111–120 of 171 posts
“my emails are just not delivered anymore. I might as well not have an email server.” FUD. I and many others on HN run our own email servers with essentially no delivery problems.
We already see "paid relays" and relays that filter certain content, even as small as nostr is today. I think the end state, if it manages to really catch on, is going to be as "oligarchical" as mastodon or other federated networks today - just via relays instead of via homeservers. A step in the right direction for sure! But I don't feel like Nostr is the final target that nature is shooting for here.
It has been long predicted that federated models (like Nostr) just degrade into a few providers that monetize in the same way they would if the network was centralized. It's the worst of both worlds between centralization and real decentralization — which (unfortunately to the haters) almost certain requires Byzantine fault tolerant consensus (blockchains). Same thing over and over again.
Nostr doesn't even have the decoupling afforded by what we typically think of when we think of federated networks (email, activitypub, matrix). If you and another party aren't using the same relay, there is 0 way for you to interact. It assumes either you pre-agree on a relay (sticky defaults encouraging centralization) or shotgun messages to many relays (economies of scale encourgaing centralization). The protocol e…
Everyone can announce to the network where they read/write from. Clients can figure out (based on the people you follow) from which relays to get the content.
I've been using it like this for nearly a year. It works
It is all wishful thinking and beside the point. Pubkey auth and normies do not mix. They lose their keys, their identity, their history, then back to zuck or elon’s plantation where things can be administratively resolved.
Disagree though, people manage keys just fine, or they can be thought.
But even if there are people in the world that never get it, it could be outsourced to a central identity provider that manages your key and messages. For the end user they would have a user/password combo they can reset.
If the network becomes more popular someone will definitely build something like that.
The technical capabilities (remote signers, bunkers, ...) already exist
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The key thing is that all messages are signed and have a few standard fields, making them easy to replicate across many relays while maintaining the ability to verify their origin. And the second thing being that it is based on websockets, allowing the client to maintain an open connection and have new data be pushed instantly rather than relying on polling.
sorry but why is the "web" part relevant for that? cant you keep a normal tcp or udp connection open?
Nostr will always be a fringe network. The normies do not want to manage their own keys.
People seem to manage their whatsapp (or signal, etc) keys just fine. Because its an app that just stores it as a file and doesn't tell you about it. So i think there are viable solutions here. It mostly just means having an app to manage the keys for you.
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Please take a look at my other replies to other posts. Read about the outbox model, or Bitchat. The large relays are not required. They are a public service but not essential. There are plenty of community relays charging for access too, and the outbox model means you're not even depending on them. Nostr can and does successfully operate via even Bluetooth Mesh Networks. Search up Bitchat and see how it has been used…
if the solution to censorship is flooding the network posting the same message to multiple of their preferred relays in hopes that the recipient gets it, what happens if i get banned from all their preferred relays? i dont think i can message them directly so im effectively blocked
Compare this with Mastodon, where your favourite server can decide to exclude other servers, so if A decides that X is toxic, you will never see X as long as you use A.
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People seem to manage their whatsapp (or signal, etc) keys just fine. Because its an app that just stores it as a file and doesn't tell you about it. So i think there are viable solutions here. It mostly just means having an app to manage the keys for you.
Both signal and WhatsApp punt key revocation and recovery to phone number verification, so ultimately these keys belong to phone number provider.
All the "downsides" of a superpeer (as the article says - "centralisation with extra steps") but without the benefit of dynamic peering thereby resulting in incomplete routing.
i.e. by its nature Nostr results in a fragmented network, which ends up looking very much like the federated network, albeit more interconnected.
Thats not necessarily a bad thing, but its a bit of a confused article, IMHO.
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This exactly. Worth mentioning that "censoring" can occur in any of a number of ways; blocking select traffic, slowing select traffic, "forgetting" specific nodes, redirecting other nodes at will, performing MITM attacks (if the protocol isn't secure), etc etc. Also, beyond just no positive incentives, there are nontrivial negatives... they're hubs for an entire network, which can be a lot of traffic and bandwidth if…
Read up on the outbox model and zaps. Also check out Bitchat for a real world example of Nostr being effectively used without even requiring Internet connectivity. You cannot censor Nostr. Also, check out how zaps work, and relay authentication. You can charge for relays if you want.
A government could make it illegal to run or connect to nodes. It could DPI traffic in and out of the country, and block known nostr relays. Or it could just mandate that smartphone manufacturers block it, which would take out a large fraction of potential users.
(How does nostr avoid hosting known CSAM? Because that is the one thing that law enforcement will definitely come after)