š
Discussion
Primal is not a hill I want to die on. Just wanted to try the advanced search. The whole VC thing and pushing out competition is terrible though
Iām so confused. Whatās happening here?
Read the thread. Semisol is giving reasons why not to use primal
Itās basically using the same playbook as microsoft with the walled gardens
I appreciate the diligence: donāt trust, verify. I just feel there are a lot of assumptions here. I donāt think the primal team is malicious and I havenāt seen any evidence as to why they would be malicious. I do think they are trying to be profitable. Thatās just how business works. They should compete to create the best product and experience like all other clients. Other clients are incentivized to create something better. This is capitalism. The user gets a better product as a result. They will not be the last to try this and if this is a threat to nostr, then it was never going to succeed to begin with. I would be concerned about this if nostr was a walled garden. Itās not. Nation states will attack nostr. They will go after the large relays and have them censor users. Thatās why we need more relays and decentralization.
Hereās a fun thought experiment. What do you think would happen if Elon integrated twatter into nostr? He will easily have the largest relay in the world. Could he create a walled garden on nostr? No.
If Iām missing something let me know but Iām not concerned based on this information.
The issue is the walled garden. Not the advanced search. VCs do have a tendency of creating walled gardens to push out the competition
The caching relay, the KYC wallet. Maybe the tags also since they decided to implement the nips in a different way.
Itās not really a KYC wallet. You can use a burner email when you make it. Whoever linked their personal email to that wallet doesnāt give a shit about their privacy.
And thatās only on the cucked iOS version. Complaining about that being a walled garden when youāre already on the iOS walled garden seems odd to me.
Hold on. Whether you use your real identity or not, itās a kyc wallet. It ties the payment info to the npub. Thatās the definition of kyc. Whether you open a bank account with a fake passport or a real one, the bank will still kyc you
I donāt think thatās correct. Every time you zap, your payment info is tied to your npub. And we can see your lightning address. Itās only KYC if feds can figure out your real identity from the email address linked to the npub.
So for a bank to kyc you it only does if you give them your real info? I disagree
How is it my wallet info tied to my npub when Iām not using the primal wallet? Iām not sure I understand
*how is my wallet info
Your wallet info is public. Node @ coin os or whatever
If you posted a note of a burner email and said this is my email address, that wouldnāt be enough to doxx you as long as your identity isnāt linked to it.
Why would there be a link to a burner address or a full name (real or not) since im not using a kyc wallet?
Like if you posted your email address in your bio for business purposes. As long as there is nothing on that email address that would identify you, youād still be anonymous.
All I know about is what you posted on nostr and your lightning address. If you linked a burner email to your account, that doesnāt tell me your real identity.
Thats still not the issue. If im using a kyc free wallet, nothing is tied to my npub. No censorship can be done now or in the future with that info. I can change my wallet whenever
You can still change your wallet on other clients.
But hereās my question to you. If you set up a wallet on primal iOS using a burner email that has never been used for anything associated with your actual identity, how would anyone know who you actually are (e.g. your name, address)?
They wouldnt know my real identity. That fake identity would still be tied to my npub. Something that would not happen with a nokyc option.
Who cares? Itās not your real identity so itās not KYC. KYC stands for know your customer. They donāt know anything more about who you are.
What about all the newcomers who did put in their real info?
Pretty sure they donāt care. They immediately join, put their names in, and post selfies š
From what Iāve seen, the ones who care the most didnāt even use the feature.
Not caring about it doesnt justify the business practice. 2 different things
Iām not justifying it but I also donāt care enough if they donāt care either. Maybe Iām jaded because Iāve wasted so much time trying to help normies. Itās like trying to orange pill people. It doesnāt work. Theyāll find the answers when they need it. People will think about privacy when they get burned. Miljan also said that they are legally required to take down an email when offering a custodial wallet. Convenience tradeoff for the normies.
Primalās business practices and waking up normies are 2 different subjects though. Has nothing to do with their practices.
Coinbase is a terrible company regardless of the fact that normies keep wanting to touch the stove
iOS has nothing the do with it. The issue is primalās business practices
The android version of primal doesnāt need an email to use the wallet.
iOS wants to get a cut of zaps because they consider it to be a purchase. That was the issue Will dealt with on damus. So primal made a tradeoff by allowing people to buy sats through strike which would give Apple a cut. But if you just deposit then you can get around that requirement and Apple doesnāt get shit. Since strike is holding the sats for you, they require an email for a one time code verification. I believe that is to prevent spam. iOS is the problem.
I disagree with you there. What about all the other clients available on ios that let you use nwc or other kyc free wallets? What about yakihonne on ios that has a wallet thats no kyc.
Will talked about that on his last show with walker on the Bitcoin podcast. iOS is random with who they target and are very inconsistent. They are also not really clear about their terms and donāt have a proper process to challenge their decision. He literally said it was just a matter of luck that some were targeted, like him, and others were not.
Their practices with lightning arent the best I agree. But that doesnt mean that what Primal does is without flaw
Itās not. Nothing is. Itās all tradeoffs. The decision Will made was not great for damus. Thatās why most iPhone users join nostr through primal. Itās why mcd still canāt zap notes š
McD cant zap notes because of his own choice. But he can zap profiles. And his identity is not tied to his npub
Neither is mine š¤·āāļø
Mine either. But thereās probably a bunch of newcomers who put their info in willingly. And are on some primal excel spreadsheet now
I have a burner email that is in the trash sitting on their excel list. It doesnāt tell them anything about who I am š¤·āāļø
It has received one email and nothing else.
Youāre forgetting the other half of my message. What about the people that did give the real info
No one forced them to. How many of these people did the same thing on X? Most just donāt care. Itās unfortunate but thatās reality. Most people still use coinbase or kraken lol
That doesnt mean that what primal is doing is right. Coinbase argument is invalid. Dont care maybe. Dont know better maybe closer to reality.
Never said it was right. I just donāt think these practices lead to the EEE conclusion.
They have added their own nonstandard caching protocol, completely donāt work with private relays, and are extending the protocol in nonstandard ways. Now all that remains is closing the exits.
Who has the authority to say what the standard way is?
How can they close the exits?
Who has the authority to say what BIPs are used for bitcoin?
No one
So why are there quite a few used in bitcoin core for example?
Thatās the consensus Iām guessing. But you can still use others and be forked off.
BIPs are not my area of expertise. Not sure how that relates to nostr.
It relates to nostr because we have nips. Nostr improvement proposal. Thereās consensus for those too. Primal is not following consensus with a lot of its developments.
But I donāt think we need consensus on nostr the way we need it on Bitcoin. Primal doing its own thing doesnāt seem to affect damus and amethyst. Unless Iām wrong.
How about the tags when someone on primal replies to a note?
All the clients need to āspeak the same languageā or it doesnāt really work
Can you explain your position nostr:npub12262qa4uhw7u8gdwlgmntqtv7aye8vdcmvszkqwgs0zchel6mz7s6cgrkj and why you think primal is doing EEE? Or link to a note ID where you explained it before.
Itās annoying as fuck lmao but it doesnāt break nostr is my point. We donāt have a network of nodes that enforces consensus on nostr.
A lot of notes and notifications that I donāt see on primal but I see on damus and others.
I would say relays are similar to nodes. Not the same but similar
Yeah thatās an annoying problem. The free market will fix all this. They will either do it themselves, or someone else will offer something better.
Already other great options on ios and android. But Primal keeps being pushed because itās so convenient.
Normies man. Tell them to set up a wallet on alby or coin os and they lose their minds. Weāre not going to onboard people to nostr if we need them to learn anything to do with lightning lol
ššš
They kinda have to learn a strict minimum even with the kyc wallet. whats an address. How to send/receive. Solutions like wallet of satoshi or coinos are very normie friendly. But yes. I get your point
One step at a time. Imagine joining nostr as a normie and people are welcoming you by telling you to run a lightning node šµāš«
Thats crazy. I said wallet of satoshi or coinos. Not LND or CLN + channel management š
I literally ran into this issue last night trying to onboard someone! Fuck, wish I knew about coinos
https://coinos.io/ nwc wallet. Newcomer friendly
So VC walled garden practices is good for nostr ? š
The answer is subjective but I canāt deny that more people are onboarded to nostr through primal though.
So as long as lots of people are onboarded through primal, they can have questionable practices? Meh
Never said that sir lol.
They can do that. Doesnāt mean they should.
You said its subjective. Anyways. In the end it doesnt matter. We have the choice to use what we want. I just wish people stop recommending primal so much. Just because it has an integrated wallet. Every precoiner has multiple apps for social media and at least an app for banking. But 2 apps for nostr is too much. That makes no sense
Ideally, theyād join with a different wallet. But you know how normies are man. Convincing their TikTok rotted brains to just think for 2 minutes is like pulling teeth. But hereās the thing, some will join and learn this stuff then later create a new anonymous npub. If they care. Most do not.
Agreed. Again doesnt mean that what primal is doing is right
Idk much about the caching relay. What does that actually do? Why is it bad?
It controls what you see on primal. Instead of reading from your list of relays (like all the other nostr clients do), you read from the primal caching relay. Think about npubs being censored and such things. This is done through the caching relay.
Gotcha ok. That probably makes the user experience better but itās a tradeoff because they could censor you at some point. That also means that they would filter out spam and CSAM content as well. Itās a tradeoff.
Do you remember when ralf, onyx and 4-5 other npubs were censored by primal? They did that with their caching relay. That tradeoff is not the best. I dont see any csam on nostr wine for example. I dont need a caching relay to control what i see. I already have a list of relays i use
No I donāt. And I can see why youād think itās not a good tradeoff. But thatās the beauty of nostr, you can just take your npub and go to a different client. Idk who those npubs were or why they were censored. My guess is that primal felt it was best for their business to do that. Not saying itās right or wrong. Not saying that it is better for their business or not. But they felt it was the best thing to do at that time and made the decision. It is what it is. And it wonāt be the last time something like that happens. That verita guy said he got censored by amethyst.
At some point, dangerous things will be planned on nostr and the largest clients and relays will be pressured to censor those as well. I canāt imagine any large relay allowing users to publicly plan things like kidnapping, rape, or terrorist attacks. That shit will get blocked.
You dont know about this? Oh man! So many memes came out of that. Some had figured that Primal trending list could be gamed by zaps. So they started zapping some notes to have them in the trending list, to prove a point. Instead of doing their research, to figure out what was the cause of this, Primal just censored the notes of the npubs that went trending. Ralf (less active now but hes Ewelinaās bf. They used to go to a lot of bitcoin nostr conferences), Onyx (you know who Onyx is right?) and a few others.
Everybody called primal out. They apologized later
Oh I remember that issue but didnāt know they did that. Itās probably not an easy fix and just censoring the people who abused it was probably a quick fix. Looks like it backfired on them. Part of running a business is making mistakes and learning from it. It is what it is. I donāt agree with everything they do. The same can be said about other clients as well. But I donāt see the rationale for the other EEE claims so Iāll wait for sol to chime in š¤
Onyx got censored because they couldnāt make an NSFW filter
Yeah sounds like theyāre taking shortcuts. It was probably the same rationale for the zap censoring. Maybe itās due to time constraints or just laziness idk. But the backlash probably taught them a lesson.
š© censor š© narcissists š© croatianš© dEcEnTrAlIzEd centralized cache š§āāļø
How do you create walled garden on an open protocol? I just donāt get that.
nostr:npub12262qa4uhw7u8gdwlgmntqtv7aye8vdcmvszkqwgs0zchel6mz7s6cgrkj can explain this better than me
Iām genuinely trying to understand cuz I like primal but Iāll drop them if they really are malicious.
Almost no one starts with malicious intentions. Therefore it's all about incentives.
Bitcoiners after all should know about incentives and game theory.
But than most Bitcoiners also ignore Monero, which means that most are not as smart as they pretend to be.
I understand incentives, but how can primal, or any other client, turn an open protocol into a walled garden?
By changing the nips (basically having their own relay that doesnt interact well with others) and onboarding tons of people under the guise of convenience
But as long as you can take your npub somewhere else, it doesnāt hurt nostr?
Proprietary features intentionally designed to not work as well on other clients
Is that enough to call it an EEE attack?
That is the defintion
- adopt a protocol
- extend it in a way others canāt catch up
- take control of the protocol, even though they ācouldā do something about it in theory, in practice no
And how do they take control of the nostr protocol? Are they going to be able to kick damus and other clients off the protocol? Are they going to be able to stop me from posting to other relays?
Read my point
They will add arbitrary features, fragmenting the network, and making using any other client annoying
Making it annoying to use other clients is different from killing off other clients. Thatās what your initial post says. Seems like you are being a little dramatic. But even if you are right, the free market will always punish bad actorsā¦ eventually. If nostr is anti-fragile, then we have nothing to worry about.
Anything will eventually happen if you believe it enough, even though 99.9% of the chance it wonāt
That doesnāt make any sense. I was trying to be respectful but are you actually retarded?? Lmao
that is quite the way to say Iām wrong but I wonāt accept it
No I am asking a legitimate question. Maybe youāre autistic or havenāt taken your meds today.
First you said primal is a threat to other nostr clients but then later flip flopped and said primal would just make it annoying to switch clients. Two very different things. You are either being dramatic, maybe to get engagement, or spreading FUD because you just donāt like primal. Just say fuck primal if you donāt like it. Donāt worry, primal canāt stop you.
But then you act deep by saying some incoherent shit like what you believe will happen even though it wonāt happen over 99% of the time. Makes no sense.
What you are saying is not consistent
By making cross-client interaction basically useless, it is in fact a threat to Nostr, and interop
Please read what EEE is then come back later instead of ad hominem
If thatās all it takes to destroy nostr then it isnāt antifragile and itās only a matter of time until itās ruined. Why waste your time on nostr then? Why develop on here?
Insults, really?
If youāre being honest with yourself, you didnāt even know that nostr works by concensus and has NIPS, in the same way that bitcoin works. Pretty important for this conversation.
Seems to me like you didnāt really move on any of your points since the beginning of the conversation. Youāre just saying āfree market will fix thisā. Look up Microsoft and Internet Explorer. The free market didnāt fix anything.
Totally fine to ask questions (and keep your stance no matter what I guess/whatever). But maybe add some nuance since it seems to me like you donāt even understand the problem. And then you insult the dev trying to explain it to you š
Bitcoin needs maxis just like nostr needs devs like Semi, in my humble opinion.
Anyways we can talk about something else. No need to continue this one friendš«
node uP my friend*/ noxnow to catch up ^ on thread, but have A good SUNday node*/
Rand! GM
Have a great Sunday friend
The original post and this entire thread is insulting toward the primal team.
I like to use Socratic questioning and the answers Iāve received so far donāt make sense to me. Based on the answers in this thread, not my words, nostr doesnāt need full consensus to work. It may not work efficiently, but it doesnāt break nostr. So the NIPs are not really like Bitcoin? Again this is based on the answers in the thread.
Iām totally fine with changing my views but Iāve failed to see how primalās business practices will lead to the end of other nostr clients as it says in the original post. And then later sol said that it would just be annoying for other nostr clients to interact with. Two very different things that sol said. And when I pressed him on it, he said something that doesnāt make any sense: what you believe will happen even though it never does 99% of the time.
I also donāt care about titles of expertise. You can be good at writing code but bad at game theory. Frankly, youāve convinced me more of the game theory problems that primal is creating without having dev expertise so I appreciate you for that. But I still donāt see how this will lead to the end of nostr. Maybe itāll be more clear later š¤·āāļø
Thatās my last post on this subject though so need to respond. Time will tell what the future of nostr looks like.
