Nostr • Hacker News Board

Re: Nostr

#61

Post by t1E9mE7JTRjf » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:06 AM UTC

dbushell wrote: post #34

A big misconception I've seen is the assumption that Nostr relays are federated and share messages between one another. This is not how it works. So if you're building a "Twitter clone" the client app must search multiple relays and post to multiple relays. If clients are not using a relay in common they cannot see one another. The end result is a bad experience for both user and developer. Using a single relay is ce…

This is a valid observation and hurdle of sorts. One to me, which is a fascinating problem to work on. There are a few approaches to solve this. For instance NIP65, where one defines on their profile meta which relays they read/write to, giving clients the ability to discover all the right content. That's just one approach, and some are exploring other ideas. It seems like a very solvable problem anyway.

Re: Nostr

#62

Post by nunobrito » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:07 AM UTC

dbushell wrote: post #34

A big misconception I've seen is the assumption that Nostr relays are federated and share messages between one another. This is not how it works. So if you're building a "Twitter clone" the client app must search multiple relays and post to multiple relays. If clients are not using a relay in common they cannot see one another. The end result is a bad experience for both user and developer. Using a single relay is ce…

There are some messed up things on a few NIP because the technology evolved fast.

Most NIP are fine and continuously improved.

This is trivial to solve when there is there a periodic release of the NIP as done in other specs. So far there hasn't been much need for that formality, most developers understand quickly how to create tools on top of it.

Re: Nostr

#63

Post by vincnetas » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:08 AM UTC

thrownawaysz wrote: post #58

>apolitical communication commons Some people say that labeling yourself apolitical is 1, a polticial statement 2, a privilege itself which puts you into a certain socio-political position

whats up with people being afraid of being political. its your duty as citizen to be political. in ancient grece apolotical people were called "idiots". literally thats the origin of the word.

Re: Nostr

#64

Post by nunobrito » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:08 AM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #39

littlecranky67 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is noteworthy that zapps are based on lightning (which is Layer-2 for bitcoin), and similar in privacy as monero (and instantaneous).

Does lightning work now? A few years ago, I remember they had quite some difficulties. Maybe I should brush up my knowledge.

It is OK for small amounts like paying a coffee or a few cents.

Not reliable for larger values.

Re: Nostr

#65

Post by keiferski » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:08 AM UTC

t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote: post #52

keiferski wrote: post #26

Something I don’t quite get about these new social networks that are clearly aimed at technical people: my model of a truly decentralized social network is more like a network of privately hosted personal websites, à la the original web. Not yet another platform I need to make an account to interact on separately. Have there been any attempts to make more of a “network” that incentivizes operating personal websites b…

That's more or less how nostr works, except instead of websites there are notes (a generic type which can be anything - including website content), and instead of servers there are 'relays'.

Yeah the more I read about it, the more it does sound somewhat similar to what I was proposing.

However, the copywriting there is not in this vein at all. IMO the metaphor of personal websites is a simple, universal one that most people can understand. Nostr seems unintelligible to anyone that isn't pretty technical.

Re: Nostr

#66

Post by scellus » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:09 AM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #7

Last time I tried navigating the Nostr ecosystem I found their Twitter-equivalent platform and it was full of people posting about cryptocurrencies and other topics that weren't of particular interest to me. Are there any major figures of interest primarily participating on any Nostr platform? Or is there any kind of uniquely interesting content that is being primarily produced and shared on Nostr?

Same here. I like the idea, have tried the social-network side a couple of times, but my kind of content is missing or I can't find it.

https://bitchat.free now uses nostr for non-mesh contacts somehow, but I see no-one there either.

Re: Nostr

#67

Post by AlecSchueler » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:09 AM UTC

thrownawaysz wrote: post #58

>apolitical communication commons Some people say that labeling yourself apolitical is 1, a polticial statement 2, a privilege itself which puts you into a certain socio-political position

> 2, a privilege itself which puts you into a certain socio-political position

And others say that we should use our positions of privilege to help others, which seems to apply in this case.

Re: Nostr

#68

Post by t1E9mE7JTRjf » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:09 AM UTC

thrownawaysz wrote: post #58

>apolitical communication commons Some people say that labeling yourself apolitical is 1, a polticial statement 2, a privilege itself which puts you into a certain socio-political position

I would interpret it as anyone is welcome. The only barrier to entry is an internet connection, and even that is needed for just part of your experience. I'd guess it's context is the censorship seen in the last decade on most social media platforms.

Re: Nostr

#69

Post by Arathorn » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:10 AM UTC

> "An open protocol with a chance of working"

One of the most depressing things about the decentralised protocol space is the adversarial attitude to other projects - whether that's Nostr v. ActivityPub v. ATproto v Nostr, XMPP v. Matrix v. IRCv3 v. Deltachat, etc.

Imagine if the energy spent on positioning yourself relative to other open-source projects (who should be fellow travellers, if anything) was instead invested into competing with the centralised proprietary incumbents instead.

The same applies to open source as a whole, but it's depressing to see the same vibes leach into the literal tagline of the project.

Re: Nostr

#70

Post by grumbel » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 8:10 AM UTC

benrutter wrote: post #23

Hope this doesn't come accross as rhetorical, it's a genuine question! Nostr users, how does this differ in your experience from Mastodon? At first glance it seems like the same idea but with the extra ingredient of blockchain, I'm not sure what this adds though, anonymity?

The fundamental difference is that with Mastodon, or any Fediverse service, the server still has full control over the user. It's basically no different from regular Facebook or Twitter, just with some optional federation on top that can be switched off at any time (and often is).

On Nostr the server is just a dumb relay, it controls and owns nothing. User identities are proper public key pairs. If a relay goes evil, you can just use another one or use multiple at once to begin with, since the location of the messages is irrelevant, everything is held together by public keys.