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Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#51

Post by DennisP »

procrastitron wrote: post #40
fiatjaf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to do what you're suggesting with identities? I don't think there is. How are you going to rotate keys without a master key? And even if you're ok with the master key, the only way to solve this without centralized providers is with blockchains. A blockchain for rotating keys doesn't make sense. But I do want to know if you're ok with a master key and subkeys that can be rotated.

“Is there a way to do what you're suggesting with identities” There are certainly solutions, but I don’t know what the best solution is, hence why I called it an open problem. An example solution would be something like having your identity be a hash of your initial public keyset, making each key have a set expiration date, adding new keys by signing them with one of the existing keys, and then storing all of the rot…

Vitalik wrote a bit about ways blockchains can help with identity systems here: https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/06/12/nonfin.html

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#52

Post by nobody9999 »

Cameri wrote: post #24

I don't agree Nostr is P2P since clients must connect to relays and there's no provision at the time for client to client connectivity. I found out about Nostr and due to the simplicity of the protocol I was able to start building right away. I implemented a relay using Typescript: https://github.com/Cameri/nostr-ts-relay I also wrote this dead simple SMTP to Nostr gateway: https://github.com/Cameri/smtp-nostr-gatewa…

How does your client (or any nostr client) deal with discoverability?

I'm not piling on nostr here, that's an issue with ActivityPub as well as most decentralized platforms/protocols?

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#53

Post by anon291 »

egypturnash wrote: post #10

So how does nostr propose to solve the problem where there is, in fact, quite a lot of content that you want to filter out, whether because it makes for a better experience for the people using this protocol to talk to each other, or because there are some pretty solid laws about things that various governments require people to filter out? https://abovethelaw.com/2022/11/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-spe... is a pretty d…

No post body was provided.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#55

Post by olah_1 »

I'm beginning to think that ActivityPub will never add anti-censorship features into the core protocol (for example, independent IDs that don't live on a relay server). Because I spoke with a core developer on ActivityPub stuff a couple of years ago about the issue of servers going offline and losing your account and he said that he was working on it.

But I wouldn't be surprised if he was discouraged from continuing this work because ultimately people like ActivityPub because server admins can be little dictators that censor and ban at will.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#57

Post by jonstaab »

egypturnash wrote: post #10

So how does nostr propose to solve the problem where there is, in fact, quite a lot of content that you want to filter out, whether because it makes for a better experience for the people using this protocol to talk to each other, or because there are some pretty solid laws about things that various governments require people to filter out? https://abovethelaw.com/2022/11/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-spe... is a pretty d…

Relays can censor as much as they want, since they're only stewrding a small part of the network, likely replicated elsewhere. As to building in ways to curate/moderate content in a distributed way, there are lots of ideas out there as to how that might happen. Here's an issue I opened just the other day: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/issues/75

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#58

Post by jonstaab »

deaddodo wrote: post #36
fiatjaf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike what OP says Nostr relays are not dumb, they can have their own policies and to me they look like a better version of Mastodon servers. They can have identities, "themes" and policies as they wish. On Nostr it's totally fine for one relay to only allow certain kinds of content and block everything else. Users can just connect to multiple relays if they want to read/write about different things.

What bugs me about it is their naivety to solved technical problems. For instance, they answer the question of “why this hasn’t been done?” with: > I don't know, but I imagine it has to do with the fact that people making social networks are either companies wanting to make money or P2P activists who want to make a thing completely without servers. Except it has been done. In fact, that’s literally what KaZaA was wit…

Scale is hard, but for small-to-medium sized clusters, you can use your own node, or a friends'. Now you have your own copy of the data, and control over latency. The key insight with nostr is the multi-master architecture.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#59

Post by jonstaab »

noizejoy wrote: post #43
chromatin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of ideas that have been tossed around for relay abuse prevention: - Proof of work: computing some hash, which is not enough to be onerous but enough to reduce spam - micropayment over Bitcoin lightning network

Proof of work via computing should be a non-starter for anyone caring for limiting environmental damage.

Bitcoin is carbon-negative believe it or not. Not that CO2 emissions are a meaningful measure of environmental stewardship.

Re: Nostr is a stupid simple P2P protocol that works, built by builders

#60

Post by fiatjaf »

olah_1 wrote: post #55

I'm beginning to think that ActivityPub will never add anti-censorship features into the core protocol (for example, independent IDs that don't live on a relay server). Because I spoke with a core developer on ActivityPub stuff a couple of years ago about the issue of servers going offline and losing your account and he said that he was working on it. But I wouldn't be surprised if he was discouraged from continuing…

Of course they won't add anything, and if they add no one is going to implement.

Mastodon, Pleroma et al. are not really ActivityPub implementations. Each of the fediverse clients implement some random 10% of AP and just try to get compatible with each other using dirty hacks.

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