I can't host a node for Facebook or Twitter because its a private CDN, not because its a centralized database. Gawsh.
Bitcoin's singular database is distributed over an ad-hoc public CDN, thats the actual only difference. Oh, and it determines which singular state is authoritative through consensus rather than admin. Is the White House decentralized because its populated through consensus? Lol.
Bitcoin has a singular, public, centralized, grand unified ledger widely distributed over an ad-hoc public CDN (content distribution network, not content decentralization network lol).
Nostr should show everyone who didn't already know what actual decentralized ledgers (always plural and different if really decentralized) mean.
You said it yourself: "distributed around the world". The same data on hundreds or thousands of nodes is how every centralized database works in modern era.
Thousands of nodes hosting the same database = centralized and distributed. That describes the data layer of Facebook or Twitter or Bitcoin.
It doesnt even make sense to speak of " a" decentralized database or ledger in the singular. If its decentralized, its a plurality of databases or ledgers, none of which have all the data or constantly sync up to the same authoritative global state.
If by "peer to peer" you mean "they all live in the same grand unified blockchain distributed over an ad-hoc CDN like Facebook, not decentralized like Nostr", sure.
It's ridiculous at times. The only reference I can think of is that the Roman supreme would paint his face red in honour of Jupiter and parade through the streets with his unarmed army in a victory march called the Triumph.
Lmfao! I just saw his name in there while typing that last word. Hmm...
Or a cash transaction or service swap, for example. These are properly termed Cryptoeconomics precisely because there's no ledger. Blockchain, the brilliance, takes the choice of ledger out of the hands of the transacting parties alone, and centralizes the record of every transaction in the same ledger.
Through a mind-fuck word association game, the shadowy originators of Bitcoin have you guys talking in Doublespeak about a massively centralized public ledger, centralized at the data layer and merely distributed over an ad-hoc CDN, not decentralized at the data layer like Nostr, and 180 degrees from private / actual cryptoeconomics.
You can't solve the Generals problem without centralizing something. Blockchains don't solve it without doing so, they just chose to centralize the most dangerous part to actual free trade -- the ledger.
No, because it promotes a contradiction in terms. Crypto- as a prefix means 'hidden', as in a crypto-anarchist describes a person who puts on the appearances of supporting the State, maybe claims to have voted, etc.
Here we get the spectacle of a *public* grand unified ledger of economic activity under a title that means the opposite. Cryptoeconomics would apply to a blockchainless Pear Credit transaction, or a Cashu transaction that has the Lightning link disabled.
Mass adoption next Wednesday. I wait for the day Nostr blows past Bitcoin in users. Then there will be more signal in here, less non-stop centralized blockchain shilling.
According to the man who warned you against a centrally planned, artificially fixed rate of supply like BTC and would have favoured a market-driven rate of supply. Which would serve as a price stabilizing mechanism, defending against 10% of your wallet fluctuating on a single day every time a whale primes the pump for a big move.
"Please implement your better idea so that we can all use that"
See? Blockheads don't know how to think in terms of the multi-polar decentralized plurality of solutions that real bottom-up systems exhibit.
Bitcoin (well, the central planners they hid from you to let you imagine there are none and talk about it like an actor) certainly did not "take into account all of the reasons why these monies didn't work". Else it would have a market-determined rate of supply. The market-determined rate of supply is well understood by actual Austrian economists to be THE price stabilizing mechanism.
Bitcoin with it's centrally planned, artificially fixed cap and rate of supply, will never have a price stabilizing mechanism to counter-balance wild swings due to shifts in demand (actual or faked). This lets whales 'prime' the price before making a major buy or sell move.
Bitcoin will never not be volatile. When the rate of supply hits the artificial fiat (by decree) cap of 21M (which appears nowhere in the whitepaper and can be changed by 1 of 5 devs with write access to the centrally hosted git repository. Yes, "you can always fork" but nobody has ever considered a fork of Bitcoin the 'real deal', nor will they. The fact is the fiat cap is arbitrary and can conceivably be changed. It's frustrating talking to Bitcoiners who keep claiming it has properties it doesn't.
But let's say the 21M really doesn't change. What then? Will Bitcoin magically become less volatile? No! The centrally planned rate of supply simply becomes artificially fixed to zero. Volatility is built in, and if you think about it, this baked-in volatility from the planner(s) rejecting a market-determined rate of supply is the only reason anyone heard of Bitcoin on the evening news.
Here is a free audiobook on the history of "money" before brand-name currencies like USD and BTC. You know, akshully decentralized solutions: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/64160
A lack of research on decentralized systems of credit and debt that leads to crap like "no moneis have worked, ever" -- a ludicrous claim that should knock anyone out their chair -- is a choice.
This would actually turn Nostr into a viable DM option. When someone wants to DM me often I currently load them onto my private XMPP server. Nostr just is not an option for private comms. A holepunch solution would get around every concern. Excited you're thinking about it!
For the github alt? Its now 1bn sats
Yeah I don't think my beer purchase in West Samoa should be in the same fucking ledger as your condom purchase in Mexico.
I'm decentralized like that. #[4]
#[2] I would love to elucidate with luxury of detail how Pear Credit and Cashu converge and diverge, they are the only two decentrally issued projects I find interesting right now.
Bitcoin devs are a bit of an oxymoron tho, right. No amazing devs I know are infatuated with 'blockchain technology'.
Connect to fewer relays, or paid relays (read-only is free).
Nostr is client heavy, much or all of the recent data in all your relays is downloaded to your phone even though you haven't scrolled past, as I understand it. Could be wrong about that, ask the amazing #[2]
Nostr has nothing to do with media file hosting and delivery. Just because Nostr's distributed text blobs can contain links to centrally hosted, censorable files with a server admin doesn't make any of that 'part of Nostr'.
Similarly, Nostr is not Lightning and would integrate just as well with PayPal. Just because clients can build profile fields for Lightning URLs doesn't make any of that 'part of Nostr'. jb55 has repeated this so many times.
Oh, that wouldn't be Nostr because it's centralized? So is NostrNests, which isn't part of Nostr and doesn't even authenticate the Nostr way.
Not everything adjacent to Nostr is Nostr, and selling media files for Lightning invoices is entirely doable without Nostr. The Nostr protocol adds nothing to the mix except yet another public record of your transaction on multiple servers, which isn't really a plus, plus you already have that with the blockchain.
Check out https://simplex.chat - unfortunately I can't use it because it only supports Android 10+ and iOS so far, but they claim there's not even a unique user identifier (unlike Signal and Session).
Another harebrained thought was a NIP to maintain a memedirectory that simply assigns an ID to each popular meme background. Then you can pass that ID, topText and bottomText and the meme can be transmitted and interpreted and rendered as an image by any supporting client without transmitting anything but text, and retaining the decentralized relay hosting that standard memes do not (the centralized image host gets every viewer's public IP and all the images go down if the centralized image host crashes or shuts down).
Kinda irrelevant to your post, but I had to get this idea written out. Thanks :p
Images will always be centrally hosted.
I had an idea for a client to auto-convert images to vector SVG so they can be transmitted in text (faaar smaller than binary converted to base64) but that level of abstraction won't do for these purposes. 😋 For memes tho...