The First Amendment of the United States Constitution contains beautiful words, but unfortunately that is all they are. The 1A could never protect the speech of individuals.

The 1A is not permissionless. You must be a US citizen to enjoy the benefits.

The 1A is not trustless. You must trust a centralized organization (the US government) to protect your freedom; and hope they don’t infringe upon it themselves.

The Nostr Protocol is the First Amendment of the internet, and of the whole world.

I’m seeing lots of notes about how the average pleb can’t, or won’t set up their own non-custodial lightning node. I’m calling BS.

I’m an average pleb without a technical background. I set up my bitcoin node, lightning node and a couple of channels. It was a weekend project, and a lot of fun.

The best part was I didn’t do it alone. The team at Start9 was incredible, and through their Telegram channel they walked me through any issues I ran into ( #[0] , #[1] , #[2] )

#[3] , #[4] , #[5] , and the rest of the #Nodestrich crew were incredibly helpful in getting my lightning channels up and running with lots of inbound liquidity. I highly encourage you to reach out to any one of them if you’re thinking about starting your own non-custodial lightning node.

Give me your thoughts below. Are you an average pleb node-runner or do you plan to be? Do you think non-custodial lightning will take off or is it too complicated?

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