No doubt, Nostr is promising and exciting.

But there is still an unsolved (or at least not properly solved) problem before Nostr becomes "the new Twitter," or the favoured network for hundreds of millions of people: human-readable handles.

NIP-05 is addressing this issue, by allowing users to "verify" a Nostr public key, which means mapping it to a human-readable handle (in fact a DNS-based identifier). But there are still some (important) issues.

In a nutshell, there are only 3 possibilities:

You use Nostr with a default public key, and will be identified on the network as something like:

or (HEX):

Advantages: Simple, nothing to do, universal (works on all clients) Problems: . Obviously not amazing for brand recognition . Terrible to fight fake accounts, scams, impersonating etc. . I seriously doubt that Nostr could onboard 500M+ users that way

You use a dedicated service or app to get your handle (usually for a small fee) under their domain, and will be identified on the network as something like:

Advantages: Easy. Problems: . Your handle becomes entirely dependant of the chosen service. What if they disappear in a year? What if they change their policy/price? You have no guarantee whatsoever of the perennity of your handle, which is a problem if you start building a community around it. . There is risk of concentration. If the majority of users get an handle at, say, damus.io, Damus becomes the new Twitter, not Nostr. . In short, this solution re-introduce centralisation into Nostr.

You own a domain name and you use NIP-05 to make your handle verified. You will be identified as something like:

Advantage: You really control your handle, directly associated to your site/blog/brand

Problems: . Not so easy to do. The process involves converting your npub address, creating a JSON file (simple) and sometimes changing the configuration of your Web server (best guides explaining the procedure: here and here). Doable, but could be challenging for many users. . Since it's quite hard to register a domain name anonymously, you lose anonymity (not necessarily a problem since you're precisely trying to "verify" your identity). . You also expose yourself to possible censorship. If you do something reprehensible or illegal on Nostr, authorities can ask your hosting provider to shut down your site/domain, terminating your Nostr handle in the process.

. . .

It looks like Nostr suffers from its own trilemma. Either you choose to stick to a poor UX (non-human-readable handles) or you go for solutions that will affect some of the key benefits of Nostr (decentralized, anonymous, uncensorable).