Lately I’ve been building Substr — mostly because I kept running into the same feeling on social platforms (including Nostr):
Too much noise, not enough structure. And that's oke if you just want to scroll for scrolling.
Substr is my attempt to flip that a bit.
The idea is pretty simple:
Instead of one chaotic global feed, you get focused spaces (“substrs”) around topics, creators, or projects.
Think Reddit-style communities, but with Nostr-native posts under the hood. Everyone can create his own "substr".
All posted content = Nostr-native events
Reposts via NIP-18 (kind:6)
Long-form (NIP-23) support
Live streams inside communities (via naddr)
Media uploads + multiple post types
Cross-client compatible — what you post is visible outside Substr but not other way around.
One important design choice:
Communities themselves are currently stored in a DB (not NIP-72), because I want more control over UX and behavior.
But everything posted inside them is fully Nostr-native.
Not perfect, but it gives me room to build a better experience first.
Still figuring out a lot — especially moderation and onboarding for non-Nostr users.
If you’ve got thoughts, ideas, or see obvious flaws in this approach, I’m all ears.