Exploring the Nostra-verse

There has been lots of developments in the space of web3 social media in the last days and the importance of defi and owning your own data through use of blockchain technology that is more censorship resistant has become more important.

First off there was a dispute between Reddit and its users due to fee charges for the use of the API. The data on Reddit was being mined by apparent AI services at a very low cost and the company wanted to recieve payment for this.

This was then followed suit by Elon at Twitter with the restriction of viewing tweets which has caused an uproar in the Twitterverse. Most likely Twitter needs to also restrict and charge for access to the vast swathes of data that it acts as gatekeeper for.

The main alternative to web2 in all its forms and that has the longest history is Hive. Hive provides a decentralised eco-system based on cryptographic keypairs for authentication. Inside the eco-system is among others blogging, gaming, video content, streaming and many short-form content options similar to all the web2 options available.

However today, I will look at a recent growing network called Nostr (pronounced Nostra). Nostr is a decentralised network system based on relays using cryptographic keypairs. As it is a protocol, a variety of client software can be used by users for various things. Also, anybody is free to run a relay and this should be quite quick and easy to setup.

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The first I heard of Nostr was that it was an alternative to Twitter in a program called Snort. Snort.social is a very basic short form content program and looks just like Twitter.

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An interesting aspect was that you can use your Lightning Node client software to login and then also to zap sats to other content creators. This method has been tried and tested before for example with Read.cash and indirectly Noise.App in the BCH community. Mostly people are not willing to give crypto tips directly from their wallets to others. Once Read.cash stopped its Random Rewarder, many users dropped off from the site.

This is in comparison to Hive with its daily reward pool that each Hive stakeholder can distribute a portion of the reward dependent on their stake. Users here are more incentivised to upvote and reward content creators.

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The interesting thing with Nostr though is that it isn't only just Snort. There is being built a whole eco-system similar to Hive around the protocol. As you can see from the list of resources, the development seems to be growing very fast and is supported by many of the mainstream's anti-heroes such as Jack and Snowden and co.

The recent restrictions on Twitter and Reddit could therefore be driving faster blockchain technology adoption and further crypto usage, particularly Bitcoin and Lightning.

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One of the clients that I like to use is Nostragram, which has twitter like views and also you can change the layout similar to Instagram or Pinterest. There are growing many clients each day. However, finding good content of interest is not easy as this can be dependent on your relays. Filtering through lots of garbage can be quite frustrating right now.

Nostr is very much loved by the #Plebchain as there is the possibility to zap other users sats. This is easily setup in Alby or Wallet of Satoshi. I do not have many followers but have gained over 2k sats myself so far.

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For the long form content, there are not too many options so far. There is so far Habla where you can publish longer articles, but there is not much to choose from at the moment.

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Another interesting development is the Zap Stream site where you can stream or watch streams easily using the protocol. Streamers have full control over their stream and are no longer held at the whims of Twitch or Trovo. Users get a great experience too and can zap sats using the lightning network to the streamer, who gets to keep 100% of the rewards. This seems similar again to a service called Vimm TV that is already available on Hive but not so often used.

Overall there seems to be many apps being developed and things are moving at a quick pace. Many of the things being developed are already existing on Hive and are not quite so polished. However, it does seem to be pushing further change in the social media space and we will have to see how the adoption will look like in the next weeks and months.

Credits:
The title image was created in Canva using image from source.

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