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Nuh
930ccef12372dd2f16057cfc54f0dbd94335d8b51b4e2737236b00cab718fcd9
Working on https://mlkut.org, designer and maintener of https://pkarr.org. https://nuh.dev

This is value judgment though, we are betting that users want a relationship with ONE hosting provider that promises them data integrity, strong consistency, etc.. all what you an I expect from a data store.

But, note two things here:

1. Unlike nswcbunkers, we don't give the homeserver our root keys, and we expect apps to know that we delegated to that Homeserver from Pkarr (like DNS), in Nostr prominent devs killed any attempt to have key delegation, we are not going to play nice with that.

2. Nothing preventing you from taking SOME of the data on the homeserver and cache them around as you wish with higher layers, and if that requires that the data is signed, we plan to get to that, but at least the straightforward usecase of just... you know follow a URL to the authority server is covered.

3. Nothing prevents us from having special service types including mirrors of the data, or literally Email address.. whatever you can put on DNS works. we are just making this new service type because it covers so much of what web2 does for as little complexity as possible. and the least mental load on users.

Replying to Avatar hodlbod

Oh, didn't realize you're Carvalho himself. Nice to meet you! As I say below, I've followed your work for a long time, well before I got into the space. Now I have to re-write my note to speak in 2nd instead of 3rd person 😅

On your critiques of nostr:

> Scalability/incentive challenges that result in only a few centralized relays, lacks key-delegation and identity-based routing, inviting censorship and data loss.

I agree on key management, but the rest of it is either wrong or has to be justified a lot more. A "challenge" does not "result" in anything. And there is identity-based routing in NIP 65 and other places.

PKARR sounds great, but again, why not bring it to nostr rather than pump your own brand? I'd love to see someone solve that problem on nostr.

I also have a problem with your thesis that DHTs "ensure scalability". P2P DHTs are pretty well understood to not scale. Hub-based DHTs can scale, but that's basically nostr's topology. You even say "the network scales seamlessly, supporting millions of nodes globally". Don't we need billions? Unless you're talking about shared homeservers, but, again — that's the same topology as nostr.

You claim that pubky is "not just another app or platform; it’s a paradigm shift". I'd argue that the paradigm shift happened as early as scuttlebutt, other protocols are just attempts to improve on their work, pubky being no exception. The attempt to claim all this stuff for your own brand is kind of sketchy.

We would have loved to have you over here on nostr for the last two yearse pushing forward web of trust, content curation, decentralized algorithms, identity-based routing, etc. These are things nostr developers have been working on for years now. They're just all still nascent because everyone has their own project to take care of. Nostr has a high level of redundant work happening compared to bluesky, pubky, etc. Which has its challenges, but I see it as a good thing.

I'm hard on pubky not because I'm a nostr-only robot, but because I closely followed your work for quite a while prior to getting into nostr development. I installed the wallet, read the slashtags docs, etc. So this isn't just a confirmation-bias opinion. I'd love to see all the effort that is going into pubky go into building on nostr. Unless you think nostr isn't salvageable? But apart from the DHT implementation, it seems to me like all pubky's good ideas could be retrofitted onto nostr.

First of all, Pkarr was shared with Nostr folks especially Fiatjaf from day one, the reaction was always either Nostr doesn't need it or we can't change the Identity now it is too late.

Secondly if you are willing to make a breaking change like Pkarr as the root identity, then might as well reconsider other unfortunate parts of Nostr that are bundled with the discovery layer for no reason, most importantly why would we use websockets and Nostr events as base API instead of HTTP verbs, headers, and semantics? just because Nostr made that bad decision? Why not build a datastore like WebDav and then advertise that event (PUT/DELETE) on Nostr relays?

Well, pubky core only engages with Pkarr and data stores. And it doesn't tackle discovery so Nostr can be that for Pubky or not.

But note that Pubky didn't take away anything from Nostr, anymore than Blossom takes away from Nostr, if anything wr just decided to use the tried and tested tech of web servers.

It bothers me when a social media app doesn't allow me to override users profile pictures, this is my phone god damn it.

Yes and Holepunch team didn't invent or maintain Mainline...they have an entire whole other DHT.

And we only use Mainline to map keys to web servers, then you proceed like you do after you find the IP address from DNS.

No p2p swarming, no Hypercores or even Torrent. Just http, simpler even than websocket and nostr events. If you know Fetch API you know pubky

It is very high risk. The work is immense and the reach is almost non existent.

This is why we didn't demand that people install pkdns to use Pubky, in fact we are doing a lot of work to allow web apps as easily as possible.

You gotta go to people where they are, I am even worried about asking users to install a key management app, and that is why there is always the option to upload your keypairs to a web app on your own risk, just to lower the barrier to test the system and what it has to offer.

I want to give every adult a sovereign domain, that can't be done on Bitcoin. I don't know what more to say.

The only thing we can do is invest in UX solutions to all the problems you mentioned. There will never be a future where everyone who wants a domain on Bitcoin can have one, so even if it is superior to ICANN (which it is not because at leas ICANN names works everywhere) it is a dead end.

You are free to use it. And good luck convincing people to buy a name that they can't use anywhere, and then they can't use your app before they buy that useless name. Namecoin existed forever man, no one cares, let's try something with less barriers to entry.

Technically 13 root servers belonging to 12 different organisations, but the structure is more complex because there are observers and stakeholders that have some voice and observers status, from governments to private sector and businesses etc.

There track record is very good, and ther is no close second in terms of being a good custodian of the commons they oversee.

It is a n extraordinary claim that some other organisations should be equally trusted. And even then, why would we move from what we already trust.

I know it has value, Bitcoin can't scale to satisfy that demand though. ICANN or a reinvention of it is the only way at serious scale.

This is why pkdns was an ambition not something we actively tried to sell to people, convincing users to do any of this is pretty hard. Luckily app developers can add support Pkarr and Pubky by embedding it in their apps without asking users to change anything on their system.

Didn't expect many people to get as excited as you about it, but maybe one day browsers and popular DNS servers like 1.1.1.1 will support it natively, and users will get it without much configuration

It was rhetorical, of course ICANN is better, anyone who disagrees shouldn't be considered a serious engineer.

nostr:note1p88j5w83pvq6whqak8armcxurtsfd8a049qvgzsqupammyrvx2zsaurl9e

Not even close. Sure once you Know the key, the key can tell you what alias it wants to be called, and you save it in your bookmarks/phone book as such, but that is marginally better than say http title element.

the actual problem is the inverse lookup, how do you find the key by a human memorable name that you heard on Radio or a concert or whatever... that is simply impossible yo solve without either ICANN or Namecoin

Pubky is definitely inspired by RemoteStorage and the general Unhosted.org philosophy. I believe we do things that RemoteStorage does not do though. Most importantly; Pkarr instead of web fingers, and the paginated listing API making Pubky an ordered key value store, not just a filesystem.

I want to make pubky so good that no indiehacker can be bothered setting up a backend to validate an idea.

They would tell early adoptors; Just sign in with your pubky and come with your own backend, and that wouldn't be too much to ask. Maybe even attractive to users who know that their data won't disappear if the developer got distracted by another side project.

There are around 1000 known PDSs in AtProto, how many Outbox relay are there in Nostr?

I need to read more. But my intuition says, the old owner already had all shares necessary to generate a full valid signature, so that is impossible to verifiable lose.

The only scenario that makes sense to me, is if the company from the start setup the key shares with a trusted 3rd party that assures the new owner that the previous owner doesn't have enough shares to sign on their own. maybe that is what you meant all along.