Nostr is a protocol that formalises how digital information is shared on the cyberspace.

It's being implemented in various sorts of ways, for example as social network (similar to twitter, Facebook, reddit, substack etc.), as an online market place (amazon, eBay), and much much more... but also, because we have true digital money, aka Bitcoin, and money is information, nostr can also be used to send and receive payments in bitcoin. This is achieved by leveraging bitcoin's Lightning Network. (and soon the cashu protocol.)

Because nostr is a protocol and not an application, you can use any client of your choice to interact with it. Your twitter client for example, does not allow you to access your Facebook data, and vice versa... This is because these clients lock you in by owning your digital identity (and by extension, your data). With nostr, you own your identity, which is just a pair of interdependent cryptographic keys (public and secret - similar to username and password) that you can use to independently prove who you are, and what data you own.

Nostr is open-source, anyone can contribute to improve the protocol, or to build clients, libraries, etc (check out mine, nostr-java, I beg for contributions from the community 😅)

The implications of everything I've said here are huge. This is why we're excited.

like twitter but encrypted, less centralized, uncensored and lightning integrated.

there are many additional features and potential uses of course.

It's social media not directly dependent on any company, so there's no censorship.

It is a protocol for sharing data across internet. A set of rules on how to write the data and sign it to prove it was you who created it. The protocol also says how this data should be stored and shared. It is an open protocol, so anyone can learn the rules, and anyone can use nostr applications to share data with whoever use the same rules. This protocol can be used to share data like tweets, dms, bounties, or posts, even money as lighting invoices. Anyone can setup a nostr relay, what makes nostr decentralized, which is an advantage against censorship and can improve privacy.

its like a cross between twitter and reddit. depending on what app you use.