My issue with Nostr right now (and I've said this before here and elsewhere) is that most of the devs are spreading themselves thin feature-packoing their apps, rather than establishing single use cases, as @fiatjaf suggested. I believe this creates a lot of technical debt/bloat, and will limit the success of apps like Damus and Amethyst. It seems like many developers have taken adoption for granted, but unlike Bitcoin, Nostr didn't come with an implementation. And that's the point! Rather than perfecting any individual use case, they are concurrently developing various intertwined use cases, which resist compatibility with other clients/relays. I expect lots of bumps in the road as Nostr grows, lots of stratification and centralization. I still don't use Nostr because I haven't found a client or a relay that appeals to me. I hope to implement my own relay sometime soon, but that's an uphill battle I'm not ready to tackle.

I disagree. Nostr can survive and thrive as a niche. It does not need to pander to the least common denominator. It does not need to dissolve its and become reddit or facebook.

Placating the masses is a recipe for growth but also homogeniety.

Let some killer app build on nostr, but nostr is a neutral protocol. Let it resist being embraced and eventually extinguished, like they did to email, and tried with xmpp.

Success is not determined by acceptance and spread, but resilience over time.

Venture capital mindset is r-selected.

NOSTR IS DEAD https://nostrisdead.com/

Yes please.

I agree with many of your points. But FOSS or fuck off, I don't agree with this. There are good non FOSS products and they can continue building because they have a working business model. Yes they could do FOSS and run a business too, but it's ok if it's not (except if the product "protects" your private keys or other secrets, in this case, FOSS or fuck off). Small FOSS projects can't last forever without money. It's a fact

My fear is that it remains in the nerd corner and never gets adopted. The single biggest inhibitor has to be the current UX.

Well said, i think you'd like sms4sats, one purpose, useful, good ux.

Most of all, something you can only use sats for, which is the main thing lightning needs to offer to gain use beyond early adopters.

And in the background, that's something that nostr could be setting the ecosystem up for by allowing arbitrary peer to peer routing and being the main way to route around censorship, centralization, and surveillance.

Sms4sats is solving this problem in miniature, a way around sms verification, except nostr is creating a whole alternative system that doesn't need sms verification measures, but as you've said this is somewhere well down the road.

I think it's OK for nostr to be a nerdy playground right now. It's still in its infancy and people are figuring out what it's best for. I have yet to be convinced that the killer app for nostr is social media -- I think the potential use cases are much broader than that. But who knows? I say embrace the chaos for now and enjoy the ride.

Nostr will never go mainstream so long as nearly every Nostr post is about Nostr and/or Bitcoin. People did go on Twitter in the early days and constantly tweet about Twitter.

I find Nostr amazing but one thing normies avoid is anything related to Bitcoin and Nostr are mostly devs and Bitcoiners.

I also agree with @primitive1 it is getting bloated of many apps, what Nostr also needs are good main third party clients as other social media as Lemmy, Lemmy got traction really fast thanks to Sync client moving to Lemmy and Voyager which resembles Apollo.

Nostr will go mainstream "the year of Linux desktop". I remember reading Slashdot posts "This year is the year of Linux desktop" regularly about 15 years ago.

The best tech goes unnoticed

Both of these sound like perfect ways to kill Nostr.

I think it is important to remember Nostr is a in development beta test of a new, free, uncensorable, decentralized social media protocol. It is created and maintained by a loose, growing coalition of devs, volunteers & friends.

It might be wise to maintain some perspective when comparing Nostr to centralized & controlled, decade old social media platforms ran by some of the world's largest corporations.

Fucking devs just writing code for fun is bullshit because they don't give a fuck about what the market (i.e. people) actually want. They're just building for themselves.

The moment people start building on nostr for other people and for profit, then nostr will work.

Just build and let the market shake it all out.

I agree their are more important things we need.

Still, social media is a part of life these days & NOSTR is the best we got at the moment

errybody take a look at 'you need to do things differently' / public journal guy