Nostr Web Client

If open source clients aren't in the hands of the user, then I don't know what is. I don't fathom how online services like nostrum or okta are putting identity "in the hands of the user." They seem to me to be taking it out of the hands of the user. "Trust me with your identity" sounds to me like "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But surely I misunderstand.

Gossip reflects my own tastes which are highly self-sufficient with low-trust. I don't want to be tied into any particular provider, including identity provider. Anything that can be managed client-side will be. I will aim to give users maximal control, and it will always be open source so you can read what it is doing and compile it for yourself.

StackSats.IO 2y ago

Nostr provides for both the identity and client in user hands but so far most people have experienced nostr through a client with their identity being secondary, often provided by the client (Damus for example you don’t have a contact list if you byo keys)

Nostrum (or others) would allow me to:

- have multiple keys, each keypair being it’s own identity

- authorise keys to certain apps

- manage contacts for that identity in a single location

- manage profile for that identity in a single location

So instead of choosing where I want to go (client) and selecting my outfit (identity) when I arrive, I choose my outfit and then decide where to go when dressed appropriately.

I’m not going to use my main keys, or my real name keys to go play poker; I’m going to have a poker identity. Those keys will be authorised for the gambling apps in my Nostrum and that profile can look entirely different to my others, different Lightning wallet, different badges etc. For all you know StackSatsIO doesn’t know how to play poker, we could play together all the time under different nyms and not know each others other keys.

Take this further, when real world services begin integrating nostr im going to need to have things like phone number and drivers license available (ie in an ubereats competitor) - I don’t want this identity and this lightning wallet attached to those parts of my identity though, I’ll run separate identity for that and only use that for those apps where I need to expose it.

Identity will decouple and become more central to nostr as more apps come online. Right now you can manage flipping between the clients with one identity but when there are 100 or 1000 with everything from social to porn to finance to who knows what?

Nostrum in this case becomes like a vault / sso that I use as a launchpad to navigate between apps; I control my vault so I control my identities and I decide which keys access which clients.

I’m not tied to nostrum here either; those are my keys and my identities, I can go to another vault provider and bring those with me so there’s no lock-in - they’re merely the nostr identity client I use to connect to nostr content clients.

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Discussion

Mike Dilger ☑️ 2y ago

Thanks for explaining that further. That all makes sense.

I was looking at your post from the perspective of "where are your keys"? And being a desktop-client developer I wasn't thinking of the model that your client may be out on the network somewhere (web hosted apps).

Your identity provider should certainly be the closest thing to you, and yes you take that identity out for a spin on the town. Nos2x is like your identity provider. Gossip as a local desktop client is a client and identity provider tied together. Nostrum served from a webserver could be an identity provider for people who are willing to trust dynamically served web content with their keys. nos2x/alby feeding nostrum being preferred IMHO.

I can't imagine having more than a small handful of identities. Firefox has Multi-Account Containers that work just like this. Websites see very different identies when browsed from those containers. I've only ever had about 6 or 7 such identities, and managed client-side has worked out for me.

However, if you want to use many different clients with those same identities, and you have a lot of extra functionality surrounding those identities, then combining the client with the identity provider kind of locks you in. I don't want to lock anybody in. So I'm open to having a pluggable indentity provider in gossip, but there has to be (among others) a local desktop provider that is open source that I can read and learn to trust.

StackSats.IO 2y ago

Yep you get it 🤙