Nostrica Discussion Thread
342 sats \ 97 comments \ @sn 19 Mar 2023 nostr
Nostrica is bringing together many Bitcoin, Lightning, and Nostr builders in Costa Rica over the next few days, so we’ve set up a dedicated thread for sharing ideas, updates, and announcements from the event in real-time. The full event schedule can be found here.
Whether you’re at the event, watching the live updates online, or curious to learn more about the ideas being discussed, this thread is for anyone to share their favorite Nostrica moments or ask any questions they have.
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467 sats \ 9 replies \ @muteness11 19 Mar 2023
how can non-Bitcoiners be onboarded to Nostr? as its essential for its growth (not to be seen as a Bitcoin only place)
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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @m00ninite 20 Mar 2023
Yea, I'm not bullish on nostr until I see normies talking about and using it tbh
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10 sats \ 6 replies \ @xanny 20 Mar 2023
A lot of people are looking for an alternative to Twitter and Meta at the moment. And both are now charging for blue ticks.
The way I put it to a non-bitcoiner is "it's like Twitter without ads and algorithms but it can do a lot more as well, a lot of cool new stuff is being built for it, and instead of paying for a tick, people can pay you if they like your content, and you can support creators you like in the same way, it's private with no need to send your ID and no middleman and it works instantly."
The fact signing up to Nostr is as easy as generating a keypair and doesn't even require an email makes onboarding new people real easy too.
And I make clear the option to send/receive payments is optional for people who aren't interested in that side of it, to address the non-bitcoiner thing further. If someone doesn't want anything to do with bitcoin they simply don't make a LN wallet.
Of course the community is dominated by bitcoiners and that can be off-putting to the normies but not much can be done there really, aside from hoping that other communities grow organically over time.
Still I am super bullish on Nostr purely because of the rapidly organic community of not only users but builders who are coding such great stuff so fast. I've never seen anything like it in recent years. Feels like web 1.0 again.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @muteness11 20 Mar 2023
thanks for taking the effort to share this.
I believe BTC price appreciation and most importantly the ability to Zap on Nostr will bring a new wave of non-bitcoiners driven by self-interest
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @xanny 20 Mar 2023
I think so too.
The way most people will look at it is a choice between:
  1. Pay Elon or Zuck $10 a month for a tick and still get bombarded with ads and tracking
  2. Use Nostr for free, get paid if people like what I post, and pay others if I like what they post
Laid out like this the choice is clear.
Usually the barrier to getting people to try a new platform, even if it's superior, is lack of users on the new platform. Nostr does not have this issue and there is basically no friction to onboarding. Hit a button and it makes a keypair. Done.
And it has a great community of builders making cool shit all the time.
I am super bullish.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @muteness11 21 Mar 2023
Hoping the Devine would help me now! as soon as I crawl on the way up I get dragged back deeper into Bitcoin and LN rabbit hole :) ......but i guess its time to give Nostr a concentrated effort
apart from nostr.how... what is your advice for a deep dive?
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @xanny 22 Mar 2023
Best thing to do is sign up and look around, find people to follow, etc.
If you use Android you want Amethyst. If you use iOS you want Damus. For desktop I like Snort.social.
To find people to follow:
Twitter users with verified Nostr keys: https://www.nostr.directory/
Trending people and posts: https://nostr.band/
Me: xanny@stacker.news
If you use the Orange Pill app, there's a field on there for Nostr public keys too, and from what I've seen most people on it have that filled out.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @muteness11 22 Mar 2023
thats super helpful .... thank you Xanny!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mo 20 Mar 2023

🟪 nostr will be the layer 3 that allow ⚡️lightning adoption.

There gonna be so many microApps that people will start using them because the simplicity and lightness they run on... like ostriches!
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381 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
@jb55 just gave a shout out to Stacker News as an incredible product that inspired the idea of adding zaps to Damus
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @muteness11 19 Mar 2023
Wow
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388 sats \ 2 replies \ @mo 20 Mar 2023
Building the next Good's Store on Nostr.. check it out
🚀 Landing page GoodStr.io
🦩 Join the early access list beta.goodstr.io
🛍️ Try GoodStr online from demo.goodstr.io
🎨 The Ui Designs are available on Figma (account required) check it out!
🐙 Or check and contribute to the code on github.com/abhiShandy/thegoodstr
🔥 Zap the project on makers.bolt.fun/project/goodstr or getalby.com/GoodStr
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7010 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinosphere 21 Mar 2023
Nice! I see that the demo store requires a Privkey... We shouldn't be putting those online at all even if we do trust you. Isn't there any way around doing that?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
very cool
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302 sats \ 0 replies \ @cstack 21 Mar 2023
My big takeaway from Nostrica 2023 is the nearly unanimous focus on enabling the sovereign individual.
While the phrase sovereign individual still rings awkwardly in my ear, it conveys an extremely important concept.
Bitcoin, Lightning, and now Nostr exemplify a new counterculture that supports privacy, decentralization, and freedom. This is in stark contrast to the mainstream which seems comfortable giving up privacy to corporations and governments in exchange for convenience and security. I have no idea which group is expanding.
Charles Stack — https://devstr.org #nostrica #devstr
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369 sats \ 0 replies \ @cstack 20 Mar 2023
Pura Vida,
GM. Day Two of our experimental event support for Nostrica 2023 'built' in Nostr.
We created a dedicated npub, nostrica@nostrplebs.com, to post notes about Nostrica live. Please Follow us in your Nostr client. Or either in NostrGram Client Link or Snort Client Link
We launched a free dedicated relay: wss://nostrica.nostrnotes.com for the entire Nostrica 2023 community in Costa Rica and virtual. Please add it to your Nostr Client relays.
We are a Nostrica NostrHack project building a Dev Community for Nostr in Nostr.
Feedback on our experiment is greatly appreciated!
— New to Nostr? Then visit https://devstr.org
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582 sats \ 0 replies \ @plebpoet 20 Mar 2023
just here reading along and loving it
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
new zap-related ideas from @jb55:
  • commerce functionality on your profile page so you can sell products on nostr
  • zap-based polls coming soon to Damus
  • using zaps to combat spam in DMs (a zap could be required to DM someone)
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246 sats \ 0 replies \ @Kraftig 19 Mar 2023
Stream link https://www.youtube.com/@nostrica2023/streams
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379 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
an audience member just said “craigslist is one of the best apps we’ve built on the internet, but sadly it’s dying. we need to resurrect it on nostr”
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498 sats \ 2 replies \ @orthzar 19 Mar 2023
I'd love to have attended, but travelling to Costa Rica was totally infeasible for me. I hope they'll pick some place like Austin next time.
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39 sats \ 1 reply \ @franzap 20 Mar 2023
As much as I like Austin and in general the USA it's actually totally infeasible for foreigners who need to be jabbed to enter
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @orthzar 20 Mar 2023
That's a good point. I suppose the only alternatives would be a virtual conferences and local meetups.
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206 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xtr 19 Mar 2023
Excited to hear more about Diagon Alley
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173 sats \ 0 replies \ @ez 19 Mar 2023
my body is ready
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50 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
@jb55: “the goal of zaps is to orange-pill the world”
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
i think evan’s talk is my favorite one so far at nostrica… definitely worth tuning into it if you’re curious about the history of social media.
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Christopher just announced that Arc is one of the 8 companies that were accepted into the first cohort of Wolf’s Lightning accelerator to build a Wechat style chat/commerce app on Nostr.
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90 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Christopher David is now introducing the beta build of his Arc Nostr client, which leverages NIP-28 (public chat) to build a group chat experience to Telegram on Nostr
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110 sats \ 1 reply \ @Prinzessin_Eclipse 21 Mar 2023 freebie
Nostr is trash rn
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap 21 Mar 2023
Why?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
Ben Arc: “Nostr is like a town, and you get to choose which streets you walk down”
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
Nostr market from Ben Arc looks pretty cool, has anyone here tried it yet?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Next up is Joe and Arun to talk about their Nostr client called Current, which I believe is a pivot from Starbackr
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
one interesting idea Martti just introduced was the possibility of file storage on Nostr 🤔
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30 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
@jb55 is now up on stage talking about the history of Damus and the role of zaps on the client
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244 sats \ 0 replies \ @OneOneSeven 19 Mar 2023
With a Stacker News shoutout too!
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @melvincarvalho 19 Mar 2023
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_57b01419927de1b4833de43147d1b2f2bd7deea8d7e209f6c65c808ea9e3fe15.jpeg
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @sideways 19 Mar 2023
Pura Vida,
Today we are launching experimental event support for Nostrica 2023 'built' in Nostr.
  1. We created a dedicated npub, nostrica@nostrplebs.com, to post notes about Nostrica live. Please Follow us in your Nostr client. Or either in NostrGram Client Link or Snort Client Link
  2. We launched a free dedicated relay: wss://nostrica.nostrnotes.com for the entire Nostrica 2023 community in Costa Rica and virtual. Please add it to your Nostr Client relays.
We are a Nostrica NostrHack project building a Dev Community for Nostr in Nostr.
Feedback on our experiment is greatly appreciated!
— New to Nostr? Then visit https://devstr.org
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
interesting discussion right now about the sustainability of relays…
“no relays are making money right now, and unless relay operators are independently wealthy, they need to make money somehow”
not sure if this is the most pressing issue on nostr today, but it is a problem that will need to be solved over time.
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32 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 21 Mar 2023
there was an audience question about things people would like to see on nostr, and jack dorsey said he is actively looking at ways to use nostr to help the music industry
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45 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
there is a panel about markets on nostr right now, and the first panelist just said “i’m a 4 month old nostrich, and a 3 month old bitcoiner”.
very cool to see that nostr is actually an on-ramp for creating new bitcoiners.
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345 sats \ 0 replies \ @xanny 20 Mar 2023 freebie
Nostr onboarded me to Lightning (have been into BTC since 2013 but never used LN before Nostr) and now I'm already running my own Lightning node. Just onboarded a friend IRL to both Nostr and Lightning yesterday too and that's someone who isn't into crypto at all usually. It is a wonderful thing.
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @selfish_gene 19 Mar 2023
сделайте детский ностр. проверенный на биткоинах. что б 100% была уверенность в контенте. ни какого хлама и негатива. пропоганды и войны. просто хороший мультик для детей. не очень хочется пускать детей в нынешний интернет который полон ненависти и говна.
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15 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
evan rabble is now discussing the history of decentralized social media and shared that he was actually the person who first hired jack dorsey at odeo before it became twitter
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 21 Mar 2023
a few of the interesting non-social media use cases of nostr being mentioned…
  • craigslist (or commerce-related markets)
  • private groups
  • p2p trading/exchange (imagine merchants that accept bitcoin being able to sell their btc p2p at a premium as an additional income stream)
  • substack (or paywall-related content)
  • github
  • slack
however, all the panelists seem to be in agreement that these ideas are all the first-order ideas and that there will be many more ideas that are unimaginable today emerging over time.
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5756 sats \ 0 replies \ @ncryppt 22 Mar 2023
e-commerce on nostr would be HUGE
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2 sats \ 25 replies \ @0359c62f34 20 Mar 2023
I feel like Nostrica is alienating, personally. It stratifies the world between "people who can afford to take the time and resources to drop everything and go to Costa Rica" and those that cannot. It kinda has the vibe of being like a club where the cool kids go an innovate, and everybody else gets Polaroid pictures or a slide show of what they missed.
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164 sats \ 14 replies \ @franzap 20 Mar 2023
This resonates with me, on the other hand I think there was an online event as well
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @nodecitizen 21 Mar 2023
"online event" is a generous term for "streamed on youtube" unless there's something major I missed somehow.
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0 sats \ 12 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
Right. So right now if you look on Nostr you see plenty of pictures of people slicing coconuts and hanging out on tropical beaches. The thing is, due to economics (and not free market ones either) not everyone can go do that. It's a hard sell if you are saying "this technology is gonna make things better for humanity" and then you go off to paradise and send everyone else pictures of what they missed while offering an "online event". It ought to be the case that it is a sort of "one for all and all for one thing" or forget it. Regular money all ready did all this.
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150 sats \ 5 replies \ @nout 21 Mar 2023
There are three ways to be able to get to Costa Rica. Each may or may not work depending on some amount of luck.
a) You work hard, you continuously learn new things that will move you forward, you focus your time on that goal, you spend some portion of every day on getting closer to the goal. You also exercise and try to sleep well to be as healthy as possible and to make your brain work well.
b) You demand your government takes care of you. You say that everyone deserves to go to Costa Rica. So you support whichever leader gives you that and together you choose a type of people that you fight against (e.g. choose from people living in the cities, people owning businesses, people from upper class, people of different religion...) That's all you need to do really, just sit back, watch TV and wait. By having this selected enemy the system can squeeze money. If you are close to the center of the system it's possible that the system sends you to Costa Rica to discuss open, public, censorship resistant protocol. The question is what do you do there?
c) You were born in the right setup and have easy money. Note here that for people living in the US, Costa Rica is generally a bit cheaper. So by going to Costa Rica you save some money (it sort of depends, CR is getting more expensive in the recent years - the market seems to be pushing it on the levels of Hawaii).
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @franzap 21 Mar 2023
It also depends where you live. It's cheaper for me to go to Costa Rica than to the US.
Let's not forget the jab. This kind of conferences should all be organized in countries that require no stupid vaccination passports. So definitely not in the USA.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
I think the jab is irrelevant in the sense that if you include it you will be dead soon enough anyway.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
a) You work hard, someone else steals your work and claims it as their own.
b) partially responsible for stealing your work.
c) Probably true for the majority of people such that a) or b) isn't happening to them.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 21 Mar 2023
Stealing of your work can happen in specific classes of work, but it's not as common - it's part of the risk assessment that everyone has to do on their own. That's why I really specifically focused on learning things - skills and knowledge can't be stolen from you. So hustling and trying multiple things is a good approach even when you hit setbacks, but I fully agree that this is not easy and even if you do all this it may not result in success.
Overall, so I understand better, what do you suggest would be a better way? What did you expect to happen with Nostr and Nostrica?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
There is a balance between charity and earning--especially for humanitarian needs. Right now, I'd say the needle is set to "earning" in a less than balanced way.
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210 sats \ 5 replies \ @Coinosphere 21 Mar 2023
Agreed Comrade! Let's force the imperialist swines who are attending to fund all of our trips to costa rica this weekend!
Could you sound any more commie? ;)
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
I'm not the one touting bitcoin as a solution to world economy woes and global banking. As a matter of fact, I didn't go to Costa Rica whereas a lot of people did go. So, if you are one of those people who says bitcoin is good for developing countries and yet you accuse those developing countries or people who can't afford to not go as being commies, fuck you. I say that very politely--and fuck everyone who gave you sats too.
Don't you or your ilk pretend you are anything else other than a new banking elite.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Coinosphere 28 Mar 2023
You're severely barking up the wrong tree here. Yes, me and everyone else on this board beside you FIRMLY believe that the world's monetary system is broken beyond any hope of repair and Satoshi gave us the keys to fix it for everyone in an extremely fair way. He gave us a far, far, far better money that every last person on earth can have access to and start earning today if they only understand it.
As for your assumption that "you accuse those developing countries or people who can't afford to not go as being commies," you've totally lost the script here, bigtime.
YOU are accused of being a commie for suggesting a redistribution of wealth. Specifically you said: [Going to Nostrica instead of watching it online] "ought to be the case that it is a sort of "one for all and all for one thing" or forget it."
What a crazy thing to say. Putting politics aside, how could any convention ever happen again if everyone thinks like this? Sounds beyond even what Marx could hope to achieve to me. It's not like there is a hotel somewhere that can house all 8 Billion people for the weekend or something...
As for the people IN those developing countries who can't afford to go, I accuse them of nothing, and assume they are good capitalists and smarter than you by far. Nostr & bitcoin will both be there for them and replace all of their currencies and media over the next decade or two.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @0359c62f34 28 Mar 2023
I don't use a script. Big difference between you and me.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinosphere 29 Mar 2023
What script? I believe that the money is literally broken and will die, followed by the pain or death of millions of innocent people. That's what reason has led me to. Education is not a script.
And damn straight there is a big difference. I want to help those people and you just want to see them perish faster by not having access to the tools they need to survive.
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110 sats \ 1 reply \ @ibz 21 Mar 2023
How about those that can't go to Miami due to the difficulty of getting a US visa? How about those that can't make it to Riga, because Europe is even more expensive than Costa Rica? Perhaps there should be no more in-person events, just so that we are a more "inclusive" community. Just exclude everybody, to be safe.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
Isn't that kinda what technology is? You exclude everyone who can't use the tech forming an "in group" and an "out group".
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0 sats \ 7 replies \ @benthecarman 21 Mar 2023
so should people just not throw conferences?
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
That's one solution.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @benthecarman 21 Mar 2023
that's pretty childish
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
Then come up with something that isn't childish.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @benthecarman 21 Mar 2023
let people live their life, dont complain about others
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @0359c62f34 21 Mar 2023
You realize that being on a "social protocol" which inherits from a "social network" is going to be all about others, communities, and opinions, right?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @benthecarman 21 Mar 2023
yeah and those people are going to want to meetup in person. dont see a point to complaining about other people meeting up
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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Keith from SeedSigner: “I’m very pessimistic on the future of NIP-26 Nostr key delegation”
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393 sats \ 0 replies \ @fiatjaf8 19 Mar 2023
Great news.
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
One microservice Current just announced the launch of a Giphy-like GIF library called Plebhy where users can choose to tip the creators of GIFs with sats on any client
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Ben Arc is up right now explaining the different Nostr extensions LNBits has today…
  • Nostr client
  • Nostr market
  • Nostr relay
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
interesting discussion about the overlap between bitcoin and nostr.
Ben is suggesting that it’s best to keep the Bitcoin and Nostr communities separate rather than intertwining them over time.
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Nostr 101 is kicking off right now with Ben Arc from LNBits and @fiatjaf tuning in remotely
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 21 Mar 2023
there is a nostr key revocation discussion happening now, covering the pros and cons of NIP-26
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 21 Mar 2023
really impressed with the ambition and conviction of the people that have gathered at nostrica.
also a bit concerned about how few people are making money on nostr today (most clients and relays are losing money from what i can tell).
hope to see more money flowing through the ecosystem very soon so the ambitious builders have a realistic path to sustainably build their idea.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 21 Mar 2023
now the discussion on the open source stage is covering the non-social media use cases for nostr.
this aspect of nostr seems to be significantly under-rated right now… it feels like many people are still looking at nostr through the twitter lens.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 21 Mar 2023
fun discussion with @maxawebster and Andi Pitt about the role of venture capital on nostr happening right now
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 21 Mar 2023
day 3 is kicking off with a collection of Nostr related product updates across clients and relays
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
lots of enthusiastic replies of audience members getting up in the q&a session and asking @jb55 to offer paid subscriptions to damus so they can support him.
very cool to see so many people willing to pay money for damus.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
@nvk and @jb55 going back and forth with lots of good ideas for how to fund relays and clients on nostr
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
another fun panel with @nvk happening now, talking about the challenges of building coinkite and startups generally.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
evan just made a really interesting point about the interaction of nostr and lightning.
he thinks nostr has a good payment setup right now where payments are a layer above the core protocol allowing anyone to participate without making any payments at all.
he emphasized that while bitcoin payments are cool and probably fun for some bitcoiners, the fact that it’s not forced on users means non-bitcoiners can continue to participate on nostr without needing any internet money… in his view, this is where some of the shitcoin decentralized social protocols went wrong, embedding payments into the core of the protocol.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
another interesting discussion happening now about when the right time to use nostr is.
does it make sense for people to simply use open-source tools like mattermost for team communication or is it useful to have something like slack built on nostr?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 20 Mar 2023
day 2 is kicking off with an open forum in the workshop area, got some pretty cool talks lined up throughout the day focused on relays
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
On the workshops stage, Keith from SeedSigner is showing a demo of how to use a SeedSigner to generate a keypair and import it to Nostr
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Martti Malmi is talking about how at one point he owned as much as 55,000 BTC
apparently he spent 10,000 on a studio apartment in 2011
he is also covering his transition to working on social media through Iris, and the idea of web of trusts
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 19 Mar 2023
What % of people is wearing Nostr t-shirt?
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77 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
Not many, under 5%
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 19 Mar 2023
looks like a really solid lineup of speakers today, starting in an hour or so
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @03bd9f4d4c 26 Mar 2023 freebie
Good