Subnostr

With the significant surge in usage of Bitcoin through Lightning Addresses and Nostr zaps and payments, it’s important that we understand how things started and how far we’ve come.

I have a talk at MIT about the Lightning Address protocol soon after I released it. Posting it here for those who may have seen it before.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pNfvWHWhuMg

andre 2y ago

I’m not following. How exactly are sats lost? Are you saying you’ve received sats to your ZBD Developer Dashboard using the API connection with Nostream but right now you can’t withdraw? That’s not how this should be working at all. Can you DM me your email address used?

Replying to

Brisket

You're picking up on an element I think many haven't quite grasped. Nostr is using cryptographic key pairs for identity creation & management.

It's completely permissionless but it comes with zero cost to the key creator. In order to be heard amongst the noise that comes with zero cost communication, you need to demonstrate PoW.

This is more than just a Twitter replacement. This is the start of humans scaling trust in cyber space. It's really hard for me to articulate why that's important, but I feel it deep within.

We still need improvements to private key management & identity transfer but that will come.

andre 2y ago

Beautifully written

Replying to

Derek Ross

Are Paid Relays a Shitcoin?

Last night on Nostr Spaces, we discussed potential implications of paid relays. I believe we Nostriches all understand that paid relays are needed for 1) to pay for the service that we're using as nothing should be free 2) relay operators need funds to pay for relay hardware infrastructure and 3) to thwart spammers.

#[0] said that he thought that paid relays were Shitcoins. What did he mean?

With a Shitcoin, anyone can create one. There is no Proof-of-Work in this process. The creator makes promises about their current offerings or future offerings. And lastly, they want payment and take user's money.

#[1] mentioned that he believed paid relays should operator on a Web-of-Trust model. What does this mean?

Do you know the relay operator? Do they have an older or well known Nostr public key? Did they previously run a free relay? Do reputable people use and recommend this relay? It's fairly easy now to form a Web-of-Trust with well known actors in this space and community.

As we move forward, we do need to watch for scams. A relay and operator could appear out of nowhere. A relay could promise the moon on speed and resources. That relay and relay operator could also disappear in a day or a week or a month, after they've reached their fund raising goal.

Right now, using Nostream to operate a paid relay at least requires a ZBD developer account. This is right now behind a gatekeeper. #[2] needs to approve relay API access. This will get easier in the future. In the future, Nostream will work with other providers and I would assume even end up working with your own node. In the future, we'll need to be more diligent when choosing paid relays.

Start building your Web-of-Trust now.

andre 2y ago

100% expect there to be hundreds to thousands of payment provider plug-ins, for different types of relay implementations in the future.

#[2] built Nostream and is one of the most friendly relays to get started with as well as one of the most configurable. ZBD API felt like a perfect fit, but I'm sure there will be plenty others.

We NEED there to be plenty others, including self-hosted solutions. A distributed network is only strong because it has 0 single points of failure.

andre 2y ago

We're a regulated US money transmitter and we have certain requirements we need to follow (unfortunately). Especially when we enable direct access for developer tools/APIs that allow devs to move money globally at large volumes/amounts and have immediate settlement.

We have a Sandbox environment that is going to be shipping soon so folks can get started without doing this added step.

I'm trying my best to continue pushing back -- this is why you see ZBD mobile app users only need to go through this step when they move LARGE sums through the app (aka are power users). For users we can do that. For developers we cannot at the moment.

Maybe this will change in the future. Going as hard as we can, trust me.

andre 2y ago

Too sexy. Woah

andre 2y ago

Paid

andre 2y ago

Literally just deployed a ton more invite codes to ZBD Dev Dash.

Bunch of new paid relays about to pop up left and right imminently!

BTC + NOSTR FTW

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

andre 2y ago

For everyone asking for invites, I promise I’ll get to you asap. Just been hella busy rn. But stay tuned over DMs.