Nostr Web Client

When someone says 'Feature X is impossible,' it often really means 'You won’t get permission to roll out Feature X.' This has become the norm in Nostr for some time now. Nostr was intended to be a space for permissionless innovation, where 1000 ideas could bloom, but over the past year, things have become more centralized, with only a small group of developers able to push things forward.

A year ago, we saw a lot of exciting development happening, but much of that has since slowed down. The regular updates we used to see are now rarer. The beauty of an open protocol like HTTP is that anyone can create their idea without needing permission, but lately, we’ve even heard that developers are being told they can’t submit NIPs because 'the NIPs are scarce.' When innovation gets restricted like this, it sends a clear message. Nostr, while never fully open or community-driven, is now being seen for what it is—a more centralized, proprietary space.

That said, there are still a handful of really good developers pushing hard, and that gives some hope that things can turn around. Maybe one day, Nostr will become the open, transparent protocol we hoped for, like Bitcoin, but there’s still a way to go, and the developer exodus continues

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Discussion

miggymofongo ☆彡 1y ago

booooo i hate asking for permission

rfkill 1y ago

just fork the nip repo and call it nipx and continue

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

I believe pubkeys will be the one thing about nostr fiatjaf is remembered for inventing,

and Will is going down in history for refining that idea into npubs,

and everything else about nostr will change because the pubkey login design is the one real nugget of soul in a sea of deep state bullshit designed to delay decentralization by wasting mass hours of open source dev work.

I can't stop wondering if people like fiatjaf even know they work for the global deep state.

Melvin Carvalho 1y ago

sipa actually invented the pubkey system, it's taproot

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Isn't attaching it to social media profiles new? Taproot was for wallets as I understand it

Melvin Carvalho 1y ago

The key pair mechanism + signagure, and attaching social media profiles are slightly different things. One is about cryptographic proofs, and one is about relations. With regard to relations, this is nothing new, we've been doing it for about a decade. You just add some JSON next to the pubkey. In fact nostr has done it in a pretty poor way, compared with other solutions. For example most people would use JSON for a social profile, but nostr uses stringified JSON which is hard to work with. Similarly other system are interoperable and extensible. Take website for example. You might have 2 websites, but nostr doesnt have a mechanism to add more than one website, whereas standardized methods that have existed a long time allow this optionality. Nostr just about works, but most of it was taken from things that came before.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Interesting.

So maybe I should credit fiatjaf and Will with implementing and popularizing keypair logins in the form of npubs, rather than making the invention itself.

They'll still be remembered, and it's still sad that nostr will probably need to be taken from its inventors to grow greater.

Melvin Carvalho 1y ago

Will is credited with npubs which are vanity addresses and zaps. FJ repackaged ssb, and cut out some of the complexity. Nostr is just a proof of concept really. Pepole have been tying social profiles at scale to keypairs since at least 2006, at scale since 2014 (e.g. activitypub), and altcoins do it all the time. I dont think its worth getting hung up on individual contributions, it really was a team effort, for example Greg Heartsfield, who you probably have never heard of, probably did more for nostr than anyone. FJ cared not at all about the ecosystem, which was the most important element. Manyh good devs left due to his caustic attitude. And there are many unsung heroes. I work quite a lot with Tim Berners-Lee, who invented HTTP, HTML, first web server, first web browser, and URI. He ALWAYS describes the web as a team effort. Which is one reason it was successful. You dont hear alot of that in nostr. Many of the celebs did much less than people think, and the people you dont know, did much more. But by far the most important person was Jack, who noticed the pattern and saw the potentially and really breathed life into it.

🇵🇸 whoever loves Digit 1y ago

Didn't know about Greg Heartsfield, curious about him now

It's an honor to talk to someone who works with Tim Berners-Lee

I believe in the long run you and I are more important to nostr than Jack, but you seem to have a knack for remembering and appreciating everyone's work and input