Imagine if we could put an AI agent in charge of maintaining your Amethyst. You could just write a DM to the agent asking for a new feature, the agent would change the app in place and give you back to test. If things work well for you, you could submit the change to your friends. If enough of your friends like and use it, the main repo could take that in. Maybe that's the future we want.

I made a mistake during my Bitcoin lecture last week in the university of Bologna. One I’m not going to repeat. I assumed something. And I shouldn’t have.

Since I was talking about my job, I told the students that a big part of it is debunking myths around Bitcoin...

You know, the usual stuff: Bitcoin is a Ponzi, it’s going to zero, it’s killing the planet. I built like 15 slides for this. I was ready to fight. Ready to debunk every single one of them, one by one.

So I asked them: “What’s something negative you’ve heard about Bitcoin?”

Silence. No one raised their hand. No one mentioned pollution. No one said anything about volatility or scams. These were 22 years old, curious, open-minded, and genuinely there to learn. They didn’t have myths to unlearn.

So there I was, spending the next 20 minutes talking about gas flaring, carbon-negative mining, and all the reasons Bitcoin is not what “they” say it is. But “they,” in this case, didn’t even exist. The only person bringing up those narratives was me.

And that’s when it hit me. All these years in the Bitcoin scene have trained my brain to always be on the defensive. To expect resistance. To anticipate criticism. And that mindset slowly killed a part of the joy I used to feel when I first learned about Bitcoin.

Back then, no one had told me it was bad. I just found it exciting, revolutionary, empowering. My brain wasn’t busy filtering negative takes it was busy being amazed.

That beginner’s energy, that childish awe, that sense of discovering something precious, it’s something I want to reconnect with. I don’t want to be the person who walks into a room full of open minds and immediately starts talking about the bad things people say.

I want to talk about freedom from banks and government, creativity, women empowerment, potential. I’m not saying I’ll stop responding to critics when necessary. But I want to stop assuming that everyone is a critic.

There are way more people out there who are just curious, interested, open to learning, than there are loud contrarians I’ll never change the mind of anyway.

From now on, I want to speak to the curious ones. Not the ghosts in my head.

I sent another +60,000 sats today as a test…

(And might have even broken a few things 😬)

Day 3 of my zap-vertising experiment:

1️⃣What I did

2️⃣What I learned

3️⃣What comes next

Let’s recap:

On day 1 I sent 60,000 sats - primarily large quantities (on average +300 Sats)...

My thinking was that if I was the top zap on trending notes, I’d get a lot of visibility.

I ended up growing by 87 followers.

I posted a full day 1 breakdown, and that note started getting a ton of traction on it’s own.

Since I was gaining momentum from that alone I figured I’d pause the zapping experiment until that died down… thus, no day 2 recap.

Today I went for a very different strategy…

1️⃣ What I did:

This time I went for Quantity > Quality

I sent (or tried to send) +6000 zaps at about 8-10 sats each (my goal was 60,000 sats total).

Truthfully, I have no idea how many sats were actually sent…

A lotta shit broke.

First, I was using zapadd.com to send bulk zaps

This was quite unreliable. I think I lost probably 30k-40k sats in the process.

I have no idea how many zaps were ultimately sent but I think a few thousand.

I will say, the developer who built it was super helpful with support and did offer to refund everything.

According to him, this might have caused some issues with the primal wallets today.

I’m not technical and have no idea what actually happened other than shit didn’t work and people couldn’t zap me (and maybe many others) for a while today.

In terms of the message - I went with “sending love” instead of “testing something”

Optimizing for vibes.

Results:

Gained 152 new followers… about 395 sats per follow… ~$0.37

SOLID.

2️⃣What I learned:

Value 4 Value.

What really got the most traction on my account was my recent note.

And that note cost a whopping 0 sats.

Good content wins.

Regardless of where this zapvertising experiment goes, there is no replacement for good content.

Learning numero dos:

Nostr is such an infant.

The infrastructure feels so new and delicate.

It’s kinda wild that there is no reliable way to allocate $50 to growth.

What excites me the most is that I can help to shape that future…

Picture this - it’s only a matter of time before there are companies on here that want to allocate 10,000,000 sats per day to growth and exposure…

I want to help shape what that system could look like.

(P.S. - I’m looking for some technical counterparts to help build here! Slide in my messages if that's you.)

3️⃣ What comes next:

Something I haven’t tested yet is direct linking in zaps.

I think these will probably come off a bit more spammy - especially if it's straight to a product page…

I’m working through some creative ideas to make it so it’s still well received

(The “sending love” was very well received today)

What I really want to see is if I send 100,000 sats, and each zap has a direct link, how many clicks will that drive?

Will keep you all posted 🫡🫡🫡

Damus’ first algo feed is working! (ish)

Shows the last note posted by each user in your contact list (or any list).

Already finding lots of notes i’ve missed!

nostr:nprofile1qqs83kwrxvrqec2hdy04qcnt3yjtp8ywh0q3jr64a3a5nwjfusytf7gprfmhxue69uhkummnw3ezummjv9hxwetsd9kxctnyv4mqzrrhwden5te0vfexytnfduq3qamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwa5kuegra86s6 is building something really interesting that I think he's getting ready to start sharing

The boring PhD in me gets triggered when people take sides in a sideless battle. :)

Why just data and not real-world goods and services?

Maybe someone who wants to help #Nostr growing and support those that are trying to build on it for no monetary gain! I’m sorry I’m not rich and I offer to use months of saving to optimise Narratives. I didn’t ask you to do everything, just some support

😂😂😂

thank you, nostr:npub1arqu5qaydkt3sjlumyf95hykwj5x00gmat47glrh6n4wcmz7ap6qlskjdh -- I will try to not get my faith in humanity destroyed by this one horrible interaction, it's just so terribly disappointing!

and lol, yeah, definitely I don't know a single developer that would take a project for 1500 euros!

Good day to check out nostr again. The primary reason I'm not here more often is I connect through a very jank VM. Elon is working hard to incentivize me to fix it.

has anyone thought/written about data-processing services via nostr?

I'm thinking of, as nostr:npub1dergggklka99wwrs92yz8wdjs952h2ux2ha2ed598ngwu9w7a6fsh9xzpc says, a vending machine model.

Money in, data out.

Example:

I publish an event saying I want "X data processed in Y form, will pay Z", services compete to serve me the data back.

Rationale:

I'm integrating audio/video highlights on nostr:npub1w0rthyjyp2f5gful0gm2500pwyxfrx93a85289xdz0sd6hyef33sh2cu4x (cc nostr:npub1kuy0wwf0tzzqvgfv8zpw0vaupkds3430jhapwrgfjyn7ecnhpe0qj9kdj8 nostr:npub18lzls4f6h46n43revlzvg6x06z8geww7uudhncfdttdtypduqnfsagugm3 ); instead of handling the transcription within Highlighter (which is what I'm doing now via the `whisper` model), what if users could query for that specific service and pay for it directly to the right service provider?

Ideally, the user would have no "account" or "balance" on any of the service providers (vending machines don't have balances!), and ideally only the "best" (as understood by the user) is rewarded.

The way I imagine it working is:

* user publishes X event with the job spec

* service providers that can handle that job spec compete to serve it (risk!)

* when service provider serves the data the user pays to the "best" service provider

Ideally there would be no negotiation steps between user<>provider, at least for inexpensive compute.

Obviously there's risk to the service provider here, but it's risk that would be very easy to price/handle for a motivated service provider.

The upside is a transparent, always-on global marketplace for data-processing/compute.

I deleted it, I need to understand what to stream, it felt super boring / camera shy 😅

Should I stream while writing a new NIP?

Mom and baby Atlas are in great shape. Labour was really good and the mom was incredible. It was literally three pushes and he was out.

🙌🙌 nostr:note1txrtunaujaguqzads4ypach5glnxz6em2hzr4ezptpxrdn0853dse7xpjd

Any interest from anyone to help me organize this? nostr:note10xcsw3wydy46mqq7mqpnrvckzzdzg0xkapcsq55dnjehzt69sreqeymu7v