Craig, so far ~9 years.
I'd like to point out though that there are now two people in this thread saying nostrplebs.com do verify account and there's a possiblity I'm wrong. I've reached out to Derek on Twitter on their procedure, because I'm geuinely interested and'll happily admit when I'm mistaken đ.
Well, I'm not outright saying that. What I am saying is it doesn't really matter from the point of view from nostr itself - a nostr client just checks whether the nip-05 identity you put in your profile actually points back to your profile, and if it does, it calls you "verified". Nothing else.
Whether you as a person put more weight on a nostrplebs.com identity than on a "free-nostr-identities-for-all.com" identity is purely a social construct.
I don't fully agree. A nip-05 identity is like an email address. It allows people to look up your npub based on a username@domain.nl identifier. That's its primary purpose.
I don't think nostrplebs is doing any sort of verification? I can't find any evidence for them doing that. Perhaps #[8] was referring to the initial signup where people could contact Derek on Twitter to be able to register an early account? But it seems that at least today anyone can register any username on nostrplebs.com.
Not saying that hodlonaut isn't truly hodlonaut, it's just that in my opinion being nostrplebs "verified" doesn't prove that he is đ. The best proof of identity would be the person giving their npub on a site (such as Twitter, although in this case hodlonaut hid/removed his account there) where you know it's them.
"Yes anyone could register the same username" No I'm talking about nostrplebs.com, the nip-05 identity service. Anyone can register a username there, provided you pay for it. I don't see any evidence of them verifying twitter accounts.
Do they? It seems anyone can register any username, you just have to pay. "Hodlonaut" is still available on any of the other 4 domains they offer.
Is this thing on? *tap tap tap*