Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays, thread and discussion

[chance vought]

Nostr is an open protocol, like http, smtp, or ipfs, that allows communication of data. Right now it is being used as a “free speech twitter”, but the potential is much greater than just social media, since any data can move.

Anyone can build a client that interacts on the network, and almost all clients support “zaps”, user to user transmission of Bitcoin on the Lightning network.

There is no sign up, no email or phone required, just create a public/private key pair, and that is your identity. You can create as many identities as you want and use them for different purposes.

Get started with Nostr

This guide will help you understand the basics of Nostr and get you all set up and ready to use Nostr with a new account. We’ll cover how to create a new lightning wallet, create an account, and sign into a client safely.

nostr.how

 

[chance vought]

I have been using it for about 18 months, and it was very few users, and felt fairly dead. Recently with government crackdowns on social media, there have been a flood of new users.

It starts a little slow, though, because there is no algorithm directing you to any content. You can follow people and follow who they follow, but it’s all up to you…it’s not like other social media that constantly feeds you stuff, that feed is something you must build for yourself over time. But the signal to noise ratio, once you do that is extremely high.
Screen shot of Damus client iOS, and screenshot of primal with integrated lightning wallet

 

[chance vought]

 

[stadtaffe]

It's hard not to think of cosa nostra when you read the name of that but that is of course something else.

Elon is the only one of the big tech leaders I like, but still, if censorship gets worse and the SHTF we may really need this..

Cool, you are an early adopter. An advantage of that is you get the pick of the usernames.

I never revived my twitter, not yet, and never got round to opening a gab account, not sure if I am missing out but can see here yet another more robust option..

 

[chance vought]

It's hard not to think of cosa nostra when you read the name of that but that is of course something else.

Elon is the only one of the big tech leaders I like, but still, if censorship gets worse and the SHTF we may really need this..

European Digital Media Observatory

New call for proposals under Digital Europe Programme.

hadea.ec.europa.eu

Usernames seem to be almost unlimited, there can be thousands of @jack, but the only way to verify it’s Jack Dorsey is to look at the npub.

It also removes self-censorship. Those of us with sensitive jobs can use a vpn and post about anything and remain pseudonymous.

 

[chance vought]

X goes dark in Brazil as tensions between Musk and Judge escalate

Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court judge, ordered the “immediate and complete suspension” of social media platform X in Brazil, the BBC reported on Aug 31. The judge directed the country’s telecom agency to block access to X, causing the platform to go dark earlier today, according to the New...

cryptoslate.com

 

[stadtaffe]

It also removes self-censorship. Those of us with sensitive jobs

That brings back memories of when I had to go into the office, had a hard time maintaining self-censorship throughout the day, constantly making sure I didn't mention politics, religion, race, gender nonsense, the Lügenpresse etc - when it got to the end of the day I would feel like I was going to burst!

I was going to ask whether you should mask your IP if you use nostr with VPN or Tor, who will see it? I don't really worry with Element / Matrix (protocol) as I don't really do anything political with it and it's not really big tech. It's decentralised and there are a lot of servers, although most people seem to use the central one matrix.org which cancels out the 'decentralised' a bit. Maybe this 'nostr' also is notionally decentralised but not quite so decentralised in practice. Will soon find out. A matrix server operator can see your IP but I don't think (like to hope) they don't harvest it or retain it for more than the legal requirement which is lower in the Netherlands than elsewhere. Some of these products, such as 'briar' use Tor by default. Anyway, wrongthink is catching on and they can't arrest the whole world.

 

[chance vought]

That brings back memories of when I had to go into the office, had a hard time maintaining self-censorship throughout the day, constantly making sure I didn't mention politics, religion, race, gender nonsense, the Lügenpresse etc - when it got to the end of the day I would feel like I was going to burst!

I was going to ask whether you should mask your IP if you use nostr with VPN or Tor, who will see it? I don't really worry with Element / Matrix (protocol) as I don't really do anything political with it and it's not really big tech. It's decentralised and there are a lot of servers, although most people seem to use the central one matrix.org which cancels out the 'decentralised' a bit. Maybe this 'nostr' also is notionally decentralised but not quite so decentralised in practice. Will soon find out. A matrix server operator can see your IP but I don't think (like to hope) they don't harvest it or retain it for more than the legal requirement which is lower in the Netherlands than elsewhere. Some of these products, such as 'briar' use Tor by default. Anyway, wrongthink is catching on and they can't arrest the whole world.

Relays can see your IP, VPN should be sufficient

 

[Thefinalepic]

What does this solve over something like a federated social media like Mastodon? You have clients, then servers (which I assume are self-hostable) and from there...? I see there is a cryptocurrency attached - but truly, none of this seems new to me. The diagram they have on their wiki actually is less decentralized than federated services because the servers don't communicate.

Urbit was a attempt at this a few years back, as well as Zeronet, both of which are essentially dead as of now. There are decentralized protocols as you mention in i2p, ipfs, etc. but those are essentially alternate webs at this point, not saying this is good/bad just that they are effectively outside the mainnet.

While I agree and am all for decentralizing the web, the technology already exists and is mainstream: XMPP & IRC for communication and simply having a website for web/social. From there, self hosting services on a server that you control, mirroring them to darknets (TOR and i2p) and I think you are free.

Not trying to rain on your parade here, just trying to understand further.

 

[chance vought]

What does this solve over something like a federated social media like Mastodon? You have clients, then servers (which I assume are self-hostable) and from there...? I see there is a cryptocurrency attached - but truly, none of this seems new to me. The diagram they have on their wiki actually is less decentralized than federated services because the servers don't communicate.

Urbit was a attempt at this a few years back, as well as Zeronet, both of which are essentially dead as of now. There are decentralized protocols as you mention in i2p, ipfs, etc. but those are essentially alternate webs at this point, not saying this is good/bad just that they are effectively outside the mainnet.

While I agree and am all for decentralizing the web, the technology already exists and is mainstream: XMPP & IRC for communication and simply having a website for web/social. From there, self hosting services on a server that you control, mirroring them to darknets (TOR and i2p) and I think you are free.

Not trying to rain on your parade here, just trying to understand further.

It's not just for social though. It's a full comms protocol that you can run essentially a separate internet on, without the need for specialized hardware. I tried urbit, mastodon, but setup for this is easy, almost normie friendly, not to mention the integrated Bitcoin payments. It may not be the holy Grail of a non-cucked internet, but it might be the start of something. Some suggest integration with the pear stack to make it peer to peer instead of peer to node.

The keypair is getting integrated in other apps that can use it for web of trust...for instance finding someone to send them an unsolicited Bitcoin payment. You can use the web of trust like the telegram app pulls your phones contact list. Except this would use the WoT on nostr to find someone who wants to buy/sell something or buy dollars with BTC, etc. Works like a credit score for reputation. Easier to tell if you are dealing with an honest person or a scammer

 

[Thomas More]

It's not just for social though. It's a full comms protocol that you can run essentially a separate internet on, without the need for specialized hardware. I tried urbit, mastodon, but setup for this is easy, almost normie friendly, not to mention the integrated Bitcoin payments. It may not be the holy Grail of a non-cucked internet, but it might be the start of something. Some suggest integration with the pear stack to make it peer to peer instead of peer to node.

The keypair is getting integrated in other apps that can use it for web of trust...for instance finding someone to send them an unsolicited Bitcoin payment. You can use the web of trust like the telegram app pulls your phones contact list. Except this would use the WoT on nostr to find someone who wants to buy/sell something or buy dollars with BTC, etc. Works like a credit score for reputation. Easier to tell if you are dealing with an honest person or a scammer

I noticed in the video that you only get one public key and one private key, but you have to submit your private key to various apps. The speaker recommended making sure you know that your app is trustworthy before letting it have your private key. The video said you can't ever change your private key. They made the analogy of the public key being like a username, and the private key being like a password, except that you can never change it if it is compromised.

It seems inevitable that private keys would eventually be compromised. This seems like a weakness to me.

 

[chance vought]

I noticed in the video that you only get one public key and one private key, but you have to submit your private key to various apps. The speaker recommended making sure you know that your app is trustworthy before letting it have your private key. The video said you can't ever change your private key. They made the analogy of the public key being like a username, and the private key being like a password, except that you can never change it if it is compromised.

It seems inevitable that private keys would eventually be compromised. This seems like a weakness to me.

Definitely could be. I believe you can sign with your private key without exposing it to 3rd party apps using another program, similar to pre-signing a bitcoin transaction. I haven’t any experience with anything so elaborate as I don’t have much of a brand to protect. For non-influencers like me I would just spin up a new nsec

Right now for me it’s like a twitter without the algorithm, pure signal. I did pay an artist in the UK to paint my dog using photos, and it came out great.

 

[stadtaffe]

With what is happening to Duvel in France and maybe Telegram, and what has happened to Twitter in Brazil this is seeming like a better idea, before suddenly all the plugs get pulled.

In this guide :

Join Nostr

..it suggests that you need to buy a domain for it and rent a server for it!!

Now for certain purposes I'm happy to do that. And the article is good enough to list registrars and hosts which accept crypto. However I unfortunately can't see this platform replacing Telegram or Twitter / X if part of setting it up is buying a domain and renting a server!

Does someone know if that is true?

almost normie friendly

Don't think it's even "almost" if the above is true. Yes many of us from CiK could rise to the challenge but it's not worth the effort if after all that, one is just going to be on a quiet and lonely platform, albeit uncensored..

 

[chance vought]

With what is happening to Duvel in France and maybe Telegram, and what has happened to Twitter in Brazil this is seeming like a better idea, before suddenly all the plugs get pulled.

In this guide :

Join Nostr

..it suggests that you need to buy a domain for it and rent a server for it!!

Now for certain purposes I'm happy to do that. And the article is good enough to list registrars and hosts which accept crypto. However I unfortunately can't see this platform replacing Telegram or Twitter / X if part of setting it up is buying a domain and renting a server!

Does someone know if that is true?

Don't think it's even "almost" if the above is true. Yes many of us from CiK could rise to the challenge but it's not worth the effort if after all that, one is just going to be on a quiet and lonely platform, albeit uncensored..

No need to register a domain. It’s super easy just download primal on mobile it has built in wallet, or use in browser with alby wallet extension.

No wallet needed though, just create a npub/nsec key pair.

 

[fortyfive]

It starts a little slow, though, because there is no algorithm directing you to any content. You can follow people and follow who they follow, but it’s all up to you…it’s not like other social media that constantly feeds you stuff, that feed is something you must build for yourself over time. But the signal to noise ratio, once you do that is extremely high.

But how do you find people, groups, and topics there? Is it like a telegram where you need to know the names of the channels beforehand?

 

[JayR]

No need to register a domain. It’s super easy just download primal on mobile it has built in wallet, or use in browser with alby wallet extension.

No wallet needed though, just create a npub/nsec key pair.I

I managed to get myself a NOSTR "account" about a year ago during a bored hangover Sunday. I'm using a Windows client called Iris -- I remember needing to create and fund an Alby Bitcoin wallet in order to register/validate my user name for a few Sats. Having gotten that done, I still find NOSTR utterly confusing.

I'm following Michael Saylor. Nobody is following me -- perhaps because I don't know anybody else on NOSTR, I have never posted anything to the "NOSTR-verse" and don't intend to. I'm not looking to post my deep thoughts to the world and wait for the zaps -- I just want a way to talk to my friends privately -- like a decentralized Telegram.

If this can be used like a regular messaging program where I can chat with a friend or create a chat group with several friends, it would hold more interest for me.

Can it be used this way?

 

[chance vought]

I managed to get myself a NOSTR "account" about a year ago during a bored hangover Sunday. I'm using a Windows client called Iris -- I remember needing to create and fund an Alby Bitcoin wallet in order to register/validate my user name for a few Sats. Having gotten that done, I still find NOSTR utterly confusing.

I'm following Michael Saylor. Nobody is following me -- perhaps because I don't know anybody else on NOSTR, I have never posted anything to the "NOSTR-verse" and don't intend to. I'm not looking to post my deep thoughts to the world and wait for the zaps -- I just want a way to talk to my friends privately -- like a decentralized Telegram.

Its more active than a year ago. You can follow everyone Michael Saylor follows. A lot of bitcoiners are on there and you can follow 1 or 2 of them and follow who they follow.

If this can be used like a regular messaging program where I can chat with a friend or create a chat group with several friends, it would hold more interest for me.

Can it be used this way?

There might be a nostr app that does this, I just posted something asking the community. The twitter esque apps offer DMs but not the functionality of telegram...but I will find out if one exists.

Create a chatroom here

Get started with NostrChat.io

A step-by-step guide to getting started with the NostrChat.io client

nostr.how

Have you tried Keet by Holepunch? Its end to end encrypted, peer to peer only. You can set up groups and even do voice or video calls. None of it ever touches a server, its pure peer to peer. Send files as well. https://keet.io/

 

[chance vought]

But how do you find people, groups, and topics there? Is it like a telegram where you need to know the names of the channels beforehand?

use hashtags in the search #bitcoin #agora #artsr #dogstr
to find people, you can put a name in the search and most clients rank by number of followers. I just searched "Preston" and the top hit was preston@primal.net with 128k followers - so probably Preston Pysh
hodl@nostrverified.com is American Hodl

Follow who they follow for a good start

 

[chance vought]

I just posted an #asknostr on a telegram/signal type functionality and someone recommended https://www.0xchat.com

0xchat is a secure chat app built on the Nostr protocol. It prioritizes security, featuring private key login, encrypted private chats and contacts, encrypted group chats, and lightning payments. Additionally, it also offers an open communication platform through public channels.