What is Nostr and why is it exploding? A guide for Hiveans.

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(Edited)

This is a value for value post: see the explanation in the footer.

As many of you know, I've been described as "Hive's leading expert on Lightning". I'm never sure about anything like that but it could possibly be true. I've certainly put in the hours (have I done 10,000 hours of studying Lightning? Maybe).

Nostr is NOT part of Lightning or even Bitcoin, but it is being developed by many Devs who have been deep in the Lightning BTC dev community for a long time.

I believe Nostr was the brainchild of a developer called Fiatjaf. I've linked to his Nostr profile on a site called Astral.ninja. The first evidence of Nostr I find is back in Nov 2020 github.

Twitter's blog post banning overt promotion of identities on other sites.

Why did Nostr get noticed now?

On December 19th Twitter put out a tweet linking to a blog post which said this:

December 2022
Twitter is where the public conversation is happening, and where people from all over the globe come to promote their >businesses, art, ideas, and more. We know that many of our users may be active on other social media platforms; however, going >forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter.

What is a violation of this policy?

At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media >platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:

Prohibited platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr

Right there at the end of a list which starts with the multi-billion user Facebook is Nostr. A protocol which barely more than a few thousand people had heard of or used. This blog post barely lasted 12 hours before it was deleted and the policy recinded.

But that was enough. A few days prior to this, Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, had donated 14 BTC (approx. $235,000) to Fiatjaf for him to hand out as he saw fit:

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1603535971114487816?s=20&t=jsvyfANH44jwrVXehDgLDg

That tweet set off an explosion of interest and resulted in hundreds of tweets like the following, which were used to verify a public key based identity on Nostr:

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1603945963944480768?s=20&t=jsvyfANH44jwrVXehDgLDg

Here's mine:

https://twitter.com/v4vapp/status/1605959605283999748?s=20&t=jsvyfANH44jwrVXehDgLDg

I actually had an earlier tweet but I deleted it, I just don't want the hassle of being banned from Twitter again!

Nostr is a communications protocol

Here's the description of Nostr from the nostr.com site:

What is Nostr?

A decentralized network based on cryptographic keypairs and that is not peer-to-peer, it is super simple and scalable and therefore has a chance of working.

From the main porotocol github page, Nostr stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmited by Relays" and is:

The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global "social" network once and for all.

It doesn't rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, therefore it works.

Nostr is a message passing system

At its heart Nostr establishes a protocol or format for sending short messages around which are signed by a public/private key pair (very similar to but far simpler than the key system we have on Hive).

Knowing what I know about Fiatjaf which comes mostly from my interactions with him on Twitter, he has the typical closed minded approach to incentivisation and tokenisation of a Bitcoin Maximalist. The time he appeared on a Bitcoin podcast and was supposed to receive streaming sats, his Lightning node wasn't configured to receive the payments:

https://twitter.com/fiatjaf/status/1563555361914638336?s=20&t=DCFbtk6zbpbDDZ4PSfxWaw

As usual I was called a "shitcoiner".

Nostr doesn't have what Hive has

Nostr's approach is basic and naive. Mostly because it is built and used right now by Bitcoin Maximalists, they have a religious aversion to any form of in built tokenisation for an incentivisation system.

The closest they've come is code in the clients that recognises a Lightning invoice and renders it, if you have a suitable Lightning wallet on your device, you can click and pay it. This is, of course, a scammer's dream. There was a lot of fun to be had posting invoices and waiting to see if someone else would randomly pay them though I think that's died down now.

Damus Invoice Screen

Lightning Invoice on Nostr

Public Relays

Nostr relies on people running relays. These store and forward messages. There is no incentive at the moment to run these and no way to formally collect payment for doing so. This will be built "with Lightning" at some point. But as with all things Bitcoin, the base layer protocol (which when we're talking about Lightning is 2 layers removed from Nostr), gives no reward for anything except mining.

One key part of brilliance of Bitcoin was rewarding the infrastructure runners to keep it running. But there's nothing in there for anyone else. Paradoxically, it is this innovation, pivotal for Bitcoin's success, which is regarded as completely unusable for anything other than Bitcoin by the Bitcoin maximalists. Lightning adds routing fees, but these are proving to give marginal reward for the risk and capital investment necessary to run a Lightning node.

Spam Spam Spam

They've also had to deal with the first load of spam. It's trivially easy to create a public/private key pair and then start sending any old rubbish out to a selection of relays. Some kind of financial cost or even a proof of work system is being talked about to stop this.

Censorship resistance

There is talk of censorship resistance but this relies on the persistant existance of relays to carry your messages. There is also no real way for end users to download and store all their own messages yet. If you chose an arbitrary set of relays, your messages will be spread around them, but with no guarantees about long term storage.

Damus App store rejection

Damus and the App store

Damus is the most developed and pretty Nostr client but it's currently only available as a iOS TestFlight app. The first try at getting into the App Store failed for the predictable reasons: no capacity to censor, block or filter "objectionable content".

Good luck with that: to be honest this is a critical problem for all of use working on truly independent Web 3.0 projects. The Google and Apple grips on the App store fronts will hurt all of us.

Try it out

If you want to try it out, you probably should start wiht a web based version. The only decent mobile client is called Damus and only available on iOS but it's a beta version and the testing slots are all full.

Go to astral.ninja instead.

Create a new public/private key pair and make sure you keep a note of these somewhere. You'll need them. Now if you know what you're doing editing JSON and you want to do something a bit fancy you can get a "verified tick" like mine:

Nostr Verified

To get one of these go to @ausbitbank's site and log in with HiveKeychain. Go to your own profile page and look for the section on the left hand side of the page called "Posting Json Metadata".

If you are logged in you should see a little pen, click this, which will let you edit this. What you need to do is insert a key/value pair for your Nostr public key. Perhaps if a few of you ask, @ausbitbank will make this easier.

UPDATE... @ausbitbank made it easy(er)

A note about Nostr keys: you have ONE public key but it can appear in 2 formats (because nothing is ever easy on Nostr). These are BOTH my public keys, one starts with npub and one is in HEX. It doesn't matter which one you put into Hive, but I would suggest you use the one which starts with npub:

npub18hz8xs2tafx7rhclzukrr94gypcemw6ch2hcwe9eak4q03k4a8wq2wfmgv
3dc473414bea4de1df1f172c3196a820719dbb58baaf8764b9edaa07c6d5e9dc

What you should NEVER do is share a key which starts with nsec.

Just find the Nostr button below the edit box and paste your PUBLIC key in there.

Adding Nostr public key to Hive profile

Once you've done that, go back to astral.ninja and find the profile editor.

Profile on Nostr

On Nostr you can fill in both the NIP-05 Identifier field and the Lightning Address or LUD-06 Identifier with the same thing: [email protected]

You can copy what I've done using my Hive image as my avatar if you like substituting your own Hive name:

https://images.hive.blog/u/brianoflondon/avatar

In the NIP-05 Identifier and the Lightning Address boxes you need to add the bit which I've built once again removing brianoflondon and putting in your Hive name:

[email protected]

When you do that, Nostr clients will make a call to my server like this:

https://api.v4v.app/.well-known/nostr.json?name=brianoflondon

Which will return your public key and give you that verification mark.

Any Questions?

If there is more appetite for information about Nostr, I'll answer comments and perhaps post again, let me know!

Value for Value

For the last few months while building @v4vapp I was generously supported by the DHF. Going forward I have a much more modest support which covers direct server costs and a little of my time.

If you apprecieate the work I do on and around Hive, you can express this directly: upvoting posts on Hive is great. Also consider a direct donation (there's a Tip button on Hive or a Lightning Address) on all my posts.

Support Proposal 244 on PeakD
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Send Lightning to Me!

lightning leofinance v4vapp nostr bitcoin proofofbrain development
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50 comments
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Whenever I open that website out of curiosity I instantly close it at first glance.

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I'm not even going to open it. However I hear more and more often about this Nostr and every time I explain to people that since it is not a blockchain-based social network they are continuing to waste time.

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Haven't heard about this before.... Sound interesting. Will Give it a check. Btw, Thanks for this brief Guide. Much appreciate your work.

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i got the keys and tried to click around few weeks ago. it is hive in 2017 with no incentive to run anything and even steemit site made more sense in his basic form.

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Did I do anything wrong?

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Same here.

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https://v4v.app/.well-known/nostr.json?name=ervin-lemark

It should all be working for @ervin-lemark but I'm seeing astral.ninja being hideously slow right now.

But this isn't set up right yet for @toofasteddie

Eddie you need to move your nostr item INTO the Profile section. I believe @ausbitbank has made this easier to do now.

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Your API responds correctly yet astral.ninja doesn't handle it, I guess:

Could there be a browser issue? I am using Brave.

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I have to convert the npub thing into hex at the server... I'll do that soon.

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Don't worry, figured out what's wrong... they need hex. It'll be best if I convert at the server though if you can figure out how to convert you key which starts npub into Hex it should work for you. I'll sort this after I've made dinner :-)

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I converted it and put it into json. Yet it still returns the same value. Cloudflare cache? No problem, enjoy your dinner :)

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Hopefully I've fixed it. Go back and change the one in Hive to the one which starts npub and my system should convert that correctly to the right hex form.

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Lol, let’s start the new social media web3 hype by starting with btc maxi mindset and no incentives… this will be a success for sure…?

No worries mate, we’ll do something with Lightning a couple years from now! Or a bit later…

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Does look and sound complicated. 😏
I tried another lightning based social media App these days, Starbackr. Don’t know if you heard of them. You can send a little Sats amount with liking other content. But I must say everything seems so under developed regarding community size, activity and content quality if I compare it to Hive. Also the use case is much better here. My main focus remains here because of that. It’s just the better App.
Only thing that has also a good look&feel and a well developed platform with a somewhat community is FountainApp. But that’s only for podcasting. But still.

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They're trying a bunch of stuff which all feels very basic compared to Steem 5 years ago.

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(Edited)

I did a quick update to add an easy nostr button under extra props at the bottom
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Sounds like something nose-related.

!PIZZA

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😀

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I’ve now heard about Nostr on some podcasts and am intrigued. I think the name is kinda horrible, though.

!PIZZA

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The Fountain link gives this error:
404 - That page does not seem to exist...

Some free Hive-engine tokens for you: !PGM !PIZZA !LOL

Ps. Would you like to have some fun, help save the world and get rich while doing so?

If so,

Join The Matrix-8 Solution General Discussion + Q & A's Group on Telegram and https://t.me/+U6NwI1Zw3Z_F-Jja to earn $HIVE and *pre-mine $KLU"

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Sent 0.1 PGM - 0.1 LVL- 1 STARBITS - 0.05 DEC - 15 SBT - 0.1 THG - tokens to @atma.love

remaining commands 14

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Thanks for this detailed information about Nostr and how one could get on it. I must say that the name flew around me several times, but for some reason, I wasn't excited enough to try it out. Probably will need to read a little bit more about its tokenomics and how/what personal data it handles and give it a try if everything is fine. I wonder if it can be another channel on which I can shill Hive 😀

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I hear more and more about this Nostr, but I use HIVE and I'm not interested at all. Also in my opinion a social media must be blockchain based with its own tokenomics. So, if I understand correctly, in my opinion Nostr is already old. Thanks for this topic

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So the crux being that when it comes to creating a censorship-resistant social media platform, it's a step in the right direction...

...but without incentivising infrastructure, they're going to have to monetise to scale and hence you have Web2.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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my peon brain will need to read this 4 more times probably before i can grasp what is written

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Now I understand why you’re called ‘brain’, you’ve got the brain mate!😃😃

Thank you @brianoflondon for taking your time to come up with all of these. It was so detailed, keep it up 👍

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When I first got to Israel, my bank actually mis-spelled the name on my credit card and wrote Brain instead of Brian. I left it that way until the card expired :-)

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Ohh I see the story behind the name, but regardless you’re still a smarty pants🙃

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I'm there!

npub1cm7x0f3pzrt0enkrvfmwc6x9unr8vuzre6jh3jz7ph6jcq9zwqwqc9ztan

!PIZZA

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As per my prior comment on your other recent post about Nostr, this just gives me bad vibes. Hive does everything better, for free, and does not have the toxic BTC Maxi cult controlling it, which turns off new users from BTC more than anything else

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Kay, I joined the club. Now all I need is a use case for NOSTR.

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From your interaction with its founder, he seems like a nice guy...

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(Edited)

@brianoflondon I did all the steps but it says failed to verify NIP-05. Any clue?

The network request does not even go out, it fails immediately.

(updated my vote on the proposal 💪)

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PS. seems to be their JS breaking. Oh well, I tried.

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  {
    "hive_accname": "cryptoshots.nft",
    "npub": "npub157kq66q5682tz24dftyqv5p9acdfczwpu0s4a95w2z8ywjy86hvqm94t46",
    "hex": "a7ac0d6814d1d4b12aad4ac8065025ee1a9c09c1e3e15e968e508e474887d5d8",
    "last_check": "2023-03-03T06:04:05.995000"
  }

Your name is done correctly in Hive and my systems so any problems with Nostr are PROBLEMS WITH NOSTR 🤣

As long as your npub key is correct (I calculate the hex one)

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(Edited)

PS. strange, something may be off on your side too:

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PPS. It could have been a caching issue. Eventually the username field got populated and the update went through.

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The response with the "_" is a default response when no Nostr pub key is found for the name. That Pub key points to my [email protected] account and acts a sort of domain default.

If you have put a pub key on crypto-shots it's not being found.

BTW that one is being found now.

You can get the full list of all keys I know about here:

https://api.v4v.app/docs#/nostr/nostr_list_v1_nostr__get

When someone updates their profile on Hive, I won't know about it until a request to lookup a Nostr key comes in, then I cache it in a database. I forget about it after an hour so will look it up again if I need to.

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