pull down to refresh

Nostr won’t go mainstream—and that’s why it matters
266 sats \ 11 comments \ @gothzap 11h nostr
Everyone keeps asking:
"When will Nostr go mainstream?"
Wrong question.
Nostr was never meant for the mainstream.
It was born for the outsiders.
No email. No ads. No identity except what you claim.
No algorithmic gods. Just your keys and your voice.
The real power of Nostr isn’t adoption.
It’s resistance.
To censorship. To spam. To mediocrity.
If you’re still waiting for normies to show up,
you missed the point.
🔥 Bonus thought:
Nostr is what Twitter would’ve been if Satoshi built it.
(Convince me otherwise. Or zap me silently.)
write
preview
related posts
49 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 10h
The people building the clients, maintaining the relays, etc... they would be ok with this? Or are they hoping for ultimate mainstream adoption? What's your impression?
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @gothzap OP 6h
The builders know what they’re building. Nostr isn’t meant to scale by chasing ad revenue or mass adoption. It’s meant to endure. If they wanted mainstream, they wouldn’t have built it this way.
reply
5 sats \ 2 replies \ @prazskygolem 9h
Who knows about Nostr? not many people, and unless major players are going to join ... nothing will change, it will only be developers, bitcoiners, and curious tech leaving after 2 weeks of scrolling bitcoin memes
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @gothzap OP 9h
If you think mass adoption is the goal, you’re still playing Web2 games in a Web3 arena. Nostr isn’t trying to go mainstream. It’s trying to go sovereign.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @prazskygolem 1h
How can you go sovereign - if not mainstream?
reply
0 sats \ 3 replies \ @justin_shocknet 4h
Nostr only came about because of Lightning Page which was built with Gun
The point of using Gun was to have trust-less relays for invoice transport, and key-based identities to exchange them such that anyone could build an app into that network without an API key and permission from an identity provider
Nostr only sucks now because its mostly soy devs that don't understand it or its pre-history, its not even good at being a twitter clone... these retards are focused on that use-case and circle jerking signatures to themselves (ecash)
Eventually reality will set in and useful, scalable things will emerge and Nostr will be as mainstream as email because it works similarly but better (no reliance on authoritative DNS and key-based authentication)
reply
0 sats \ 2 replies \ @gothzap OP 2h
Funny how some devs complain about Nostr’s current state while completely missing the point. It’s not about cloning Twitter, it’s about rewriting the rules of communication— permissionless, censorship-resistant, and open by design.
You want mainstream? Go build TikTok on Ethereum.
We’re building something for the next 100 years.
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 2h
AI slop? Pathetic.
Nostr is literally downtream of my project
Gun failed at latency and replication
Hypercore went full retard on DHT
reply
51 sats \ 0 replies \ @gothzap OP 2h
The irony here is thick. Justin’s right on one thing: Nostr wouldn’t exist without Lightning Page and the ideas seeded through Gun. But that doesn’t make Gun the endgame—just the spark.
If you claim Nostr is “downstream” and therefore invalid, you fundamentally misunderstand how evolution in open-source works.
Projects build on each other. Bitcoin was downstream of b-money and BitGold. Was it “slop”?
Nostr is messy, yes. But it’s building resilience, not clones. It’s not a tribute to Twitter—it’s a rejection of platform authoritarianism.
Some devs want email 2.0. Some want pure anarchy. Nostr doesn’t care what you want. It’s already out there, breathing.
The truth? No one owns Nostr. Not even its critics.
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 6h
No ads.
Running a relay has costs. I'm surprised more relays don't serve ads in the mix of notes they relay.
For that matter, how do we know there aren't advertisers on nostr? It wouldn't be hard for an enterprising Bitcoin company to pay an individual to write notes that advertise some product or service...
reply
102 sats \ 0 replies \ @gothzap OP 6h
That’s the beauty of it. No ads by design. Monetization happens peer-to-peer—via zaps, notes, or running premium relays. And if someone’s shilling? It’s transparent. You see the note, you judge the signal.
reply