Why I'm Betting Big on Nostr \ stacker news ~nostr

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Why I'm Betting Big on Nostr hivemind.vc/nostr/

5616 sats \ 29 comments \ @MaxAWebster 13 Jan 2023 nostr

893 sats \ 4 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 13 Jan 2023

Great post. I am very opinionated about nostr but see it being good at specific things, but not encompassing everything and the "growing pains" of tough problems they need to solve while they try to make it work for "everything."

You mention it some here but the intersection between Decentralized Identity and Nostr has a lot of promise IMO. It's just a shame that ego's get in the way of the two groups seeing how they actually do compliment each other. Turns out there's a reason why the DID spec is "complicated" (its not, but more complicated than nostr I suppose). And to the DID community - the jealousy of nostr building instead of talking and bike shedding for half a decade with hardly anything to show for it.

387 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaxAWebster OP 13 Jan 2023

🙏

I don't know enough about DIDs yet to have a super strong opinion, but from what I can tell, it seems like there's natural overlap.

360 sats \ 2 replies \ @melvincarvalho 14 Jan 2023

I laid part of the ground work for the creation of DIDs and it's at least 300 pages of reading, but more likely 3,000 pages to understand what you need to know

They dont even realize that all their canonical data types are buried in an obscure XML document from 2000. There's undoubtedly some good bits in there, but a lot of technical debt. Which is always swept under the carpet. It will come back to bite

I am however of the conclusion that it's worth trying, and might be useful, down the road. Actually for something completely different which is diverse checkpointing, but that's another story.

Nostr in contrast is 3 pages and you are off to the races

BTW is not 5 years of bike shedding, it's more like 20

75 sats \ 1 reply \ @MaxAWebster OP 14 Jan 2023

Cool! Would love to hear more about how you think they'll work together.

FWIW, I actually don't think the current NIP5 identification system is bad. Probably better if anchored in Bitcoin, but doesn't seem like a hair on fire problem. At least not yet.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @melvincarvalho 16 Jan 2023

It's actually quite easy

The web was created by adding hyperlinks (http://) in documents

The URI is the abstraction of the http: hyperlink

So, if you have another system to http (allowed and encouraged) you put those hyperlinks in your documents. In this case, JSON.

So add nostr: links in your json, or "nostr": <key> for example allows interop

And vice versa. This is all by design

716 sats \ 3 replies \ @MaxAWebster OP 13 Jan 2023

I've become pretty obsessed with Nostr and am increasingly convinced that it will bring Bitcoin and the Lightning Network mainstream. I've outlined some of the business opportunities that I see in the post above. Would love to hear ideas from others as well!

600 sats \ 2 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 13 Jan 2023

With the sudden growth and interest of a very new and fast moving protocol, it does feel like a unique position to be in as an investor looking at potential companies wanting to solve problems with Nostr. Do you feel that you have to approach the investment decisions aspect any differently than others (inc lightning) or do you view nostr very similarly to how you've gone about your LN investments? Agree some of the business model is there, but does anything change for you specifically when viewing it so early?

285 sats \ 1 reply \ @MaxAWebster OP 13 Jan 2023

Timing is definitely tricky. I believe most of the first wave of Nostr startups will just remake slightly cooler old-world experiences. The really big winners will likely emerge in the next wave with brand new experiences that mash up nostr + lightning. I don't know what these will be, but they'll be cool as shit! One simple example: I can imagine most people sending payments or remittances via a text/tweet and not in a dedicated app.

So given that perspective, I'd rather bet on the second wave. But Nostr development is happening ridiculously fast. B/c it's open, simple, and fun. Hell, I may start programming again to join in on the fun :) So given how fast it's all being built, I could also see a world where that 2nd wave comes very quickly. So given my intuition on all this, I'd much rather be there early.

And for the most part, I'll follow the same guidelines I do for investing in Lightning companies: back really smart founders with great taste who ship quickly. We'll figure everything else out on the fly ;)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 14 Jan 2023

Well said, appreciate those insights!

698 sats \ 1 reply \ @038c4b0d02 13 Jan 2023 freebie

Also agree with all your points. Fantastic article. This is a great opportunity for the development ecosystem of bitcoin — we’re seeing people come into Nostr building on it who are not even bitcoiners. We’ve been stuck in this hamster wheel of developing the same kinds of applications for a while — wallets wallets wallets, now it’s time for building vertically as Roy puts it. Use cases on bitcoin that show off how it is going to be the native currency of the internet.

I would argue that we have seen this kind of interesting development before, Twitter in the early days attracted designers and developers to create all sorts of things on top of its API.

Services and companies were built around that ecosystem. Do you remember twitpic, klout, buffer, foursquare? The difference is now the API will remain open, payments can be integrated natively, and as you stated no central authority.

FUN times ahead for bitcoin!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaxAWebster OP 13 Jan 2023

can't wait :)

309 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 14 Jan 2023

interesting post, which of the four business models you outlined do you think has the biggest opportunity for a company to capture value for shareholders?

no doubt there is an opportunity for teams to create a lot of value on nostr, but would love to know whether you see any sustainable moats forming that may lead to google-level returns as an investor?

the bitcoin mining and ln node operator industries seem to be very competitive with slim margins, will nostr be different?

435 sats \ 1 reply \ @MaxAWebster OP 14 Jan 2023

I'm still forming my opinion, but search and discovery seem most attractive atm. I see a couple possible moats: 1) having access to the most data (by running the beefiest/most performant/best connected relays) or 2) having the best algorithm (I think social graph + ValueRank are both interesting primitives, but they'll likely be tinkered with and mashed up with PageRank and/or other data). Probably a lot of others I haven't thought of yet.

Another big winner could just be building the most popular consumer app that mashes up messaging/payments and then offering financial services on top. I think CashApp is well positioned there.

I'm personally excited about disrupting the music industry. I love (and make) music, so am eager to see a much better platform than Spotify.

And, again, the big winner will likely be some brand new, kinda weird use case!

Do you have any early thoughts on where value accrues?

230 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 14 Jan 2023

Makes sense, I could definitely see some snowball effect forming in those areas making it hard for others to catch up.

Identity seems to be another area where a lot of value could accrue to a single company.

Synonym and Block seem to be going after a similar market with Slashtags and TBD, and I could see these protocols turning into winner-take-all markets… especially if these systems don’t interoperate.

It’s still unclear to me where money is going to be made, but being the winner that everyone uses to manage their internet identity seems to be the harder part of the equation.

103 sats \ 0 replies \ @ThrillerX_ 14 Jan 2023

🎯I think you hit it dead on Max. Especially about intersection of adoption. We’ve been talking about Nostr at the lab since last December. Knew than as I know now this will onboard so many developers and users to lightning! Nostr is unstoppable.

16 sats \ 4 replies \ @l0k18 13 Jan 2023

The hype surrounding nostr makes me want to vomit. I feel like I'm reading sockpuppet posts here.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @000 14 Jan 2023

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18 sats \ 2 replies \ @l0k18 14 Jan 2023

When I can make some sats hosting Nostr content I'm adopting it. It's not going to go very far until then. The name, the way it seems artificially hyped, it all smells like fish to me. People are starting to talk about these solutions but until I can put a native desktop app on my linux box, at minimum, I'm not wasting my time I have other things to do.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @000 14 Jan 2023

deleted by author

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @l0k18 14 Jan 2023

I didn't say monetise it. I said, get paid for running a relay. In the protocol, not some narrow band application.

I am building systems that leverage LN at the protocol level right now. You are reading this on a forum that uses LN for micropayment tips. Remember IPFS? Where is the decentralised static web that it is supposed to enable?

I'm not saying it's not great that people are working on legit fully decentralised social/chat apps.

I'm just saying that the hype is over the top and the real world prospects of success will depend on getting people to run relays and cache content. Zeal is not enough.

There was scores of attempts to do what Satoshi did, before he did. His was the first that made an incentive for a broadly distributed population running the software because they make a living from it directly, or nearly directly.

Without that, it just remains a hobby and a charitable cause.

Without that, eventually the network will be coopted by motivated attackers.

75 sats \ 0 replies \ @lunanto 14 Jan 2023

Nostr is trending for all bitcoiners as it brings decentralization and censorship resistance features to social media networks. It's going to be one of the biggest innovations in this field so I support your bet.

75 sats \ 2 replies \ @brugeman 14 Jan 2023

Great post, I guess you're the first to outline the full long-term bullish case for Nostr!

Is there one Nostr thing (app/feature) that you personally feel is lacking, that you'd use every day if it was built?

75 sats \ 1 reply \ @starbuilder 14 Jan 2023

yes. right now it is very focussed on bitcoin maxi culture. It may be good to bootstrap users initially but adoption outside of this community is key to success.

Need to build the features for a no coiner to show up and find value in using the Nostr.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @arcanox 14 Jan 2023

Nocoiners will choose a digital prison over freedom anytime.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @zman 13 Jan 2023

it's physically impossible to write this much and mention so many things about nostr without mentioning https://nostr.directory but you have done it!

it's right there in jack's tweet that you've quoted and it's the most used micro-app that's solving what you mentioned that you need "A) identity" with a web of trust.

meanwhile I continue to physically repulse VCs which I still maintain is a slightly annoying superpower. must be something I ate about 10 years ago. lol.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaxAWebster OP 13 Jan 2023

Thanks for flagging them! I quoted one of their cool ideas I saw, but will definitely check out their service more

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zepasta 17 Jan 2023

I still have no clue what Nostr is and what it does or how it works :D

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @l0k18 14 Jan 2023

Anyone else see that "Great post" starts 5 comments on this thread?

Reminds me of the Steem/Hive forum spam.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 15 Jan 2023

Could be pathological, could just be that the community is small and we all want to show appreciation.