Not everything that people like is a scam.

The sophon is a bot that tries to attack the creation of new brc20 tokens.

this is soy speak

Nostr has a funding problem. Developers and infrastructure is severely underfunded and reliant on flawed economic models, and this could pose a risk to the future of Nostr as a protocol.

To understand it, we need to understand what resources are needed to make Nostr work, how they aren't funded properly and what could happen next.

# The costs of what makes Nostr work

Nostr works because:

1. Developers build clients on it

2. There is infrastructure to support clients

If there are no developers, there are no clients. If there is no infrastructure, clients have no purpose.

## The costs of developing a client, and the reliance on developers

Clients require time to develop the client, and money to run infrastructure for it.

Without developers, there would be no clients, and no Nostr.

Developers have lives and need to make money somehow in exchange for the time they spend. Developing a client is a significant cost, even for small ones (assuming 1 hr/day, no infrastructure costs and the average salary of a software developer, **$1500**) and needs to be covered somehow.

We have multiple models, all of which have large downsides:

1. Donations/V4V/Bounties:

This model suffers from the problem that a minority pays for the majority, which will lead to the majority demanding exclusive benefits for their money or otherwise cutting off funding since they have no reason to pay.

This also suffers from the fact that donations are unreliable.

2. Grants from OpenSats and similar non-profits:

These suffer from the same problems as the donations model, but also suffer from the following problems:

- the managers of these non-profits may have views not aligned with their donors, leading to misfunding.

- that such projects are mostly stopgaps that add additional complexity to a direct donation model.

3. Paywalled features:

It is very hard to find the balance between paywalling enough features to make money, and discouraging too many users from using the client. There may not even be such a sweet spot.

4. Cuts:

It is extremely hard to balance these so that people don't complain, and it is likely that there will be forks of FOSS clients that remove these features by some users.

5. Paid clients:

People do not want to spend a lot on services that they expect to be free or cheap, and spending $5/month on this client, $10/month on that client, so on won't scale, even though that is way less than the actual value they are getting.

6. Ads:

Ads are usually underpaying and mostly make money for the ad companies instead of the client developers. Ads are also an invasion of privacy and may not be well received by some users.

7. VC funding:

VCs put profit above protocol health, which may accelerate some issues that I will discuss later. They also may disincentivize the development of some apps (uncensored social media for example) for pushing their own agenda.

Even if we find some good way to fund clients, it doesn't end there...

## The cost of infrastructure

There are multiple types of infrastructure for Nostr, such as relays, services like Noswhere's search relay, push notifications, etc. All of these cost money to operate, and are the other half of what make Nostr work.

These have even more limited funding options, which have even bigger downsides:

1. Client funding:

Clients already struggle on funding as I discussed in the previous section. This would mean infrastructure is even more underfunded.

2. User payments:

Users do not understand the details and importance of infrastructure, and have no reason to fund it. Making this problem worse, infrastructure providers can falsely advertise their services, diverting money away from infrastructure that is higher quality and should be funded. This is already happening.

3. Grants from OpenSats and similar non-profits (*relays only*):

Again, these suffer from problems specified in the last section about grants. These entities will likely want the highest value from their donations, therefore leading them to encouraging a few big relays than many medium sized ones. Since relays are more important infrastructure, and they could have more control, these entities can also exert more control over the network.

4. Data harvesting and selling:

This would discourage people from using their providers, but this is likely going to happen to some extent. The issue is that it would not generate sufficient revenue for the amount of users it will drive away.

Both infrastructure and developers being underfunded can lead to issues that may kill the protocol, which I'll discuss in the next section.

# The risks of improper funding

## 1. The protocol fizzles out and dies without reaching critical mass

This is one of the less likely options since there will probably be people developing for the sake of it, but is likely. With client developers being underfunded and infrastructure shutting down, Nostr would become smaller and worse to use until it completely fizzled out except maybe a few people.

## 2. The enshittification of Nostr

This is the most likely outcome, and the worst one. As Nostr continues developing, developers and infrastructure developers will want to maximize revenue, so they will begin by making good products to attract users at a loss.

After they have a sufficiently large user base, they would slowly erode bridges to their competitors, only leaving what is required so that their users won't complain.

After this stage, it is likely that clients will start merging with other ones to make larger "everything" apps and kill the last bridges, turning them into proprietary walled gardens, returning us to where we are today.

# How do we fix this?

I have no idea. Please share your opinions if you do :)

nostr:note1zxetaehzyvvgzjsyj2nxhx5wtns3v2wcv2vutyk3xq74tn7dtk5qtluxpr

How much space does it take to register a name? What's the dollar cost when fees are 100sats/vb?

GrapheneOS is one of the most important FOSS projects i can think of right now

get your damn pixel and ditch the iphone already. it works flawlessly

I am getting close to giving a more detailed assessment on Israel/Hamas, as it drags on.

And it will probably be Nostr-only since other platforms can’t handle it. It is too polarized. Everyone is tunnel-visioned.

My husband is currently in Cairo dealing with some property work we are doing for our extended family. They are only 250 miles from the problem, and Egypt’s acute currency crisis brings it closer to home if military or refugee shit hits the fan. Most of my extended family is geopolitically or financially close to the Israel/Gaza issue and is Muslim. I am thus both close and far from the issue. And I grew up in the US in a diverse region with Jewish and Muslim peers, but more-so Jewish overall.

Suffice to say, I don’t want civilians on either side to suffer or die. I am pro-humanity first and foremost.

Before I give my eventual analysis, I am happy to see Nostr comments on the issue. What are your thoughts and questions on the topic? What would you like to see addressed from a diverse or as non-biased source as possible?

Were Hamas allowed to continue raids such as occurred on 10-7 (as they have promised to do a million times if necessary) they would certainly be an existential threat. No state can tolerate the existence of a neighboring faction dedicated to such actions.

From: ursuscamp<-DerekRoss at 11/05 09:15

> Hamas is not an existential threat to Israel. This campaign is about revenge, pure and simple.

>

> What is existential to Israel is bombing the population of Gaza to oblivion, committing non-stop terror and violence against the citizens of the West Bank, and uniting the entire Muslim world against them. THAT is an existential threat to Israel, and they have brought it on themselves.

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The actions of Israel are certainly horrible. I believe that everyone in Israel thinks this is true, including the leaders and the military. War is horror. But I ask you, what other choice do they have?

A cease fire was in effect on 10-7. It was broken by Hamas. If Hamas can break a cease fire at any time then the term "cease fire" only applies to Isreal. If Isreal agrees to a cease file then Hamas will simply regroup and, as they have promised, commit more and more 10-7 atrocities. Does anyone doubt that?

Are there moral positions that are dependent upon history? Yes, because injustice is immoral. But there are actions that are so severe that justice is impossible and irrelevant. There is no just punishment for roasting babies alive. There is no just punishment for shooting up a dance concert. In such cases justice becomes irrelevant, and the only course of action is permanent prevention.

Existential threats require existential responses. The 10-7 atrocities were an existential action. Israel could not survive as a nation if it allowed such actions to continue. The only rational response, therefore, is the elimination of the actors: Hamas.

From: mikedilger at 11/04 20:02

> On which point do you wish to change my mind? I see the horrors committed by Israel and I post about this topic in support of International efforts for a cease fire

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Drop the str

I'm getting a "Error: Failed to deserialize form body" when submitting on the newname page. pasting a base64 psbt from sparrow.

are you using damus? if so, there is a solution:

nostr:note1krp6w3n58j7x6ap0qct4e5d4dvjqd2zrk9mm2502m8t4egvc2xcqf2vzlf

why no zapping?