image source: nostr.com
NOSTR stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays". It's supposed to be a decentralized, censorship-resistant protocol for sending "notes and other stuff". A "better internet" with social media and other stuff everyone can access. using...
Public-key cryptography
Nostr uses public-key cyrptography so users can easily verify the data you sent is yours and has not been altered. You can also encrypt messages to send privately.
(I like this very much)
Relays
Data is shared between users via relays. Users can choose which relays to use and can run their own. No single entity, corporation or government can control the flow of information.
Nostr Improvement Possibilities (NIPs)
Nostr is a protocol, and uses shared standards called NIPs, which allow different apps to share data seamlessly. Nostr is permissionless so ANYONE can create an application.
So far so good.
When they say "other stuff" one immediately thinks SATS! right? I want to be able to send sats to information or media I find valuable as well as receive sats for my content if others find it valuable. You know... value-for-value using protocols that are not run by and cannot be manipulated by governments or corporations. #freedomtools, right?
So I went and downloaded a NOSTR client called Primal. You may have heard of it.
When I went to try to use my wallet, I get this message that says
You need to activate your wallet
And when I went to activate my wallet, it asks me for my full name, date of birth, email address and country of residence. KYC much?
So of course I went to Twitter to complain about it and someone at Primal was kind enough to answer
So I started fiddling with some of my Lightning wallets and of course, none of them support NWC, which I had to look up by the way because I'd never heard of NWC before. It stands for Nostr Wallet Connect.
I eventually remembered downloading Alby Wallet at some point to try to connect my wallet to one of those podcasting 2.0 protocols like Fountain.
Turns out, you can run Alby Hub on your computer and custody your own funds! alright! sounds amazing.
Elefgee! (LFG!)
So I went and downloaded Alby Hub for Mac Os and I get this:
That's what I got! a blank screen. Nothing will load. When I go back to Alby Hub I realize that this whole thing is still experimental and may encounter issues.
Needless to say, I stopped trying to connect a Lightning wallet to NOSTR and I don't want to use Primal's wallet because I don't want to KYC.
So now I'm making this post here, on Onebitcoinclub.org. I didn't have to provide any of my private information and as you can see, I've already made my very first post.
I have also connected my bitcoin wallet, so pretty soon I might be able to send and receive sats. I will play around with it a bit and let you know how it goes.
In the meantine, I've already shared this post on Twitter to let people know that there are non-KYC protocols that are much easier to connect to:
Thanks for reading.
absolutely comical experience with btc maxi clowntech
It's my ver honest and objective review of my experience. There are other technologies that are more private, no KYC, reliable, etc. I don't understand why bitcoin maximalists won't consider them. I bet there could be amazing sinergies if they would't discard anything that isn't 100% aryan bitcoin.
As for Nostr, it's cool, but as you can see has serious shortcomings in privacy, user experience and incentive structure to run the network.
There is other tech out there.
Thanks for this insight into NOSTR
I have often thought of joining to support another group seeking decentralized, indeoendent social media. This was quite surprisingly the opposite of what I expected.
Don't get me wrong, it's a decentralized protocol run by volunteer nodes and accessible by different clients such as Primal. This is a good thing. There are two things I didn't like though:
If you want to send value peer-to-peer, you have to KYC or run your own Lightning node. I don't want to KYC and running a node is not that easy. I'll try running a node some other time and do a Frankenstein connection to make it work. I don't have the patience right now.
There's no incentive to run nodes ("Relays"). This doesn't make it reliable or scalable in my opinion. You can't expect everybody to run the network just because of "the vibes bro".
Both of those are much more robust on the HIVE protocol.
and Alby and many of those Nostr clients block the Cuban IP lol
Check out your lightning wallet, you should have received some sats :))
Nice presentation of NOSTR
I am still publishing on Nostr
Alby hub wallet is very useful to log in
Thanks
Yeah, I'll continue to explore NOSTR. It's decentralized and promotes free speech, which is great. It's just a little cumbersome to get around KYC to get a wallet connected.
Hearing about the Nostr for the first time. It’s good to know you got another not stressful option. They really need to review their system
I once tried nostr
The interface was so crazy that I couldn’t understand anything…
I abandoned it…
I was thinking about checking out NOSTR, but I'm already in the right place -- thanks for the confirmation!
Oh yes we are ;))
Did you try putting „fantasy data“ in, Alex?
When I created my Nostr profile I noticed you can. They allow you to be „Thomas Average“ from Austria for example with a random birthdate. You can also put a non KYC email where you just have to copy a number from the activation mail et voila!
The Nostr people are like Hivers quite sensitive with privacy from what I discovered and this thing you saw on Primal is a pro forma compromise to get the listing on the AppStore imo.
I’m glad I never bothered to try nostr
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STOPThank you for the information. I have never heard of NOSTR.
;0
Bankers are everywhere