4e40b752e652

Nostria 2w ago 💬 1

In the about section of Wavlake it mentions RSS? Nostria already supports podcast and music if you have an RSS feed. I want to improve these features and add more options for discovering music, podcasts, etc.

I'm interested in different opportunities; it will likely take a while to get enough premium subscribers to sustain myself.

https://mibo.eu.nostria.app/5876b89c5bf9c9a2c067437bc6665cbc1e47049926511a78f409aa5d458f6ff3.mp4

SondreB 2w ago

Ah, just noticed the RSS icon. Why does this not appear everywhere?

https://mibo.eu.nostria.app/a6071dbfbc70d7d5423fd1753cca6b7bb55bc18a8897f814232542a73aa5e16c.webp

This has a different type of RSS format, had to implement support for it. Here it is in action:

https://mibo.eu.nostria.app/3a5f907a9feac90b7843ea5754b3991d16d4a0ccb351b36fd18ba4279f342004.mp4

Heuristic 2w ago

I can imagine. As a producer having a solid way to release music with some form of... Oh no, he didn't say... royalty structure would be step in... a direction.

Not saying the old models are good, but there are parts that could be salvaged and maybe updated.

I love the idea of v4v. It's an honest, if a bit nieve, way to receive support as an artist. I have a bones structure for what it could look like to take it a bit further and attach licensing options for zaps as a way to encourage that support.

Nostr is primordial ooze, so watching people add and take away from these concepts will be interesting.

So far my single has traction with tons of plays and downloads. So DJs are grabbing the track to add to their sets and people are listening, which is great.

That has yet to produce a zap ⚡. So with that many plays on Spotify I many only get $.000001 cent so far for instance. But that is value of some kind beyond being able to say "cool man, people like this."

Ultimately, this is not a gripe. Just note for people like you looking to attract investment in dev.

My label(s) would be happy to enter into a beta agreement with a dev and offer fresh releases while testing ways to monitize that build our sats, the devs sats and returns that value to the following.

Monitary systems are always complex, even more so when art is involved.

#nostria #wavlake #heuristic #stacksats

Bitcoin Awareness 2w ago

Yes. We should work more with normies in mind.

Heuristic 2w ago

I agree with a lot of this. I can say I was pretty disappointed that nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcqpqyfg0d955c2jrj2080ew7pa4xrtj7x7s7umt28wh0zurwmxgpyj9sldm58v forces email usage to create a separate account to access the studio function and release tracks.

So the whole "followers" crossover thing dies there unfortunately. I know people can see your nPub and lightning wallet. Non-tech people can't be fucked to click through extra steps taking them to other places to complete a thing like following you.

That being said the UX/UI is nice on it. I dropped a track just to see how it works that was set for release on Spotify originally. Hopefully they figure that part out. The v4v thing is a great idea. Hard sell for a label right now though.

https://wavlake.com/album/cf2d1559-8c0a-45a1-9320-4e40b752e652

Troy 2w ago

Why is a label needed?

Heuristic 2w ago

Labels do a lot more than release music. I am not signed to a traditional label anyway. Some of my masters are released through them, others are self released etc.

There are certain realities that will remain even in this space. The label offers me tours, marketing, manages advancing, covers costs and process for visas through trusted agents - to name a few of the services provided for their cut if they are a good label.

Some of this stuff is a lot more difficult than people think. I can't tell you how many artists get visas denied from countries because they werent advanced properly and ended up working illegally in the country thinking nothing of it when they were on vacation a decade ago.

The US is a prime example. People don't realize when they appear on a music lineup for a theme camp at Burning Man, the government considers it work even if they didn't get paid.

Immigration does a now super quick AI deep dive on you and those things pop up. Old twitter posts, YT videos the artist didn't even know were being taken posted by influencers who dropped their name in the description to get views etc.

Ultimately, a label is choice. If an artist wants to bootstrap, amazing. Go for it. The labels I work with are all either ditching web 2.0 models and garbage like Spotify or are being born in the nostr spacey people who have decades of connections and are tired of the industry the way it is.

No Good Kid 2w ago

nostr:nprofile1qqst9ge7953et4c854glcpp7ctdcke2ml0jf2m4dltdav9dppalp5usppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qyfhwumn8ghj7mmxve3ksctfdch8qatz9un5n4pc is here to test our egos and sharpen our arguments.

Let‘s discuss & build the Nostr way - in peace. ☮️

nostr:nevent1qqsvdga5qr44dtcl67dyp5egxcaddlfq3r6m7fl8h5dhl72lh8889vspndmhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0y5erqamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wd3skuep0y5erqffjxpshvct5v9ez2v3swaehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hj2v3sy5erqctkv96xzu39xgc8wumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetjv4kxz7fwvdhk6te9xgc8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7ffjxpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctv9urxxjlm

Globe99 2w ago

#Longforms and Newsletters.. Perhaps epitomizes the problems with development here... All of these are either "vibe" coded and poorly maintained, or buried inside of "everything" apps.

Longform.space -- feels buggy, half-built... yet they're already trying to push a subscription option??

Decentnewsroom.com clearly has a vision to be some kind of one-stop news site, but development appears to have been stalled

Yakihonne has a long-form editor, but it's buried inside of their "everything app", which also has some weird "bonus box" thing I guess they're trying to monetize?

Globe99 2w ago

Hold the presses -- #Nostria has a #longform editor that actually looks pretty good!

Only question -- does it save drafts to relays?

Constant 2w ago

My dude, just saying, you are giving real 'i just learned about Nostr and i am here to fix it' fibes. How about you lurk moar?

tree 木 2w ago

My npub is older than yours. If you want to engage with the critique, do it.

The longer I lurk here, the more I feel that it can't be fixed anyway. Just like with the AT Protocol, where the problem is excessive centralization, here the problem is the opposite, a lack of coordination.

Constant 2w ago

You are not all that worth engaging is what i am saying, but the point seems to fly over your head.

Sebastix 2w ago 💬 1

Everything can be fixed by yourself. You don’t need permission. Proof it wrong.

Zsubmariner 2w ago

Proof of Power ⚡