I think the fear that Nostr is too centralized right now is a bit overblown. With such a small group of users, all with similar ethos, there is no pressing need for decentralization right now because there are so few risks even if things are centralized. When the user base grows into something more substantial and starts fracturing into different ideologies and interests then decentralization becomes a lot more important. IMO it'd be a waste of time and resources to build out large swaths of infrastructure and services just for decentralization's sake when the demand for those resources just aren't there.

I have thought about how to do atomic payments to multiple parties at once over Lightning so much... thanks for laying out the problem space like this and theorizing a potential way Bolt12 could help do it. It's a really interesting idea.

What I struggle with when it comes to all these approaches is -- and this is coming from the perspective that the reason we need atomic split payments is so there is no custodial element when trying to pay multiple recipients simultaneously -- every participant still needs a stable, funded Lightning node for the payment to work at all. I think right now it is still way too difficult for most people to run their own node. And until that hurdle is cleared, non-custodial split payments don't gain most end users very much if those payments are ending up on a node they don't control anyway.

I'll have to read more into the blinded paths pattern in Bolt12. If anything it could serve as a good enough solution in the near future while nodes become easier to run over the longer term.

Great questions. All those are valid concerns and a lot to try and bite off at once, which is why we're taking a more incremental approach. I can assure you that the Wavlake you see today is very much a prototype for a much bigger vision of what we think could be.

One thing to consider is that the distribution and payment model we've built doesn't necessarily have to adhere to a pure v4v application in every situation. For example, if a company wanted to create an ad with a song in it, that license could be secured with a Lightning transaction. And every airing/play of that ad would require the company to pay the artist X amount as part of the terms. That would just be part of the deal. This is just one example, I'm sure you can imagine many more.

In my mind, listeners sending sats to artists is just the tip of the iceberg. It's a really interesting application of this technology, but there are many other ways this could be used to the benefit of artists and consumers.

My naive take is that royalties are complicated because so many parties are involved outside of the artists and their management. When you boil it down splits are relatively simple.

We follow the spec closely, it's why all our music can appear on the likes of Fountain, etc. The truth is we don't know how all this will evolve over time, we're just making choices based on what seems to be working for people.

Royalties are complicated and we don't make any claims to solve for the different publishing, mechanical, streaming, over-the-air, licensing, etc categories. As you may know, each of these are enforced by different entities and can also change depending on jurisdiction. That said, direct payments to creators does create an opportunity to simplify a lot of this bureaucracy and accounting. We're just in the very early stages of unlocking this potential.

Not at all. Comes with the territory :)

Thanks @k00b, appreciate you giving us the benefit of the doubt. What you said is spot on.

A lot of these criticisms are rooted in a very specific ideology about how podcasting 2.0 is supposed to work according to some people. Some of it is also based on a mistaken perception of what Wavlake is simply because we operate in the space.

Fact is: we've always been upfront about what we're trying to do and how we do it. That will surely evolve over time as we figure things out, but for now I think it's safe to say we've helped a lot of artists discover a cool new way to share their music and earn. We're just gonna keep focusing on doing more of that. And even better.

I love this idea.

I've made a few programs like this for just myself or my family. One was an app that would remind me when a Bulls game was going to be on regular TV (never had cable). Another would generate and send weather updates to be displayed on the digital photo frame in my kitchen (too cheap to get a tablet).

My favorite, though, was for an office prank. It was at my first job as a dev and there were just a half-dozen or so of us in a relatively small space. We listened to music a lot in the main room and one of the guys complained about a particular artist all the time. I want to say it was Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, but I can't recall exactly who.

Anyway, another dev and I started monitoring the office router to figure out the mac ID to his phone. Then we set up a script to watch the router for that mac ID and start playing this music he hated every time he entered the office.

He thought it was a coincidence for a couple weeks. Good times. :)

I think the most emotional response I've ever had to a piece of art is in front of Picasso's Guernica.

Not at all! Glad to see this old thread still has some legs 😀

We keep a zine (blog) that might be helpful. This might be a good place to start: https://zine.wavlake.com/value-for-value-music-with-lightning-what-a-concept/

Let me know if you have any questions

The Taj Mahal is really breathtaking. Pictures can't do it justice.

Hiring is hard. Based on my own experience and talking to others, I take some solace in the fact that even the best still never get it right every time. I would hazard to guess it's like baseball, where if you're batting .300 that's still pretty damn good.

Is it possible the terms of the contract may have skewed the outcome? In other words, were candidates less motivated to give their best effort because the outcome was uncertain? In your defense, I also would expect people to do their absolute best to secure the best chance of landing the full-time job, but it sounds like the uncertainty led some people to keep one foot out the door so to speak, and keep exploring other options for themselves as a hedge. It makes a lot of sense but I would not have factored that in ahead of time if I had been in your shoes.

Some of this reminds me of the behavior of consultants, where making short-term wins usually takes priority over the long-term goals of the client. And while a consultant always has an eye on selling more work to the client long-term, the reality is they'll always be playing the field for the best opportunity available.

One question: did you use references at all? In my experience that has usually been the most valuable source of info for making a hiring decision.

Such an interesting account, thanks so much for sharing.

Maybe it's just because I'm reading The Hobbit right now, but when I read "my precious bitcoin" my mind went straight to Gollum and the Ring. Only mentioning because I can relate to the sentiment; there is an obsession with this thing that can go pretty deep at times. It's always good to pull back once in a while and get some perspective.

Great post. Thanks for sharing.

I'm always skeptical of the survivor bias inherent in these kinds of stories, especially when someone applies a framework to a successful endeavor after the fact. Still good food for thought, and great to read to see how messy this process is for everyone

Haha that looks great

What was the musical?

Interesting, I'll have I check that out. I was also reminded a bit of Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman -- that strikes some similar tones.

Wow thanks for sharing this. That's a fascinating read. The depth of regret and emotion, the self-reflection, all the little wisdoms he peppers in between technical discussion points -- and all of that under the weight of this horrible crime he's committed and in prison for. I've never read anything like it

The first thing that came to mind when reading about Turbo mode

From someone who only has a very high-level understanding of how fedimints work: I think of it as the Bitcoin version of community banks or credit unions — so basically a group of people with some kind of community or affiliation that want to pool their resources together for the benefit of the collective. In traditional banking, this would primarily mean granting loans and earning some interest on savings.

Fedimints, on the other hand, could be a way to remove the technical and financial burden of using bitcoin for a group of people who would rather trust (and possibly pay fees to) a guardian or group of guardians to do the work. It makes a lot of economic sense if you consider how much work and upfront capital it requires for an individual to self-custody on Lightning today. The value proposition here is a member gets more say and visibility into the custody of their funds in return for some trust and possibly fees. The multi-guardian model also distributes custodial risk, but doesn’t remove it entirely.

I think fedimints, if viable, could be useful for onboarding communities, both traditional and virtual, to bitcoin. I’ve even thought about how groups of musicians could set up mints so they don’t individually have to run nodes or use a handful of custodians just to try Lightning. I could see this model working for other groups of tradespeople and retailers, too.

Hasn't this always been the case? That our experiences and perceptions are not totally aligned but, as you put it so well, "we are still able to patch it into a story"?

I would make the case that we are more aware than ever of each other's thoughts and emotions, maybe even to the point of info overload. I'm not sure we're evolved enough to handle so many shared experiences simultaneously all the time in a healthy way.