Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
1–10 of 156 posts
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#2I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)?
Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using lightning network in some way. I set up an account on astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed, and when I tried to make a post it just hung and never posted anything. Suffice to say my initial experience started off okay, then dissapointment.
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#3I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)? Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using lightning network in some way. I set up an account on astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed, and when I tried to make a post it just hung and n…
It does not tie into Bitcoin. It's just a very very simple protocol of clients sending and subscribing to pieces of data, and relays that dumbly (i.e. with little processing) send data across connected and subscribed clients.
It's like a very minimal version of ActivityPub. It takes an hour to go through the whole spec and addenda.
Then Jack Dorsey got interested, gave the project a big grant (in BTC), and a lot of crypto hype flew into it. But while it is a convenient excuse to say "crypto, therefore bad", the protocol is itself completely unrelated and IMO quite neat. There is a lot of potential for systems that anyone can comprehend in their totality in an afternoon.
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#4I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)? Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using lightning network in some way. I set up an account on astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed, and when I tried to make a post it just hung and n…
The best web clients so far are Snort and Iris, I'd try again with Snort and you should have a smoother experience.
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#5I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)? Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using lightning network in some way. I set up an account on astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed, and when I tried to make a post it just hung and n…
It’s not tied to bitcoin other than it was created by decentralization loving bitcoiners. It doesn’t use blockchain or token bullshit as those people don’t believe blockchain is a silver bullet for any problem. You might see lightning invoices posted by users but that’s more of a client rendering the encoded data.
Fiatjaf who often posts here also stated that he would like to nostr to be used by non bitcoiners and even people who are antagonistic to bitcoin.
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#6The best introduction to Nostr is on the Nostr protocol github:
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#very-short-summary-o...
>Everybody runs a client. It can be a native client, a web client, etc. To publish something, you write a post, sign it with your key and send it to multiple relays (servers hosted by someone else, or yourself). To get updates from other people, you ask multiple relays if they know anything about these other people. Anyone can run a relay. A relay is very simple and dumb. It does nothing besides accepting posts from some people and forwarding to others. Relays don't have to be trusted. Signatures are verified on the client side.
The FAQ on the same page also answers questions about why Nostr instead of other options like Mastodon, Secure Scuttlebutt, etc.
There's also a recently launched podcast that talks to some developers building on the protocol:
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#7I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)? Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using lightning network in some way. I set up an account on astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed, and when I tried to make a post it just hung and n…
The best web clients so far are Snort and Iris, I'd try again with Snort and you should have a smoother experience. https://snort.social https://iris.to
My favorite Nostr client (web or non-web) is Damus for iOS by jb55:
It looks great, works well, the code well-written and super easy to hack on.
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#8I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)? Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using lightning network in some way. I set up an account on astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed, and when I tried to make a post it just hung and n…
It does not tie into Bitcoin. It's just a very very simple protocol of clients sending and subscribing to pieces of data, and relays that dumbly (i.e. with little processing) send data across connected and subscribed clients. It's like a very minimal version of ActivityPub. It takes an hour to go through the whole spec and addenda. Then Jack Dorsey got interested, gave the project a big grant (in BTC), and a lot of c…
The relationship to bitcoin besides being created by bitcoiners is that it uses Schnorr Signatures for the secp256k1 curve - the same curve as bitcoin.
A Nostr account is identified by a public key, you follow accounts by following public keys and the ability to post as an account is controlled by the corresponding private key.
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#9The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's unknown and unencrypted content.
Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay.
Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that message available to anyone.
Unlike an email relay, you are not forwarding the message to someone else like a dumb pipe; there's no final destination.
Unlike a torrent / DHT node, you do not know beforehand what you are going to make available.
Unlike a Tor exit node, you do not deal in encrypted fragments which you don't store locally.
Unlike an IPFS node, you do not store fragments of files while not even having a full set of such fragments for a given file.
Even though the message is signed, you can't reasonably prove that you do not possess the private key used to sign it, or have not possessed.
So, if you are an anti-censorship activist, and your machine gets searched (which may be even easier to do in the case of a VPS), you, the runner of the relay, may have some pretty unpleasant time. Even if you manage to convince everyone that you only forward these messages and do not inspect or endorse them, and the authorities will not even fine you, it will cost you time and trouble.
Worse, it becomes easy to send something incriminating from a throwaway or stolen client through your relay, and report you to the police. This can of course be done with email or any IM, but these will immediately show you what you've got, so you can e.g. immediately delete it. They do not allow perfect strangers quietly put random stuff onto your disk.
Of course the point of the protocol is to resist censorship, so any content deemed criminal by someone cannot be entirely blocked. But the publishers and the receivers of such content make their choice, while those running a relay seem to remain unprotected from from consequences of that choice which they did not make.
Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
#10I saw Snowden tweeted about this. Anyone have a TLDR on what Nostr is exactly? And how it ties into Bitcoin (if at all)? Update: It seems to be partly a twitter alternative perhaps using lightning network in some way. I set up an account on astral.ninja, created keys, username, saw that there were relays that were defined already. I couldn't see any posts in my feed, and when I tried to make a post it just hung and n…
The best web clients so far are Snort and Iris, I'd try again with Snort and you should have a smoother experience. https://snort.social https://iris.to
I've been using
https://member.cash
It seems to work a little differently to other clients by aggregating all the content on one relay first before sending it to the client, but I prefer this as it is faster and uses less bandwidth.