https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-November/022152.html
Interesting comment by Peter Todd when discussing the possible use of nostr as a new protocol for the bitcoin-dev mailing list. His comments are not particular to that usage though:
"
Strong NACK on nostr. It's a badly designed, centralized, protocol that needs a
significant redesign to be usable. While off topic for this mailing list, some
of its many issues include:
* Reliance on single-key, cryptography that often results in people having
their keys compromised. This is a serious problem in the context of
bitcoin-dev, where faked messages published could easily have market-moving
results.
* Inability to mirror relays: since nostr deliberately ignores the lessons of
blockchains, there is no way to be sure that you have a complete set of
messages from a given person, for a given topic, etc.
* Highly centralized design: since mirroring relays isn't reliable, in reality
nostr operates in a highly centralized fashion, dependent on a tiny number of
relays that can't be easily replaced if taken down.
"
He was replying to this proposal by nostr:npub19jescdjr3wk552j3q77f3awwhe4qy2ds24xce773exd28nr7emqsm2pt7r (I believe).
nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft nostr:npub1qqqqqqyz0la2jjl752yv8h7wgs3v098mh9nztd4nr6gynaef6uqqt0n47m nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx
Is he saying that putting tweets on a blockchain would be a very good idea?
Or is he saying that we should somehow enforce that all relays host all the data forever and that somehow will make the network less centralized? Maybe he will be interested in Farcaster.
In any event, I think he doesn't realize that the outbox model is possible -- or how much centralization his suggestions would bring, including any kind of "key delegation" mechanism he may have in mind.
Including all messages in the Bitcoin blockchain via ordinals would certainly make the mirroring concerns go away, indeed 😃
It would be easy to write a relay for the list, that wraps all received messages in kind:6 reposts and tagging them with sequence numbers. It would serve only reposts signed by the relay, the relay could be fully replicated using strfry sync. It’s actually quite trivial. The relay would only serve and store the wrapped messages.
PGP has one key only as well, a mailing list ist in no way more secure than a nostr message.
Why would key delegation centralize anything? PGP has key delegation without issue.
...and yes, putting tweets on a block chain/git style data structure is a very good idea. That's how you can easily find out how much you've actually seen, and what you may have missed or been censored from seeing.
It just doesn't work in practice. Scuttlebutt users and developers suffer every single day with forking histories and the inability to use the same account in multiple apps or devices.
Who decides what keys have been revoked or not?
