PROTOCOLS, NOT PLATFORMS.

At the heart of Nostr's philosophy is user choice, a feature that fundamentally sets it apart from legacy platforms. In centralized systems, the user experience is dictated by a single person or governing entity. If the platform decides to filter, censor, or ban specific users or content, individuals are left with little action to rectify the situation. They must either accept the changes or abandon the platform entirely, often at the cost of losing their social connections, their data, and their identity.

What's happening with TikTok could never happen on Nostr. With Nostr, the dynamics are completely different. Because it is a protocol, not a platform, no single entity controls the ecosystem. Instead, the protocol enables a network of applications and relays that users can freely choose from. If a particular application or relay implements policies that a user disagrees with, such as censorship, filtering, or even government enforced banning, they are not trapped or abandoned. They have the freedom to move to another application or relay with minimal effort.

THIS IS POWERFUL.

Take, for example, the case of a relay that decides to censor specific content. On a legacy platform, this would result in frustration and a loss of access for users. On Nostr, however, users can simply connect to a different relay that does not impose such restrictions. Similarly, if an application introduces features or policies that users dislike, they can migrate to a different application that better suits their preferences, all while retaining their identity and social connections.

The same principles apply to government bans and censorship. A government can ban a specific application or even multiple applications, just as it can block one relay or several relays. China has implemented both tactics, yet Chinese users continue to exist and actively participate on Nostr, demonstrating Nostr's ability to resistant censorship.

How? Simply, it turns into a game of whack-a-mole. When one relay is censored, another quickly takes its place. When one application is banned, another emerges. Users can also bypass these obstacles by running their own relays and applications directly from their homes or personal devices, eliminating reliance on larger entities or organizations and ensuring continuous access.

AGAIN, THIS IS POWERUFL.

Nostr's open and decentralized design makes it resistant to the kinds of government intervention that led to TikTok's outages this weekend and potential future ban in the next 90 days. There is no central server to target, no company to regulate, and no single point of failure. (Insert your CEO jokes here). As long as there are individuals running relays and applications, users continue creating notes and sending zaps.

Platforms like TikTok can be silenced with the stroke of a pen, leaving millions of users disconnected and abandoned. Social communication should not be silenced so incredibly easily. No one should have that much power over social interactions.

Will we on-board a massive wave of TikTokers in the coming hours or days? I don't know.

TikTokers may not be ready for Nostr yet, and honestly, Nostr may not be ready for them either. The ecosystem still lacks the completely polished applications, tools, and services they’re accustomed to. This is where we say "we're still early". They may not be early adopters like the current Nostr user base. Until we bridge that gap, they’ll likely move to the next centralized platform, only to face another government ban or round of censorship in the future. But eventually, there will come a tipping point, a moment when they’ve had enough. When that time comes, I hope we’re prepared. If we’re not, we risk missing a tremendous opportunity to onboard people who genuinely need Nostr’s freedom.

Until then, to all of the Nostr developers out there, keep up the great work and keep building. Your hard work and determination is needed.

Quick review:
In the past two weeks, Nostr statistics indicate over 224,000 daily trusted pubkey events.The number of new users has seen a significant increase. Profiles with contact list amount is four times the amount from the same period. Public writing events have reflected a 50% increase. More than 9 million events have been published, with posts leading in volume at around 1.3 million, representing a significant 32% decrease. Total Zap activity stands at approximately 9 million, marking a 20% decline.

Additionally, 16 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 8 merged. A total of 45 Nostr projects were tracked, with 13 releasing product updates, and over 337 long-form articles were published, 34% focusing on Bitcoin and Nostr. During this period, 1 notable event took place, and 3 significant events are upcoming.

Nostr Statistics

Based on user activity, the total daily trusted pubkeys writing events is about 224,000, representing a slight 5.5% decrease compared to the previous period (8-22 Dec). Daily activity peaked at 18053 events, with a low of approximately 16276.

The number of new users has seen a significant increase. Profiles with contact list amount to approximately 18,340, which is four times the amount from the same period. Pubkeys writing events total around 80,000, reflecting a 50% increase compared to the same period.

Regarding event publishing, the total number of note events published is about 9 million, marking an increase of above 20%.Posts remain the most dominant in terms of volume, totaling approximately 1.3 million, reflecting a notable decrease of 32%. Reposts stand at around 327,000, showing a decline of approximately 8.5%, while reactions have experienced a significant increase, rising by 18% to reach 635,012.

For zap activity, the total zap amount is about 9 million, showing a decrease of over 20% compared to the previous period.

In terms of relay usage, the top five relays by user count are: wss://bostr.bitcointxoko.com/, wss://feeds.nostr.band/, wss://relays.diggoo.com/, wss://bostr.azzamo.net/, wss://bostr.lightningspore.com/

Data source: https://stats.nostr.band/

NIPs

Asset prices
Vitor Pamplona defines event kinds to host asset prices.Kind 31892 stores the latest conversion price. The d tag contains the commonly used ticket conversion symbol for the pair. The value tag contains the amount, parseable to a Decimal. n tags separate the pair into the two ticket symbols. The event's created_at field MUST be used as the date/time of the conversion value.Kind 10041 lists the user's authorized providers for pricing services. It contains s tags with the provider's pubkey and the relay where those events are stored.

nip-38: chained stories.
Kehiy defines a new status type which lets users share a chain of stories.This NIP enables a way for users to share live statuses such as what music they are listening to, as well as what they are currently doing: work, play, out of office, etc. A special event with kind:30315 “User Status” is defined as an optionally expiring addressable event, where the d tag represents the status type.The status MAY include an r, p, location, e or a tag linking to a URL, profile, location, note, or addressable event. The content MAY include emoji(s), or NIP-30 custom emoji(s). If the content is an empty string then the client should clear the status.Clients MAY display this next to the username on posts or profiles to provide live user status information.

adding x tag to nip56
Kehiy is proposing that with the growth of clients like zap stream, olas, chat apps, or music clients we have more stuff that may need to be reported. here we can support blobs. When Nostr grows in using media based clients, like zap.stream or olas or music clients, then the event itself is not too important and the media is more important. by reporting events, the media is still accessible. We can support reports ol medias like this.

NIP-91: Extension Negotiation
Semisol is proposing that NIP-91 adds an extension negotiation scheme for clients and relays to negotiate new protocols. The intended goal is to replace NIP-11 for the discovery of relay supported features. An extension feature negotiation scheme is also included.

Trusting rumors by entirely trusted relay list
nanikamado has decided to require Nostr users to register their pubkeys to access the bridge after discussions with some Fediverse users. Unregistered users will be denied both read and write access, operating similarly to a paid relay. In addition, measures will be implemented to prevent events within the bridge relay from being broadcast to other relays, even if it compromises compatibility. The "-" tag alone is insufficient for this requirement. This NIP has already been implemented on the relay: nanikamado/rockstr@f968149. There are also plans to fork a web client and implement this NIP there.

Notable Projects

Amethyst v0.94.3
nostr:npub142gywvjkq0dv6nupggyn2euhx4nduwc7yz5f24ah9rpmunr2s39se3xrj0

• Adds iMeta tags to GIF urls
• Adds iMeta tags to GIF urls to optimize GIF previews
• Fixes the extra empty kind 20 post when uploading videos on the media tab
• Fix: Only close the upload screen if the video upload is a success on the Media tab
• Maintains note reaction visibility when scrolling by Giovanni

Flotilla 0.2.1
hodlbod

• Improve performance, as well as scrolling and loading
• Integrate
• Improve NIP 29 compatibility
• Fix incorrect connection errors
• Refine notifications
• Add room menu to space homepage
• Fix storage bugs
• Add join space CTA

Primal for Android build 2.0.34
primal
They now support the full highlighting feature set for long form notes: highlight display, select any text & highlight, comment on highlights, share highlights in your main feed. They also added btc/usd conversions in the wallet, as well as other small fixes and improvements.

0xchat App v1.4.5 & Desktop v1.0.1
0xchat

• Added support for NIP46 login.
• Adapted UI for tablet devices.
• Introduced connection ping status.
• Implemented search functionality for Moments.
• Set default relays for first login.
• Added default reaction emojis.
• Fixed an issue where messages couldn't be sent after joining a relay group.
• Resolved occasional UI flipping issues.
• Fixed an issue preventing images from being moved after zooming.
• Addressed a bug causing voice messages to get stuck in a loading state.
• Fixed file encryption and decryption issues.
• Corrected some typos.
• Fixed an issue with Nostr.build uploads.

Yakihonne Latest Update (iOS/Android/Web/Zap.Store)
YakiHonne

Web:

• Yakihonne is now multilingual! Enjoy the app in English and Chinese, with more languages coming soon, including Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Arabic, Japanese, and Italian.
• Added support for translating notes and articles into the app's selected language.
• Copy-paste images to upload seamlessly across the app.
• Resolved issues with secure DMs when logging in using a private key.
• General bug fixes and improvements.
• Article drafts now can be cleared directly or the published one will no more be existed

Mobile:

• App languages: Yakihonne is now multilingual! Enjoy the app in English and Chinese, with more languages coming soon, including Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Arabic, Japanese, and Italian.
• Translation: Added support for translating notes and articles into the app's selected language.
• Wallet balance: Fix issue where wallet balance is N/A.
• Account initialization: Fix issue when initializing account.
• Paying invoice: Fix issue sending sats using invoices.

Olas 0.1.7.1
PABLOF7z

• Works with remote signers like Amber (on nsecbunker mode).
• The video tab now plays short videos with sound on and stops playing when you swipe out
• Yet even more performance improvements
• Fixed a bug where Android wasn't calculating blurhashes
• Always adds image dimensions when posting so @Vitor Pamplona is happier.
• “Some” fixes on NWC wallets, but it's still quite buggy, will investigate more -- if you've received zaps on your Olas posts today, that was probably me zapping via NWC + remote signing those zaps.

Wherostr v1.3.3
Wherostr

• File Upload Error: Resolved the “404 Not Found” issue during file uploads.
• Increased Geohash Precision: Enhanced location accuracy by increasing geohash precision from 9 to 11.

DEG Mods
DEG Mods

• A small update went live:
• A “try again” button appears on mods that error out. (99% of the time this fixes the issue).
• The blog tab in a user's profile now loads correctly (doesn't get stuck anymore for new users)
• Text now appears if a game isn't found in the search
• Looking into fixing one newly discovered issue related to old mods
• Easier media uploads (drag and drop basically. No need to go find other sites to upload images to anymore)

AlbyHub 1.11.4
Alby

• You can use all the features of Alby Hub in self-custody with LND on Raspiblitz, now available in WebUI.

Zapstore 0.2.0
Zapstore

• 0.2.0 is out with support for signing in with Amber (NIP-55) and zaps via Nostr Wallet Connect.

Narr release v0.3.2
fiatjaf

• New Narr release v0.3.2 fixes all the problems with articles updating, insufficiently-rendered Markdown, Nostr usernames not loading, and makes everything better.
• It supports all sorts of RSS feed discovery from HTTP URLs and renders them beautifully in a simple straightforward interface, you can also paste nostr:... URIs, including nip05, npub and nprofile codes (they should also work without the nostr: prefix).

ZEUS v0.9.4
ZEUS

• Embedded Node: LND v0.18.4
• Speed up tx UX improvements
• CLNRest: display of destination addresses on txs
• Display keysend messages in Activity + Payment views
• Open Channel view: Connect Peer UI tabs
• CLNRest: paste connection strings
• Channels: sort by Close Height
• Optimizations + bug fixes

Citrine 0.6.0
Citrine

• Update dependencies
• Show notifications when importing, exporting, downloading events
• Change database functions to be suspending functions

Long-Form Content Eco

In the past two weeks, more than 337 long-form articles have been published, including over 93 articles on Bitcoin and more than 22 related to Nostr, accounting for 34% of the total content.

These articles about Nostr mainly explore its diverse applications and potential impacts across various domains. Topics range from technical guides like creating custom emojis and automating workflows, to cultural and social aspects, such as the Nostr Bread Festival and the role of Nostr in enhancing free speech. There are reflections on the past year's developments, predictions for 2025, and discussions on integrating Nostr with other platforms like Bluesky. The content also delves into personal experiences, community interactions, and broader societal issues, highlighting Nostr's growing influence and the creative ways users are engaging with this decentralized network.

The Bitcoin articles discuss a wide range of topics, from technological innovations to socio-economic impacts. They cover the speed advantages of the Lightning Network, the economic model policies of Bitcoin, and the outlook for Bitcoin's development in 2024. Some articles analyze the relationship between Bitcoin and traditional financial markets like the Nikkei 225, highlighting the potential of a decentralized future and the spread of Bitcoin education. Additionally, they explore the possibility of Bitcoin as a legal tender, its connection to religious and spiritual dimensions, and the mystery surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto's identity. Reflections on Bitcoin's milestones, such as the release of the genesis block, emphasize its challenge and revolution to the modern financial system. Overall, these articles showcase Bitcoin's profound global impact and its continually evolving ecosystem.

Thankyou, TheWildHustle asyncmind Nightmare Harazono Ksenia Crypto Airdrops Ambadi John Bitcoin Txoko Shigeru Minami
and others, for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.

Nostriches Global Meet Ups

Recently, a Nostr event have been hosted.

• The Bitcoin Meetup took place on December 29, 2024, at the “Accra City Pub” in Jamestown. The event featured the “Orange Pilling” session at 3:00 PM, followed by the GH Bitcoin NYTZ meetup at 7:00 PM. Participants also had the chance to win a free Trezor Safe 3 hardware wallet, and the event was free to attend.

Here are the upcoming Nostr events in November that you might want to check out.

• The Bitcoin City Team Hackathon will take place online (via Discord) from January 10 to January 31, 2025. This event aims to develop a fun and interactive visualization of live Bitcoin and Lightning transactions. Participating teams will have the opportunity to win a total prize of 10,000,000 IDR.
  Bitcoin Indonesia 🇮🇩

• The inaugural Bitcoin Circular Economy Summit will be held from January 27th to 29th in El Zonte, El Salvador! This three-day event includes leadership training, Bitcoin education, and exchanges with over 15 global Bitcoin circular economies. It offers a unique opportunity for global leaders in Bitcoin adoption and economic development to connect, learn, and collaborate. This summit precedes the PlanB Forum, taking place on January 30th-31st in San Salvador, making it an excellent chance to network with Bitcoin users worldwide.

• The Bitcoin Freedom Festival will take place from February 20 to 24, 2025, at the Awakening Center in Uvita, Costa Rica. In collaboration with the Awake Earth Festival, this event blends a music festival with Bitcoin seminars and lectures. From February 20 to 23, the focus will be on music, healing workshops, ceremonies, and educational talks, featuring internationally renowned artists and captivating discussions. February 24 will be a special day dedicated to Bitcoin, with all activities centered around it.
  Bitcoin Jungle

Additionally, We warmly invite event organizers who have held recent activities to reach out to us so we can work together to promote the prosperity and development of the Nostr ecosystem.

Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.

Notwithstanding the lack of capitalisation, Nostr is an acronym for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays. According to the website of its creator, Nostr was created in response to perceived issues with Twitter.

It’s important to be clear that Nostr is not an app or service that you sign up for. Rather it can be better understood as an open standard for social media that anyone can use. A useful analogy is the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) used for email. You probably know how this works:

1. You write your email using Gmail, Outlook, or whichever email client you prefer.
2. Your message travels through various email servers.
3. The recipient can read it using any email client they choose.

Nostr works similarly:

1. You write your note in an Nostr client (like Damus, Primal, and many others).
2. Your note travels through Nostr relays (similar to email servers).
3. Others can read it using whichever Nostr client they prefer.

The use of a standard protocol enables interoperability, allowing users to choose their preferred software. No single company controls the system.

Isn’t Mastodon a decentralised social media platform? Why do we need another one?

While Nostr and Mastodon both enable decentralised socially communication, they take fundamentally different approaches. The comparison made above equating Nostr relays with email servers is actually imperfect and better describes the approach Mastodon takes. Mastodon does rely on servers run by organisations or individuals where users create accounts. Your identity is tied to your chosen server, similar to having a Gmail address. This means you are still at the mercy of the entity running the server.

Nostr, in contrast, removes the need for servers entirely. Your identity is a cryptographic key pair, which works directly with any compatible client or relay. This key pair is mathematically linked. One is a private key (which is kept secret, like a password) and the other is a public key (which you share freely, like an email address). This enables the impressive ability to use different clients with the same identity without the need for accounts. The downside is that the onus is users to safeguard their key pairs. There is no Nostr tech support to help with a lost private key!

Nostr aligns with library values

From a librarian’s perspective, there is a lot to like about Nostr. There is no central algorithm that controls what content is shown to you. Individual relays can choose what they show, but users can connect to other relays. The diversity of relays effectively prevents single-point censorship, as there is no central authority that can remove content from the entire network. Again, more is demanded from the user in terms of selecting which relays to connect to, but this aligns with the long-held value of librarians of developing information literate citizens capable of making such choices on their own. In an age of information overload, we need to trust people to select their own sources wisely rather than rely on centralised content moderation. Nostr protects freedom of speech at the protocol level, ensuring that no central authority can arbitrarily block content from being posted.

Nostr also scores highly on privacy. No personal information is needed to generate a private-public key pair. This obviously aligns with librarianship’s historical role in championing patron privacy as a cornerstone of intellectual freedom. The lack of a centralised authority allows users to access information with reduced risk of surveillance.

Information preservation is another library value that Nostr is better aligned with compared to centralised social media platforms. A lot of historically and culturally significant content has been posted to social media, and there is a need to preserve it and make it available for future research. However, it is doubtful that for-profit social media companies will prioritise this. The biggest advance in this respect came in 2010, when the Library of Congress announced with great fanfare that it would archive all public tweets. But in the face of various challenges, the project was scaled back in 2017. I could find no further updates from the LoC, and given the current ownership of Twitter/X I think it unlikely that much progress will be made. The centralised nature of traditional social media means that preservation is the hands of a single entity.

Contrast this with Nostr’s architecture that requires multiple relays and hence multiple copies of data. This creates resilience in a way that librarians will be familiar with (“Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe”). Libraries could potentially choose to create their own relays and preserve notes that are relevant to their own collection development policies. Again, the open nature of the protocol means that they would not have to seek permission to do this.

In essence, Nostr's decentralized architecture naturally aligns with core library values of intellectual freedom, privacy, and preservation, potentially providing a pathway to a truly open digital commons. Librarians and information professionals could play a pivotal role in shaping this online public square.

Getting started with Nostr

I am cautious of getting too carried away with the potential of Nostr. It currently has very few users for a social network. At the time of writing, the stats page of Nostr.Band showed the number of daily active users hovering below 20,000. This is a tiny fraction of the 245 million daily active users of Twitter/X. Given the importance of the network effect to social media, Nostr has a long way to go before it becomes a true competitor.

However, it is not inconceivable, and I would argue that the alignment of the Nostr architecture with our values makes it important for librarians to engage with and understand this technology. The best possible outcome would be a truly decentralised, censorship-resistant, online social space on top of which anyone could build apps and services. In such a world, individual citizens will need to be much more information literate and independent. As information professionals, librarians could play a leading role in adopting and advocating for this.

Nostr clients

The best way to get started is to download a client. As mentioned, there are many Nostr clients to choose from. Some offer additional features for subscribers. Try out a few to see which one you prefer and remember that you can use all of them with the same key pair!

• Primal (Web, iOS, and Android)
• Amethyst (Android)
• Damus (iOS)
• Nostur (iOS)

Recommended longer read

Exploring the Nostr Ecosystem: A Study of Decentralization and Resilience: This pre-print on arxiv.org provides a more technical introduction to Nostr. The Nostr primer that starts on page 4 is particularly helpful for new users.

• Nostr is an open and interoperable protocol
• You can integrate it with workflow automation tools to augment your experience
• n8n is a great low/no-code workflow automation tool which you can host yourself
• Nostrobots allows you to integrate Nostr into n8n
• In this blog I create some workflow automations for Nostr
• A simple form to delegate posting notes
• Push notifications for mentions on multiple accounts
• Push notifications for your favourite accounts when they post a note
• All workflows are provided as open source with MIT license for you to use

Inter-op All The Things

Nostr is a new open social protocol for the internet. This open nature exciting because of the opportunities for interoperability with other technologies. In Using NFC Cards with Nostr I explored the nostr: URI to launch Nostr clients from a card tap.

The interoperability of Nostr doesn't stop there. The internet has many super-powers, and Nostr is open to all of them. Simply, there's no one to stop it. There is no one in charge, there are no permissioned APIs, and there are no risks of being de-platformed. If you can imagine technologies that would work well with Nostr, then any and all of them can ride on or alongside Nostr rails.

My mental model for why this is special is Google Wave ~2010. Google Wave was to be the next big platform. Lars was running it and had a big track record from Maps. I was excited for it. Then, Google pulled the plug. And, immediately all the time and capital invested in understanding and building on the platform was wasted.

This cannot happen to Nostr, as there is no one to pull the plug, and maybe even no plug to pull.

So long as users demand Nostr, Nostr will exist, and that is a pretty strong guarantee. It makes it worthwhile to invest in bringing Nostr into our other applications.

All we need are simple ways to plug things together.

Nostr and Workflow Automation

Workflow automation is about helping people to streamline their work. As a user, the most common way I achieve this is by connecting disparate systems together. By setting up one system to trigger another or to move data between systems, I can solve for many different problems and become way more effective.

n8n for workflow automation

Many workflow automation tools exist. My favourite is n8n. n8n is a low/no-code workflow automation platform which allows you to build all kinds of workflows. You can use it for free, you can self-host it, it has a user-friendly UI and useful API. Vs Zapier it can be far more elaborate. Vs Make.com I find it to be more intuitive in how it abstracts away the right parts of the code, but still allows you to code when you need to.

Most importantly you can plug anything into n8n: You have built-in nodes for specific applications. HTTP nodes for any other API-based service. And community nodes built by individual community members for any other purpose you can imagine.

Eating my own dogfood

It's very clear to me that there is a big design space here just demanding to be explored. If you could integrate Nostr with anything, what would you do?

In my view the best way for anyone to start anything is by solving their own problem first (aka "scratching your own itch" and "eating your own dogfood"). As I get deeper into Nostr I find myself controlling multiple Npubs – to date I have a personal Npub, a brand Npub for a community I am helping, an AI assistant Npub, and various testing Npubs. I need ways to delegate access to those Npubs without handing over the keys, ways to know if they're mentioned, and ways to know if they're posting.

I can build workflows with n8n to solve these issues for myself to start with, and keep expanding from there as new needs come up.

Running n8n with Nostrobots

I am mostly non-technical with a very helpful AI. To set up n8n to work with Nostr and operate these workflows should be possible for anyone with basic technology skills.

• I have a cheap VPS which currently runs my HAVEN Nostr Relay and Albyhub Lightning Node in Docker containers,
• My objective was to set up n8n to run alongside these in a separate Docker container on the same server, install the required nodes, and then build and host my workflows.

Installing n8n

Self-hosting n8n could not be easier. I followed n8n's Docker-Compose installation docs–

• Install Docker and Docker-Compose if you haven't already,
• Create your docker-compose.yml and .env files from the docs,
• Create your data folder sudo docker volume create n8n_data,
• Start your container with sudo docker compose up -d,
• Your n8n instance should be online at port 5678.

n8n is free to self-host but does require a license. Enter your credentials into n8n to get your free license key. You should now have access to the Workflow dashboard and can create and host any kind of workflows from there.

Installing Nostrobots

To integrate n8n nicely with Nostr, I used the Nostrobots community node by Ocknamo.

In n8n parlance a "node" enables certain functionality as a step in a workflow e.g. a "set" node sets a variable, a "send email" node sends an email. n8n comes with all kinds of "official" nodes installed by default, and Nostr is not amongst them. However, n8n also comes with a framework for community members to create their own "community" nodes, which is where Nostrobots comes in.

You can only use a community node in a self-hosted n8n instance (which is what you have if you are running in Docker on your own server, but this limitation does prevent you from using n8n's own hosted alternative).

To install a community node, see n8n community node docs. From your workflow dashboard–

• Click the "..." in the bottom left corner beside your username, and click "settings",
• Cilck "community nodes" left sidebar,
• Click "Install",
• Enter the "npm Package Name" which is n8n-nodes-nostrobots,
• Accept the risks and click "Install",
• Nostrobots is now added to your n8n instance.

Using Nostrobots

Nostrobots gives you nodes to help you build Nostr-integrated workflows–

• Nostr Write – for posting Notes to the Nostr network,
• Nostr Read – for reading Notes from the Nostr network, and
• Nostr Utils – for performing certain conversions you may need (e.g. from bech32 to hex).

Nostrobots has good documentation on each node which focuses on simple use cases.

Each node has a "convenience mode" by default. For example, the "Read" Node by default will fetch Kind 1 notes by a simple filter, in Nostrobots parlance a "Strategy". For example, with Strategy set to "Mention" the node will accept a pubkey and fetch all Kind 1 notes that Mention the pubkey within a time period. This is very good for quick use.

What wasn't clear to me initially (until Ocknamo helped me out) is that advanced use cases are also possible.

Each node also has an advanced mode. For example, the "Read" Node can have "Strategy" set to "RawFilter(advanced)". Now the node will accept json (anything you like that complies with NIP-01). You can use this to query Notes (Kind 1) as above, and also Profiles (Kind 0), Follow Lists (Kind 3), Reactions (Kind 7), Zaps (Kind 9734/9735), and anything else you can think of.

Creating and adding workflows

With n8n and Nostrobots installed, you can now create or add any kind of Nostr Workflow Automation.

• Click "Add workflow" to go to the workflow builder screen,
• If you would like to build your own workflow, you can start with adding any node. Click "+" and see what is available. Type "Nostr" to explore the Nostrobots nodes you have added,
• If you would like to add workflows that someone else has built, click "..." in the top right. Then click "import from URL" and paste in the URL of any workflow you would like to use (including the ones I share later in this article).

Nostr Workflow Automations

It's time to build some things!

A simple form to post a note to Nostr

I started very simply. I needed to delegate the ability to post to Npubs that I own in order that a (future) team can test things for me. I don't want to worry about managing or training those people on how to use keys, and I want to revoke access easily.

I needed a basic form with credentials that posted a Note.

For this I can use a very simple workflow–

• A n8n Form node – Creates a form for users to enter the note they wish to post. Allows for the form to be protected by a username and password. This node is the workflow "trigger" so that the workflow runs each time the form is submitted.
• A Set node – Allows me to set some variables, in this case I set the relays that I intend to use. I typically add a Set node immediately following the trigger node, and put all the variables I need in this. It helps to make the workflows easier to update and maintain.
• A Nostr Write node (from Nostrobots) – Writes a Kind-1 note to the Nostr network. It accepts Nostr credentials, the output of the Form node, and the relays from the Set node, and posts the Note to those relays.

Once the workflow is built, you can test it with the testing form URL, and set it to "Active" to use the production form URL. That's it. You can now give posting access to anyone for any Npub. To revoke access, simply change the credentials or set to workflow to "Inactive".

It may also be the world's simplest Nostr client.

You can find the Nostr Form to Post a Note workflow here.

Push notifications on mentions and new notes

One of the things Nostr is not very good at is push notifications. Furthermore I have some unique itches to scratch. I want–

• To make sure I never miss a note addressed to any of my Npubs – For this I want a push notification any time any Nostr user mentions any of my Npubs,
• To make sure I always see all notes from key accounts – For this I need a push notification any time any of my Npubs post any Notes to the network,
• To get these notifications on all of my devices – Not just my phone where my Nostr regular client lives, but also on each of my laptops to suit wherever I am working that day.

I needed to build a Nostr push notifications solution.

To build this workflow I had to string a few ideas together–

• Triggering the node on a schedule – Nostrobots does not include a trigger node. As every workflow starts with a trigger we needed a different method. I elected to run the workflow on a schedule of every 10-minutes. Frequent enough to see Notes while they are hot, but infrequent enough to not burden public relays or get rate-limited,
• Storing a list of Npubs in a Nostr list – I needed a way to store the list of Npubs that trigger my notifications. I initially used an array defined in the workflow, this worked fine. Then I decided to try Nostr lists (NIP-51, kind 30000). By defining my list of Npubs as a list published to Nostr I can control my list from within a Nostr client (e.g. Listr.lol or Nostrudel.ninja). Not only does this "just work", but because it's based on Nostr lists automagically Amethyst client allows me to browse that list as a Feed, and everyone I add gets notified in their Mentions,
• Using specific relays – I needed to query the right relays, including my own HAVEN relay inbox for notes addressed to me, and wss://purplepag.es for Nostr profile metadata,
• Querying Nostr events (with Nostrobots) – I needed to make use of many different Nostr queries and use quite a wide range of what Nostrobots can do–
  • I read the EventID of my Kind 30000 list, to return the desired pubkeys,
  • For notifications on mentions, I read all Kind 1 notes that mention that pubkey,
  • For notifications on new notes, I read all Kind 1 notes published by that pubkey,
  • Where there are notes, I read the Kind 0 profile metadata event of that pubkey to get the displayName of the relevant Npub,
  • I transform the EventID into a Nevent to help clients find it.
• Using the Nostr URI – As I did with my NFC card article, I created a link with the nostr: URI prefix so that my phone's native client opens the link by default,
• Push notifications solution – I needed a push notifications solution. I found many with n8n integrations and chose to go with Pushover which supports all my devices, has a free trial, and is unfairly cheap with a $5-per-device perpetual license.

Once the workflow was built, lists published, and Pushover installed on my phone, I was fully set up with push notifications on Nostr. I have used these workflows for several weeks now and made various tweaks as I went. They are feeling robust and I'd welcome you to give them a go.

You can find the Nostr Push Notification If Mentioned here and If Posts a Note here.

In speaking with other Nostr users while I was building this, there are all kind of other needs for push notifications too – like on replies to a certain bookmarked note, or when a followed Npub starts streaming on zap.stream. These are all possible.

Use my workflows

I have open sourced all my workflows at my Github with MIT license and tried to write complete docs, so that you can import them into your n8n and configure them for your own use.

To import any of my workflows–

• Click on the workflow of your choice, e.g. "Nostr_Push_Notify_If_Mentioned.json",
• Click on the "raw" button to view the raw JSON, ex any Github page layout,
• Copy that URL,
• Enter that URL in the "import from URL" dialog mentioned above.

To configure them–

• Prerequisites, credentials, and variables are all stated,
• In general any variables required are entered into a Set Node that follows the trigger node,
• Pushover has some extra setup but is very straightforward and documented in the workflow.

What next?

Over my first four blogs I explored creating a good Nostr setup with Vanity Npub, Lightning Payments, Nostr Addresses at Your Domain, and Personal Nostr Relay.

Then in my latest two blogs I explored different types of interoperability with NFC cards and now n8n Workflow Automation.

Thinking ahead n8n can power any kind of interoperability between Nostr and any other legacy technology solution. On my mind as I write this:

• Further enhancements to posting and delegating solutions and forms (enhanced UI or different note kinds),
• Automated or scheduled posting (such as auto-liking everything [Lyn Alden](Lyn Alden) posts),
• Further enhancements to push notifications, on new and different types of events (such as notifying me when I get a new follower, on replies to certain posts, or when a user starts streaming),
• All kinds of bridges, such as bridging notes to and from Telegram, Slack, or Campfire. Or bridging RSS or other event feeds to Nostr,
• All kinds of other automation (such as [BlackCoffee](BlackCoffee ) controlling a coffee machine),
• All kinds of AI Assistants and Agents,

In fact I have already released an open source workflow for an AI Assistant, and will share more about that in my next blog.

Please be sure to let me know if you think there's another Nostr topic you'd like to see me tackle.

GM Nostr.

The Nostr Review is a biweekly newsletter focused on Nostr statistics, protocol updates, exciting programs, the long-form content ecosystem, and key events happening in the Nostr-verse. If you’re interested, join me in covering updates from the Nostr ecosystem!

Quick review:
In the past two weeks, Nostr statistics indicate over 240,000 daily trusted pubkey events. However, the number of new users has significantly declined. Profiles with LN addresses or bios are far below the single-day numbers recorded during the same period. Public writing events have also dropped sharply, reflecting a 97% decrease. More than 12 million events have been published, with posts leading in volume at around 2 million, representing a slight 4% decrease. Total Zap activity stands at approximately 9 million, marking a 10% decline.

Additionally, 30 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 10 merged. A total of 44 Nostr projects were tracked, with 17 releasing product updates, and over 378 long-form articles were published, 34% focusing on Bitcoin and Nostr. During this period, 3 notable events took place, and 3 significant events are upcoming.

Nostr Statistics

Based on user activity, the total daily trusted pubkeys writing events is about 240,000, representing a slight 1.3% decrease compared to the previous period (24Nov-8Dec). Daily activity peaked at 19231 events, with a low of approximately 17467.

The number of new users has seen a significant decline. Profiles with LN addresses or bios amount to approximately 33,000, far below the single-day numbers of the same period. Public writing events total around 53,887, reflecting a 97% decrease compared to the same period.

Regarding event publishing, the total number of note events published is about 12 million, marking a decrease of approximately 20%. Posts continue to be the most dominant in volume, totaling about 2 million (a slight increase of 4%). Reposts is about 350000 and reactions (539588) saw a small decline, around 3%.

For zap activity, the total zap amount is about 9 million, showing a decrease of over 10% compared to the previous period.

In terms of relay usage, the top five relays by user count are: wss://realy.damus.io, wss://nos.lol, wss://eden.nostr.land, wss://realys.snort.social, wss://realy.current.fyi

Data source: https://stats.nostr.band/

NIPs

first draft of NIP-79 Nostr Relay Chat
mleku is Starting discussion of this idea for synchronous instant messaging a la IRC style leveraging ephemeral events and subscriptions. Note that this is specifically for only synchronous messaging using ephemeral message kinds. Relays should support this facility and it has not been much used by anything, but it essentially enables exactly the same protocol mechanics as used in IRC.It includes stuff about a protocol to acquire and update missing user data required to implement features also. Most of the elements of this proposal are already implemented in https://realy.lol aside from the spidering, which I am implementing now before starting on the client (s).

add accepted and blocked mint lists
PABLOF7z is proposing that adds lists the user wants to accept nutzaps on (this should have been part of the NIP-61 PR ) and mints the user doesn't want to use.

NIP-0A discrete query messages FOLLOWS/FOLLOWERS
Jundow is proposing two discrete query messages FOLLOWS and FOLLOWERS. This “discrete query message” approach aims for the protocol to have essential and single-function query methods for quick searching response. This concept will be beneficial for the ecosystem especially if there are relays with huge numbers of accesses in the near future. “REQ” message is quite versatile and convenient, but this concept lacks a consistent approach to have a quick search response based on indexed databases or data structures.This proposal is a starter. There may be more beneficial types of discrete messages for relays and clients to deal with the huge number of accesses.

Merchant Delegation Tags
amunrarara is proposing that In the Merchant Delegation paradigm, a different Nostr account effectively controls all commerce-related events on behalf of the Merchant. The delegated account creates every Stall and Product, receives all Checkout events, and handles checkout-related communication with the Customer.
The Merchant signs a Merchant Delegate Token, which is placed in a tag on every event signed by the delegate account. Clients parse the tag, verify the signature is valid, and cause non-checkout events to target the Delegator automatically.This PR is a WIP.

nip4e: decoupling encryption from identity
fiatjaf is proposing that a system for users to share private data between their own devices that doesn't rely on all devices holding the user account private key.
The first device to come into the world will generate a random encryption key；When another device's device key is spotted, the device that knows the original encryption key encrypts that key to the target device's device key using NIP-44 and sends it out；Encryption and decryption are performed using the encryption key using the NIP-44 algorithm, skipping the first step and proceeding with conversation key set to the shared encryption key.

change NIP-01 to only allow a single filter per REQ
fiatjaf is proposing that anything that can be done with a single REQ and multiple filters can much more easily be done with multiple REQs each with a single filter.In practice the existence of the possibility of multiple filters in a single REQ has no benefit and only serves to hurt performance and increase complexity of codebases.this is a breaking change, but not a very drastic one. We can easily transition to this by having clients stop being built with this "feature" in mind, and relays can follow later. If a client sends a REQ with more than one filter to a relay that only supports one that's also ok, the client will just get less results than it expected.

NIP 74 - NWS
asmogo defines a specification on how to send TCP messages trough NOSTR.TCP messages can be received by exit-nodes. This also introduces a Domain Name System to announce exit nodes to NOSTR clients.Exit nodes will further forward the TCP connection to a desired destination (static service or chosen by the client).NIP-74 enables people to use HTTP, SSL, SSH and many more protocols built on top of TCP trough NOSTR.The example implementation uses a SOCKS5 proxy as a client. This client publishes signed Nostr events for the exit node using the Nostr relays from the resolved domain.

NIP-G0 for Geospatial Tagging Standardization
SwBratcher is proposing that Introduction of NIP to standardize event geospatial tagging for location of event origin and location area of event relevance, with both being hierarchical, offering flexibility for users and systems to filter and improve content relevance to user interest when proximity, politics and geography matters.

Update NIP-51 for software applications
franzap is proposing that Introduce app curation sets, used to group applications (for curation, recommendation, organization, backup). Minor fixes to release artifact sets, reflecting current usage.Both kinds 30063 and 30267 have been heavily used for months in Zapstore.

NIP-0A - Contact List v2
Mike Dilger is proposing that Contact List v2 could be used for any other event kinds that have editable lists. He is not arguing for a contact list v2 actually, arguing for conflict-free replicated data types, in order to prevent conflicts.CRDTs aren't really necessary in practice if people always use the person's outbox relays and don't use two clients at the same time. But we saw a lot of conflicts early on. One problem is the size. Contact lists are already very long for some people, and while we could compress some of this data, not by a huge amount given the printable character set nature of JSON.

Consistent method naming for NIP 47(NWC) Response
Gudnessuche is proposing to Add consistency to the event structure in (NWC).
Currently, requests and responses have different keys to identify their method type, which may cause confusion or misunderstandings.This change aims to standardize the key names across all request and response events, making it easier for developers to understand and implement the protocol.

NIP-34: Git Remote Nostr URL format and helper spec
DanConwayDev is proposing to add the Git Remote Nostr URL format which can be used as a normal git clone address when ngit is installed. This is used by ngit and gitworkshop.dev, minus the usage of nip05 addresses which @lez is working on adding. It is also partially supported experimental WOP tools like @lez's git-remote blossom and @Guga implementation of git-remote-nostr. We are now collaborating together. See this public discussion of the format on Nostr.Add wider git remote helper spec implemented by the git plugin bundled with ngit.

Notable Projects

Amethyst v0.93.1
nostr:npub142gywvjkq0dv6nupggyn2euhx4nduwc7yz5f24ah9rpmunr2s39se3xrj0

• Moves to NIP-22 to reply to Interactive Stories.
• Adds amount and personalizations labels to the DVM feed
• Fixes Satellite's blossom upload
• Fixes incorrect reply order when the direct reply is also included as a quote.
• Fixes image upload tests
• Fixes the bug on not having the video feed at the top when loading the app from scratch.
• Fixes screen mispositioning when rotating the phone on full screen video/image dialogs.
• Fixes images on DVM profiles
• Fixes badge crash
• Fixes missing reactions on video feeds
• Improves performance of the Hex encoder.
• Improves the layout of the discovery feed items
• Updates jackson, secp256k1 and AGP

Coracle 0.5.0
nostr:npub13myx4j0pp9uenpjjq68wdvqzywuwxfj64welu28mdvaku222mjtqzqv3qk

• “Undo” via delayed send can be enabled in Coracle's settings. This allows you to quickly correct those typos you notice just as you press “send”.
• Login and onboarding have been completely re-worked to walk the delicate balance between flexibility/security and a comprehensible UX.
• Feeds are now faster, especially relay-based feeds. The controls for feeds should also be incrementally improved.
• The note create/reply inputs are now powered by nostr-editor for a smoother editing experience
• The HUD (which you can access in the left sidebar on desktop) now has information about relay connections and NOTICE messages.

Flotilla 0.2.0
hodlbod

Flotilla 0.2.0 is out, which brings provisional support for NIP 29 groups — this means that flotilla is now interoperable with chachi, highlighter, and groups.nip29.com.

Damus1.12
nostr:npub18m76awca3y37hkvuneavuw6pjj4525fw90necxmadrvjg0sdy6qsngq955

• Render Gif and video files while composing posts
• Add profile info text in stretchable banner with follow button
• Paste Gif image similar to jpeg and png files
• Improved UX around the label for searching words
• Improved accessibility support on some elements
• Fixed issue where the "next" button would appear hidden and hard to click on the create account view
• Fix non scrollable wallet screen
• Fixed suggested users category titles to be localizable
• Fixed GradientFollowButton to have consistent width and autoscale text limited to 1 line
• Fixed right-to-left localization issues
• Fixed AddMuteItemView to trim leading and trailing whitespaces from mute text and disallow adding text with only whitespaces
• Fixed SideMenuView text to autoscale and limit to 1 line
• And more

Yakihonne
YakiHonne

For Web:

• Resolved issues causing the article editor to appear malformed.
• Added support for both LTR and RTL languages in the article editor.
• Enhanced the messaging box to support long text writing.
• Secure DMs (Nip44) can now be enabled globally via the messages and settings pages.
• General bug fixes and improvements.

Primal
miljan

All Primal apps have just been updated. Here’s what’s new:

iOS 2.0.134:

• Improved onboarding
• Profile screen improvements
• Feed rendering improvements
• App shell cosmetic improvements
• Various bug fixes

Android 2.0.28:

• Improved onboarding
• Feed rendering improvements
• Profile screen improvements
• Various bug fixes

Web 2.0.11:

• Profile screen improvements
• Feed rendering improvements
• Various bug fixes

0xchat 1.4.4
0xchat

• Fixed the issue where inbox/outbox relays could not be added.
• Fixed the issue where push notifications for voice calls had no sound.
• Fixed the lag issue when loading private chat videos.
• Fixed the issue where custom emoji reactions were not displayed.

highlighter
PABLOF7z

• New Highlighter Studio for long-form writing：
• Much more reliable draft support
• Checkpoint support (restore to a 10-revisions-ago draft)
• Blossom
• Proposals
• And a ton more things cooking.

Olas Web 0.1
PABLOF7z

• NIP-07 login (NIP-46 coming)
• View-only
• NIP-22 comments

Gossip Release 0.13.0
Gossip Client

This is a major release with the following changes:

• File Metadata support (NIP-92 / NIP-94)
• Blossom support (BUD-01, BUD-02)
• NIP-89 Support - Recommended Application Handlers
• Search on relays (NIP-50): you must choose your search relays first
• on the Person page, you can view who someone follows, and who follows them (including for yourself). Computing who follows them is expensive and inaccurate
• Undo Send - for 10 seconds (or whatever you configure) you can undo sending
• Thread replies now sorted by date, except author replies come first
• Cancelling a draft asks if you are sure, so misclicks don't erase your carefully crafted manifesto.
• Inbox indicator showing how many messages are waiting
• Feeds no longer inject new events and scroll while you are trying to read
• Every feed has it's own separate "include replies" switch now
• Relays can now be tested to see whether they are fit for purpose
• Zap amount can now be typed in (or slid with a slider)
• Support for pubkey hints in 'e' and 'q' tags
• Support for 'E' and 'A' tags and kind 1111 Comments (NIP-22)
• Font update to support more unicode codepoints
• NIP-46 replies with NIP-44 encryption if the client used it.
• NIP-44 encryption now used for private contacts and private lists.
• FFMpeg 7.1 support
• Relay URLs now rendered as links to the relay config page
• Build.sh script to help users choose features when compiling
• New command line commands: delete_by_kind, disable_relay
• Subscription batching for naddr searches
• Database compacting reduced to once per week, and handles out of space error
• Some theme color changes
• Relay scoring adjusted
• Likes and zaps data updated more frequently than before
• Default relays for new users have been tested and updated
• Many fixes

Formstr
Form*

• Move to a dedicated forms nip https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/issues/1190
• Encryption for response submission upgraded to nip-44.
• Users can now add multiple admins to a form
• Users can limit participants to a form (all accesses shared as giftwrap events)
• Users can encrypt form content.
• Added a “login” button.
• Form IDs are now “naddrs” to a form event.
• Added image upload buttons to question and options
• New Dashboard view instead of tables on the home screen
• Tabs for "on device" , "shared with me", "my forms" & "drafts" added.
• Relay acceptance view on form publish is now added.

Plebeian Market
Plebeian Market

• Better logs and reporting
• Avoid de-bouncing grand total calculation
• Make categories urls case-insensitive
• Sales are listed oldest first
• Blank space on product explorer page
• Return pleb if role cant be found
• Admin actions appear for everyone

Wherostr v1.3.0
Wherostr

• (Beta) Direct Messages: Chat privately with other users anytime, anywhere.
• Feed Filtering: Customize your feed by choosing the content you want to see.
• Fixed NWC issues for Lifpay to ensure smoother transactions.
• Resolved NWC zapping timeout issues, improving reliability for payments.
• Resolved incorrect date display issue showing “January 1970”.

Amber 3.0.5
Amber

• Add appName parameter for web apps using nip 55
• Try to fix bunker requests showing up again after accepting/rejecting them
• Fix loading screen
• Fix racing condition when using bunkers
• Better pin entry screenAdd a close application config in the ui
• Separate the service notification in a group
• Always return a hex key for the get_public_key method

AlbyHub v1.12
Alby

• 0-amount invoice support
• Migration to dynamic backups setup
• LND channel notifications
• Better relay connectivity
• Interface improvements and minor fixes, all listed at their GitHub

Zapstore 0.1.8
Zapstore

• Fixes issue with blocking relays, and since we used relay.nostr.band (that has been down) it froze many requests
• Fixes issue with unnecessary relay initialization, which may be a source of slow performance in some cases

ZEUS v0.9.4
ZEUS

• Embedded Node: LND v0.18.4-beta
• CLNRest: fix display of destination addresses on txs
• Display keysend messages in Activity and Payment views
• Open Channel view: UI tabs for Connect Peer
• LND: optimize payment path calls after payments
• CLNRest: add ability to paste connection strings
• Channels: restore sort by Close Height
• Networking improvements

Long-Form Content Eco

In the past two weeks, more than 378 long-form articles have been published, including over 102 articles on Bitcoin and more than 28 related to Nostr, accounting for 34% of the total content.

These articles about Nostr mainly explore the protocol’s potential for decentralization, privacy, and emphasizing its role as a revolutionary tool in combating centralization. They highlight various use cases, such as using Nostr for blogging, personal websites through platforms like Npub.pro, and innovative projects like Fountain Radio. Tutorials delve into functionalities like custodial zapping with tools like Coinos.io and Amethyst, while reflections discuss adoption challenges, user insights, and the broader implications for internet freedom. The reviews and discussions also consider the usability of website builders and the emergence of unique features like the GM filter, painting a picture of Nostr as a versatile yet evolving ecosystem.

The Bitcoin articles discuss a broad spectrum of topics surrounding the cryptocurrency ecosystem, exploring its role as a revolutionary technology and an economic disruptor. They delve into Bitcoin's multifaceted applications, from being a store of value and a medium for escaping traditional systems to its potential as a tool for social and political empowerment. The articles highlight ongoing debates about Bitcoin's environmental impact, governance, and scalability, while also reflecting on its cultural significance through literature, poetry, and historical analogies. Several pieces examine technical developments, including advancements in mining, Lightning Network innovations, and self-custody strategies.

Thankyou, Win Ko Ko Aung, DamageBDD, Bitcoin Infinity Media, darashi, Mike Dilger, Kiwi Bitcoin Guide, フェゼレント (fezerent), OKR, MadMunky2140, Oyl Miller,
and others, for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.

Nostriches Global Meet Ups

Recently, several Nostr events have been hosted in different countries.

• The Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024 took place from December 9 to 11, 2024, in Nairobi, Kenya, featuring key programs such as Btrust Developer Day, TBD Hackathon, ABC Social Impact Award, Afro Bitcoin Fellowship, and Africa Bitcoin Day. The event hosted nearly 70 distinguished speakers, including Noelyne , nostr:npub16hssgmdhw9e9j6z8na45lzz4grdsfjqlp5hf8dtcqnp0glseeu3seecguf, nostr:npub1m7uxdt50d2jw35q79zlszlsvy79t7dpdxptz6rfsrsamra7l8ttsq752yl, John Dennehy, who focused on topics such as Bitcoin adoption, regulation, innovation, and security. This conference offered attendees valuable opportunities for in-depth discussions and knowledge sharing.

• The Dadas Bitcoin Workshop was held on Tuesday, December 10, 2024. This event was open to everyone and invited several changemakers who are driving innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including MouxDesign and Ella Hough, among others. The workshop featured guest speakers sharing how Bitcoin has transformed their lives and careers. The event delivered major surprises, along with gifts and rewards, and fostered vibrant discussions and connections that left a lasting impact on participants.

• Bitcoin Layer 2's vs Bitcoin Sidechains took place on December 10, 2024, at 7 PM CAT, hosted by Rootstock on X Space. This online discussion, featuring guests such as Kilian and others, delved into the differences between Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions and sidechains, highlighting their applications in smart contracts and DeFi.

Here are the upcoming Nostr events in November that you might want to check out.

• The Adopting Bitcoin Capetown 2025 conference will take place on January 24-25, 2025, at Workshop17 in Cape Town's Waterfront. The event will focus on how Bitcoin can reshape the financial system and revitalize communities against the backdrop of South Africa's ongoing decline in governance and infrastructure. It will feature dozens of prominent figures from the Bitcoin ecosystem, including Frank Corva, Djuri, bizzle, SowetoBtc, Nathan Day, Sabina, Tando.me, Bitcoin Diary, Hodl_poet, and others, to discuss Bitcoin's practical applications and its impact on financial infrastructure.

• The Bitcoin Beach Circular Economy Summit will take place from January 27 to 29, 2025, in El Zonte, El Salvador. This will be the first gathering of global Bitcoin circular economy leaders, with 20 invited Bitcoin circular economy organizations participating. The summit will focus on leadership training, Bitcoin education, and facilitating exchanges and collaboration among 15+ global Bitcoin circular economies. As an exclusive, invitation-only event, it offers Bitcoin adoption and economic development leaders worldwide a valuable opportunity for learning, networking, and cooperation.

• The Awake Earth Festival will take place from February 20 to 24, 2025, at the Awake Center in Uvita, Costa Rica. This unique event combines music, learning, and Bitcoin themes. The festival is divided into two parts: from February 20 to 23, it will focus on live performances by internationally renowned artists, healing workshops, educational talks, and ceremonies. On February 24, the focus will shift entirely to Bitcoin, featuring related talks and discussions.
  Bitcoin Jungle

Additionally, We warmly invite event organizers who have held recent activities to reach out to us so we can work together to promote the prosperity and development of the Nostr ecosystem.

Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.

The revolution won’t ask for your email,
It won’t require you to accept cookies,
It won’t target you with ads for sneakers
You thought about once three weeks ago.

The revolution won’t care about your likes,
Your follower count,
Or whether you subscribe to the premium plan.

The revolution won’t crash when AWS goes down,
It won’t shadowban dissenting voices,
And it won’t rewrite your posts to please the algorithm.

The revolution won’t happen on a walled garden,
Or behind a paywall.
You won’t be locked out of your account
For posting the truth too early or too often.

The revolution won’t beg for venture capital
Or IPO on Wall Street.
It won’t pivot to profits,
Because it isn’t owned.

The revolution will be peer-to-peer,
It will be cryptographically signed,
Relayed by independent nodes
That don’t care who you are,
Only what you have to say.

The revolution will zap you on Lightning,
It will live on NOSTR,
It will be open-source, decentralized,
Immutable, unstoppable, and yours.

Because the revolution won’t be centralized.

Stay humble. Stack sats.

Oyl Miller comes from an advertising background where he has worked for legacy brands like Nike and PlayStation, digital giants like Google and Airbnb, as well as crypto and web3 startups. He is experimenting with moving to a Bitcoin standard, and is looking to create value with his writing skills in a variety of ways.

This isn’t the internet we were promised. It’s a walled garden where central authorities control the gates, monetize our data, and censor voices that challenge the status quo.

Enter decentralized protocols like NOSTR, a breath of fresh air for those of us who believe the internet should be free, open, and resistant to control. Here’s why NOSTR and other decentralized protocols are the antidote to the internet’s centralization problem—and why we’re just getting started.

The Centralization Problem

The modern internet revolves around a handful of centralized platforms:

1. Social Media: Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram determine what content reaches your feed. Algorithms prioritize engagement over truth, often creating echo chambers.

2. Cloud Hosting: Companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud host vast swaths of the internet. A single outage or policy change can take down critical infrastructure.

3. Search Engines: Google alone processes over 90% of global search queries, giving it disproportionate power to shape knowledge discovery.

4. Financial Gatekeepers: Payment processors like PayPal and Stripe have the power to cut off individuals and organizations from financial systems based on subjective criteria.

Centralization leads to:

• Censorship: Voices can be silenced without recourse.

• Monopolies: Innovation is stifled as big players dominate.

• Data Exploitation: Our personal information is harvested, sold, and used to manipulate us.

Decentralization as the Solution

Decentralized protocols aim to distribute power back to users, removing the need for centralized intermediaries. Let’s break down why they matter and how they work:

1. Ownership of Identity With NOSTR, your identity isn’t tied to a platform. It’s tied to a cryptographic keypair that you own. Lose trust in one relay or client? Simply move to another without losing your connections.

2. Censorship Resistance Decentralized systems like NOSTR rely on relays—small, independent servers—to propagate messages. No single relay controls the network, making it far harder to censor content globally.

3. Data Sovereignty Your data isn’t hosted on a corporate server. Instead, you choose how it’s stored and shared. With decentralization, the era of platforms monetizing your personal information could come to an end.

4. Financial Inclusion Integration with Bitcoin and the Lightning Network allows users to send microtransactions directly, bypassing traditional financial gatekeepers.

Why NOSTR Is Just Getting Started

NOSTR (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) embodies the core principles of decentralization. While still in its infancy, it’s already showing immense promise. Here’s why it’s poised to grow:

1. Developer-Led Growth Unlike centralized platforms, NOSTR is an open protocol. This means developers can build clients, relays, and applications without asking for permission. This freedom fosters rapid innovation.

2. Interoperability NOSTR isn’t tied to one app or use case. It can support everything from social media to blogging to encrypted messaging. The possibilities are endless.

3. Community-Driven Ecosystem Early adopters of NOSTR are passionate about its mission. These pioneers are building not just the infrastructure but also the culture that will guide its future.

4. Rising Distrust in Centralization As more people wake up to the downsides of centralized platforms—data breaches, censorship, manipulation—the demand for decentralized alternatives will grow. NOSTR is well-positioned to meet this demand.

Challenges Ahead

While the promise of decentralization is exciting, challenges remain:

1. User Experience Today, setting up a NOSTR account requires understanding public and private keys, choosing relays, and navigating new apps. This complexity must be simplified for mainstream adoption.

2. Spam and Moderation Decentralized networks can struggle with spam and harmful content. Innovative solutions, like paid relays or community moderation, will be crucial.

3. Scalability As user numbers grow, relays and protocols must scale to handle increased traffic without compromising performance.

4. Economic Models Sustainable monetization for relay operators and developers will be necessary to maintain and grow the ecosystem.

The Road Ahead

Decentralized protocols like NOSTR represent more than just a technological shift—they’re a philosophical one. They challenge the very idea that a few corporations should control the internet’s infrastructure. They empower individuals to own their data, control their identities, and interact freely without interference.

As early adopters, we have the opportunity to shape this movement. By building, experimenting, and sharing the principles of decentralization, we can create a future where the internet fulfills its original promise: a free, open space for innovation, connection, and human potential.

NOSTR is just getting started. And so are we.

Stay humble. Stack sats.

Oyl Miller comes from an advertising background where he has worked for legacy brands like Nike and PlayStation, digital giants like Google and Airbnb, as well as crypto and web3 startups. He is experimenting with moving to a Bitcoin standard, and is looking to create value with his writing skills in a variety of ways.

Nostr, che in realtà è N.O.S.T.R., il cui acronimo significa Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay, è un protocollo di comunicazione nato da pochissimi anni, che promette decentralizzazione e incensurabilità.
La maggior parte degli utenti internet non conosce il significato di queste due promesse, per motivi che non verranno analizzati qui (DYOR), ma decentralizzazione e incensurabilità sono tanto importanti quanto la libertà che ne consegue.

Decidere di usare il protocollo Nostr è senz’altro facoltativo e dovrebbe essere preso in considerazione per una migliore conoscenza del web. Quanto meno giudicare Nostr inutile a prescindere è un errore.

Incensurabilità

Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay è già l'essenza: l’identità e i dati non risiedono in uno specifico server centralizzato, ma su tanti piccoli serverini, i relay, che trasmettono le note (i post) scritte da un autore/un’autrice.

Questo è ciò che accade anche con i social media tradizionali, salvo il fatto che tutte le piattaforme come facebook o twitter possono decidere di cancellare l’identità digitale di un utente, eliminandolo dai propri server.

Su Nostr NO.

Il singolo runner del relay può certamente decidere di bannare una determinata identità digitale, perché magari pubblica contenuti non graditi. Questi stessi contenuti, però, resteranno visibili su altri relay e quindi fruibili per i relativi follower.
Infine, si può installare il proprio relay e a quel punto solo un idiota si bannerebbe da solo.

Tue le chiavi, tua l’identità

I primi abitanti di questo piccolo universo hanno deciso di auto-definirsi Nostriches.
I/le Nostriches devono solo creare una coppia di chiavi, privata e pubblica.
La chiave pubblica, npub, è l’identità digitale dell’utente.
Dice effettivamente chi sei e aiuta gli altri utenti a trovarti.

La chiave privata, o nsec, è la prova crittografica dell’identità digitale e questo è già un bel salto di paradigma rispetto al più diffuso sistema costituito dalla combinazione username/password.
Non esistono due chiavi private uguali, quella generata per ogni singolo utente è unica ed è da quella (solo da quella e nessun’altra) che poi viene derivata la chiave privata.

Il protocollo Nostr permette, quindi, di essere i proprietari della propria identità digitale.

Ed è bene ribadire questo concetto:** l’identità digitale è solo dell'utente, non è delle aziende che gestiscono il social media di turno**.
Lo stesso principio si applica ai dati e ai contenuti pubblicati, che appartengono ai legittimi autori e non alle piattaforme.

Già… le piattaforme

Ma quindi, come funziona Nostr?
Semplice. Ci sono moltissimi client, che permettono di fare login con la chiave privata, creare un profilo completo di foto, biografia e link ai siti web, nonché di postare le note e trasmetterle ai relay cui si è deciso di farlo.
Alcuni relay offrono il servizio gratuitamente, altri a pagamento e – con l’esperienza – si troverà il setup con cui iniziare.

La nsec permette di fare login ad ogni client indistintamente, senza costringere gli utenti a creare la combo username/password per ogni servizio.

Non so se è abbastanza chiaro...

Web-Of-Trust

Identità digitale e possesso dei propri contenuti sono alla base di un sogno, nato decenni fa con il web2.0 e naufragato con esso nella palude del business dei dati personali.
Non me ne frega un cazzo del gombloddismoh e di cosa fanno le multinazio(a)nali dei dati personali di ogni utente, o di come questi vengano utilizzati per addestrare modelli di linguaggio avanzati.

Ciò che, a mio avviso, è rivoluzionario, è la realizzazione del sogno sogno.
Il salto di paradigma è proprio il WoT, il Web-Of-Trust: essere certi che chiunque abbia la possibilità di diffondere qualsiasi tipo di messaggio, che ne sia realmente l’autore e quindi se ne assuma la responsabilità e che chiunque altro possa decidere se fruirne o meno.

Ciò implica anche la libertà di usare parole che sui social media tradizionali verrebbero censurate. Significa essere “giudicati” dai propri pari, liberi individui che decideranno se quel contenuto vale la pena di essere letto oppure no.
Comporta, per i lettori, la libertà scegliere autonomamente cosa o chi seguire a seconda dei contenuti e non che un capriccioso algoritmo deciderà per loro cosa è meglio leggere o cosa no.

Non so se è abbastanza chiaro…

Client e ZAP ⚡️

Le opportunità che offre il protocollo Nostr sono molteplici.
Con l’unica accortezza di custodire in maniera responsabile la nsec, con un unico “account” si può postare su client simil-twitter, blog post, link-in-bio tipo Link Tree, eventi come su Eventbride, raccogliere immagini tipo Pinterest, creare form come Google-form, ma senza avere una username e una password per ognuno degli account, senza fornire la propria email a cani e porci (che non è comunque igienico) e senza rischiare di gestire decine di password o – peggio – usarne una unica per tutti.

Infine, se ciò non fosse già abbastanza, ecco l’incentivo economico: grazie all’integrazione del protocollo Lightning Network, ogni client Nostr permette di monetizzare con i contenuti pubblicati; gli utenti decidono di premiare alcuni post tramite Zap, micro pagamenti anche di frazioni di centesimi, fino ai macro pagamenti.

Perché Nostr

Per chiunque abbia qualcosa da dire, frivolezze o concetti profondi, Nostr è quello che a Napoli in maniera geniale viene definito il fattoapposta!

Essere protagonisti in prima persona delle proprie esperienze social-web, provare l’ebbrezza di essere gli unici proprietari dell’identità digitale e dei contenuti prodotti nonché monetizzarli per merito e non per algoritmo, è una scossa che vale davvero la pena di provare.

Attualmente Nostr potrebbe apparire come una piccola bolla, uno spazio abitato da strani esseri che parlano di cose aliene come libertà finanziaria, incensurabilità e decentralizzazione.
Ma si può usare il tempo concesso da un’adozione prematura per conoscere il protocollo e capirlo.

Si potrà sempre tornare ad abitare il Web2.0, uno spazio dove le idee vengono censurate o dove gli utenti che si dichiarano progressisti ed inklusivi se ne vanno perché in disaccordo con l’esito di un’elezione regolare e demograttika

Risorse per approfondire:
i) https://nostr-resources.com/
ii) https://nostr.net/
iii) https://nostr.how/en/nostr-projects
iv) https://nostrapps.com/

Quick review:
In the past two weeks, Nostr statistics show over 230,000 daily trusted pubkey events, a 3.5% decrease from the previous period. New user numbers have been a significant increase, Profiles with LN addresses or bios have marked a nearly 100-fold growth, Public writing events surpassed 2,000,000, reflecting an 800% increase. More than 14 million events have been published, with posts leading in volume, totaling about 2 million. Total Zap activity reached over 9.7 million, marking a significant 50% decrease.

Additionally, 18 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 9 merged. A total of 44 Nostr projects were tracked, with 12 releasing product updates, and over 434 long-form articles were published, 30% focusing on Bitcoin and Nostr. During this period, 4 notable events took place, and 4 significant events are upcoming.

Nostr Statistics

Based on user activity, the total daily trusted pubkeys writing events exceeded 230,000, representing a slight 3.5% decrease compared to the previous period (Nov 11-24). Daily activity peaked at 19519 events, with a low of approximately 16969.

In terms of new user numbers, there has been a significant increase. Profiles with LN addresses or bios have reached approximately 1,859,727, marking a nearly 100-fold growth compared to the previous two weeks. Public writing events surpassed 2,000,000, reflecting an 800% increase over the same period. The daily peak hit 304,317, exceeding the total for the previous two weeks combined.

Regarding event publishing, the total number of note events published has surpassed 14 million, marking a significant increase of approximately 27%. Posts continue to be the most dominant in volume, totaling about 2 million (a slight decrease of 5%). Reposts (353,266) and reactions (553,926) also saw a small decline, around 1%.

For zap activity, the total zap amount is approximately 9.7 million, showing a significant decrease of over 50% compared to the previous period.

In terms of relay usage, the top five relays by user count are: wss://bostr.bitcointxoko.com/,wss://feeds.nostr.band/,wss://realy.nostr.band/,wss://realys.diggoo.com/,wss://realy.lumina.rocks/
Data source: https://stats.nostr.band/

NIPs

NIP-0A - Contact List v2
Mike Dilger is proposing that NIP-0A - Contact List v2 can prevent contact list clobbering issues.This method could be used for any other event kinds that have editable lists. He is not arguing for a contact list v2 actually, rather, the focus is on conflict-free replicated data types, in order to prevent conflicts. CRDTs aren't really necessary in practice if people always use the person's outbox relays and don't use two clients at the same time. However, many conflicts were observed early on.Contact lists are already very long for some people, and while we could compress some of this data, not by a huge amount given the printable character set nature of JSON.

Consistent “method” naming for NIP 47(NWC) Response
Gudnessuche is proposing that consistent “method” naming for NIP 47(NWC) Response adds consistency to the event structure in (NWC).Currently, requests and responses have different keys to identify their method type, which may cause confusion or misunderstandings.This change aims to standardize the key names across all request and response events, making it easier for developers to understand and implement the protocol.

NIP-34: Git Remote Nostr URL format and helper spec
DanConwayDev is proposing that add the Git Remote Nostr URL format which can be used as a normal git clone address when ngit is installed. This used by ngit and gitworkshop.dev, minus the usage of nip05 addresses which Lez is working on adding. It is also partially supported experimental WOP tools like lez's git-remote blossom and Guga implementation of git-remote-nostr. Add a wider git remote helper spec implemented by the git plugin bundled with 'ngit'. This is probably less useful for inclusion in the NIP but he is not sure where else to put it.

NIP-42 Extension: auth-by-payment
Arjen is proposing that this Extension of NIP-42 allows relays to add an extra NUT-18 argument to AUTH messages, that gives the user the option to authorize by providing a cashu payment. This allows relay operators to monetize with pay-as-you-go connections without the need to keep track of subscriptions and/or whitelists.This would allow the user to use ephemeral pubkeys to sign this message as well, giving them more privacy.

Notable Projects

Amethyst v0.93.0
nostr:npub142gywvjkq0dv6nupggyn2euhx4nduwc7yz5f24ah9rpmunr2s39se3xrj0

New Features:

• New Android Image/Video Picker
• Adds support for pronouns on profile
• Migrates Video uploads from NIP-94 to NIP-71 Video events
• Migrates Picture uploads from NIP-94 to NIP-68 Picture events
• Adds support for BUD-01, BUD-02, and BUD-03
• Adds support for NIP-22 Comments
• Adds nip05 field to the hidden words filtering by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹
• Adds support for q tags with addresses
• Adds search.nos.today to bootstrapping relays for search
• Adds DM and Search default buttons to the relay screens
• Adds hidden words filter to search, hashtag and geotag feeds
• Applies hidden words even to hashtags that were not included in the content of the event.
• Adds support for saving reactions, zaps, translations user preferences on private outbox relays

UI Improvements:

• Adds animations to the zap, reaction and boost popups by @Giovanni
• Lighter chat bubbles
• Date separators on chats
• Adds unfollow to note dropdown
• Improves (Show More) presence to only when it actually makes a difference.
• Adds UI for when the location permission is rejected.
• Improves error message for the signup page when the display name is blank
• Adds extra padding for the zap setup screen
• Pre-process search to avoid showing and hiding posts after hidden words where processed by the UI.
• Rotate on full screen video if the device orientation is not locked by KotlinGeek
  Additionally, this update addresses 18 bug fixes, introduces 13 code improvements, and enhances performance by optimizing thread preloading. Additionally, a new cache system for reply levels when viewing threads has been implemented for a smoother experience.

Damus1.11
nostr:npub18m76awca3y37hkvuneavuw6pjj4525fw90necxmadrvjg0sdy6qsngq955

• Multi image uploads
• A video player that actually works
• Share sheet action
• Seamless scroll
• And more

Yakihonne
YakiHonne

For Mobile:

• All-in-One Content Hub: Create notes, articles, videos, curations, and smart widgets all in one place.
• New Media Servers: Added support for @nostr:npub18jnd0, Nostr check, and more.
• Thread Timeline Enhancements: Smoother and clearer thread viewing.
• Nip 44 Gift Messages: Now enabled by default.
• App-Wide Improvements: Faster, smoother, better.
• Full compatibility with NWC secrets created outside the Alby wallet is now possible.
• Provide an option to scan invoice QR and pay it.
• Bug Fixes: Notifications, wallets, and feeds are now more reliable.

For Web:

• Upgraded Note Editor: GIFs, emojis, and real-time previews to enhance your creativity.
• Enhanced Long-Form Content: A fresh design to make writing a joy.
• Custom Media Uploaders: Support for more media options and servers.
• Expanded Search: Find more notes, media, and users with ease.
• Browsing Suggestions: Discover new notes, media, users, and more.
• General Improvements: Smoother performance and optimizations.
• Bug Fixes: Making things more seamless for you.
  Additionally, Hot fixes for the YakiHonne Web 4.1.2

0xchat 1.4.3
0xchat

• Fixed the issue where inbox/outbox relays could not be added.
• Fixed the issue where push notifications for voice calls had no sound.
• Fixed the lag issue when loading private chat videos.
• Fixed the issue where custom emoji reactions were not displayed.

Olas 0.1.5
PABLOF7z
Olas 0.1.5 for iOS has officially shipped to TestFlight

• Reposts
• Zaps (via Nostr Wallet Connect for now)
• Swipe-to-zap
• Performance improvements

Nos 1.0.3
nos
Nos 1.0.3 is now on TestFlight for all our beta testers and waiting on Apple’s for review for our App Store users in Australia and New Zealand.

• Added support for user setting and displaying pronouns.
• Added display of website URLs for user profiles.
• Updated note header UI to make it more readable.
• Fixed galleries expanding past the width of the screen when there are lots of links or images.
• Fixed quoted note composer not expanding to fit mentions.

DEG Mods site update
DEG Mods

• Add a Repost tagging system.
• (Technical) Refactored code for the mods and mod page
• Design tweaks for the "view more" part of a Mod post's page
• Design tweaks for blog posts
• Games added:S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

WasabiWallet 2.3.1
Wasabi Wallet
This version is a stability release packed with bug fixes and preparatory changes for upcoming features:

• Bug Fixes
• Settings Layout
• Tor upgraded to v13.5.9
• Buy Anything Button Disabled

KYCNOT.me
nostr:npub188x98j0r7l2fszeph6j7hj99h8xl07n989pskk5zd69d2fcksetq5mgcqf

UI Improvements：

• The service list view is now more visually engaging, it displays additional information in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. Both filtering and searching functionalities have been optimized for speed and user experience.
• Service pages have been also redesigned to highlight key information at the top, with the KYC Level box always accessible. The display of service attributes is now more visually intuitive.
• The new self-made Captcha is robust, addressing the reliability issues encountered with the previous version.

Terms of Service Summarizer：

• A significant upgrade is the Terms of Service summarizer/reviewer, now powered by AI (GPT-4-turbo). It efficiently condenses each service's ToS, extracting and presenting critical points, including any warnings.
• processing over 40 ToS pages via the OpenAI API using a self-crafted and thoroughly tested prompt.
  Additionally, updates and upgrades have been implemented across Nostr Comments, Database, Scoring, Listings, API, and Pages.

notedeck
Damus Code

• Update user relay-list via polling
• Add user mute list sync via polling
• Skip muted content
• debug: add crate features which enable egui DebugOptions
• ci: fix linux packages
• Release v0.2.0 - Notedeck Alpha
• fix linux packages again
• ui: use proper response in wide-rendered note
• ui: fix quote repost hitbox
• ui: fix duplicate hitbox widget ids
• anim: smoothly animate delete button from 0 size
• nav: refactor title rendering for flexibility
• column: switch to simplified strings for column headers
• column: use simplified column string titles for now
• column: switch to profile pictures in header
• column: improve nav style
• column: only show delete button when not navigating
• column: reduce bounciness when navigating

Amber 3.0.1
Amber

• New design (still a work in progress)
• Removed the push notification server
• Open the permissions page with the correct account
• Fix crash when signing in with ncryptsec
• Fix icon size on notifications
• Fix relay connection when changing the default relays
• Option to setup a custom pin for the app
• Button to copy your public key
• Fix layout on Android < 15
• Fix multi event screen
• Fetch profile data
• Show relay message when event is rejected
• Fix profile icon size
• Don’t close app when using nostrconnect arcade
• Better check for valid relays
• Fix padding and scrolling
• Support for secret when using nostrconnect
• Fix empty relay notice，and more

Citrine 0.5.7
Citrine

• Fix rotation resetting the app state when downloading your notes
• Fix timeout when downloading your notes when you have a lot of notes

Long-Form Content Eco

In the past two weeks, more than 434 long-form articles have been published, including over 84 articles on Bitcoin and more than 43 related to Nostr, accounting for 30% of the total content.

These articles about Nostr thoroughly explore its transformative role in decentralized social networking, highlighting its potential to revolutionize communication, provide censorship-resistant platforms, and promote the free flow of information. They delve into Nostr's technical aspects, including the integration of Nostr SDK across platforms, building high-performance relay networks, and innovative uses in micropayments with ecash wallets. The articles also examine the dynamic growth of the Nostr ecosystem, covering key statistics, community expansion, and strategies driving global projects. In addition to reflecting on Nostr's current achievements, they envision its future potential in areas like content creation and data sharing, while addressing challenges related to scalability and privacy.

The Bitcoin articles discuss its transformative role in the global financial ecosystem, emphasizing its potential as a store of value, a decentralized currency, and a driver of economic freedom. They explore Bitcoin's historical evolution, technical innovations, and its impact on broader financial systems, including comparisons with CBDCs and other cryptocurrencies. The articles highlight key developments, such as Bitcoin hitting significant price milestones, its integration into everyday financial practices, and the challenges posed by regulatory and market dynamics. Additionally, they delve into topics like mining sustainability, self-custody, the importance of education, and the cultural and ideological implications of Bitcoin in fostering decentralized trust and financial inclusion.

Thankyou, elsat, TKay, gandlaf21, SwBratcher, Terry Yiu, BLOCKCHAINYOGI ₿⚡丰 , Bitcoin Well, Pilgart Explores, nostr.build, Rebecca Knight, nostr:npub1xjwkhqsmd5qs0k4jrfu27x86j0g736xuklzdkpd5dnjd6y4j5kcs72w6e7, Бабкоправдинск, Пятигорск 24/7, Battosai,
and others, for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.

Nostriches Global Meet Ups

Recently, several Nostr events have been hosted in different countries.

• BtrustGathering successfully took place in Kenya on December 4-5, 2024. This annual event brought the Btrust team together to collaborate and lay a solid foundation for the future of open-source Bitcoin development. Over two days, the team outlined their vision for 2025, discussed strategies for funding engineers and sustaining open-source projects, and shared updates on the Bitcoin Open Source Software (₿OSS) program to better support builders.

• The Nigeria Bitcoin Conference was successfully held from December 5th to 7th, 2024, at PopHAUS in Lagos, Nigeria. The event brought together global and local participants from the Bitcoin industry, including exchange founders, developers, investors, policymakers, miners, artists, and more, for three days of in-depth discussions and learning. The conference featured a variety of activities, including keynote speeches, interactive discussions, educational workshops, and a three-day hackathon challenge focused on technical innovations in Bitcoin Core and the Lightning Network.

• The Bitcoin Africa Story Meetup successfully took place on Saturday, December 7, 2024, in Lagos, Nigeria. The event offered an engaging platform to explore Bitcoin's role in Africa and foster discussions and interactions among participants.
  Bitcoin Africa Story

• Btrust Developer Day took place on Sunday, December 8, 2024, in Nairobi, Kenya, as part of the Africa Bitcoin Conference (ABC 2024). This event provided a platform for African developers to explore Bitcoin technology, learn from industry leaders, and collaborate on projects. It featured lightning talks, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, project showcases, and networking opportunities, making it a valuable experience for Bitcoin developers, open-source developers, technologists, and Bitcoin enthusiasts.

Here are the upcoming Nostr events in November that you might want to check out.

• The Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024 will take place from December 9 to 11, 2024, in Nairobi, Kenya, featuring key programs such as Btrust Developer Day, TBD Hackathon, ABC Social Impact Award, Afro Bitcoin Fellowship, and Africa Bitcoin Day. The event will host nearly 70 distinguished speakers, including Noelyne , nostr:npub16hssgmdhw9e9j6z8na45lzz4grdsfjqlp5hf8dtcqnp0glseeu3seecguf, nostr:npub1m7uxdt50d2jw35q79zlszlsvy79t7dpdxptz6rfsrsamra7l8ttsq752yl, John Dennehy, focusing on topics such as Bitcoin adoption, regulation, innovation, and security. This conference offers attendees valuable opportunities for in-depth discussions and knowledge sharing.

• The Dadas Bitcoin Workshop will be held on Tuesday, December 10, 2024. This event is open to everyone and invites several changemakers who are driving innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem, including nostr:npub1urhnkns9rt4c9mk6t9xctjkzmlkawxkdpzjnxdxhx82mqm7hfpuq0j7ue, Ella Hough, among others. The workshop will feature guest speakers sharing how Bitcoin has transformed their lives and careers. The event promises major surprises, along with gifts and rewards, and will foster vibrant discussions and connections that will have a lasting impact on participants.

• Bitcoin Layer 2's vs Bitcoin Sidechains will take place on December 10, 2024, at 7 PM CAT, hosted by Rootstock on X Space. This online discussion, featuring guests such as Kilian and others, will delve into the differences between Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions and sidechains, highlighting their applications in smart contracts and DeFi.

• The 5th Bitcoin Educators Unconference will be held on April 10, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee. This event is specifically designed for educators, meetup organizers, community leaders, and grassroots experts, aiming to provide a platform for Bitcoin educators to collaborate and share insights. Participants will have the opportunity to exchange experiences, discuss best practices in Bitcoin education, and help drive the adoption and application of Bitcoin.

Additionally, We warmly invite event organizers who have held recent activities to reach out to us so we can work together to promote the prosperity and development of the Nostr ecosystem.

Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.

Ventajas del Protocolo Nostr

1. Sencillez y Minimalismo

   • Arquitectura simple: A diferencia de otros protocolos que requieren complejas infraestructuras, Nostr se basa en un diseño minimalista. Solo necesita claves públicas/privadas y relays para funcionar, lo que reduce los puntos de fallo y facilita su implementación.
   • Facilidad de desarrollo: Los desarrolladores pueden crear aplicaciones rápidamente sin enfrentarse a las complejidades técnicas de protocolos más elaborados como ActivityPub.

2. Resistencia a la Censura

   • Modelo distribuido: Nostr no depende de servidores centralizados ni de federaciones específicas. Esto lo hace más resistente a la censura, ya que los mensajes se replican en múltiples relays, y un relay censurado no afecta al resto del sistema.
   • Claves privadas como identidad: La identidad de los usuarios no depende de una instancia o servidor. Conservar la clave privada permite mantener el control total sobre la identidad.

3. Interoperabilidad y Flexibilidad

   • Compatibilidad con múltiples aplicaciones: Nostr permite que las aplicaciones utilicen el mismo protocolo para diversos casos de uso (mensajería, redes sociales, pagos, etc.), a diferencia de ActivityPub, que está más limitado a redes sociales.
   • Extensibilidad: Al ser un protocolo simple, puede ser extendido fácilmente para adaptarse a nuevos usos o necesidades.

4. Neutralidad y Descentralización

   • Sin entidades centralizadas: Nostr no depende de organizaciones o consorcios que dicten reglas, a diferencia de AT Protocol o ActivityPub, que están influenciados por sus comunidades o estructuras de gobernanza.
   • Incentivos abiertos: No hay jerarquías ni dependencias, lo que permite una verdadera descentralización sin riesgo de monopolios.

5. Privacidad y Seguridad

   • Cifrado de extremo a extremo: Al depender de claves públicas y privadas, se garantiza un alto nivel de privacidad y seguridad en las comunicaciones.
   • Anonimato opcional: Los usuarios pueden interactuar sin necesidad de compartir datos personales.

Conclusión

Nostr destaca entre otros protocolos descentralizados por su sencillez, resistencia a la censura y verdadera neutralidad. Mientras que AT Protocol y ActivityPub tienen sus fortalezas, su complejidad y dependencia de entidades específicas limitan su alcance. Nostr representa una solución ágil y poderosa que podría convertirse en el estándar para un internet más libre y descentralizado.

Quick review:
In the past two weeks, Nostr statistics show over 240,000 daily trusted pubkey events, a 28% increase from the previous period, The daily peak reached 22201, the highest in the past two months.New user profiles with bios have reached around 40,000，profiles with contact lists are around 18000，both showing increases over 20%. More than 11 million events have been published, with posts leading in volume, totaling about 2.1 million. Total Zap activity reached over 19 million, marking a significant 70% increase.

Additionally, 26 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 8 merged. A total of 42 Nostr projects were tracked, with 12 releasing product updates, and over 419 long-form articles were published, 33% focusing on Bitcoin and Nostr. During this period, 1 notable event took place, and 3 significant events are upcoming.

Nostr Statistics

Based on user activity, the total daily trusted pubkeys writing events exceeded 240,000, a 28% increase compared to the previous period (Oct 29-Nov 10). The daily peak reached 22201, the highest in the past two months, with a low of nearly 17682.
In terms of new user numbers, profiles with bios are around 40000, up 21% over the past two weeks; profiles with contact lists are around 18697, up 22%. Public writing events exceeded 200,000,The daily peak reached 32480.
Regarding event publishing, the total number of note events published has surpassed 11 million, marking a significant increase of approximately 28%. Posts remain the most dominant in volume, totaling about 2.1 million, far exceeding reposts (357,168) and reactions (560,243).
For zap activity, the total zap amount has exceeded 19 million, showing a significant increase of over 70% compared to the previous period.
In terms of relay usage, the top five relays by user count are: wss://bostr.bitcointxoko.com/,wss://feeds.nostr.band/,wss://realy.nostr.band/,wss://realy.lumina.rocks/,wss://unostr.site/
Data source: https://stats.nostr.band/

NIPs

Break out chat and threads from nip 29
hodlbod is proposing that this is a variant of #1589 which attempts to reconcile NIP 29 and flotilla's rooms over chat and thread kinds. This requires no changes of NIP 29 clients, only flotilla will need to be modified,andmove kind 9 and 11 out of NIP 29.
The choice of new event kinds was initially made to avoid conflicts with existing implementations. However, it would be beneficial to align the two approaches. For chat and threads, maintaining shallow reply hierarchies rather than arbitrary ones is a key consideration. Moving forward would depend on whether this stipulation is acceptable to the NIP 29 community.

Relay chat
hodlbod is proposing an alternative to NIP 29 for several reasons. NIP 29 is overly prescriptive in several ways and encourages group admins to host their groups on a third-party relay. Moving group-like features to relays eliminates the need for separate specifications for each group. Additionally, group metadata is redundant because relays already have a NIP 11 information document and a public key with which they can publish additional information.Admins and moderators can be handled implicitly, out-of-band, or by querying feature support using LIMITS. This approach keeps the base specification small while allowing features like moderator lists to be added as optional extensions. Member lists are managed by the members themselves, enabling them to choose whether to publicly disclose their group membership. This approach facilitates web-of-trust-based community recommendations.

Time-ordered event ids
Vitor Pamplona is proposing that there are a lot of performance benefits to having primary keys with temporal locality.when your database needs to check the uniqueness of IDs, only a small portion of the index needs to be hot (in memory). With the current “random identifiers”, the working set eventually becomes all of the data and your database will be page-faulting continuously. Sequential primary keys also make it easier for the database to place new records in order, minimizing the need to rearrange data or update index structures.This PR makes a simple, but breaking change, to the way we compute event ids. It was inspired by the improvements made by UUIDv7.

NIP-37 - Transport method announcement
Arjen is proposing that Nostr decouples applications completely from the transportation layer, meaning services no longer have to be designed around a single transportation method, but can be accessible through a plethora of ways. This NIP is meant to act as a lookup system that tells a client which transportation methods can be used to access its services.There have been NIP proposals that touch the connection between pubkeys and addresses, example NIP-97 - Nostr Naming System, NIP-66 - Relay Discovery and Liveness Monitoring.
NIP-97 is very close to solving the issue of this mapping.However, it attempts to also include human-readable naming into the solution. human-readable naming of pubkeys/services is inherently different from mapping a pubkey to an address where a user can access that pubkey's services, which may or may not map to a legacy domain name.NIP-66 covers discoverability from the client side and can be a very important tool to discern which services are worth connecting to. I think it can act as the feedback mechanism to the proposed event of this NIP. It can be used to build metrics for the various networks a pubkey announces it to be accessible. Things like rtt (round trip time) can also be different for each network and should be measured separately.

nip46: simple public key login using kind:10046
fiatjaf is proposing that This vastly simplifies the bunker:// flow while also making it easy for the user on every other front possibly -- and brings back NIP-05 login, but in a simpler, more generic way.

Add optional arg to nostr.getPublicKey()
Lez is proposing that if login is optional for an application, nostr.getPublicKey({optional: true}) can be used to retrieve the pubkey if the user has already granted permission to the app. This allows the user to view the app’s landing page without being interrupted by a popup window. The user can still press the login button later, which calls nostr.getPublicKey() and prompts for permission.

NIP-62: Collections
limina1 is defining a specification for organizing nostr events into collections - ordered, optionally-hierarchical structures like books, journals, or documentation. Currently, there's no standardized way to create versioned collections of content. The closest option is to use lists, but this extends that idea beyond a strictly linear hierarchy.
Introducing two new event kinds: kind:30040 - Collection Index and kind:30041 - Collection Section. The Collection Index serves as a table of contents, providing metadata about the collection and listing events in display order. Meanwhile, the Collection Section contains the actual content and supports linking to other content using wikilinks, enabling seamless connectivity within the collection.

Add r to kind 10009
hodlbod is proposing adding an "r" field to kind 10009, allowing users can advertise what relays/groups they are members of. Flotilla uses this to recommend relays. These of course should be considered non-canonical because the users publishing them may not actually have access to the relay specified.

Add support for naming unmanaged groups
hodlbod is proposing Instead of allowing human-readable ids, it's probably better to just allow users to name groups. I opted for a petnames strategy here instead of recommending sending 9002 events or something. Clients can choose whatever heuristic they want to resolve conflicts.

Add feature detection for unmanaged groups
hodlbod is proposing feature detection for unmanaged groups that has to exist on two levels.On the group level, so that clients can toggle the richer NIP 29 behavior on or off. Feature detection based on NIP 11's supported_nips field isn't sufficient, since a relay implementation might support NIP 29, but the actual relay may not.On the relay level, since clients need to be able to know whether users can post events to groups that don't yet exist, or whether they have to send a create-group event instead.The default (obviously) has to be that unmanaged groups are allowed, so unmanaged group support is opt-out.

kind-scoped follow
PABLOF7z is proposing kind-scoped follow does NOT (necessarily) replace kind:3, it's a way to do a very simple follow of one or more kinds that might be of interest.This way we also start moving away from huge follow lists that can get wiped at a moment's notice and instead clients are responsible for computing the follow list and updating its local state.This also allows apps to show "followed" notifications without a central source.

Build Your Own Adventure posts
Vitor Pamplona is defining kind:296 and kind:297 as text notes with options to navigate to the next text notes and continue reading. Kind 296 serves as the root story and 297 for the sections of that story.The idea is to replicate the dynamism of build your own adventure books, where each reader takes their own journey in the story.Story Section events contain an optional title tag and option tags for the next sections.Clients SHOULD render options in a way that users can select and move to that post.

Notable Projects

Primal 2.0
primal

Primal now offers a much more comprehensive view of Nostr, with the following additions:

• New tab: READS
• New tab: EXPLORE
• Feed Marketplace
• Advanced Search
• launched Primal Premium, for $7/month, you can get a Primal Name and Nostr Tools for power users
• enable plugging any feed into the sidebar

Yakihonne
YakiHonne

Mobile latest updates:

• Adjust your home feed with what interests you the most.
• Home suggestion box can be enabled and disabled.
• Profile preview can be enabled and disabled.
• Replies can be previewed and highlighted directly.
• Articles, videos and curations can be quoted inside notes for more exposure.
• Add the ability to link connected wallets to your profile for zaps receiving.
• Thread view is enhanced and well adjusted.
• Fix a variety of introduced bugs.
• General improvements across the app.

Web latest updates:

• A fresh design overhaul for the article, video, and curation pages, enabling seamless browsing and enhanced interaction with content.
• Connected threads! A refined notes thread makes following entire discussions more intuitive.
• Users can now personalize their home feed by selecting their top interests.
• Replies can now be previewed directly from the note card, without needing to open the full note.
• Wallets can now be linked to your account directly from the wallet page.
• Drafts for notes and replies are now saved, allowing easy edits later.
• The suggestions box on the home page can now be hidden.
• The on-hover user preview can now be disabled for quicker access to profiles.
• Articles, videos and curations can now be quoted and shared as notes.
• General improvements.
• Bug fixes and optimizations.

ZEUS Pay
ZEUS

• All payments will incur no fee for the receiver (previously 2.5-10% depending on amount)
• The minimum amount receivable has been lowered to 1 satoshi (previously 10 satoshis)

TestFlight
nostr:npub18m76awca3y37hkvuneavuw6pjj4525fw90necxmadrvjg0sdy6qsngq955

TestFlight is a program designed for those who want to join the nostr:#damus roadmap, prioritizing improvements to video support and introducing several new features：

• Improved video controls
• Stability improvements to video support
• New image share options on the full screen carousel
• Hashtag suggestions
• Multi image uploads
• A video player that actually works
• Share sheet action
• Seamless scroll
• Added Damus Share Feature
• Fixed missing tab bar on navigation
• Fixed some issues where profile QR code scanning would not work, and improved UX to make experience more robust

Olas 0.1
PABLOF7z

Olas is an Instagram-like client for iOS and Android，provides a feed of videos (like those on flare/highlighter/zap.stream), picture events (kind:20, a new kind that no client had implemented yet) and the classical short notes with images attached we are all used to.Some more features already available:

• blossom uploads
• NIP-22 replies
• Reels (still quite buggy though)
• Edit your preferred blossom servers
• Edit your nutsack mint list
• Image download optimization (to be gentle with mobile data plans)
  Additionally, there are some coming next, including NIP-55 (Amber) Logic,Fix NIP-46 (bunker) login,complete NIP-60 (nutsack) wallet,Add NIP-57/61 zaps + nutzaps,and more.

Gossip 0.12.0
Gossip Client

This is a major release with the following major changes:

• Bookmarks support (including private bookmarks)
• Global feed and per-Relay feeds (with volatile storage, erased when you quit)
• Friends-of-friends scores shown in avatar
• Improved spam filtering script with more inputs to make decisions on
  Additionally, there are some minor changes, including updated emoji picker, reworked relay scoring, more efficient background tasks, faster database (less syncing),and more.

Nostur v1.16.0
Nostur

• Nostr Nests integration
• Live video streams and chats
• Relay Autopilot improvements
• VPN detection toggle: only connect to additional relays if VPN is detected
• Relay Connection stats improvements
• Rewrite of feed loading. Faster & more efficient
• Possible imposter label also added on new follower notification and quoted posts
• Improved profile card rendering/animation
• Improved quoted post and inline naddr1 rendering
• Optimized profile gallery loading
• Exclude reposts for new posts notifier
• UI tweaks, more compact, less clutter
• Full width images now go to screen edge
• Reduced data usage for new follower notifications
• Many many bug fixes and other optimizations

Fountain Radio 1.1.8
Fountain

• Add and upvote tracks in the queue
• Support the artist currently playing
• Post in the live chat
• Save tracks to your library
• Listen to Fountain Radio on other apps
• Artist takeovers

Plebeian Progress Update
Plebeian Market

There are some enhancements and new features:

• dialog manager
• hide non-working parts of the ui
• publish events, we are just signing
• Moderation Tools for Admins and Editors
• introduce 'editor' role
  Additionally, a major bug causing errors when creating stalls with more than one shipping method has been fixed, and the “v4v” text has been updated to Community Contribution.

Zapstore 0.16
Zapstore

Zapstore 0.1.6 released now.Some performance issues addressed, reverted installer, fixed themed icon and toasts, and more.

0xchat 1.4.1
0xchat

• Optimized video player UI with support for landscape mode
• Added audio configuration in settings
• Enabled copying of ecash tokens from ecash messages
• Support for media deletion
  Additionally, some bug fixes,such as the occasional gray screen when sending e-cash，gray screen issue in Hungarian language，“mark all as read” function not working，and more.

DEG Mods update
DEG Mods

The updated version introduces a new Web of Trust system and a Blog system, with relevant pages and sections now implemented and updated.And there are some changes:

• (technical) nPub user addresses now lead to a user's profile if added through the URL, which would be auto-converted to an nProfile type address.
• Reaction (heart/poop) numbers now show a loading indication with 3 dot animation, and you'd only be able to react once loading is finished.
• There's now a spinning loader animation for the comments of a post to make sure, as a user, if there are comments or not
• There's now a comment loader button that you can press to load newly discovered comments for a mod or blog post
• Minor design adjustments for blog posts
  Additionally, fixed the ordering of the latest mods, ensured profile links in comments (from clicking the name or user address) lead to the correct profile page now, and more.

Long-Form Content Eco

In the past two weeks, more than 419 long-form articles have been published, including over 100 articles on Bitcoin and more than 30 related to Nostr, accounting for 33% of the total content.

These articles about Nostr mainly explore the protocol's development, practical applications, and its role in driving the decentralized social media ecosystem. They cover updates on tools and features like TestFlight and Knox Beta, highlighting innovations such as healthcare micro-apps, privacy enhancements, and NFC integration. Community-driven initiatives, like self-hosted Zap cooking, board member introductions, and the power of collaboration, reflect the growth of the ecosystem. Additionally, the articles discuss challenges such as key management and content moderation, as well as creative contributions like Thanksgiving use cases and cultural content.

The Bitcoin articles discuss the development, adoption, and impact of Bitcoin on the global financial landscape. They cover Bitcoin's market performance, technological advancements, and its role in the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem. The articles also explore Bitcoin's rise, its increasing market cap, and predictions for its future price movements. In addition, they focus on Bitcoin's use in various applications, the challenges faced by Bitcoin mining, and its evolving role in decentralized finance, highlighting Bitcoin's potential to address global issues, from the limitations of fiat currencies to the challenges posed by central banking systems and surveillance. Overall, the articles reflect Bitcoin's growing influence and its potential to drive future technological and financial revolutions.

Thankyou,Sebastix， hodlbod，Rod，Inner Circle Nostrich 🔮，DoraDesigner，Student of Bitcoin，Fiat Revelation，Dikaios1517，
and others,for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.

Nostriches Global Meet Ups

Recently, several Nostr events have been hosted in different countries.

• Adopting Bitcoin 2024 took place successfully from November 15 to 16, 2024, in the southern region of El Salvador. The event attracted over a hundred Bitcoin experts, advocates, and innovators from around the world, including nostr:npub14d5399mthprnnur9g2wq877hg0htr5afrdad5dryryeftct885fqtcpuyp, Svetski, calvadev⚡️, Max DeMarco，and more. Discussions focused on Bitcoin’s potential to reshape global finance, culture, and social structures, with key themes around decentralization, Bitcoin’s challenge to sovereignty, and its impact on education and family life.
  nostr:npub1ad0ptuzte83alpkpqqctvewlaqj5zq23c83m82xw8apg4t6zlyns6xng2c

Here are the upcoming Nostr events in November that you might want to check out.

• Btrust Developer Day will take place on Sunday, December 8, 2024, in Nairobi, Kenya, as part of the Africa Bitcoin Conference (ABC 2024). This event aims to provide a platform for African developers to explore Bitcoin technology, learn from industry leaders, and collaborate on projects. The event will feature lightning talks, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, project showcases, and networking opportunities, making it ideal for Bitcoin developers, open-source developers, technologists, and Bitcoin enthusiasts.

• The Africa Bitcoin Conference 2024 will take place from December 9 to 11, 2024, in Nairobi, Kenya, featuring key programs such as Btrust Developer Day, TBD Hackathon, ABC Social Impact Award, Afro Bitcoin Fellowship, and Africa Bitcoin Day. The event will host nearly 70 distinguished speakers, including Noelyne , nostr:npub16hssgmdhw9e9j6z8na45lzz4grdsfjqlp5hf8dtcqnp0glseeu3seecguf, nostr:npub1m7uxdt50d2jw35q79zlszlsvy79t7dpdxptz6rfsrsamra7l8ttsq752yl, John Dennehy, and more,focusing on topics such as Bitcoin adoption, regulation, innovation, and security. This conference offers attendees valuable opportunities for in-depth discussions and knowledge sharing.

• The Asia Bitcoin Tech Unconference is set to take place from February 8 to 10, 2025, in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Organized as a workshop-style event, it will feature a diverse lineup of speakers, including Roland, Luke Childs ☂️, Sherry, WendyDing, Shaun，and others. The conference will focus on key topics such as scalability, mining, payments, and infrastructure, while also encouraging participants to share unfinished projects or technical challenges. Through hackathons and hands-on discussions, the event aims to foster collaboration and innovation. Highlights include technical talks, pitch competitions, Bitcoin product showcases, and creative and wellness activities such as Thai massages, ice baths, and arts and crafts workshops.⚡ats 'N' Fact⚡

Additionally, We warmly invite event organizers who have held recent activities to reach out to us so we can work together to promote the prosperity and development of the Nostr ecosystem.

Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.

In the last decade - the past five years especially - social apps have become more social media than social network. They’ve become more about discovery, and less about relationship. More about size, and less about connection. More about the algorithms, and less about the social graph.

Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon, gave a fantastic talk on a similar thread at SXSW 2024, called “The Death of the Follower”

https://youtu.be/hwn6-8XpIuE

I believe this will change over the coming decade, as people begin to crave community and connection again, and not just content consumption.

This doesn’t mean the multi billion user platforms run by algorithms will disappear. In fact, they will probably be larger and stronger than ever.

BUT…I predict that we will also see the rise of many, many niche and micro-social networks with a focus on relationships, communities and the social graph.

In fact, there will also be applications that do a mixture of both media/content/algorithm and network/community/social.

In this essay, I’d like to look at the history of Social Networks, how they started, how they’re going, what the evolution looked like and what the future will hold.

Social 1.0?

Social 1.0 has been about massive, billion+ user platforms. Think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn.

While there is certainly a variance in the kinds of users attracted to each, and also how they work, there are some underlying commonalities among them.

First of all, each of these Social 1.0 networks are platforms.

They are built in such a way that they own not only the content and data, but also the user’s identity (eg: your handle), the social graphs and connections (follows/following), and the algorithms that serve up the content (or censor it).

This is not a problem in and of itself. In fact, it worked extraordinarily well for the teams who built sticky-enough applications that fostered network effects and reached scale.

The problem however, arises later, when the platforms who basically own everything, lose the incentive to provide value, and instead need to find ways to keep people “locked in.” Turns out, the best way to lock people in is to push their dopamine buttons and hook them on content. In other words, when social-networks reach saturation, the only thing left to do is drive consumption.

This of course creates some perverse incentives. And since we are creative human beings after all, we find ways to game the incentives, resulting in the problematic state that social media finds itself in today: a big digital dopamine-dispenser, where the user, instead of being a client, becomes the product, and a slave to the algorithm.

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.”

-Tristan Harris, The Social Dilemma Documentary

The second issue is the converging nature of all these social networks.

Because they are siloed platforms, they cannot leverage content between each other. In the early days of social (pre-2010), there were open APIs all over the place and each social network bootstrapped off the other. Instagram bootstrapped both off Twitter and Facebook!

But, as the realisation dawned on each of them that their key asset was their users, they had to - economically-speaking - cut off access to others that might leech their user base. This is perfectly rational market behaviour, given the constraints they were working with. Your social network is valuable insofar as you have enough connections there to sustain it. If someone starts to suck your users away, it could destroy you. See MySpace and many others along the way.

So what happens here in time, is that all the feature set of all these platforms begin to, slowly by slowly, inch toward each other.

Instagram created the first real “influencers,” and since then every other social network copied. SnapChat created stories, basically everyone followed. TikTok came out and has since pushed almost every social network towards being more ‘social media’ by implicitly incentivising video. Now, almost every platform is doing some sort of video short.

Of course, the increase in internet bandwidth and device quality has gone hand in hand with this. Video is far more engaging and close to “real life” than simple photos or text are. But there’s something else that came with this. And that’s the more from being networks with a social graph, toward being essentially content engines. I will elaborate on this in a future essay.

The result of all this is a strange blend of excess redundancy and dependence on platforms which own your digital footprint.

I find myself these days, posting basically the same shit, across multiple social apps. Sure, there is some variance, but since everyone is increasingly getting on all of them, the audiences, while quite different in the early days, are slowly becoming the same.

This redundancy part, is something that platforms like Buffer and Hootsuite have taken full advantage of.

Other than the annoying redundancy, the dependence side of things involves me as a creator, trying to optimise all of my content for the algorithms, ie": for maximum engagement instead of maximum value, across all of these platforms. And worse, trying to do it such a way that doesn't get me banned, because my content, my social graph and my identity are owned by the platform, not by me.

Long term, what this does is both (a) waste a lot of time, and (b) make creators less interested in producing for their niche, and instead producing for a bunch of algorithms that are increasingly converging around appeal to a lowest-common-denominator of consooomer.

It’s a strange situation, that almost had to happen, but which we can change.

How and why did this happen?

Despite what the conspiracy theorists might believe, this was not all part of some premeditated agenda. These things are complex and emergent. Nobody had any clue what these platforms would come to be in the early days. Nobody had any idea Facebook would be used for marketplaces or that Instagram would change the very nature of travel, food and fashion. But they did, because they evolved, and did so in such a way that conspiring to use them became necessary.

Because Social 1.0 platforms are all companies, they are able to be “captured” - especially if they’re public. This is part of why Elon is such an important figure. He’s rich enough to not be entirely captured and he acts as somewhat of a bastion against the rot. That being said, this is not a viable long term solution to the problem, because one man is fragile, and the nature of the current paradigm and available building blocks is such that it will trend once more to centralisation, censorship and co-opting.

So if you want to know the real reason as to why we got here, it pretty much boils down to the building blocks that we had available. If you have mud all around you, don’t be surprised that the best structure you can build is a mud-hut.

This first round of social networks saw humans and human nature collide with an ‘internet’ that fundamentally lacked an identity layer, something the early pioneers were not ignorant about. The issue was that a viable implementation was never conceived - or at least, never broadly adopted. The internet stack only made it four layers deep:

What happened instead of a native digital identity for the web, was the creation of many identities owned by the actual applications built ON the internet. Instead of a protocol like TCP or IP, identity became a feature inside of a product. In fact, “logging in” is basically a feature, and your profile or identity are simply a database entry owned by whichever online product / service you signed up for. You have an identity with Amazon, with your bank, with your sales software, with Facebook, with Google and with every other online service.

This of course got very messy in time. We all ended up with a million and one identities, each requiring their own username and password. Not only that, but each online service became a honeypot full of private, identifying data that hackers love to exploit.

Some bandaid solutions arose to solve this problem. One was password managers (which we all hate). The other was SSO. Companies like Google and Facebook saw an opportunity here and being so broadly used developed Single Sign On (SSO) - and to some degree, they solved a big issue. It’s much easier to have a secure email set up with Google and just log in using SSO. The solution of course, comes with its very own problem, namely; Google/Facebook (insert SSO provider) ends up owning your identity, making you increasingly dependent on them.

This might be ok in a perfect world, but as you know, we live in an imperfect one. It’s very easy for Google to not only use that information to exploit you (selling your data, selling you shit, etc), but you can very easily get ‘cancelled’ or deplatformed.

While this is problematic with an email account, it even worse with a social account on a platform like Facebook or Twitter, because at least with your emails, you can own the list. On a social network, you could spend years building a following, an audience, a treasure trove of data and content - and then one day, be cancelled for saying or believing the wrong thing. Or perhaps even worse: become algorithmically irrelevant.

This is clearly a problem and one that has only become more prevalent since 2020. Celebrity chef Pete Evans, was de-platformed from Facebook and Instagram in 2020 after his public support for Trump and his opinion on the Covid-19 situation. Almost 2 million followers, gone overnight. The same has happened to countless other creators and online personalities who dared have an opinion in conflict with the mainstream narrative - I was one of them. My personal twitter account was perma-banned in 2021, right as my public profile began to take off because I dared question official narratives (although I created a new one).

So ultimately, we have a web stack that is ok, and got us quite far over the last 30-40 years - but comes with a unique set of problems, that are a function of the building blocks we’ve had to work with. I don’t believe there was a ‘master plan’ to get here, but there was no other option consider the ingredients we had. The only way to really handle identity, and later social, at scale, has thus far been with these constraints.

Hence why I call it Social 1.0, and why now, with the emergence of new technologies and new ways of managing your digital identity and footprint, we have an opportunity to build a new Social Web that doesn’t fall into the same trap as the first one did. We understand how people behave online much better than we did a decade or two ago. If we learn from the past, we can do things differently in the future. We can build something fundamentally new, and more importantly, better.

What is Social 2.0?

Social 2.0 is the term I’m giving to this very nascent but emerging new field of social networks that are smaller and more niche, and that are once again focusing on the connection between people, as opposed to the algorithmic content-recommendation engines. Some (not all) are leveraging the new building blocks that have emerged over the last five years.

In general, they are smaller, more community focused, and concentrate around a particular domain. This is a trend that is gaining traction, with a number of strong examples in various domains:

• Cara: Basically an Instagram for artists
• BlueSky: Basically Twitter for the Left
• TruthSocial: Like Twitter for MAGA
• New Public: Pluralist digital public spaces
• Dribble: A social network for designers and digital artists
• Primal: Like a Twitter meets Venmo that appeals to Bitcoiners
• Farcaster: Kind of like Twitter, but for Crypto Degens, built on ETH
• Ditto: Decentralised, self hosted, community-social networks
• Highlighter: Like Patreon meets Substack for digital creators that want censorship resistance.

And of course there is Satlantis, which is essentially a Social Network for Sovereign Individuals. We are interested in the global community of people who live at the nexus of the following interests and domains:

Beyond their size and focus, the most interesting commonality, which in my opinion will become an ever-increasingly defining characteristic for Social 2.0 platforms, is that some of these (eg: Highlighter, Primal, Ditto and Satlantis) are all built atop a common social protocol: Nostr.

This is important because the identity and social graph do not live on the platform, but instead live on an underlying protocol - a bit like how your email lives on and is transmitted on the SMTP protocol.

This approach and what it implies could be the most significant upgrade to the web, perhaps since Web 2.0 really became a thing. If a robust, user-owned identity layer is adopted across the web, the entire topography of the internet will change, and so will the design space and the kinds of products which can be built.

Of course, the benefits it comes with, also bring some drawbacks, but in my opinion, they far outweigh the downsides. This is why I am so interested in the future of the social web, and the role Nostr in particular can play.

What is Nostr?

An explanation of Nostr is probably not necessary for anyone reading this essay here, but I'll summarise how I explained it over on Substack for normies and non-Nostr people. Hopefully it's useful when you're doing some Purple-pilling.

• Nostr is a rich identity layer for the internet.

• This identity is rich because you can append meta-data to it, for example, a profile photo, a description and perhaps most importantly, a list of follows and followers. This is what makes it a ‘social protocol,’ and not just native identity for the web.

• This identity is also sovereign, meaning that it’s not “issued” by some platform or entity, but instead mathematically derived as a crypto-graphic key pair. Your private key is your ID, and your public key is your public address / username (how people find you). So long as you control the private key, you fully control your ID.

• Unlike a blockchain, Nostr is stateless (like the internet) so it has the capacity to scale, and because it’s not money, it doesn’t need consensus. This avoids all the extra bloat that kills the usage of all other “crypto” and “blockchain” networks.

• Storage is solved by the market. If you are posting data that might be censored, you can run your own relay (like a database) and ensure that it’s never taken down. If you’re posting non-sensitive content, you can very easily rely on the network of relays that the apps you’re using use. This is fine for 99% of use cases, and is abstracted away so nobody is impacted or annoyed.

• It is very tightly linked to Bitcoin, the lightning network and other e-cash solutions, which make it “internet money native.” This is a huge benefit because commerce on the web will only want to grow, while the legacy digital banking infrastructure gets more stringent and draconian - so we need a plan B. Bitcoin solves that, and Nostr can scale without needing to shoehorn a token into it.

• Like TCP/IP and SMTP, it is a protocol. This means it’s not owned by a single entity or company - making it much harder to capture.

• As a new protocol layer, it upgrades the topography of the web, and opens up a design space that was not possible before. It’s a significant new building block for the web. Recall the earlier diagram depicting the current “internet stack.” With Nostr and Bitcoin, the internet stack gets a serious upgrade:

  

Of ocurse, if you haven't read @Lyn Alden 's peice on Nostr it's worth doing so: https://www.lynalden.com/the-power-of-nostr/

I also did a thorough X post explaining it here: https://x.com/SvetskiWrites/status/1828403019081269661

There’s also a great post from my other Substack called Reviewing Reviews:

https://remnantchronicles.substack.com/p/reviewing-reviews

Comparing Social 1.0 and 2.0

Now that you have all of this context, let’s close out this essay with a quick comparison table between the two social paradigms:

As you can see, there are some general differences. And while I don’t show it to make the claim that one is good or the other is evil, I personally believe that Social 2.0 is technically and socially superior. It has better building blocks, and it’s the best shot we have at making the web more sovereign, independent and useful.

Also note:

1. These dichotomies are not hard rules. There’s a lot of both elements across all kinds of social networks, but broadly speaking Social 1.0 is larger, more about discovery than relationships, more about content consumption and more algorithmically driven than Social 2.0 will be.
2. The rise of Social 2.0 doesn’t mean social 1.0 will entirely disappear. In fact, part of the 2.0 movement implies that there will be both big and large social networks, and both protocol-connected and independent platform-enclosed social networks. In fact, there will also be blends of the two. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Threads, or maybe even X one day, leverage something like Nostr. Maybe they become “Nostr-compatible” so that people who have built profiles and audiences on Nostr, can easily port them over to X, while maintaining control.

It will be interesting to see how the future evolves, now that we have some new and unique building blocks. One thing I am certain of, is that the future will look different to the present, and I look forward to helping built it with Satlantis.

Thankyou for reading the first full essay on Social 2.0. If you're interested in checking out Satlantis, go here: Satlantis.io

Aleksandar Svetski

• I’m Rod
• I’m going down the Nostr rabbit hole
• I’m a startup founder, former listco CEO, NED, Bitcoin Miner, New Zealander, Dad
• I value community
• I was white-pilled by the free and interoperable internet and am ready to chip in

Nice to meet you

Today I am getting started creating a profile for my real self on Nostr. I am going to share what I learn.

Your average new Nostr user probably shouldn’t follow my lead here. The “main flow” onboarding for Nostr is becoming very smooth. Download Damus or Primal or Amethyst, then click “create account,” and be up and running in seconds.

For me though, I want to go off-road. I think Nostr is a fundamental reimagining of the internet where power resides with users rather than platforms. I want to work on it and with it. I think it has a chance to bring back the internet of my youth where people could be "internet" users rather than "corporate internet brandname" users.

So I plan to go on a tour of the weird and wonderful side quests that Nostr can offer—in order to really have some fun with it and write about it as I go.

I hope the writing will add some value.

Nostr is being driven forward by passionate and prolific devs who are creating wild new proofs of concept everywhere. These primatives are amazing, and also for a regular pleb, sometimes inaccessible and confusing.

I think I can add value by highlighting some of the “why” of fun and useful Nostr rabbit holes. If I can document what I do as a user, what I managed to make work, how I made it work, and why it was important, then I may encourage others to join and have a go.

Not a how to guide. Rather a “what I did and how and why” journal of sorts.

I can do a better intro than that

My name is Rod, and I am non-technical startup founder, former listco CEO, and company director.

Foremost in recent times, I am the founder of Jayride Group, which is a travel e-commerce marketplace that helps travelers to find and book rides around the world. I launched Jayride in January 2012 and grew it for six years to public listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:JAY) in January 2018, then ran it as a public company for six more years before stepping back from Managing Director to the role of Non-Exec Director around August 2023.

I am also a Non-Exec Director of Fishburners, Australia’s foremost technology startup founder community (and co-working space). Fishburners helps startup founders to get started. I was an early Fishburners resident, and being involved in that community was instrumental to my early startup success.

I have been flirting with Bitcoin mining since 697532 or thereabouts with 3.5Ph of hash rate, which was briefly about 1/100,000th of the network.

I’m a Nostr pleb, happily married, rational optimist, expat New Zealander living in Australia, and dad.

I will post about all of these things too.

Two key lessons led me to Nostr today

I learned the importance of community from Fishburners.

In the early days of a startup, you don’t know what you don’t know. Community helps you to learn those things simply by being amongst it. And when you find something specific which you know you need to know, community is there for you then too.

The more time I spend on Nostr, the more aware I am that this is a an awesome community of builders with the potential to add some real and lasting value to the internet and world. I want to do whatever small things I can to help and be part of that.

I learned the importance of resilience from the world's reaction to COVID.

Travel businesses and co-working businesses were smashed by lockdowns. To chart the path through it all, it became my full-time job to study the disaster of fake narratives and regulatory capture and bad policy responses, in order to try to navigate it. I learned that if you pay attention long enough then you can see behind the curtain–and it’s not a good look.

On Nostr, I find myself gradually returning to a rationally optimistic outlook. No amount of propaganda and greed and bureaucracy will ever be as fast and powerful and resilient as a free and interoperable internet.

We can build systems which leverage these strengths. If built, these systems will naturally outcompete and win on their merits, because they will be faster, freer, more powerful marketplaces for ideas and capital, more resistant to capture, and more resilient to external shocks.

Better systems means better aligned and fairer outcomes for everyone. These systems are a must-have and need to succeed. So I’m going to chip in.

I’m not sure exactly how yet!

But I’m up for it.

In summary

Hi. It’s nice to meet you all, and I hope to share something of value!

Because:

• Nostr is becoming an incredible community of builders that will make its mark on the world, and
• Nostr can become a true reimagining of the internet and contribute to a powerful, free and resilient world.

Up next

To start, I've learned a few things about setting up a new profile and I can share what I learned in future posts:

• Mining a branded vanity pubkey with Rana
• Setting up a self-custody lightning wallet to make zaps on Nostr with Phoenixd and Albyhub
• Setting up Nostr and lightning addresses at your own domain with Sveltekit and Vercel

Looking forward to it.

Here's a breakdown of key features of Nostr:

• Decentralized Network: Nostr doesn't rely on any trusted central server, making it resilient to censorship. Users can publish their notes (content) to multiple relays of their choice, and followers can retrieve these notes by connecting to these relays.

• Cryptographic Security: Nostr prioritizes security by using cryptographic keys and signatures for user authentication and content integrity. Every note is signed with the user's private key, allowing clients to verify the authenticity of messages and ensuring tamper-proof communication.

• User Control and Data Ownership: Users have complete control over their data and choose which relays to interact with. This allows for more flexibility and customization compared to traditional social media platforms.

• Open Protocol and Diverse Ecosystem: Nostr is an open standard, similar to protocols like HTTP or TCP-IP. This enables anyone to build clients, relays, or other applications on top of it, fostering a diverse ecosystem of software.

• Simplicity and Ease of Use: Nostr is designed to be simple to understand and implement, with a focus on lightweight JSON data structures and straightforward communication protocols. This makes it easier for developers to contribute to the Nostr ecosystem and for users to get started.

Nostr is gaining traction within cryptocurrency communities, particularly among Bitcoin users. Even Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, has shown support for Nostr's development through financial contributions. Some use Nostr through clients like Damus, a microblogging app.

While Nostr offers a promising alternative to centralized social media, challenges remain. The decentralized nature of Nostr necessitates new solutions to issues like spam prevention and content discovery. Developers are actively exploring various approaches, including proof-of-work systems, paid relay options, and reputation-based mechanisms like "orange checks" to address these challenges.

I was waiting many years for this moment and We got it.

We are early, still in niche. Watching for half a year what is happening here gave me so much confidence, and hope for Us.

#NOSTR is a fuckin #Killa.app

I also reached my FedUp point. X became a joke, fookin joke. 1/3 of My feed in German (???) crypto Solana and ETH spammers with rugpulls. On my private wall without single follow of them. Total #fiatmental bullshit. Pointless Noize

Watching kids dying in Gaza and nobody does nothing, no single fook about it. I'm done with hypocrisy, secret shadow banning my content cos I was too loud about a #truth and real issue.

I caught this moment during the creation of my newest #remix. titled World issue.

Funny feeling. Own hypocrisy being part of this doxxed X platform, to who the fook knows.
Against my own values, which I share and educate other people with.

The richest MF on earth who could solve hunger and other problems of the world in a day instead he is sending #fake rockets on Mars, Beaing silent about #Gaza. Same time posting his pictures from Auschwitz with huge word "NEVER AGAIN". Pretending to be #freedomofspeech rockstar and all his pussylikers celebrating this i$r3li founded scum on leash. Fook it all of this is an illusion.

Time for change own mental state, free from this mental xtrap.
Why cos we got it, still in developing mode, but its ours. Your own, my own, me and You are creators of it. For myself and for You.
So excited, future is bright.

#Cypherpunks back on da track and we don't give a fook

Couldn't imagine better times to exist and spread my crazy ideas with (again) YOU.

Thanks for the inspiration #NOgang #2140army and all ya gangsters wherever you are.