Nostr is the Bitcoin among social media networks. Just like Bitcoin transactions may superficially look like traditional money transfers – fill in an address, push on Send, right? – Nostr messages are superficially like other social networks… but very different under the hood. In the way that Bitcoin users own their money, Nostr lets users spin up a social identity and content that no overlord can censor.
What does Nostr Look Like?
Nostr is a protocol, so it can look different depending on the apps that are built on it. The way that most applications make use of Nostr, resembles Twitter: it’s a feed of messages (notes) from people you follow. If you don’t follow anyone yet, there is also a global feed, which contains all the public notes posted by any user.
Currently, Nostr is mostly popular among Bitcoiners, as it grew out of this community.
How Does Nostr Work?
What is Nostr? Nostr stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted over Relays. Nostr doesn’t use blockchain technology, but it is built on some of the same principles. Your social identity, or your ‘social graph’ is independent of a specific app. Instead, your messages (notes) are sent to a large number of relays. Comparable to nodes in the Bitcoin network. The apps you use are simply interfaces for showing these messages.
What is also similar to Bitcoin, is the usage of public/private key pairs. Your private key functions like your password to the protocol, whereas your public key is your username by which people can find you. So, your private Nostr key will forever give you access to your network and your messages. That’s a BIG DEAL.
Who Invented Nostr?
After it was created by Fiatjaf, an anonymous developer, it had a quiet existence for two years. Until, in December 2022, Jack Dorsey, founder of a Nostr competitor 😉 expressed his admiration and donated 14 BTC. Adoption then took off.
Why Is Nostr Important?
Currently, Twitter is the dominant social messaging application. It’s not a protocol, but a company. So, if whoever happens to be Twitter’s CEO doesn’t like your face, he or she can throw you out.
Compare this to the way the email protocol or the TCP/IP protocol have a place in our lives. No one can ban you from using email, and no one can ban you from using the internet. Sure, Google could ban you from using Gmail. But another provider could welcome you and you wouldn’t have lost a single email. Because the invention of mail and internet are on the protocol level, it keeps individual providers rather honest. As a user, you have options. This is how Nostr works, as well. You own your social graph, which makes Nostr an example of Web 3: the iteration of the internet where people own their data and identity.
Like bitcoin, Nostr is a very simple protocol. This allows for the innovation to happen on the edges of the network, so to speak. As Nostr is also an open-source protocol, innovation will likely progress fast.
Why is Nostr Censorship Resistant?
Censoring Nostr is difficult because users can save your messages to as many relays as they’d like. If one relay doesn’t like your profile and chooses not to relay your notes, people who follow you will still view your messages if you both make use of another relay.
How to Set Up an Account for Nostr?
Both Bitcoin and Nostr are protocols. Neither has a CEO, which partly explains why you don’t need to provide your email address or other personal details to sign up.
An account for Nostr is set up through clients: apps. Examples are Astral.Ninja, Damus (iOS), Amethyst (Android). The account you create at any of these apps, you can reuse it in another app. For Damus, the process goes like this:
- Download a Nostr-based app (for example Damus for iOS) or go to a website (for example astral.ninja)
- Choose a username and – optional – short about section
- Save your auto-generated account keys. First, the public key. This is like your ‘social handle’ that you can share so people can find you. Second, your private key. This is just like your Bitcoin private key.
- Handpick a few relays to which you will send your messages.
- Search for other users. For example, Edward Snowden’s public Nostr key is: npub1sn0wdenkukak0d9dfczzeacvhkrgz92ak56egt7vdgzn8pv2wfqqhrjdv9
- Post something 🙂
After these few steps, you have access to (in the case of Damus):
- Personal Feed: A feed of all the notes from everyone you follow.
- Global Feed: A feed of all the public notes that have been posted by users on the platform.
- Encrypted DMs: send encrypted direct messages to other users.
How Is Nostr Integrated with the Lightning Network?
There is no tight integration between Nostr and Bitcoin’s Lightning network. But some Lightning wallets, such as Alby, are making progress. With the Nostr-Alby integration, a Lighting tipping button will be added to your Nostr notes: other users can tip you over Lightning. Very cool.
As the Lightning and Nostr communities are closely related, no doubt we will see a lot of Nostr clients implement elements of the Lightning Network.
How Can Nostr Still Improve?
Nostr is in its infancy (in early February 2023, it had around 300 thousand unique accounts) and can use improvements:
- Mobile apps are very much needed.
- Key management is still in its infancy: how about remote signing, and delegation?
- Anti-spam measures: spam will proliferate as adoption grows. How to filter out the garbage?
- Incentives to run relays: Nostr depends on people running a relay server. How about some incentives for people to run relays? Micropayments perhaps?
Is Nostr better than Mastodon?
We are inclined to say yes. Nostr is the most straightforward open protocol that can create a censorship-resistant global social network. Whereas Mastodon has some issues for users who care about permissionless-ness, and censorship resistance.
Sure, Mastodon is more decentralized than Twitter. But less decentralized than Nostr. On Mastodon, your identity/username is controlled by who is running the server you have signed up with. These servers tend to act like dictatorships and boot people out. You will have to migrate between servers, which is a tough process.
Erik started as a freelance writer around the time Satoshi was brewing on the whitepaper.
As a crypto investor, he is class of 2020. More of a holder than a trader, but never shy to experiment with new protocols.
