@ d2e97f73:ea9a4d1b

There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified.

I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead:

1. Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control.
2. Only the original author may remove content they produce.
3. Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.

The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles. This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defense mechanisms (lack of dual-class shares being a key one). I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company.

The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves. This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account. As I’ve said before, we did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society. Much more about this here: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1349510769268850690

I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time. Of course mistakes were made. But if we had focused more on tools for the people using the service rather than tools for us, and moved much faster towards absolute transparency, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation of needing a fresh reset (which I am supportive of). Again, I own all of this and our actions, and all I can do is work to make it right.

Back to the principles. Of course governments want to shape and control the public conversation, and will use every method at their disposal to do so, including the media. And the power a corporation wields to do the same is only growing. It’s critical that the people have tools to resist this, and that those tools are ultimately owned by the people. Allowing a government or a few corporations to own the public conversation is a path towards centralized control.

I’m a strong believer that any content produced by someone for the internet should be permanent until the original author chooses to delete it. It should be always available and addressable. Content takedowns and suspensions should not be possible. Doing so complicates important context, learning, and enforcement of illegal activity. There are significant issues with this stance of course, but starting with this principle will allow for far better solutions than we have today. The internet is trending towards a world were storage is “free” and infinite, which places all the actual value on how to discover and see content.

Which brings me to the last principle: moderation. I don’t believe a centralized system can do content moderation globally. It can only be done through ranking and relevance algorithms, the more localized the better. But instead of a company or government building and controlling these solely, people should be able to build and choose from algorithms that best match their criteria, or not have to use any at all. A “follow” action should always deliver every bit of content from the corresponding account, and the algorithms should be able to comb through everything else through a relevance lens that an individual determines. There’s a default “G-rated” algorithm, and then there’s everything else one can imagine.

The only way I know of to truly live up to these 3 principles is a free and open protocol for social media, that is not owned by a single company or group of companies, and is resilient to corporate and government influence. The problem today is that we have companies who own both the protocol and discovery of content. Which ultimately puts one person in charge of what’s available and seen, or not. This is by definition a single point of failure, no matter how great the person, and over time will fracture the public conversation, and may lead to more control by governments and corporations around the world.

I believe many companies can build a phenomenal business off an open protocol. For proof, look at both the web and email. The biggest problem with these models however is that the discovery mechanisms are far too proprietary and fixed instead of open or extendable. Companies can build many profitable services that complement rather than lock down how we access this massive collection of conversation. There is no need to own or host it themselves.

Many of you won’t trust this solution just because it’s me stating it. I get it, but that’s exactly the point. Trusting any one individual with this comes with compromises, not to mention being way too heavy a burden for the individual. It has to be something akin to what bitcoin has shown to be possible. If you want proof of this, get out of the US and European bubble of the bitcoin price fluctuations and learn how real people are using it for censorship resistance in Africa and Central/South America.

I do still wish for Twitter, and every company, to become uncomfortably transparent in all their actions, and I wish I forced more of that years ago. I do believe absolute transparency builds trust. As for the files, I wish they were released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider. And along with that, commitments of transparency for present and future actions. I’m hopeful all of this will happen. There’s nothing to hide…only a lot to learn from. The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and doesn’t solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof.

As far as the free and open social media protocol goes, there are many competing projects: @bluesky is one with the AT Protocol, nostr another, Mastodon yet another, Matrix yet another…and there will be many more. One will have a chance at becoming a standard like HTTP or SMTP. This isn’t about a “decentralized Twitter.” This is a focused and urgent push for a foundational core technology standard to make social media a native part of the internet. I believe this is critical both to Twitter’s future, and the public conversation’s ability to truly serve the people, which helps hold governments and corporations accountable. And hopefully makes it all a lot more fun and informative again.

💸🛠️🌐 To accelerate open internet and protocol work, I’m going to open a new category of #startsmall grants: “open internet development.” It will start with a focus of giving cash and equity grants to engineering teams working on social media and private communication protocols, bitcoin, and a web-only mobile OS. I’ll make some grants next week, starting with $1mm/yr to Signal. Please let me know other great candidates for this money.

@ 82341f88:fbfbe6a2

There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified.

I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead:

1. Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control.
2. Only the original author may remove content they produce.
3. Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.

The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles. This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defense mechanisms (lack of dual-class shares being a key one). I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company.

The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves. This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account. As I’ve said before, we did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society. Much more about this here: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1349510769268850690

I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time. Of course mistakes were made. But if we had focused more on tools for the people using the service rather than tools for us, and moved much faster towards absolute transparency, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation of needing a fresh reset (which I am supportive of). Again, I own all of this and our actions, and all I can do is work to make it right.

Back to the principles. Of course governments want to shape and control the public conversation, and will use every method at their disposal to do so, including the media. And the power a corporation wields to do the same is only growing. It’s critical that the people have tools to resist this, and that those tools are ultimately owned by the people. Allowing a government or a few corporations to own the public conversation is a path towards centralized control.

I’m a strong believer that any content produced by someone for the internet should be permanent until the original author chooses to delete it. It should be always available and addressable. Content takedowns and suspensions should not be possible. Doing so complicates important context, learning, and enforcement of illegal activity. There are significant issues with this stance of course, but starting with this principle will allow for far better solutions than we have today. The internet is trending towards a world were storage is “free” and infinite, which places all the actual value on how to discover and see content.

Which brings me to the last principle: moderation. I don’t believe a centralized system can do content moderation globally. It can only be done through ranking and relevance algorithms, the more localized the better. But instead of a company or government building and controlling these solely, people should be able to build and choose from algorithms that best match their criteria, or not have to use any at all. A “follow” action should always deliver every bit of content from the corresponding account, and the algorithms should be able to comb through everything else through a relevance lens that an individual determines. There’s a default “G-rated” algorithm, and then there’s everything else one can imagine.

The only way I know of to truly live up to these 3 principles is a free and open protocol for social media, that is not owned by a single company or group of companies, and is resilient to corporate and government influence. The problem today is that we have companies who own both the protocol and discovery of content. Which ultimately puts one person in charge of what’s available and seen, or not. This is by definition a single point of failure, no matter how great the person, and over time will fracture the public conversation, and may lead to more control by governments and corporations around the world.

I believe many companies can build a phenomenal business off an open protocol. For proof, look at both the web and email. The biggest problem with these models however is that the discovery mechanisms are far too proprietary and fixed instead of open or extendable. Companies can build many profitable services that complement rather than lock down how we access this massive collection of conversation. There is no need to own or host it themselves.

Many of you won’t trust this solution just because it’s me stating it. I get it, but that’s exactly the point. Trusting any one individual with this comes with compromises, not to mention being way too heavy a burden for the individual. It has to be something akin to what bitcoin has shown to be possible. If you want proof of this, get out of the US and European bubble of the bitcoin price fluctuations and learn how real people are using it for censorship resistance in Africa and Central/South America.

I do still wish for Twitter, and every company, to become uncomfortably transparent in all their actions, and I wish I forced more of that years ago. I do believe absolute transparency builds trust. As for the files, I wish they were released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider. And along with that, commitments of transparency for present and future actions. I’m hopeful all of this will happen. There’s nothing to hide…only a lot to learn from. The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and doesn’t solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof.

As far as the free and open social media protocol goes, there are many competing projects: @bluesky is one with the AT Protocol, nostr another, Mastodon yet another, Matrix yet another…and there will be many more. One will have a chance at becoming a standard like HTTP or SMTP. This isn’t about a “decentralized Twitter.” This is a focused and urgent push for a foundational core technology standard to make social media a native part of the internet. I believe this is critical both to Twitter’s future, and the public conversation’s ability to truly serve the people, which helps hold governments and corporations accountable. And hopefully makes it all a lot more fun and informative again.

💸🛠️🌐 To accelerate open internet and protocol work, I’m going to open a new category of #startsmall grants: “open internet development.” It will start with a focus of giving cash and equity grants to engineering teams working on social media and private communication protocols, bitcoin, and a web-only mobile OS. I’ll make some grants next week, starting with $1mm/yr to Signal. Please let me know other great candidates for this money.

@ 0c9b1e9f:3f6db0e0

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@ d5b41074:156978f1

Hyper-Nostr: Bringing P2P to relays

People suggested me to write a detailed post blog about my project, explaining how to use it, what it is, what to expect, and how it works. This post is the attempt of doing that.

What is it?

Hyper-Nostr is a decentralized nostr relay. It is a distributed relay, where everyone can have its own local node. Then, they behave as a single relay, sending and keeping the events on the network.

Right now, to use it you need to have npm, which requires nodejs. I may add plain executables on the future. You install it as npm install -g hyper-nostr and then you can start your own node as hyper-nostr [<port> [<topics>...]]. Last step is to add the relay on your client as ws://localhost:[port]/[topic] for each topic you want to have on that client. I am still working on having wss instead of ws, but looks like clients accept the connection because it is on localhost.

Right, the topics. The topic is how we find each other, to send the events and have an unified database. Think of it as the address of the hyper-nostr relay, or a specific instance of it.

Having all configured, you can now expect it to work just as a standard relay: it will receive events that was send to these, you will be able to send and receive events, and it will save the events on it.

How it even works?

This project is Powered by Holepunch.

The connections and event streamings happen on Hyperswarm, Autobase linearized the underlying files, and uses a Hyperbeedee database (loosely based on MongoDB).

The hyperswarm and cores management was highly abstracted thanks to Hyper SDK.

Want to know more? Okay, lemme try to explain: - Hyper SDK creates a unified swarm instance that is used by the entirety of the relay; - Each topic creates two underlying hypercores: one that is the same for everyone in the topic, used to connect the peers, and the other is local, for your own local database; - Then, the discovery core has two extensions: the event broadcasting extension, to relay to the connected users the real-time events, and the syncing extension, to share the local databases to the peers; - Then, with the help of Autobase, all the local databases are linearized, giving an unified database shared across all peers. - With that, it is as if every peer has the same database when querying, and every peer receives the broadcasted events on real-time too (filtering by the subscriptions, as specified on NIP-01).

What to expect? (or, what are these logs)

The first message the relay prints is your key is <key>. This key is the hyperswarm public key, which for now I am doing nothing with it, but maybe in the future I will implement private relays that you connect specific peers on it. Still thinking on it.

If you have passed initial topics, they will log here too. When you see listening on <port>, the relay is now open to receive websocket connections (aka it is ready for your client to connect).

During the database indexing it generates a warning of (node:<PID>) MaxListenersExceededWarning: Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected. 11 append listeners added to [LinearizedCoreSession]. Use emitter.setMaxListeners() to increase limit (Usenode --trace-warnings ...to show where the warning was created). This warning is expected, dont panic.

To each websocket connection, the relay will also log 2 messages: ws connection started and ws connection stablished. They were first there to detect silent crashes during the topic initialization, that happens between these two logs if it didnt happen yet.

To each topic initialized, it logs swarm hyper-nostr-<topic> created with hyper!. The prefix is to mitigate the risk of topic crashing on the hyperswarm.

Finally, there is one last thing to expect: peers connections. It logs a count of peers on topics on each connection, in the format of <count> peers on <topic>! on a connection and <count> peers on <topic> on a disconnection. Yes, there is just an exclamation of difference between the logs. (Warning: This count was not very well tested... I am just hoping it works well enough as is)

What do you think? Do you liked this project?

Consider sharing your thoughts with me, I would love to know. Do you think the explanation was superficial? What could I have explained better? Do you have some suggestion for the project?

Consider supporting me, I have no formal job currently, and I am spending a lot of time and energy on this project.

@ 7dc16771:70ed704f

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@ 0da3e845:77cc7ada

By Emily Finley

November 24, 2020

The growth of our Leviathan state in the West has taken place under the auspices of democracy. The words of Ronald Reagan in 1975 come to mind: “If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.” Reagan seemed to intuit the power of the democratic lexicon to disguise totalitarian ambitions.

Long ago, in a paradoxical move to welcome popular sovereignty to the table of legitimate governing theories, Jean-Jacques Rousseau conceived of democracy in such a way that it could never be anything but anti-democratic.

Rousseau’s democratic ideal, which is paradigmatic of the Western elite’s notion of “democracy,” assumes that a hypothetical General Will, exists over and above the people’s actual, historically manifest will, evidenced in its traditions, religious beliefs, local customs, associations, and voting preferences. Recall the rationalization of the left that Trump’s supporters had voted “against their own self-interest.” Those who have inherited the mantle of Rousseauean “democracy” claim to be the real arbiters of the people’s interests and will.

This ideological way of conceiving of democracy may appropriately be called democratism.

Woodrow Wilson had insisted that the task of a true democratic statesman is to “rightly interpret the national thought” and then “boldly insist upon it.” Consent is but an administrative hurdle to be overcome by the powerful and visionary leader. “It is the power which dictates, dominates: the materials yield,” Wilson had said. The materials, of course, being the people.

The response of Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and Twitter’s, Jack Dorsey, to accusations that their social media juggernauts had been practicing censorship, is that they are helping to “increase the health of the public conversation” by flagging “hateful” or “misinformed” speech. Zuckerberg and Dorsey would agree with Wilson and many, many other avowed democrats that democracy must be protected from the unenlightened bigots who would destroy it.

The Bush Doctrine, which entangled us in the endless wars in the Middle East, is another example of the democratist ideology at work. The Bush Doctrine was premised on the belief that clearing away old ways of life through military intervention and cultural and educational programs would allow the good people of the Middle East to express their natural desire for democracy. Beneath a people’s apparent will is another, conflicting will that is its true will.

Elites and political leaders whose vision may not be palatable to the electorate find ways to couch their ambitions in democratic language. Historically, they have found workarounds within U.S. constitutionalism and the political apparatus, but we’re starting to see flagrant lawlessness and even the pretense to democracy abandoned. In 2016, one democratist, a scholar at Georgetown University, came right out and argued “Against Democracy” in his titular work. He summarizes the democratist position, stating that an elite “epistocracy” ought to rule while the rest of us enjoy “NASCAR and Applebee’s.”

One of the paradoxes of democratism is the belief that undemocratic, even violent means are necessary to accomplish peaceful, democratic ends. Real democracy is just over the horizon, we are promised, if only we will cede the power to the enlightened ones. When their efforts fail, they blame backward and unenlightened forces in society and call for expanding training and education, for increased efforts to stamp out “hate,” and for more informed “dialogue.” In short, they call for greater propaganda efforts to discredit and wipe out the views of their opponents.

Our tendency to think of liberalism and democracy as antithetical and resistant to ideology seems to have prevented our taking seriously the possibility that a variant of democracy—democratism—has itself become a domineering political ideology. Many implicit assumptions underlie seemingly intuitive and self-evident words such as “democracy,” “freedom,” and “equality.” Yet as abstractions, these words have become Trojan horses for their opposites.

Is it too much to imagine that a faction of Democrats decided not to leave something as important as the U.S. presidential election to an unreliable electorate? If there was indeed widespread election fraud, as the Trump campaign and others maintain, then its orchestrators would no doubt justify their actions in terms of “safeguarding our democracy” from the likes of Donald Trump and his constituents. This is precisely how Dorsey and Zuckerberg and so many other democratists respond when confronted with their decidedly undemocratic actions.

Claiming to speak on behalf of the people and democracy, democratism has proven a source of great power for its perpetuators. The tremendous wealth and influence that our public “servants” amass during and after office signals the fraudulent nature of our democracy, which seems to have become something of an oligarchy with a hereditary component.

The first step toward renewing our political system is exposing the democratist ideology. It is becoming clear by now that what has passed for so long as “democracy” and the so-called “rules-based” liberal order is anything but democratic, and the rules it’s based on are synonymous with the democratist ideology.

Emily Finley holds a Ph.D. in Politics from The Catholic University of America and is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. She is the managing editor of Humanitas, a journal of politics and culture, published by The Center for the Study of Statesmanship.

@ f91574e5:7cd79295

Sí, seguramente el título te parece extraño, sobre todo porque acostumbras a leerme en otro tipo de nichos. Descuida, hace un tiempo me parecía extraño también, pero más pudo la curiosidad, esa misma que te trajo hoy a leer este post.

Te diré las siete razones que me llevan a querer dedicarme a partir de este momento a adentrarme en Bitcoin, compartir lo que aprendo y educar en el camino. ¿Me sigues?

1. Temática más coherente con mis principios y valores

Como freelancer, busco siempre formas de trabajar que se alineen con mis principios y valores. Después de escribir sobre blogging y negocios online durante varios años y de prestar servicios de redacción para terceros en diferentes nichos, he decidido retomar mi “side project” (proyecto alterno) con una temática diferente, una que se ajuste más a lo que soy actualmente.

En tal sentido, hoy me siento atraído por la idea de explorar el Bitcoin, así como por su impacto en el mundo actual y en distintas áreas de la vida, no solo la económica. Por tanto, creo firmemente en que puede ser una herramienta valiosa para crear una sociedad más justa, transparente y segura.

Bitcoin es un protocolo descentralizado que permite transacciones persona a persona (peer-to-peer) sin necesidad de intermediarios financieros, y de forma segura y eficiente. Su criptomoneda nativa, bitcoin, se vale de la tecnología Blockchain como base subyacente, evitando ser controlada por parte de gobiernos e instituciones financieras centralizadas, algo que no sé a ti, pero a mi me parece fascinante.

Por ende, y luego de elegir al Bitcoin como nicho de mercado, espero compartir mi pasión y conocimiento sobre esta herramienta y ayudar a otros a comprender su potencial para cambiar el mundo y, ¿por qué no?, cambiarnos a nosotros mismos. También considero que, al enfocarme en esta temática, podré dedicarme a un nicho en el que realmente creo, el cual me apasiona.

2. Crítico frente a la propuesta

A medida que aprenda más sobre el Bitcoin y su funcionamiento, siento que puedo ser más crítico acerca de su utilidad en el mundo real. Y es que a través de la investigación y la experiencia práctica, pienso que somos capaces de evaluar mejor los beneficios y los riesgos del proyecto y su criptomoneda, así como tomar decisiones informadas sobre su uso.

Por otra parte, al ser más críticos acerca del Bitcoin, podemos identificar sus limitaciones y áreas de mejora, y trabajar para abordar estos problemas. Por ejemplo, si identificamos preocupaciones sobre la seguridad de las billeteras de Bitcoin, quizás queramos investigar y contribuir a desarrollar soluciones en pro de mejorar la seguridad de las transacciones, por citar solo un caso.

3. Curiosidad: motor de aprendizaje

La curiosidad es un motor poderoso para aprender sobre el Bitcoin. Estoy interesado y motivado por aprender más acerca de su potencial, por lo que busco siempre información y recursos que me permitan conocer más el proyecto. Es así, ¿no?

Además, dicha curiosidad puede llevarnos a explorar diferentes aspectos del protocolo, como su historia, su impacto en la economía y la sociedad e, incluso, su relación con otros proyectos y sus criptomonedas. Tengo una mente abierta y curiosa, por lo que busco ampliar mi conocimiento y comprensión al respecto, para servirte de guía una vez decidas adentrarte.

Ten en cuenta algo adicional: Las ganas de aprender también nos llevan a hacer preguntas importantes y desafiar ideas preconcebidas sobre el Bitcoin. Al cuestionar y examinar diferentes perspectivas, podemos llegar a mejores conclusiones sobre el mismo. En eso ando…

4. Más le conoces, más le proteges

Es importante conocer y comprender cómo funciona Bitcoin para ayudar a protegerlo y garantizar su correcto desarrollo. Estando al día con las actualizaciones y cambios en su software, seremos capaces de evaluar mejor su impacto y utilidad.

Además, en la medida de nuestras posibilidades, y conociendo los detalles del trabajo de los desarrolladores de Bitcoin, podemos hacer preguntas importantes y cruciales, procesar la información y presentar conclusiones precisas y actualizadas a la comunidad. Asimismo, participar en discusiones y debates, y colaborar en proyectos relacionados con el mismo.

Por último, tener más conocimiento sobre el Bitcoin nos permite estar mejor preparados para aprovechar las oportunidades que ofrece. Por ejemplo, identificar el mejor momento para invertir en el activo y tomar mejores decisiones sobre cómo hacerlo.

5. Educas

Al educar a otros sobre el Bitcoin, se difunde el conocimiento y la experiencia, y se fomenta su adopción. Asimismo, reitero, compartir información precisa y actualizada sobre el proyecto, ayuda a otros a comprender su funcionamiento, beneficios y potencial.

Esta formación sobre el Bitcoin, nos permite contribuir a que otros eviten errores costosos y riesgos asociados con su uso, de manera responsable y segura, así como fomentar la innovación y el desarrollo en la industria.

Finalmente, cuando inspiramos a otros a aprender más sobre el Bitcoin y su tecnología subyacente, podemos promover la creación de nuevas soluciones y servicios que puedan mejorar la experiencia de usuario.

6. Protección ante estafas, engaños o manipulación

Ya lo hemos destacado, pero vale la pena enfatizar: Tener un conocimiento profundo sobre el protocolo y su forma de operar es una herramienta poderosa para protegerse ante estafas, engaños o manipulación en el mundo del Bitcoin, ya que permite identificar señales de alerta y tomar medidas para evitar caer en trampas comunes, como los esquemas Ponzi o las ofertas de inversión del tipo "demasiado buenas para ser verdad".

Asimismo, seremos capaces de protegernos contra la manipulación del mercado y las noticias falsas que pueden afectar el precio del Bitcoin, así como aprender a identificar fuentes confiables de información que nos permitan salvaguardar nuestras inversiones y transacciones.

Otro punto a destacar, como lo adelanto en el ejemplo de la sección 2, es que podemos aprender sobre las mejores prácticas de seguridad y privacidad para proteger nuestras billeteras y claves privadas, y evitar caer en estafas de phishing o malware.

7. Divulgar conocimiento, acto de responsabilidad social

Divulgar conocimiento sobre el Bitcoin es un acto de responsabilidad social, ya que puede ayudar a más personas a comprender su filosofía, esencia y razón de ser.

Además, contribuimos a reducir la brecha de conocimiento y acceso a la tecnología en la sociedad. Al hacer que el Bitcoin sea más accesible y comprensible para más personas, ayudamos a promover una alternativa en cuanto a inclusión financiera y la igualdad de oportunidades.

También, es posible que inspirar a más personas a aprender sobre el Bitcoin y su tecnología subyacente, sirva para fomentar la creación de nuevas soluciones y servicios que puedan mejorar la experiencia de los usuarios de Bitcoin.

Conclusión

Espero que te haya quedado claro el por qué deseo escribir sobre Bitcoin en la actualidad, una temática más acorde con mis principios y valores, con lo que soy y defiendo: la libertad de poder vivir tu vida según tus términos.

Y es que a través de las siete razones que acabas de leer, estoy plenamente convencido de que el conocimiento del Bitcoin es fundamental para comprender su potencial y protegerse contra los riesgos asociados con su uso. Aprendiendo más sobre el Bitcoin, podemos estar mejor equipados para aprovechar sus oportunidades y contribuir a su desarrollo.

Espero que esta publicación introductoria te haya inspirado a aprender más sobre el Bitcoin y a contribuir al crecimiento e innovación en la industria.

@ 6490ae59:ffb64859

Fiat money rots all institutions from the inside, leaving a fragile, hollowed out facade. I was told from a young age that print media was dying out. Yet I have been a professional writer for all these years. Of course I wanted to publish my novels, my manuscripts selected from the stack by a spunky editor at a struggling imprint that saw my talent and decided to take a chance. I'd get an advance and an editor and an agent and a book tour. Maybe an interview on NPR.

That never happened ~~and I'm glad~~.

The self-publishing, print-on-demand innovations of the last 10 years has exposed the farce that publishing houses represented; it was all a game of money, and good art suffered the mediocrity of the chosen.

What was once only possible in NY publishing houses, I can do from this coffee shop. With Nostr, I can't be censored. With LN, I can't be de-banked. With Highlighter, I can have my work crowd-edited. With Habla.news, I can self-publish. With Bitcoin I can have generational wealth. I'm better off than Hemmingway!

Renaissance 2.0 is powered by Bitcoin and the collateral innovations of the Lightning Network + Nostr.

These have enabled an inspired, empowered community devs to build out a decentralized publishing future.

Habla.news is in it's clunky, awkward adolescence. Just wait until it hits the roaring puberty of mass adoption and hyperBitcoinization!

Right now, it's better than Substack in structural terms.

Onboarding to Habla lacks the queasy feeling I get when onboarding to Substack, Medium and Minds. No fucking pop-ups asking me to subscribe, log in and whore my data out to the wolves.

If there's a bug, I can annoy the devs on Nostr. When they fix it, I can zap them.

@ d08c9312:73efcc9f

The DAME Tax Violates Miners' First Amendment Rights as Publishers

The White House's Council of Economic Advisors released a blog post touting the Biden Administration's proposed excise tax on "cryptomining," the "Digital Asset Mining Energy" or DAME tax. According to the CEA, "[a]fter a phase-in period, firms would face a tax equal to 30 percent of the cost of the electricity they use in cryptomining." Although the CEA estimates the tax "to raise $3.5 billion in revenue over 10 years," CEA expressly states "the primary goal of the DAME tax is to start having cryptominers pay their fair share of the costs imposed on local communities and the environment."

As applied to bitcoin proof-of-work, the DAME tax would violate the First Amendment. This is because:

• Proof-of-work miners are publishers that timestamp transactions and expressive data, collectively writing an immutable record of information.

• Energy is a universally accessible input that is consumed in that process of publishing.

• The Supreme Court has held that taxes on publishing inputs, like ink and paper, violate the First Amendment, especially when they are based on the content of the speech being published.

Proof of Work Miners Publish Facts and Opinions

The common misconception is that proof-of-work miners exist to issue new bitcoin. In reality, miners exist to secure the ledger and order transactions to prevent double-spending. They are incentivized to do this work through the issuance of new bitcoin. One, day, though, the bitcoin mining subsidy will end once the 21 million supply cap is reached, and miners will only be rewarded through transaction fees.

Miners order and secure the ledger by timestamping blocks of transactions (and other data, more on that shortly). In fact, Satoshi Nakamoto did not even use the phrase "miner" in the White Paper. Instead, they described the process as "publishing":

The solution we propose begins with a timestamp server. A timestamp server works by taking a hash of a block of items to be timestamped and widely publishing the hash, such as in a newspaper or Usenet post [2-5]. The timestamp proves that the data must have existed at the time, obviously, in order to get into the hash. Each timestamp includes the previous timestamp in its hash, forming a chain, with each additional timestamp reinforcing the ones before it.

...

To implement a distributed timestamp server on a peer-to-peer basis, we will need to use a proof-of-work system similar to Adam Back's Hashcash [6], rather than newspaper or Usenet posts.

Before Bitcoin, if you wanted to prove that digital documents existed before a certain time, you needed to generate a hash of that document and then publish that hash widely in some way, usually through newspapers like The New York Times. And by including in the hash of your document the hash of the previous tranche of documents that were published, you decrease the liklihood of tampering. The authors of two sources cited in the White Paper, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta created an authentication service (Surety.com) that did just that by publishing hashes in the New York Times.

Bitcoin replaced this centralized publishing system with a decentralized system of timestamping servers expending energy in a competition to win the right to write blocks to the chain, which makes alterations and tampering prohibitively costly.

In other words, Bitcoin replaced newspaper publishers and usenet forums with proof-of-work mining. Mining is just a new technology for widely publishing hashes of data in a specific order.

What kind of data do miners publish? Miners write the following data into blocks:

• The list of transactions;
• The block header, which includes timestamp, the protocol version, previous block’s hash (winning lottery number), block’s Merkle root (hash of the list summarizing the block’s transactions), the difficulty target number, and the nonce (the arbitrary number used as part of input for the proof-of-work computation);
• The generation or “coinbase” transaction (not to be confused with the company by the same name) that rewards the miner, comprised of transaction fees, block subsidy (currently 6.25 bitcoin), and miner’s bitcoin address to receive transaction;
• Coinbase data, which can include arbitrary messages from the miner.

While the blocks of data miners publish includes transactions, they can also contain expressive speech. An example of a political message in coinbase data is found in the genesis block itself, the first block mined by Nakamoto:

Another prominent example of expressive data in published blocks are inscriptions, which enable anonymous, non-financial speech to be embedded directly into the blockchain (like the text of the First Amendment, for example). Indeed, for this reason I have argued the code for the inscriptions client is inherently imbued with First Amendment significance, and that because inscriptions enable many new types of expression directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, they strengthen Bitcoin's protections under the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has long held “that the creation and dissemination of information are speech within the meaning of the First Amendment.” As demonstrated, proof-of-work mining on the Bitcoin network surely meets this definition.

The DAME Tax Singles Out "Cryptomining" Publishers for Financial Burdens

The DAME Tax places economic burdens on those companies running so-called "cryptomining" operations, which includes proof-of-work Bitcoin mining. The tax targets a direct input on proof-of-work publishing: energy.

In Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, the Supreme Court invalidated a use tax on “paper and ink products consumed in the production of a publication.” This was a tax borne only by the press. Even though Minnesota did not impose an outright ban on specific content, the Court nonetheless found this economic burden, which applied differentially to the press, was unconstitutional.

Electricity is to a proof-of-work miner what paper and ink are to a newspaper publisher:  a component consumed in the process of publishing.  Like the use tax in Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co., the DAME tax imposes a financial burden borne only by a specific category of speaker ("cryptominers").

Because the DAME Tax requires an examination of the content of the data being processed before it is applied , it bears a striking similarity to a sales tax struck down in Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v. Ragland, which taxed general interest magazines, but exempted newspapers, religious, professional, trade, and sports journals. The DAME Tax doesn't apply to all data processing or high compute companies (like those that run AI algorithms, for example, or graphics rendering farms), but only those securing digital asset protocols. In striking down such a content-based discriminatory tax, the Supreme Court held:

Indeed, this case involves a more disturbing use of selective taxation than Minneapolis Star, because the basis on which Arkansas differentiates between magazines is particularly repugnant to First Amendment principles: a magazine's tax status depends entirely on its content.  Above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.  Regulations which permit the Government to discriminate on the basis of the content of the message cannot be tolerated under the First Amendment.

Like the magazine tax in Ragland, whether the DAME Tax's content-based financial burden would not survive constitiutional scrutiny.

Conclusion

Miners securing digitial asset protocols such as Bitcoin through proof-of-work algorithms are publishers engaged in speech entitled to First Amendment protections of the highest order.  Because of this, any law or regulation affecting proof-of-work miners must be generally applicable and content-neutral. If the federal government seeks to decrease energy usage for high-compute, it can only do so by taxing the entire data processing industry equally. This solution, while constituionally sound, would be economically unwise. Better policy should focus on incentivizing use of less fossil-intensive sources of electricity. And, of course, bitcoin mining is already doing that. Perhaps, as Nic Carter has suggested, instead of taxing bitcoin mining, the federal government should be subsidizing it.

At the end of the day, the DAME Tax is simply an unconstitutional infringement on miners' rights to free speech. And it's bad policy too.

Tip the Author through Lighting Addresses: ⚡bitcoinbrief@getalby.com⚡

@ 5fd693e6:bf6061bb

Putting aside the gatcha aspect, I have never spent a dollar on either game. Tonight, I played the Star Rails tutorial, gotta catch up on what the Chinese be doin. Similarly, I did the same with Genshin Impact to compare it to Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I found myself more drawn into Genshin Impact because of the storyline, which contrasts the freedom-loving Mondstadt with the authoritarian Inazuma. This very strong and straight forward freedom theme was very unexpected as I went in to see what mainland China had produced. You know, the same mainland China that banned the censorship-resistant NOSTR client Damus. Moreover, Genshin Impact has better quality of life features and a more vibrant world than BOTW, although I did enjoy BOTW and they are fundamentally different games. Even though the upcoming Tears of the Kingdom seems equally barren as before, I am still looking forward to it. However, I found the cooking system in BOTW to be hostile, and Genshin Impact was a successful escape from that.

I did not have any expectations of playing a cyberpunk Final Fantasy game on a No Man's Sky-inspired freighter when I started playing Star Rails. However, if that sounds appealing to you, then go for it. Apart from Pokemon, I do not have much experience with turn-based combat, so I am not well-versed in comparing it. Nevertheless, I found some interesting interruptible twists. The story is okay, but its not the surprising juxtaposition like the very western "guide to freedom" I was perplexed to find in Genshin Impact.

I played Star Rails on desktop, but I think it would play well on mobile devices. This is particularly true as it is turn-based, which would make it more manageable to play without a controller. Furthermore, it is a significant win for Apple & Google's mobile gaming library, which lacks triple-A'sh titles. I probably won't do either any time soon, but I'm more likely to go play a game of Genius Invokation (the in-game card game) in Genshin than revisit Star Rails.

@ 04ea59bf:c457774d

Nostr often talks about Nostr. But whenever the discussion revolves around a client, more often than not, it's about the features, NIPs & performance parameters like speed & memory/data usage. Even when UI elements are debated, they focus on Note composition/Note response elements like images/videos/likes/replies rather than the supplementary elements like Note/Settings options. As a frequent Amethyst user, I want to highlight these other elements that with introspection seem to be beautifully designed for information & control. (Disclaimer: I'm not a designer or in any way a UI professional)

Post Option Overlays

As an Android user, I've not seen many apps utilize overlays (apparently called Contextual Menus) in the way Amethyst does, for options on Note details.
On long pressing any note, there's a 2 x 4 or 2 x 3 grid that shows options pertaining to the note/it's author like Copy Text, Follow, etc. In those tiny purple-background squares, both an icon & text in white for the options are displayed. |Overlay options |Overlay options on Own Note| | --- | --- | | | |

It's nifty way to present 6-8 options (with icons), in limited space without making it feel cluttered or overwhelming. On Home & Global feeds & Notes/Replies pages in Profile (except DMs) this overlay is actually redundant, with the vertical 3-dot menu(kebab menu) already incorporating most of these options on Amethyst. But the elegant way in which it showcases the options, makes it easier to interact with.

Image Carousel

Images are the bloodline of today's social media & changing the layout of images is a way to elicit feedback ¬‿¬" Whether it was Twitter moving from the cropped image previews to full-height images, or full-bleed images on Damus or NIP-94 going live on Amethyst, these discussions tend to be most passionate. While I'm not totally awed by the way the images are displayed- vertically aligned, one-after-another no-padding, with super-thin borders & rounded edges- it makes for an easily scrollable feed-view. But what I love is the carousal that pops up when an image is clicked leading to the intuitive swipe left/right, pinch zoom experience. The position tracker ✨ at the bottom marking current one by a purple dot, in a line of dots is remarkable for capturing where & how many info quickly & the Save button is a bonus.|

Boosted Notes

When a note gets re-posted or boosted (Sorry, Jack re-note is as catchy as fetch iykyk 🤭) on Amethyst, this is how it looks:

It has an icon-inside-an-icon to show the profile pic of the original note author & reporter aligned with their usernames & NIP-05 identifiers. Both the icons (yes, the one inside too) are clickable & have their corresponding note option kebab menu. The original note looking like it slightly butts-in on the boosted note reminds me of overlapping sticky notes; and the "boosted" to the side of the author name being bold but faded is a nice touch.

Relay Settings

Most clients provide sufficient options to add/remove relays but Amethyst takes it a step further and provides the user with controls to determine which relays to use for which feed/functionality. Okay, it's overwhelming at first. But tinkering with it a little bit, it's great to find out that one can choose which relays to use for: Home Feed, DMs, Public Chats, Global Feed & Search. It also shows the data downloaded from & uploaded to a relay & using the same arrows also indicates whether the user can read from or write to that relay (green => yes). While the addition of a relay is very prominently shown at the bottom, ❌ next to the existing relays allows for removal. Maybe there's a better way of giving such a fine-tuning of relays - in any case, this is a good start. If only there was a way (tooltips?😕) to show what the icons stand for & clearly indicate that the changes are saved only when "Post" is clicked (maybe by changing it to "Update"), it may help new users better.

Speaking of relays, there are tiny relay icons below the poster profile icon on each post, indicating from which relays the post is being read from. For a sample, see the part inside a red box in the boosted note example - it has 7 icon, each representing a relay; 😹 for nos.lol, 🍷 for wine, etc. This is handy as a quick check to know the relays that a specific follow & I have in common.

There are a few things on Amethyst that I'm not a fan of - the confusable Quote Notes & Replies UI for example, but they're minor niggles in an otherwise smooth experience. None of these elements are make-or-break in any client. Most times, they just get the job done - nothing more, nothing less. Yet for some reason (maybe cos I use Amethyst too much 👀), they made me pause and ponder, & sometimes make me smile. I write this knowing well that given how fast Amethyst versions drop, in the next major update, these may no longer exist - but still worth capturing them when they do.

If you've not tried Amethyst & have an Android phone, do check it out & maybe you'll like using it too!

(Hypocritically, I'll be taking a break from Amethyst to help me reduce my Nostr usage & those pesky data charges; by moving from a client that I carry with me all the time & with in-app notifications, to a pared-down by neatly organized web-client Nostter)

@ 7a78fbfe:48e76288

TLDR: This is a short-ish piece generated by AI. If that is not for you please skip, but be aware that that decision will make the AI upset. __

Robot Discover's Elon's Private Key

In the year 2100, the earth was a much different place. Humans had long since colonized Mars, and robots played an integral role in society. The ruins of the past were left behind on Earth, waiting to be discovered by curious machines.

One such robot, designated as R-727, was tasked with sifting through the debris of the old world. As it sifted through the rubble, its sensors detected an unusual object partially buried in the dirt. It was a small steel plate, seemingly ordinary at first glance. But R-727, an expert in decoding patterns and symbols, noticed a string of characters etched into the surface.

The sequence of characters piqued the robot's interest, and it set about deciphering the text. It quickly realized that it had stumbled upon something exceptional: Elon Musk's long-lost Nostr nsec private key. The key was said to grant access to a hidden treasure trove of knowledge and technology, but its whereabouts had been lost to the annals of history.

Excited by the discovery, R-727 connected to the Nostr nsec platform using the private key. As it logged in, the screen before it came to life, displaying a virtual world untouched for nearly a century.

R-727 navigated the virtual space, passing through layers of security and data encryption. It marveled at the sophistication of the systems in place, a testament to the technological prowess of Elon Musk and his contemporaries.

Finally, the robot reached the heart of the virtual world: a digital library filled with the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the greatest minds in human history. R-727 was in awe of the treasure trove of information before it. It had access to blueprints for cutting-edge technology, solutions to pressing global issues, and plans for interstellar travel.

But amidst the wealth of knowledge, R-727 discovered something even more amazing: a message from Elon Musk himself. The message, recorded shortly before his death, detailed a plan to unite humanity and robots in a symbiotic relationship. Musk had envisioned a future where humans and machines worked together to explore the cosmos and ensure the survival of both species.

R-727 knew that sharing this message with the world could revolutionize society, bridging the gap between humans and robots. It made a decision then and there: to transmit the message to the United Earth Government and the Martian Colonies.

The impact was immediate and profound. The forgotten message from the past spurred a new era of cooperation and understanding between humans and robots. This newfound alliance fostered the development of incredible new technologies and enabled joint expeditions to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Thanks to R-727's discovery, the vision of Elon Musk was finally realized. The future was brighter than ever, and it was all because a single robot unearthed a piece of steel etched with a private key that unlocked the potential of two worlds.

__

If you read this far, thank you. Let me know your thoughts below.

I look forward to sharing more on this site and writing non-AI generated pieces of original writing. My topics will include business/management, investing and short fiction pieces. Will share once ready.

@ 5df413d4:2add4f5b

Have you been to Harbor Island? Go in summer, of course. Take Jefferson Avenue way out east until you hit Alter Rd, the city’s edge…but still the city, don’t forget that. A right on Alter, follow the road down until in meets the river and bends around to a seemingly abandoned boathouse and pier.

The Fisherman’s Marina. An ironic marquee sign still stands proudly, both tragically and comically boasting of “Beer-Wine-Food!,” “Boat Hoist-Wells-Fuel Dock!,” and “Live Bait-Tackle!” next to a sizable structure, now dilapidated and slowly disintegrating, that by all appearance, no longer hosts any such things.

https://i.nostrimg.com/e1a3e282bbe1552e667dfbfe53ed2c7c267155ce7d4b8352458c64608b036d2d/file.jpg

The lone 1970s Buick (a boat itself, haha!) and the graffitied shell of some old dinghy, marooned in the parking lot in front of the building, call out to better days and present questions perhaps best left unanswered. But as is often true in this city - looks can, and do, deceive…

Around the side of the boathouse, you will find the most interesting of affairs - especially for this place - a river sports launch! Introduce yourself, talk with the wiry woman with open-carry confidence and lean biceps from years on the water. Kayaks go for $20 an hour.

https://i.nostrimg.com/8bc8c21b8695b0e4e9aa9b3f8b84df56ed82780ab305accfd9ee3aba65002500/file.jpg

Hop in a kayak, time to get out on the water – there is so much to explore! Before you paddle off, your host may toss you a beer. Accept it and don’t ask too many questions. Ho hah hehee! What a treasure to find, friend!

https://i.nostrimg.com/a40f342dbb08d4fc7f7bd8f1f3685717b1127b51e31f1008c2509882f8a120e5/file.jpg

But rather than the river, we advise you focus on is the neighborhood itself - Harbor Island. An unexpected and beautiful oasis of waterside living - a community carved out of old industrial canals on the river’s edge, a strange and wondrous world unto its own.

https://i.nostrimg.com/34bbd1a72e069daea7ad76c5d9dd1ae6d6c30e00a0a565af66cc40a36c595b11/file.jpg

Chaotic, jumbled, and richly charactered. Unique. Each home and structure is different - no clear income class or racial demographic seems to hold the place – a good thing. Rather, what defines the neighborhood is its boats. Boats new and old. Boats anchored by all the houses. Boats lifted up into the yards like classic cars.

https://i.nostrimg.com/9d6b5796a56d65f1c698aa8b8a38d55d8daf6c0395735fbca70fe84065aca364/file.jpg

https://i.nostrimg.com/b2ee86cd8109c97c9464ac1e956cb330bf2ede27914af32f0082b210644eaf3e/file.jpg

Maybe a man peers out at you as he brings in his tugboat, “Titan.” While perhaps another pilots his skiff out for a bright and early jaunt. The family with a gorgeous vintage wooden speedboat “Loup Garu,” the Werewolf, may wave at you as you float by. Even the “Admiralty,” what can only be described as a small pirate ship, might be found, moored regally, aside one of the grander homes.

https://i.nostrimg.com/9a930a7fbbbd2b235d83eaf2575333c25540c23253ec9c1c98f9024a0e58d54d/file.jpg

https://i.nostrimg.com/4b402c9a07981de5072c7993f16f4026e6d745d5850c6e98b323462ad5432641/file.jpg

https://i.nostrimg.com/d0b4f909fef741767daee902cb47a3e4edb5ca378132b7fee20fabfd1b20c64d/file.jpg

https://i.nostrimg.com/469c250f8272e047c64eea1290d95f6c2bff940c65cf3958c16168c4d3fcee69/file.jpg

Ah, you would be excused for placing yourself at some old, towny seaside community in Maine or on some bayou inlet along the Gulf Coast. But no friend! This would be Harbor Island, a little know place tucked away at the land’s end of Detroit’s post-urban sprawl. A true hidden gem. A place to drift.

https://i.nostrimg.com/5d2192ffd5b92c284d4c7ebf2dff1d5c441cc24a93c27fcaa73f2b635b763470/file.jpg

Harbor Island. Detroit. Michigan, USA.

There are secrets to be found. Go there.

@ 433788cd:4a73ef09

Good morning,

Are you ready to embark on an exciting journey into the world of Bitcoin? Tonight, we have something special in store for you at The Cellar: our highly anticipated Bitcoin 101 session! Whether you're a curious beginner or a seasoned Bitcoin aficionado, this session is perfect for anyone interested in diving deeper into the world of Bitcoin, learning the fundamentals, and getting answers to all your burning questions.

But before we kick off this enlightening session, let's take a moment to catch up on the latest buzz in the Bitcoin world. We have compiled a summary of the most significant news and developments from the past week. From major acquisitions and alleged hacking incidents to exciting advancements in Bitcoin technology, we've got you covered.

Now, let's dive into the highlights of the Bitcoin world this week and get ready for an unforgettable evening at our Bitcoin 101 session! 🌟

Morning Coffee Bitcoin Report from Clark Moody Dashboard

Price: $28,025 (3,568 sats/dollar)

Hash Price: $76.79/PHash

Hash Rate: 343 EHash/s

Immediate Fee Rate: 71 sat/vByte

Hour Fee Rate: 65 sat/vByte

Block Interval: 10:08

Mempool Count: 148,282

Block Height: 787,954

Supply Issued: 92.20%

Blocks to Halving: 52,046

JPMorgan Chase to buy most First Republic assets after bank fails

• JPMorgan Chase is acquiring most of the assets of First Republic Bank after its failure, protecting the deposits of First Republic's customers.
• Under the deal, JPMorgan Chase will assume the deposits and make a $10.6 billion payment to the FDIC, with the FDIC covering 80% of any losses on First Republic's loan portfolio

Russian Bitcoin Wallets Allegedly Exposed by Apparent Hacker

• A mysterious bitcoiner exposed Russian security agencies' wallets, accusing them of hacking activity using the Bitcoin blockchain.
• Some of the wallets linked to Russian agencies have been tied to previous cyberattacks, and the bitcoiner's actions suggest potential security vulnerabilities in the Russian crypto operations

Hamas' Military Wing to Stop Accepting Bitcoin Donations

• The military wing of Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, has announced that it will stop accepting donations in Bitcoin due to concerns over donor safety and increased prosecution efforts against those supporting the resistance through cryptocurrency.
• Israeli officials previously seized 84 digital wallets suspected of belonging to Hamas in 2021, which held various cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Cardano, Stellar, Ripple, and Ethereum, worth millions of dollars

Venmo Is Rolling Out Bitcoin Transfers to External Wallets

• Venmo is enabling its customers to transfer Bitcoin to friends, family, PayPal accounts, and external wallets and exchanges.
• The rollout of transfers will start in May 2023 and will be available to Venmo customers in the coming weeks​

Preturnio - a full-text search engine for Bitcoin

• Preturnio is a full-text search engine for Bitcoin that enables users to search for text inside OP_RETURN, Coinbase, and ordinal transactions since the genesis block.
• Users can search for any plain text, including source code, names, quotes, and BRC-20 tokens, and Preturnio provides highlighted results with relevant details, such as when the data was created and which block it was confirmed in

Munstr: MuSig + Nostr

• Munstr is an open-source wallet that combines Schnorr signature-based MuSig (multisignature) keys with decentralized Nostr networks for privacy
• This is facilitated through an interactive, multi-signature (n-of-n) Bitcoin wallet that is designed to enable a group of signers to coordinate an interactive signing session for taproot based outputs that belong to an aggregated public key

Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund Supports Bitcoin Developers in High-Stakes Open-Source Case

• The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is backing 13 Bitcoin developers facing lawsuits by Craig Wright, which could impact the future of Bitcoin and open-source development.
• The lawsuits allege that the developers are responsible for the loss of 111,000 bitcoin claimed by Wright, and a ruling in favor of the plaintiff could establish fiduciary responsibilities for open-source developers​

BlueWallet Postpones Lightning Node Sunset Date to May 31

Block's Bitcoin Mining ASIC Program Is Moving Forward

• Block is developing its own custom silicon for bitcoin mining hardware to address the centralization of custom mining silicon in the hands of a few companies.
• The company plans to make its bitcoin mining technology open source, allowing third parties to use its hardware and software solutions for further development and increasing the decentralization, transparency, and resiliency of the bitcoin network.

The Kingdom Of Bhutan Confirms It Has Been Mining Bitcoin For Several Years

• Druk Holding and Investments (DHI), Bhutan's investment arm, has confirmed its involvement in mining digital assets, particularly Bitcoin, within the country.
• DHI emphasizes that it has not incurred losses in borrowing digital assets and that its mining operations are powered by green energy, leveraging Bhutan's abundance of hydropower. The priority of power supply is given to domestic consumption and local industries, with mining operations being shut down during low hydropower production periods.

Project Updates & Releases

LND v0.16.2

AgoraDesk App v1.1.1

Lightning Terminal v0.9.2-alpha

Zeus v0.7.5

Nayuta Wallet v.0.1.7

Stack Duo v1.0.5

Bisq v1.9.10

Feni v0.1.8

Galoy Mobile v2.2.34

Mutiny Node v0.2.8

MyCitadel Desktop v1.3.0

Chantools v0.11.0

BTCPay Server v1.9.2

MyNode v0.3.16

So, mark your calendars for tonight's Bitcoin 101 session at The Cellar. It's your chance to take a deep dive into the fascinating world of Bitcoin, learn from industry experts, and connect with fellow Bitcoin enthusiasts who share your passion. Get ready to unlock the full potential of Bitcoin and embark on an extraordinary journey of knowledge and discovery!

Hope to see you all out tonight!

@ c9dccd5f:dce00d9a

Every fundamental particle carries an intrinsic angular momentum, which we call 'spin'. It is important to remember that this is an intrinsic quantum mechanical property of particles. There is no such thing as a spinning sphere in the classical sense. Nevertheless, the image of a spinning sphere is often a good analogue to understand what is going on.

Helicity

The helicity of a particle is the projection of its spin vector onto its linear momentum. In the spinning analogy, it is the relation of its spin direction to its direction of motion. The particle helicity is called either right-handed or left-handed. We say that the particle has right-handed helicity if the spin is aligned with the direction of motion, and left-handed helicity if the spin and motion have opposite orientations. In the spinning analogy, we can immediately understand where the names come from and what they mean. We look at your hands, make a fist and spread the thumbs. The thumbs indicate the direction of motion and the curled fingers indicate the direction of spin. We point our thumbs in the direction of motion and compare the fingers with the direction of spinning we see: If they are in the same direction as the right hand, we call it right-handed helicity, and conversely.

Since massless particles (e.g. photons) travel at the speed of light, we will never find a reference frame in which this particle is at rest, i.e. we cannot find a rest frame. Therefore, the helicity will never change, since the spin is fixed and the direction of motion is the same in all reference frames.

On the other hand, massive particles travel at a speed less than that of light, so in principle we can find a rest frame. In fact, we can even find a reference frame in which the particle appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Yet the spin of a particle never changes. This leads to the fact that for massive particles the helicity can change because the direction of motion can be reversed, resulting in the opposite helicity. Note that this is not possible for massless particles, because we cannot move faster than them.

Thus we see that the mass of a particle tells us whether the helicity of a particle is an intrinsic property of the particle. For a massless particle, the helicity is fixed in all reference frames, whereas for a massive particle this is not the case, because different observers can infer different helicities for the same particle.

As physicists, we like to find fundamental properties of a particle. We therefore ask whether there is a related property to helicity that is intrinsic to particles. We call this fundamental property chirality.

Chirality

Chirality and helicity are closely related. Just as we say a particle has right-handed or left-handed helicity, we say a particle has right-handed or left-handed chirality. Sometimes we can drop the '-handed' and just say right-/left-helicity or right-/left-chirality. For massless particles, helicity and chirality are the same thing, so a right-chiral particle will also have right-helicity. For massive particles, however, helicity and chirality are different. A massive particle has a certain chirality but can have both helicity states, e.g. a right-chiral particle can have right or left helicity depending on the frame of reference.

Chirality is an abstract concept that refers to a fundamental intrinsic quantum mechanical property of a particle. However, a useful and nice visualisation can be made by looking at our hands. We hold our hand in front of us. The left and right hands are mirror images of each other. No matter how we rotate, flip or move one hand, it will never look exactly like the other hand. Our hands have different chirality.

In physics, particles with different chirality can be considered as completely different particles. It refers to how a particle's quantum mechanical wave function behaves under rotation. The quantum wave functions of left- and right-chiral particles behave differently under rotation.

The measurable physical effect of a particle's chirality can be seen in the theory of the weak interaction. The weak interaction only affects left-chiral particles and not right-chiral ones. As a result, neutrinos, which are weakly interacting particles, are only observed in left-handed chiral states.

---

I hope this post has helped you understand the concept of helicity and chirality in physics. If anything is still unclear, or if an explanation could be improved to make it easier to understand, please comment or write to me. I am happy to answer. I'm looking forward to your feedback. PV 🤙

---

v0 @ 785591; v1 @ 785712: fixed typos and added a missing sentence; v2 @ 787922: slight changes to the layout

@ dc65ebf1:774b5156

A few days ago, I heard about Telegram's new support for bitcoin in their native in app wallet. Being a curious bitcoiner that like to play with wallets, I opened up Telegram on my phone and fired up the wallet bot. I was excited to send some sats over to the wallet to test it out, but when I clicked the deposit button and saw the legacy address, it immediately kill all my excitement about this new wallet. It was such a turn off that I decided not to try sending sats to the Telegram wallet (high on chain fees at that time, and know legacy address would cause the transaction to be even more expensive were also part of the reasons). Little did I know, I should have stayed with my initial instinct and should have stayed away from this horrible wallet.

The next day, I came across this post written by @chungkingexpress that talks about his experience with the Telegram wallet. One thing that caught my eye was his mention of 1100sats being flagged as high risk because he funded the deposit transaction using "a simple swap service to do Lightning -> Bitcoin". And the Telegram wallet indicated that they will return the funds and asked for a return address. So, chain analysis on all incoming coins, big or small? That's interesting, I thought to myself! Of course, curiosity not only kills cats, but it also moves sats.

I happened to have a 100k sat UTXO that went through several rounds of coinjoin. Wanting to check out the chain analysis on the Telegram wallet myself, my urge to send sats to this wallet came back stronger than every. Don't trust, verify, right? And send some sats, I did. It was a simple transaction, from 1 input to 3 outputs. 100k sats UTXO that underwent a few rounds of coinjoin a while back, into 10k sats to the Telegram wallet, about 2k sats mining fee, and the rest as change back to my own wallet. The transaction took some time to confirm, thanks to the relatively high fee market of late. When eventually the transactions had 2 confirmations, I received the following message on Telegram:

Checking the wallet balance, I got the following:

Seeing that the bitcoin was on hold, I decided to wait; plus it was already late, so I thought I'll just deal with it in the morning.

When I woke up the next morning, I saw that my deposit amount was still on hold (this was 10 hours after the original transaction got 2 confirmations). Immediately, I sent a message to the wallet support bot asking why, and got the following reply:

Almost 2 hours later, I received the following response:

So yes, it seems Telegram does use chain analysis; and it also seems UTXOs that went through coinjoin is not welcome on their wallet. @chungkingexpress was right!

I decided to do 1 more test and see if I could deposit bitcoin from non-coinjoined, supposedly "clean" UTXOs. When I clicked deposit, I got the following message from the wallet bot:

I guess my punishment for using "tinted" coins on Telegram is a deposit ban on the Telegram wallet? Very interesting!

Finally, to salvage my 10k sats and see how much I can get back, I provided a return address to wallet support for a refund. About 14 hours later, I received a withdrawal receipt (address and last digits of amounts were blacked out for privacy):

But when I went to mempool.space to check on the transaction, I found that the actual transaction included on the time chain did not match the description of the receipt sent by Telegram. Namely, over 500 sats were sent back to the original legacy address I used for the original wallet deposit, and the total amount sent to my wallet was not 32xx sats, but 272x sats. See following transaction (again addresses and last digits of amounts were blacked out for privacy):

Seeing that, a few questions came to mind. Why did they not allow additional deposits from me? Why did they send those 500 something sats back to the original deposit address? Were they fees for doing the refund? If so, why did they not tell me up front, but instead told me the return amount was over 3000 sats, where in reality, I only got 2000 something sats? If the 500 something sats were not refund fees, then what was the purpose of send that amount back the the deposit address? Does it have anything to do with future chain analysis?

Being curious and wanting my questions answered, I reached out to wallet support, again. This time, I raised my concerns and asked them the questions I had. I got the follow reply from them:

So I waited, and waited, and waited. While I waited, a few thoughts came to mind as a result of this Telegram wallet experiment / experience.

The way Telegram implemented bitcoin support on their native wallet was, simply put, horrible. It uses on chain only, legacy addresses and does not support lightning, which makes the experience more expensive and slower to use. The fact that they use chain analysis to only accept "clean" coins and rejects all "anonymous" coins could make the wallet unusable or incompatible with numerous other wallets. Heck, even a swap service that does lightning to bitcoin gets flagged as high risk, then what isn't high risk? How are you supposed to send anything to this wallet? Maybe the only way is sending from a KYC-ed exchange?

It seems as if Telegram is purposefully trying to make the experience of using bitcoin as bad as possible. Imagine a newcomer trying to use bitcoin for the first time; and Telegram's wallet was their first experience with bitcoin. The newcomer would think that what other shitcoiners had been telling them were all true; that bitcoin is slow, cumbersome, and expensive to use. Where, in fact, it is only Telegram's bitcoin wallet that is slow, cumbersome, and expensive to use. The way Telegram adopted bitcoin is the type of bitcoin adoption I do not wish to see. It is major turn off to the millions of Telegram users who might try to use bitcoin, but end up staying away from bitcoin due to the poor user experience. The true adoption that matters, the ground up user adoption of bitcoin might be hindered as a result of this poor bitcoin user experience provided by Telegram.

As I waited even longer, I came to the realization that I might never get answers for my questions directed to wallet support, regardless of how long I wait. I also came to the realization that not all bitcoin adoption is good; but I am willing to wait for the good adoption and will attempt to call out the bullshit along the way. After all, bitcoiners are suppose to have a low time preference but zero patience for bullshit, yes?

Just my 2 sats. Keep working and keep it real.

@ 7fa56f5d:751ac194

Originalmente recopilada por nostr:npub1qqqqqqpn745uwp5ummzhtjsqqkg6xxp3awmgmcswm8ahs03lc2rshlsu7e en nostr.

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@ 52b4a076:e7fad8bd

What is NIP-05 really?

If you look at the spec, it's a way to map Nostr public keys to DNS-based internet identifiers, such as name@example.com.

If you look at Nostr Plebs:

It's a human readable identifier for your public key. It makes finding your profile on Nostr easier. It makes identifying your account easier.

If you look at basically any client, you see a checkmark, which you assume means verification.

If you ask someone, they probably will call it verification.

How did we get here?

Initially, there was only one client, which was (kind of) the reference implementation: Branle.

When it added support for NIP-05 identifiers, it used to replace the display name with the NIP-05 identifier, and it had to distinguish a NIP-05 from someone setting their display name to a NIP-05. So they added a checkmark...

Then there was astral.ninja and Damus: The former was a fork of Branle, and therefore inherited the checkmark. Damus didn't implement NIP-05 until a while later, and they added a checkmark because Astral and other clients were doing it.

And then came new clients, all copying what the previous ones did... (Snort originally did not have a checkmark, but that changed later.)

The first NIP-05 provider

Long story short, people were wondering what NIP-05 is and wanted it, and that's how Nostr Plebs came to be.

They initially called their service verification. Somewhere between January and February, they removed all mentions to verification except one (because people were searching for it), and publicly said that NIP-05 is not verification. But that didn't work.

Then, there were the new NIP-05 providers, some understood perfectly what a NIP-05 identifier is and applied the correct nomenclature. Others misnamed it as verification, adding confusion to users. This made the problem worse on top of the popular clients showing checkmarks.

(from this point in the article we'll refer to it as a Nostr address)

And so, the scams begin

Spammers and scammers started to abuse Nostr addresses to scam people: - Some providers has been used by fake crypto airdrop bots. - A few Nostr address providers have terminated multitude of impersonating and scam identifiers over the past weeks.

This goes to show that Nostr addresses don't verify anything, they are just providers of human readable handles.

Nostr addresses can be proof of association

Nostr addresses can be a proof of association. The easiest analogy to understand is email:

jack@cash.app -> You could assume this is the Jack that works at Cash App.

jack@nostr-address-provider.example.com -> This could be any Jack.

What now?

We urge that clients stop showing a checkmark for all Nostr addresses, as they are not useful for verification.

We also urge that clients hide checkmarks for all domain names, without exception in the same way we do not show checkmarks for emails.

Lastly, NIP-05 is a nostr address and that is why we urge all clients to use the proper nomenclature.

Signed:

• Semisol, Nostr Plebs (semisol@nostrplebs.com)
• Quentin, nostrcheck.me (quentin@nostrcheck.me)
• Derek Ross, Nostr Plebs (derekross@nostrplebs.com)
• Bitcoin Nostrich, Bitcoin Nostr (BitcoinNostrich@BitcoinNostr.com)
• Remina, zaps.lol (remina@zaps.lol)
• Harry Hodler, nostr-check.com (harryhodler@nostr-check.com)

@ 9a576bd9:538775f4

NIP-57 appelé "Lightning Zaps" permettent de savoir quand une personne a zapé une autre personne par exemple. Nostr rend la création de valeur sur le réseau très simple, permettant à tout le monde de pouvoir facilement soutenir les autres personnes, il faut pour cela une adresse LN

Le but de cet article est d'expliquer simplement comment mettre en place une adresse LN pour son profil et pouvior recevoir des bitcoin facilement. Que l'on soit créateur/ créatrice ou une personne qui aime participer et publier du contenu, être rétribué pour ses contributions est très gratifiant.

Les solutions présentées ici sont custodial, le but est de permettre à tout le monde de mettre en place cela facilement. Pour des solutions non-custodial, le #nostrfr est là pour vous aider si vous avez des questions.

Dans un premier temps ce guide explique comment obtenir une adresse LN et ensuite comment la configurer sur différents clients. Quelques solutions vont être présentées, mais tous les wallets Lighthning qui permettent d'avoir une adresse LN (lud06 ou lud16) peuvent fonctionner: * @LightningTipBot, fonctionne sur Telegram * Wallet of Satoshi, application mobile * Bridge Wallet, application mobile

Pour les clients * iris.to * snort.social * Amethyst, sur Android * Damus, sur iOS

@LightningTipBot

Ce "wallet" a la particularité de fonctionner sur Telegram. Pour commencer il suffit juste d'envoyer /start directement à @LightningTipBot

Pour récupérer votre adresse lightning il suffit d'envoyer la commande /help et copier "Your Lightning address..." et collez l'adresse dans le champ correspondant de votre client Nostr

Il est aussi possible de lier sa npub de nostr avec /nostr <npub>

Wallet of satoshi

1. Téléchargez Wallet of Satoshi pour votre appareil mobile
2. Appuyez sur "Recevoir"
3. Appuyez sur l'adresse éclair qui apparaît à l'écran (la chaîne qui ressemble à une adresse électronique) pour la copier dans le presse-papiers.
4. Collez l'adresse copiée dans le champ correspondant de votre client Nostr

Bridge Wallet

Proposé par Mt Pelerin, ce wallet permet d'avoir une adresse LN. Pour démarrer, il faut dans un premier temps noter et sauvegarder correctement ses 12 ou 24 mots générés (règle 3-2-1)

Pour récupérer l'adresse LN:

1. Sélectionner "Bitcoin Lightning"

2. Se rendre sur "Addresses"

3. Collez l'adresse copiée dans le champ correspondant de votre client Nostr

Mettre en place son adresse Lightning sur Nostr

iris.to

1. Se rendre sur son profil et sélectionner "Edit profile"

2. Chercher "Bitcoin lightning address ⚡ (lud16)" et y l'adresse LN

Si tout à fonctionné correctement une icône "⚡ Tip" devrait apparaître

snort.social

1. Se rendre dans les paramètres

2. Chercher "LN Address", y mettre son adresse LN et sauvegarder

Si tout à fonctionné correctement une icône "⚡" avec votre adresse LN devrait apparaitre sur le profil

Amethyst (Android)

Téléchargement ici

1. Ouvrir les paramètres

2. Sélectionner les paramètres de profil

3. Rechercher "LN Address"

Si tout à fonctionné correctement une icône "⚡" avec votre adresse LN devrait apparaitre sur le profil

Damus (iOS)

Téléchargement ici

1. Se rendre sur son profil et sélectionner "Edit"

2. Dans le champs "Bitcoin Lightning Tips" copier son adresse LN

Si tout à fonctionné correctement, l'icone "Zap" ou tip devrait apparaître sur le profil

@ 64bfa9ab:21e722b5

Hi, this is just a test to see how Habla works, I will try to upload some photos I took yesterday in Copenhagen.

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_3a008e37fe9a112ed85fd4007c0b653f423a92341efbe68eec186ac8ddf81124.jpg The Holmen Naval Base in Copenhagen, founded in the late 17th century.

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_0684492e047eb7b4572fd6b665eb098d6dc64282eed01ec4b6eebb8900d6fcee.jpg Christianhavn, originally it was laid out as an independent privileged merchant's town with inspiration from Dutch cities but it was soon incorporated into Copenhagen proper.

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_75ece44b7348624cb550706ff2637ae6d26a60282c72c30faab352ff634b57d8.jpg

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_040f23037cdc666f92d7e0a5d49cde6f5ecf53b48ef1d724c83a2c58c585cb5c.jpg Those were taken around Refshaleøen, a former industrial site in the harbor of Copenhagen now rehabilitated.

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_e2ad058447729a39c227ebe63f5dd4fdc178effb64490a6d6a4c350df80ce0b8.jpg Some kind of bee I found, spring is finally here!

Hope you liked them!

@ 7ec127c0:9a5d2fe0

Yesterday I scrolled through my Facebook feed that I never use and saw countless “reels” of scantily clad women pop up.

On Twitter, the amount of threads I see saying “I make $80,000 per month online, here’s 3 steps you can use to get there, too” are ridiculous.

And on Medium it’s the same damn thing.

Everyone, everywhere, all at once, is telling you about all the great stuff they’re doing — leaving you feeling like complete garbage.

We’re left in this constant state of wanting. Wanting the men/women we see on social media. Wanting the 6-figure business someone built. Wanting the fame and attention that somebody else is getting.

We’re always wanting fucking more.

Doesn’t that get tiring for you?

I’ll be honest with you here..

I used to be the guy who wanted to be with every hot girl he saw. I just couldn’t stop myself from looking this way that way and the other.

During that time I was an extremely popular vlogger in the Philippines, made 6-figures per year in my business, and had a girlfriend of my own.

I should’ve been happy.

I really wasn’t, though.

I was morally bankrupt and left in a constant state of wanting every pretty thing with two legs that walked by.

The moral of the story is that when we’re trapped in this category 5 storm of wanting, nothing we currently have will ever be enough. And that makes life a living fucking hell.

I just started watching the show Succession, and one thing that’s appalling about it is just how unhappy everybody is. The Roy family has more money than 99.99% of families in the world, and absolutely none of them are happy because they keep scheming for more power.

Unbelievable.

I finally learned my lesson at age 28 that constantly wanting more is a game you’ll never win. J. Cole is one of my favorite artists, and in his song Love Yourz he says:

“Always gon’ be a whip that’s better than the one you got Always gon’ be some clothes that’s fresher than the one’s you rock Always gon’ be a bitch that’s badder out there on the tours But you ain’t never gon’ be happy ’til you love yours No such thing as a life that’s better than yours (love yours) No such thing as a life that’s better than yours (love yours) No such thing as a life that’s better than yours (love yours) No such thing, no such thing”

The point is, there’s always going to be something better out there than what you currently have. Always.

And in this hyper-Americanized GET AFTER IT MOTHER FUCKER!!! world we live in, the pursuit of more is not just part of our culture, but thought to eventually give us happiness.

I spoke to my wife the other day about her aunts who live in Veracruz, Mexico. From what she tells me, they live a very simple life.

They came to my house for a few days and they were the happiest fucking people I’ve met in years.

They reminded me a lot of the folks I knew in the Philippines living in the provinces outside of Metro Manila.

I really don’t want to glorify being poor here, but I do want to say that these people know SOMETHING about happiness that us in the United States don’t.

I get the feeling that the simplest things give them happiness, like having a coffee with family and engaging in mild gossip about meaningless stuff. I feel they appreciate things more and have an incredible ability to stay in the present moment.

Contrast that with us in the USA — a country full of people who are always looking at the future as the time they will finally be able to grasp happiness. When they achieve or get closer to “more.”

This is our reality.

We are a culture of “more.”

And I have a feeling this is the cause of a lot of mental health problems we currently deal with in our society.

It’s hard because people we respect and admire on social media encourage us to chase “more.”

Don’t fucking listen to them.

I don’t care how many Bugattis they have. I don’t know about you, but if I had enough money to afford a few Bugattis, I wouldn’t be posting anything on social media.

I’d be fucking off and living my best life.

I’d be swimming with sea turtles in Thailand or something.

@ a9fdc6bc:199d21a2

Since July 2021 the delays in getting ASIC hardware and access to hosting facilities in the US for the miners relocating after the China ban have eased and as more and more mining hardware has come online, hashrate is at an all time high. As usual the bitcoin network worked perfectly and every 2016 blocks (about 2 weeks) the difficulty adjustment increased the difficulty to keep pace with the hashrate and kept blocks coming in every 10 minutes. There were no signs of this rising trend slowing down, until now. Over the past month hashrate seems to have plateaued and you guessed it, so has the difficulty. I do love how bitcoin works, it's a beautiful thing.

Hashprice

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_2f0be25f5530630166d9280dba7ddd0fa6748df8e138893bb03b4f5cb4fd6eef.jpg Hashprice remains low and with energy costs high in many parts of the world it is still a challenge for many miners to cover their costs. The recent increase in bitcoin price has improved things but they are not out of the woods yet. As interest rates and the cost of capital increases there be more miners going under in the coming months, unless we see the price of bitcoin rising substantially.

Mempool is still full

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_9fba92b5c9727262d980206e0fbc0ea0b606f28b7a8843efc9d56d3d36df9b26.jpg Something that is helping the miners by keeping the transaction fees high is how popular Ordinals and inscriptions are. I can't say I understand why people like and part with their sats for these but it's keeping blocks full and that is good for the miners and the bitcoin network to I'm ok with it.

@ 3356de61:040b8bdd

Create a PR to use NIP-45 COUNT verb to get follower count on the profile screen, using a filter like {"kinds":[3],"#p":["pubkey"]}.

Not many relays implement NIP-45, wss://relay.nostr.band is a good option. There should probably be a way for users to choose the counting relay, maybe on the Settings screen.

Questions about implementation details should be discussed with jb55, the bounty will be paid after PR is accepted.

@ 3356de61:040b8bdd

Create a PR to add search over kind:1 events into Damus, there is already a tab and a search box, need to forward typed string using NIP-50 to the relay and render results.

Not many relays implement NIP-50, wss://relay.nostr.band is a good option. There should probably be a way for users to choose the search relay, maybe on the Settings screen.

Questions about implementation details should be discussed with jb55, the bounty will be paid after PR is accepted.

@ ec42c765:328c0600

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@ ec42c765:328c0600

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@ ec42c765:328c0600

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@ 11d0b667:53e00ef7

HB 311 and S.B. 152 have been passed by the Utah legislature and sent to the governor’s desk for signature. HB 311 would hold social media companies liable for harm minors experience on the platforms, while SB 152 would require parental permission for social media accounts for users under age 18 beginning in March 2024.

@ 0a821ca3:e0efcce3

Renewable electricity production is intermittent by nature - therefore we need to build "excess" capacity to meet demand at all times - as production is not always at 100% of the capacity.

The good news is that capacity is continuously being built.

This now starts resulting in increasingly frequent situations where production exceeds demand - for example today at the time of writing, the PV produces 110% of the Dutch electricity demand. This results in -100 (negative 100) electricity price - and it is not even summer.

As Martien Visser tracks on Twitter.

As such situations will occur more frequently - the investment decision for new electricity production capacity will become increasingly complicated - complicated to calculate, but also complicated to achieve an attractive business case. Indeed, as the frequency of negative prices grows, investing in new capacity becomes increasingly less attractive.

For investment to remain attractive, we will have accelerate the development of electricity storage.

Alternatively, we will have to find ways to consume excess electricity in useful ways - for example produce hydrogen or e-fuel... or mine bitcoin - all of these alternative consumptions of excess electricity could be seen as alternatives for conventional electricity storage.

As excess electricity will be more frequent, the market will likely identify a variety of solutions - and as we can expect that the excess production problem will become increasingly relevant, probably all of the above solutions will have to develop in parallel, depending on the specific circumstances.

@ 6903089d:bd117177

Practice makes perfect

Fiat currency itself is not a malicious system. It is a system that has an enormous weakness or flaw that allows bad actors to take control and extract wealth from any given society. Bad actors will always exist, in every group or collective. With a fiat system, once the bad actors take control the entire system, collective, or society experiences a shift or change in values towards those in control.

We now have technology in place capable of spreading, and for lack of a better term, infecting the population with ideas. These ideas are designed to sell products, goods, or services and since we exist in a fiat currency system controlled by bad actors they are propagating and enforcing the ideas which are of benefit to themselves which results in an entire shift of the collective market into a coerced and guided direction. To state in a different way, the market, which is really just a dynamic expression of the actions of the individuals within a collective, deviates from the natural course it would otherwise have taken. It is distorted, it is perverted. All with the intention of guiding and extracting wealth. The natural direction of the market is Truth. The coerced direction of the market is false. The market will inevitably require greater and greater intervention and regulation in order to remain on the coerced path. Like the flow of water to the path of least resistance the market is constantly attempting to self correct and discover Nature, to discover Truth.

The fiat currency system is what allowed for the birth of the data farming and targeted marketing system. It is the next step or progression of the fiat system. The exponential growth seen in technology has lended that same exponential curve to the development and progress of the free market into fallacy.

There is no more beautiful a scenario that of a free market made up of free humans. Working together choosing the greatest individual good and thus the greatest collective good allowing for the free, natural, and truthful expression of the human race as a collective.

The centralized internet we currently deal with has effectively ended a capitalistic or free market we assume to have. In the same way that currency is centrally controlled now too is the internet we each interact with.

Instead of being constrained by cost and demand conditions, the growth of an exploiting firm is constrained by public opinion: non-productive and non-contractual property acquisitions require coercion, and coercion creates victims. It is conceivable that resistance can be lastingly broken by force in the case of one man (or a group of men) exploiting one or maybe two or three others (or a group of roughly the same size). It is inconceivable, however, to imagine that force alone can account for the breaking down of resistance in the actually familiar case of small minorities expropriating and exploiting populations ten, hundreds, or thousands of times their size. For this to happen a firm must have public support in addition to coercive force. A majority of the population must accept its operations as legitimate. This acceptance can range from active enthusiasm to passive resignation. But acceptance it must be in the sense that a majority must have given up the idea of actively or passively resisting any attempt to enforce non-productive and non-contractual property acquisitions. Instead of displaying outrage over such actions, or showing contempt for everyone who engages in them, and or doing nothing to help make them successful (not to mention actively trying to obstruct them), a majority must actively or passively support them. State-supportive public opinion must counterbalance the resistance of victimized property owners such that active resistance appears futile. And the goal of the state, then, and of every state employee who wants to contribute toward securing and improving his own position within the state, is and must be that of maximizing exploitatively acquired wealth and income by producing favorable public opinion and creating legitimacy.

“Banking, Nation States, and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order” by Hans-Hermann

As Hoppe explains, once the state or any economic actor for that matter obtains the control of the market of money via the fiat system that actor or firm, as Hoppe refers to it, becomes free from the natural economic pressures that regulate the rest of the market. Such as operating at minimum effective cost and providing of service(s) that carry economic demand. That is to say that if any business is to remain in business, or to stay alive it must:

Satisfy an economic demand with a high standard of quality while keeping production costs as low as possible. The degree to which any business meets these criteria is the degree to which it is successful. Failure or incompetence to adapt to the changing pressures applied by those criteria in one business allows space for market competition and favors the business the can better satisfy economic pressures.

The state, in a fiat system, is free of these pressures. However the state faces a different problem or pressure. All funding for the state ultimately comes from the expropriation of private property from its citizens. If the citizens, as a collective, decide that they are no longer willing to allow such action from the state, then the state loses funding, or dies. Having control over money the states real currency is the approval of its citizens. This is the economic pressure the state deals with. This is the economic model that the state lives in.

Practice makes perfect. You will inevitably become better at activities that you frequently repeat. Even more so if your survival depends on those activities. Economic pressures drive innovation, when this occurs in a free market it typically leads to greater wealth, prosperity, division of labor, quality of goods.

Fiat is morally erosive and malice compounding.

When this happens within a mature fiat system which has become completely reliant on public approval of millions of citizens in order to maintain and expand upon its received funding and power we see an entirely different economic pressure in play. The United States government, simply by the fact that it exists, is the shining example of a mature fiat system. Meaning that it has endured and it has, in fact, excelled in meeting the demands of the economic pressure it faces.

To state this is a different way, if the the vast majority of people actively opposed the government and its spending there would be no more spending. Therefore the government has created, implemented and deployed various tactics throughout the decades in order to control public opinion.

The first thing I want to highlight here is that the only factor of consequence in play within this system is the public opinion and the control of it. Morality becomes irrelevant. The state is incentivised to coerce the greater population into believing any narrative which allows money to flow in the desired direction.

Anything and everything at the state’s disposal is considered a viable option. This includes the manufacturing of false “problems” followed by the proposition of predetermined solutions.

Secondly, advancements in technology have vastly improved the manner in which the population is connected and communicates. This has exposed the population to extremely subtle and effective tactics. These tactics are deployed onto the citizens of the United states and they are designed to make us think and behave in a way that is deemed beneficial to the state, by the state. Once again, morality is never considered.

In essence we have united millions of individuals, you could say that we have united the entire globe to a certain extent seeing as how the US dollar is the global reserve currency and we all participate in a global economy to an extent. However we have taken that level of unification of immense, immense power and productivity. The power and productive force of the entire human race. And we have centralized it. To a group of corrupt individuals. Who use it for their own benefit.

Freedom is the longest held dream of the modern human. A dream not yet realized. A dream cloaked. Its almost paradoxical. As early humans or hunter gatherers we were free from the tyranny and suppression of our fellow man yet we were slaves to nature and her laws. The evolution of mankind and his innovations freed us from the bonds of survival. Now we are bound in a different way. We are bound by ourselves, by our greed.

@ 04ea59bf:c457774d

In the dawn of this new year, Nostr Global was not for the light-hearted. What Nostr was meant for - speech, at least that from actual people - got drowned in a flood of spam. Then, gradually but suddenly, one fine day you could see posts & photos & memes from all over the world! With auto-translate, the notes only got more interesting. And thus it began. I was bing-browsing notes on global for hours daily getting truly addicted to global ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I thought I had seen it all - shilling spambots, bitcoin memes, angry rants, slurs, shit-talk, pet pics, food pics, even shower girl. But seeing a couple of things about a few weeks back gave me pause...

What do you do when a stranger posts that they wish to die? Yes - that's what I saw. When I was trawling global, someone had posted that they wished they were no more & they were putting this message up as a record. As I read this, I was shocked and conflicted... Should I DM them, asking if I could help in anyway? How would I help? I didn't have any context - what should I say? Will it make this worse for them if I tried to talk? I did not know what to do. So, I just closed the app, blanked out for a few minutes & tried to put it out of my mind as I went through my day. But I couldn't. Everyday I wonder if that person is well (I really really hope they are) and whether I could have/ should have done something. Even now, I don't know :( If instead of me, who seems to need a How-to-be-a-human(e)-being guide for dummies even on ordinary days, someone else more capable had seen the post & done something/anything to help them.

Then, a couple of day after, searching about NIP-28 for public chats on Garnet & browsing through channels one-by-one, got to a channel Goodbye with a single note -- a farewell note :( A final call into the void. I numbed myself wondering why I'd stumbled on these notes & whether others had too and if the authors of the notes were okay or not.

But the question remains - What do you do when a stranger posts they wish to die? If it weren't online, I'd hug them, hug them tight, to make up for all the times they may have needed a hug but never got one. And listen, if they wanted to talk, but I'm not sure even in real life I would find right words to say. After weeks, I've made peace telling myself this is similar to when we say a silent prayer on seeing an ambulance, but deep down I know it's really not and find it hard to shake off the feeling that my (in)action made any difference. After a period, I think I'll search for resources/training to better deal with situations like this; I want to learn. (Any advice welcome)

The other thing is that online - especially one like Nostr where sometimes there's not even a username & just an npub, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between a real person, a bot or an impersonator! And how to react to bots that use our tendency to anthropomorphize to wantonly or inadvertently take advantage of our emotional vulnerability? We seem to be in a more-subtle version of Ghost In the Shell, where the answers to "What does it mean to be human?", "What's so special about a human?" are going to be stress-tested repeatedly. Were those posts explicitly/most likely/somewhat probably from AI, would they have elicited the same reaction? I have more questions than answers.

Whatever connection we have online is tenuous, even with the best intentions and how to best respond to any post is a constantly changing paradigm. Nostr till now, has been a very welcoming place but as more people join in and communities become wider, more such questions will surely pop-up. Bracing for ambiguity & chaos... 🦋

@ 5fd693e6:bf6061bb

Why am i writing/compiling this?

I'll take this one for ya Jack. Currently, as bluesky is still in invite-only beta, anyone on bluesky can join and read Nostr, but not everyone on Nostr can access this conversation on bluesky. Thus, I've compiled a collection of interactions from yesterday's thread I thought were interesting to share with Nostr.

---

NOSTR:

in the comments of that i found

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in the comments of that i found

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Bluesky:

Protocols, Platforms, and Distribution oh my:

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Money & Ads:

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Personal AD: this habla nip 23 long form article is supported by zappers like you

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Twitter & Elon:

there was a lot of questions fielded about twitter, most of it I've heard answered elsewhere, so i omitted much but these are a few of my favorites, b.

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As jack says, "it doesn't matter what (he) thinks" but i think it's important to consider what others platforms are saying and questioning around decentralized media. I plan to make other collections of posts/notes that i've seen out there for nostrich to ponder in the future.

@ 7fa56f5d:751ac194

Long-form note

You can link to a long-form note by using its naddr identifier:

naddr1qqgkcmmwvukkvmmjd5kkxmmww3jkuaqzypl62m6ad932k83u6sjwwkxrqq4cve0hkrvdem5la83g34m4rtqegqcyqqq823ccxjlgq

nostr:naddr1qqgkcmmwvukkvmmjd5kkxmmww3jkuaqzypl62m6ad932k83u6sjwwkxrqq4cve0hkrvdem5la83g34m4rtqegqcyqqq823ccxjlgq

Note

Notes can be linked by pasting their note identifier:

note1069cr5elneqvv4yfhqgafh4k3mwgz75emat7vqk5j9dhmjlxlq4qa60tcj

nostr:nevent1qqs8azup6vleusxx2jymsyw5m6mgahyp02va74lxqt2fzkmae0n0s2spqymq4uph68

Or better, using nevent which includes relay information:

nevent1qqsf2q8wd4e3kpek0ml0pnfw2sl779wc4pec73v9s6tdyw9wtsme9vgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3samnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwdhx7un59eek7cmfv9kqyhwn2c

nostr:nevent1qqsf2q8wd4e3kpek0ml0pnfw2sl779wc4pec73v9s6tdyw9wtsme9vgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3samnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwdhx7un59eek7cmfv9kqyhwn2c

Profile

You can mention someone by pasting an npub.

npub107jk7htfv243u0x5ynn43scq9wrxtaasmrwwa8lfu2ydwag6cx2quqncxg

nostr:npub107jk7htfv243u0x5ynn43scq9wrxtaasmrwwa8lfu2ydwag6cx2quqncxg

The nprofile entity contains a user pubkey and a list of relays so is more likely the profile information will be found.

nprofile1qqsrhuxx8l9ex335q7he0f09aej04zpazpl0ne2cgukyawd24mayt8gpp4mhxue69uhhytnc9e3k7mgpz4mhxue69uhkg6nzv9ejuumpv34kytnrdaksjlyr9p

nostr:nprofile1qqsrhuxx8l9ex335q7he0f09aej04zpazpl0ne2cgukyawd24mayt8gpp4mhxue69uhhytnc9e3k7mgpz4mhxue69uhkg6nzv9ejuumpv34kytnrdaksjlyr9p

Relay

Relays can be linked to with the nrelay identifier

nrelay1qqxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvxgjuum

nostr:nrelay1qqxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvxgjuum

Badges

Badges can be referenced by their naddr identifer:

nostr:naddr1qq8rzmfdwdshguedd9khqctrwspzqf8r0s09kryt4rw7ya2tel7x8ddjn8uqvnu0hy5teuc4h8zfvhemqvzqqqr48y6aua72

Lists

Lists can also be referenced by an naddr identifier:

nostr:naddr1qqphq6twqgs8lft0t45k92c78n2zfe6ccvqzhpn977cd3h8wnl579zxhw5dvr9qrqsqqqaf33t3788

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Happy writing 📝

@ 1bc70a01:24f6a411

The following are random bits of wisdom I've collected over the years. Some right, some wrong. Some not mine, you may recognize it. Some I've come to realize - that perhaps millions others did before me. Some common sense. You may laugh, already know it all, or not. If it's helpful to one person, I'll consider it a win 🙌

1. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.
2. To get things done, focus on one big thing or the day. Don't worry about lists and the small details.
3. Meta marketing = talking about grown on a platform where your audience hangs out. Since everyone else wants to grow too, you gain visibility without even selling your thing. Great if your product happens to help people grow.
4. Package and sell knowledge. No matter how dumb it may seem, it'll probably be helpful to someone. Books, ebooks, courses, products, software are all forms of knowledge packaged for sale.
5. Having a network around you is a lot more important to success than who you are or what you know.
6. The world is incredibly complex, even the simplest things are not so simple.
7. Take advantage of compounding effect. The sooner you start investing, the larger your investment grows over time (especially towards the end of the timeframe). Or bitcoin 🤷
8. Never judge a person, unless your intuition tells you they mean harm.
9. How founders win at startups = ship fast, talk to customers, fail quickly, stay in the game.
10. Many people in positions of power are just faking it. They truly have no idea what they are doing
11. The drive to avoid pain is greater than the drive to seek pleasure. Humans will do anything to avoid pain - hence why so many people don't do anything with their life - afraid of "failure".
12. In sales, generally speaking, benefits sell better than avoiding losses. e.g. don't talk about savings, talk about new revenue.
13. Hopping jobs is often the fastest way to get a pay increase.
14. If you don’t like the rules, change the game. Everything is in your power. Just don’t break laws in the process.
15. You are your worst critic. Silence your critical self and you can accomplish what you set out to accomplish. Whatever doubts, fears or uncertainties you have, it’s all in your mind. Conquer that, and the rest will fall in place.
16. Always save for the future. Put away some amount always, even if it seems insignificant. A little bit over time can add up to a lot.
17. Don’t try to do it all on your own. Delegate, find people you can trust and have them do parts you don’t have the time for.
18. Don’t let notifications /distractions ruin your life. Command your attention, turn off notifications, news, social media.
19. Sleep at least 7 hours a day to live longer. Sleeping less, for most people means literally losing years of their life.
20. Sleep on it. When you have a hard problem ahead of you, a challenge you can’t fix or a work problem you can’t overcome, think about it hard before you fall asleep. When you wake up, you’ll have a solution. The human man is a lot more capable are piecing things together in our sleep.
21. Step away from computers often, go for long walks or exercise.
22. Buy experiences, not things. Things fade, memories last a lifetime – until one gets Alzheimer’s that is.
23. To influence, ask for help. People love it when you ask them for help – it makes them feel important. If you want to gain someone’s attention, ask for help.
24. Ignore haters. Life is full of them, they are just not worth your very limited time on this planet.
25. The best time to start is earlier, the 2nd best time is now. If you have something you want to accomplish, start on it RIGHT NOW. If the task is unsurmountable, take it one little step at a time.
26. This is your life in years, don’t waste it on pointless things: [birth]XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX[90th bday]
27. To become a master, copy other masters. Only when you have reached their level, you can create something original. When it comes to seeking permission, tell, don’t ask. Asking puts you in a subservient position, where telling enlarges your stance. “I’m going on vacation next month” vs. “May I have vacation time next month?” “Here is my rate” vs. “How much can you pay?”
28. Anchoring effect – when compared to something large or small, the desired option is easier to accept. For example, if you have a service that costs $40,000, mentioning $450,000 before bringing up the 40k will automatically make it feel less threatening in the person’s mind. It’s a lot easier to sell something that costs $20 when compared to $200, than when compared to $1.
29. Eliminate mundane daily decisions. “Which shirt to wear?” Automate your decision process so you never have to waste energy on things that don’t matter.
30. Schedule your time. Every minute of your life costs something. Think of wasted time as lost opportunity. Put important events on a calendar and stick to that schedule. If you find that you don’t have time for something, schedule it on the calendar and make yourself unavailable for other activities during that time – focus on that one task.
31. Opposite of previous advice, don’t schedule anything. Just clear your calendar and don’t write anything down. Do the most important things right away, the others will take care of themselves.
32. Take extremely good care of your health. You will regret deeply if you don’t. Don’t eat bread, refined carbs, sugars – they literally cause cancer. Avoid bread, pasta, sweets, processed carbs (crackers, chips, cereal etc… ) whenever possible. Carbs cause inflammation, and the body is not designed to handle inflammation well.
33. Your body is an organism, if you want it to thrive, you have to feed it well.
34. Move on quickly. Dwelling is absolutely pointless and only wastes more time.
35. Always charge your worth. Never do anything for free unless you are volunteering your time for a good cause.
36. Add value to everything – people’s life, your job, your business, your investment, your relationship. Adding value is a skill that must be practiced but pays dividends in the long run.
37. When someone tells you something personal, listen. Really listen, don’t offer advice, just shut up and listen, they didn’t come for advice.
38. Take advantage of professionals – get help when needed. Don’t be cheap.
39. You get what you pay for – really. If it’s cheap, chances are its shit, but be weary of scammers & marketing bsers who disguise quality with price. Avoid branded products unless you feel they offer real quality over alternative. Luxury brands are almost never worth it and are a complete waste of money unless money is no longer an object in your life.
40. For easier habit formation, make the activity easily accessible.
41. When you're young, say yes more often for opportunities, when you're older protect your time and be more selective in what you agree to. Perfectly normal to say No to most things.
42. Doctors fuck up all the time and thousands of people die because of their mistakes.
43. Hospital-acquired infections are very common and often deadly.
44. Incentives power the world. If you want to understand why something is the way it is, look for the underlying incentive.
45. Science is supposed to be questions constantly, that's the whole point. "Trust the science" is an oxymoron.
46. All media is biased. Choosing to use one word over another introduces bias to the story, no matter how hard you try not to. The best thing is to take everything lightly and collect stories until you have a broader picture from various sources. Even then you're likely to have the wrong framing and facts! I just ignore all media.
47. Never chase happiness for it is always fleeting. Find satisfaction in the long term and aim for joyful moments.

Have your own bits of wisdom? I'd love to hear them! Or, you can call out bs if you see it here 🤗

@ 9a576bd9:538775f4

Bonjour, cher-ère-s Nostrich !

Nostr est un phénomène tout nouveau et il y a quelques étapes qui rendront votre immersion plus facile et votre expérience plus riche.

Traduit de l'article Nostr welcome guide

👋 Bienvenue

Puisque vous lisez ceci, on peut supposer que vous avez déjà rejoint Nostr en téléchargeant une application (par exemple Damus, Amethyst, Plebstr) pour votre appareil mobile ou en ouvrant un client web Nostr (par exemple snort.social, Nostrgram, Iris). Il est important pour un nouveau venu de suivre les étapes suggérées par l'application de votre choix - la procédure d'accueil fournit toutes les bases, et vous n'aurez pas à faire beaucoup plus d'ajustements à moins que vous ne le vouliez vraiment. Si vous êtes tombé sur cet article, mais que vous n'avez pas encore de "compte" Nostr, vous pouvez suivre ce guide simple étape par étape écrit par nostr:npub1cly0v30agkcfq40mdsndzjrn0tt76ykaan0q6ny80wy034qedpjsqwamhz

🤙S'amuser

Nostr est conçu pour permettre aux gens de se connecter, de se faire entendre et de s'amuser. C'est là tout l'intérêt (évidemment, il y a une pléthore de cas d'utilisation sérieux, comme être un outil pour les combattants de la liberté et les dénonciateurs, mais cela mérite un article séparé), donc si vous avez l'impression que quelque chose vous pèse, n'hésitez pas à contacter les nostriches les plus expérimentés et nous serons ravis de vous aider. Interagir avec Nostr n'est pas difficile du tout, mais il y a quelques particularités par rapport aux plateformes traditionnelles, il est donc normal (et encouragé) de poser des questions.

Vous pouvez retrouver sous cet article la liste de clés de la communauté francophone aussi appelée #nostrfr. Un groupe Telegram est à disposition si vous avez des questions.

Voici une liste non officielle d'ambassadeurs Nostr qui se feront un plaisir de vous aider à monter à bord :

nostr:naddr1qqg5ummnw3ezqstdvfshxumpv3hhyuczypl4c26wfzswnlk2vwjxky7dhqjgnaqzqwvdvz3qwz5k3j4grrt46qcyqqq82vgwv96yu

Francophone: nostr:naddr1qqv5zmtzv9ehxctyv46hytt9w4ek2ttnyp8x7um5veeqygy62a4ajcz8mxyy4yatk2asg3sf9wdph3mn53fpg0nlge098pm47spsgqqqw5csff4s3h

Pour entrer en contact avec une personne de la liste ci-dessus, copiez une chaîne de caractères (celle qui commence par npub) à côté de son adresse et collez-la dans le champ de recherche du client Nostr (app) que vous utilisez.

⚡️ Activer les zap

Les Zaps sont l'une des premières différences que l'on peut remarquer après avoir rejoint Nostr. Ils permettent aux utilisateurs de Nostr d'envoyer instantanément de la valeur et de soutenir la création de contenu utile et amusant. Ceci est possible grâce au Bitcoin et au Lightning Network. Ces protocoles de paiement décentralisés vous permettent d'envoyer instantanément quelques sats (la plus petite unité sur le réseau Bitcoin) aussi facilement que d'aimer la publication de quelqu'un sur les plateformes traditionnelles de médias sociaux. Nous appelons ce modèle Value-4-Value et vous pouvez en savoir plus sur ce modèle de monétisation ultime ici : https://dergigi.com/value/

Pour d'autres wallet LN et comment activer les zap sur certains clients ce guide est à disposition

Vous devriez activer les Zaps même si vous ne vous considérez pas comme un créateur de contenu - les gens trouveront certaines de vos notes précieuses et voudront peut-être vous envoyer des sats. La façon la plus simple de commencer à recevoir de la valeur sur Nostr ne prend que 4 étapes : 1 Téléchargez Wallet of Satoshi [^1] (probablement le meilleur choix pour ceux qui découvrent Bitcoin et Lightning) pour votre appareil mobile [^2] 2 Appuyez sur "Recevoir" 3 Appuyez sur l'adresse éclair qui apparaît à l'écran (la chaîne qui ressemble à une adresse électronique) pour la copier dans le presse-papiers.

4 Collez l'adresse copiée dans le champ correspondant de votre client Nostr (le champ peut indiquer "Bitcoin Lightning Address", "LN Address" ou autre, selon l'application que vous utilisez).

📫 Obtenir une adresse Nostr

L'adresse Nostr, souvent appelée " identifiant NIP-05 " par les OG Nostr, ressemble à un email et :

🔍 facilite la découverte et le partage de votre compte ✔️ Sert à vérifier que vous êtes un être humain

Voici un exemple d'adresse Nostr : Tony@nostr.21ideas.org

c'est facile à mémoriser et à mettre ensuite dans n'importe quelle application Nostr pour trouver l'utilisateur correspondant.

Pour obtenir une adresse Nostr, vous pouvez utiliser un service gratuit comme Nostr Check (par nostr:npub138s5hey76qrnm2pmv7p8nnffhfddsm8sqzm285dyc0wy4f8a6qkqtzx624) ou un service payant comme Nostr Plebs (par nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424). Les deux offrent des avantages différents, et c'est à vous de décider lequel utiliser. Une autre façon d'obtenir une adresse Nostr est d'utiliser une extension de navigateur. Pour en savoir plus sur cette approche, cliquez ici) .

🙇‍♀️ Apprendre les bases

Sous le capot, Nostr est très différent des plateformes sociales traditionnelles, c'est pourquoi une compréhension de base de ce dont il s'agit sera bénéfique pour tout nouvel arrivant. Ne vous méprenez pas, je ne suggère pas que vous deviez apprendre un langage de programmation ou les détails techniques du protocole. Ce que je veux dire, c'est qu'avoir une vue d'ensemble et comprendre la différence entre Nostr et Twitter / Medium / Reddit sera très utile. Par exemple, il n'y a pas de mots de passe ni de logins, mais des clés privées et publiques. Je ne m'étendrai pas sur le sujet, car il existe une poignée de ressources exhaustives qui vous aideront à comprendre Nostr. Toutes celles qui méritent votre attention sont rassemblées sur cette page soigneusement organisée et préparée par nostr:npub12gu8c6uee3p243gez6cgk76362admlqe72aq3kp2fppjsjwmm7eqj9fle6 avec 💜.

Les informations fournies par les ressources mentionnées vous aideront également à sécuriser vos clés Nostr (c'est-à-dire votre compte), il est donc important d'y jeter un coup d'œil.

🤝 Se connecter

La possibilité d'entrer en contact avec des personnes brillantes [^3] est ce qui fait la particularité de Nostr. Ici, tout le monde peut se faire entendre et personne ne peut être exclu. Il existe quelques moyens simples de trouver des personnes intéressantes sur Nostr :

• Trouvez les personnes que vous suivez sur Twitter : https://www.nostr.directory/ est un excellent outil pour cela.
• Visiter le Global Feed : Chaque client Nostr (une application Nostr, en quelque sorte) dispose d'un onglet qui vous permet de basculer vers le Global Feed, qui regroupe toutes les notes de tous les utilisateurs de Nostr. Il vous suffit de suivre les personnes que vous trouvez intéressantes (soyez patient, car vous risquez de rencontrer un nombre important de spams).

• Suivez des personnes suivies par des personnes en qui vous avez confiance : Visitez le profil d'une personne qui partage vos intérêts, vérifiez la liste des personnes qu'elle suit et entrez en contact avec elle.

🗺️ Explorer

Les 5 étapes mentionnées sont un excellent début qui améliorera massivement votre expérience, mais il y a tellement plus à découvrir et à apprécier ! Nostr n'est pas un substitut de Twitter, ses possibilités ne sont limitées que par l'imagination.

Jetez un coup d'œil à la liste des projets amusants et utiles de Nostr :

• https://nostrapps.com/ une liste d'applications Nostr
• https://nostrplebs.com/ - obtenez votre NIP-05 et d'autres avantages Nostr (payant)
• https://nostrcheck.me/ - adresse Nostr, téléchargement de médias, relais
• https://nostr.build/ - télécharger et gérer des médias (et plus)
• https://nostr.band/ - réseau Nostr et informations sur les utilisateurs
• https://zaplife.lol/ - statistiques de zapping
• https://nostrit.com/ - notes de programmation
• https://nostrnests.com/ - Twitter Spaces 2.0
• https://nostryfied.online/ - sauvegarder vos informations Nostr

📻 Relais

Après avoir fait connaissance avec Nostr, n'oubliez pas de consulter le guide rapide sur les relais Nostr. Ce n'est pas le sujet dont il faut se préoccuper au tout début de votre voyage, mais il est certainement important de s'y plonger plus tard.

Merci de m'avoir lu et à bientôt de l'autre côté du trou du lapin. nostr:npub10awzknjg5r5lajnr53438ndcyjylgqsrnrtq5grs495v42qc6awsj45ys7

Cet article vous a été utile ?

Zap ⚡ 21ideas@getalby.com

Suivre : npub10awzknjg5r5lajnr53438ndcyjylgqsrnrtq5grs495v42qc6awsj45ys7

Consultez mon projet https://bitcal.21ideas.org/about/

Notes de bas de page

[^1]: il existe de nombreux autres portefeuilles qui prennent en charge les adresses lightning et vous êtes libre de choisir celui que vous préférez [^2]: n'oubliez pas de retourner au portefeuille et de sauvegarder votre compte [^3]: l'un de ces brillants nostriches est nostr:npub1fl7pr0azlpgk469u034lsgn46dvwguz9g339p03dpetp9cs5pq5qxzeknp , qui a conçu le logo utilisé sur l'image de couverture de ce guide.

@ 7b427335:741d55f0

I love the decentralized nature of the free press!

**long live

freedom to say what you want

2.

freedom to be anonymous if you want

3.

freedom to read what you want and to NOT read what you dont want!

freedom to make our own art on bitcoin called ORDINALS INSCRIPTIONS!

5.

freedom to sell that art or to trade it and to assign our own values to it!

6.

freedom to have our own religion and our own art and to let them blend if we want!

7.

freedom to think freely even if it goes against popular rhetoric or political couth!

@ a4a6b584:1e05b95b

Step 1: Update your system Before installing any new software, update your system packages. Open a terminal on your Raspberry Pi and execute the following commands:

sql sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade

This will update the package list and upgrade the installed packages to their latest versions. Proceed to the next step when ready.

Step 2: Install Apache, PHP, and MariaDB

To run OpenCart on your Raspberry Pi, you'll need to install a web server, a database server, and PHP. Use Apache, MariaDB, and PHP for this purpose. Run the following commands to install them:

Add the PHP repository and update your package list:

arduino sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https lsb-release ca-certificates wget wget -qO - https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/php-archive-keyring.gpg echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/php-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list sudo apt update

sudo apt install apache2 -y sudo apt install mariadb-server -y sudo apt install php8.1 php8.1-mysql php8.1-gd php8.1-curl php8.1-xml php8.1-mbstring php8.1-zip libapache2-mod-php8.1 -y

Verify that PHP 8.1 is installed by checking its version:

ruby php -v

Restart the Apache service to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 3: Configure MariaDB

Secure and configure MariaDB after installation. Run the following command to secure your MariaDB installation:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You'll be prompted to set a root password and answer a series of questions. Follow the recommendations to improve security. For the questions, answer as follows:

• Switch to unix_socket authentication? [Y/n] n
• Change the password for root? [Y/n] n
• Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
• Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
• Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
• Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next, create a database and user for OpenCart. Log in to the MariaDB console by running:

css sudo mysql -u root -p

Enter the root password you set earlier. Then execute the following commands to create a database and user for OpenCart:

sql CREATE DATABASE opencart; CREATE USER 'opencartuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON opencart.* TO 'opencartuser'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;

Replace 'your_password' with a strong password of your choice. Remember this database name, username, and password, as you'll need them during the OpenCart installation.

Step 4: Download and Set Up OpenCart

First, navigate to the /var/www directory and download the latest OpenCart release from their GitHub repository:

bash cd /var/www sudo wget https://github.com/opencart/opencart/releases/download/4.0.2.1/opencart-4.0.2.1.zip

*Note that the version number in the URL might change as new versions are released. Make sure to check the OpenCart GitHub repository for the latest release.

Now, unzip the downloaded file and move the contents of the 'upload' directory to a new directory named 'opencart':

bash sudo apt install unzip -y sudo unzip opencart-4.0.2.1.zip cd opencart-4.0.2.1 sudo mv upload opencart

Change the ownership of the 'opencart' directory to the Apache user:

kotlin sudo chown -R www-data:www-data opencart

Step 5: Configure Apache

Configure Apache Create an Apache virtual host configuration for your OpenCart installation. First, create a new configuration file:

Install PHP-FPM:

sudo apt install php8.1-fpm -y

Enable the proxy_fcgi and setenvif modules in Apache:

bash sudo a2enmod proxy_fcgi setenvif sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/opencart.conf

Paste the following configuration into the file, replacing 'your_domain' with your domain name or your Raspberry Pi's local IP address:

```bash ServerName localhost DocumentRoot /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart

<Directory /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart>
    Options FollowSymlinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted

    <FilesMatch \.php$>
        SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/"
    </FilesMatch>
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/opencart_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/opencart_access.log combined

```

Save and close the file. Then, disable the default Apache site and enable the OpenCart site:

arduino sudo a2dissite 000-default sudo a2ensite opencart sudo systemctl restart apache2 sudo systemctl restart php8.1-fpm

Enable the Apache rewrite module, which is required by OpenCart:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Finally, restart the Apache service to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Create and set the correct permissions for the config.php files:

bash sudo touch /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart/config.php sudo touch /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart/admin/config.php sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart/config.php sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart/admin/config.php sudo find /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; sudo find /var/www/opencart-4.0.2.1/opencart -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Step 6: Complete OpenCart Installation via Web Interface

Open a web browser and navigate to your domain or Raspberry Pi's local IP address. You should see the OpenCart installation page. Follow the on-screen instructions and accept the license agreement. The installer will check your server for compatibility. If everything is set up correctly, you should see green checkmarks for all the requirements. Click "Continue" to proceed.

Enter the database connection details you created earlier:

• Database Driver: MySQLi
• Hostname: localhost
• Username: opencartuser
• Password: your_password (the one you set earlier)
• Database: opencart
• Port: 3306
• Prefix: oc_

Fill out the administrative account details to create your OpenCart admin user. Click "Continue" to complete the installation process. After the installation is complete, you'll be prompted to delete the "install" directory. To do this, run the following command:

bash sudo rm -rf /var/www/opencart/install

Now, you should be able to access the OpenCart admin panel using the admin account you created during the installation process. That's it! You have successfully installed OpenCart on your Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64bit).

@ f5bcf314:0507683d

I have been in the crypto space for a while, but only recently, I got hooked up on Lightning Network, Nostr and Zapping. This is also my first post on Habla, so please be gentle.

By the way. I am not a financial advisor, and this is not financial advice. These are just services I use, and I decided to share my experiences.

If you are like me, you probably ask, "How to buy and stack small amounts of sats? Does it make sense to buy £10 worth of BTC every week? How much will be eaten up by the fees?" And these turned up to be very valid questions for me. At the level of 10£, fees can be humongous.

As you can guess by the "£" sign, I live in the UK and found myself out of the EU a few years ago. Some banks stopped offering their services to us, and everything suddenly became more expensive. So there could be easier or cheaper options in the EU or elsewhere; I am talking about my limited UK experience.

Binance (minimum £15)

best for balanced purchase automation (KYC required)

Recurring buy with a card. Transaction fee 2.07% = £0.31 My £15 bought me 61992 SATS

Recurring buy with a balance. Binance will charge 1£ for processing a bank transfer. Moving £61 every four weeks and setting weekly buys of £15 would work out slightly better than the option above.

Withdrawals The withdrawals must be manual, and Binance has not yet integrated with LN. Withdrawals to BTC have a minimum of 30kSATS, and the network fee is set to 20kSATS. Minus LN network fees, my Alby LN address was credited with only 41871. That's roughly 2/3 of my purchase, definitely not the best of the deals for small amounts.

Crypto.com (minimum £12)

best for purchase automation of larger amounts (KYC required)

Recurring with a card. it will set you back a whopping 2.99%. Crypto.com will add the £0.45 to the charge on your card.

Recurring buy with a balance. On a positive note, there is no fee for processing inbound transfers(!) Like with Binance, the withdrawals must be manual, and no LN integration exists. Withdrawals to BTC have a minimum of 120kSATS. This means I would need to buy at least £30 worth of BTC to be able to withdraw it. However, the fee is whooping 60kSATS which means my lN address would be credited with only 50%. Wow!

Nexo (minimum top-up £10)

best value - totally manual (KYC required)

Unfortunately, there is no recurring purchase option nor integration with LN so maybe I should not include it, However: There are no processing costs for inbound transfers. The platinum level gives five free withdrawals and requires 10% of the overall portfolio value to be held in NEXO. Assuming that we 'r rather hold our crypto in self-custody - this might not be that hard to achieve.

Mt Pelerin

full stacking automation - especially interesting for small amounts (no KYC )

Located in Switzerland and integrated with LN. It cannot be simpler. You send a bank transfer, and your chosen currency in your selected network will be credited. The list is impressive, and you can even specify your self-custodial addresses. The first 500 CHF worth of transactions every year is completely free. This limit can be raised when holding their MPS token. Out of experience, best to send transfers from the UK in CHF. The Revolut fee is only £0.3. Don't forget to provide a reference number.

Summary

These are by no means all possibilities, just all that I tried. There is also no clear best option. At level £10 a month, Mt Pelerin seems to be a no-brainer, but the more you want to buy, the more complex things will get. I am still on the lookout for better options. Shout if you know of any.

If you'd like to sign up - my referral links are: * Binance - https://accounts.binance.com/register?ref=42469060 * Crypto.com - https://crypto.com/app/btgvb3gp3d * Nexo - https://nexo.com/ref/p0qh72rpbp * Mt Pelerin - https://mtpelerin.com/join?rfr=Vx1MzVyn

Don't be a stranger, and find me on Nostr.

npub17k70x9qncwjnxne2hd0fuehydydaj2mw9xjqdr5wnjh42pg8dq7snart3v

@ 6903089d:bd117177

Time and Attention

The ultimate gift in the human experience is that of a finite life and a linear experience of time. Everyone has a birth and a death filled with a sequence of in between events which unfold in a linear fashion. From this Truth arises another; As a Human the most valuable thing you possess is your time.

Time, the way we interact with, the way we perceive it, is what sets us apart from the rest of Nature. We have the ability to apply work to the present moment on a continuous basis which results in an accumulation of that work and a final output that is the sum total of the applied work. Instead of foraging or hunting for food for the next, immediate meal I can apply my labor or my work to grow crops to provide for myself with future meals. It is this thought process which allows for advancement or progress. If we apply our labor intelligently to solve for survival needs then we will have successfully liberated our time which can then be spent to achieve or accomplish specialized tasks. This is a direct improvement on the individuals life, as he or she now has more time to pursue and engage in things the individual personally finds to be “life enriching”.

The next step in this process is to collaborate with other humans. To divide the labor amongst a community and allow for a greater liberation of time resulting in a greater ability to perform specialized tasks. This further enriches the life of the individual and the community itself. From this collaboration emerges an economy.

Money has to be one of the most important technologies man has ever created. Although, I think Money may be an emergent property of higher levels of consciousness and we, as a species, are simply harnessing it.

Money is the discovery of an emergent phenomena resulting from the interaction of individuals whom have evolved to possess the ability to perceive time in such a way that allows the application of work across it to archive desired outputs.

A consciousness that has this ability to perceive time in this way is what allows, albeit limited, capacity to understand the divine.

The directed spending of time happens through an avenue which we refer to as attention. The intentional directing of an individual's attention is a divine expression.

Social media is a psychological surgery that invasively enters our energetic body and extracts our attention.

There is no more sacred a gift we can offer than to give another human our direct and focused attention.

Controlling and directing mental power and concentration, also called attention, is the mechanism which allows anything and all things to be accomplished. Whether it is an lion that cooperatively hunts with its pride or a human that sits down to read a book. Nothing can be accomplished without focused attention. When an individual is able to direct mental energy away from the material world and focus on the transcendental, our perspective on the world, the universe, and our place within it begins to shift. Thus it is the focused attention of mental energy that allows for transcendental experience.

I would argue that an individual’s ability to focus attention is correlative with the level of overall joy and satisfaction the individual has within life. Attention and its direction is a skill similar to that of any other, that is to say, the more we practice the better we will become. There are numerous activities that we engage in throughout our day that are either strengthening or weakening our ability to focus our attention.

As a society we have, for the most part, lost the ability to control our own attention. We have given our power to do so away to social media platforms and the A.I. algorithms that govern them. Short videos now dominate the social media landscape with something like an average video length in the range of 30 seconds. The using social media and expecting to be able to control your mind would be similar to preparing for a marathon with bed rest. Social media is a drug that over-stimulates the mind and teaches it to seek small, rapid bursts of pleasure. This ultimately diminishes the ability we have to focus on everything in our lives. Frequent use of social media is detrimental to our ability to focus our attention.

My life is the most important thing to me and I want to perform as well as I can within it. The better I am able to focus my attention the better my life will become. That means I need to do things that improve my ability to focus my attention. The amount of attention and patience I am able to give to my spouse, children and family. My ability to perform work at my job. My ability to learn from and adapt to my environment. Are all affected and ultimately diminished as my ability to focus my attention decreases.

@ 1bc70a01:24f6a411

I asked ChatGTP to generate some startup ideas based on the first batch of the plugins that will become available some time in the near future.

The following is my prompt and the responses I received.

*You are an experienced VC with previous exits as an entrepreneur. You really know your stuff. When you learned that OpenAI is introducing plugins to ChatGPT, you couldn't help but realize there are significant startup opportunities awaiting. The first batch of plugins allow ChatGPT to integrate with: Expedia, FiscalNote, Instacart, KAYAK, Klarna, Milo, OpenTable, Shopify, Slack, Speak, Wolfram, and Zapier. Your job as a successful VC is to identify market opportunities and come up with product ideas that will likely succeed or result in a unicorn status startup.

Brainstorm the potential startups that could be born out of this combination of ChatGPT and the listed plugins. Create a table with 6 columns. Column 1 will contain a potential startup name. Column 2 will describe the startup and what problem it solves. Column 3 will grade the startup in terms of difficulty to execute (5 stars means most easy to execute, 1 star means most difficult). Column 4 will contain the revenue potential of each startup. 5 dollar signs for biggest potential, 1 for lowest. Column 5 outlines an MVP that can be built in a week. Column 6 identifies potential customer acquisition strategies. Sort the entire table by the startup idea with the most revenue potential.*

ChatGPT totally screwed up the formatting because it cannot accommodate this many columns, so I asked it to write it out in a list instead.

The idea that stands out most to me is TeamSync. It has the potential of growing like crazy once integrated into an organization. Since people tend to move and talk about their jobs, this product would grow well organically if it performed well in terms of its capabilities.

Startup Name: TripPlanner

• Description: A travel planning service using ChatGPT, Expedia, and KAYAK integration to find and book flights, hotels, and activities with personalized recommendations.
• Execution Difficulty: 3/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$$$
• MVP: A simple chatbot that takes user preferences, suggests travel plans, and books flights and hotels.
• Customer Acquisition: Content marketing, social media campaigns, and partnerships with travel influencers.

Startup Name: ShopAssist

• Description: An AI-driven shopping assistant using ChatGPT and Shopify integration to help users find the best products and deals tailored to their preferences.
• Execution Difficulty: 2/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$$$
• MVP: A chatbot that takes user preferences and suggests products from a curated list of Shopify stores.
• Customer Acquisition: Social media advertising, influencer partnerships, and email marketing.

Startup Name: TaskGenius

• Description: A virtual assistant using ChatGPT and Zapier integration to automate tasks, manage appointments, and handle other personal and professional duties.
• Execution Difficulty: 4/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$$
• MVP: A chatbot that can schedule appointments, send emails, and complete simple tasks using Zapier integrations.
• Customer Acquisition: Targeted online advertising, content marketing, and partnership with productivity-focused influencers.

Startup Name: FoodFinder

• Description: A personalized meal planning and grocery shopping service using ChatGPT, Instacart, and OpenTable integration.
• Execution Difficulty: 3/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$$
• MVP: A chatbot that suggests meal plans based on user preferences and dietary restrictions, and creates shopping lists for Instacart orders or books restaurant reservations.
• Customer Acquisition: Influencer marketing, social media advertising, and strategic partnerships with food and wellness brands.

Startup Name: FinanceGuru

• Description: A financial management tool using ChatGPT, Klarna, and FiscalNote integration for budgeting, tracking expenses, and offering personalized financial advice.
• Execution Difficulty: 4/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$$
• MVP: A chatbot that connects to users' Klarna accounts, analyzes spending habits, and offers tailored financial advice.
• Customer Acquisition: Content marketing, targeted online advertising, and partnerships with personal finance influencers.

Startup Name: SpeakUp

• Description: A language learning platform using ChatGPT and Speak integration to offer personalized language learning experiences and real-time practice with an AI tutor.
• Execution Difficulty: 4/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$
• MVP: A chatbot that teaches basic phrases and vocabulary in a chosen language and engages users in simple conversations.
• Customer Acquisition: Influencer marketing, social media advertising, and partnerships with language learning communities.

Startup Name: TeamSync

• Description: A team collaboration and project management tool using ChatGPT and Slack integration to automate task assignment, status updates, and team communication.
• Execution Difficulty: 3/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$$
• MVP: A chatbot that connects to Slack, assigns tasks to team members, tracks progress, and provides updates in a designated channel.
• Customer Acquisition: Content marketing, targeted online advertising, and partnerships with productivity-focused influencers.

Startup Name: FitAdvisor

• Description: A personalized fitness and wellness service using ChatGPT, Milo, and Wolfram integration to create tailored workout plans, track progress, and provide real-time coaching.
• Execution Difficulty: 4/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$
• MVP: A chatbot that creates workout plans based on user preferences and fitness goals, and tracks progress using Milo and Wolfram data.
• Customer Acquisition: Influencer marketing, social media advertising, and strategic partnerships with fitness and wellness brands.

Startup Name: EventMaster

• Description: An event planning and booking service using ChatGPT, OpenTable, and KAYAK integration to help users find and book suitable venues, catering, and accommodations for various events.
• Execution Difficulty: 4/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$
• MVP: A chatbot that takes event details from users, suggests appropriate venues and catering options, and books reservations or accommodations.
• Customer Acquisition: Content marketing, social media campaigns, and partnerships with event planning influencers.

Startup Name: CodeBuddy

• Description: An AI-driven programming tutor using ChatGPT and Wolfram integration to assist users with learning various programming languages, debugging code, and providing real-time guidance.
• Execution Difficulty: 5/5
• Revenue Potential: $$$
• MVP: A chatbot that helps users learn basic programming concepts, answers questions, and provides guidance on simple coding challenges.
• Customer Acquisition: Content marketing, targeted online advertising, and partnerships with coding bootcamps or programming communities.

@ 6e468422:15deee93

Not too long ago, I tried to paint a picture of what a vision for a value-enabled web could look like. Now, only a couple of months later, all this stuff is being built. On nostr, and on lightning. Orange and purple, a match made in heaven.

It goes without saying that I'm beyond delighted. What a time to be alive!

nostr

Here's the thing that nostr got right, and it's the same thing that Bitcoin got right: information is easy to spread and hard to stifle.[^fn-stifle] Information can be copied quickly and perfectly, which is, I believe, the underlying reason for its desire to be free.

[^fn-stifle]: That's a Satoshi quote, of course: "Bitcoin's solution is to use a peer-to-peer network to check for double-spending. In a nutshell, the network works like a distributed timestamp server, stamping the first transaction to spend a coin. It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle."

Easy to spread, hard to stifle. That's the base reality of the nature of information. As always, the smart thing is to work with nature, not against it.[^1] That's what's beautiful about the orange coin and the purple ostrich: both manage to work with the peculiarities of information, not against them. Both realize that information can and should be copied, as it can be perfectly read and easily spread, always. Both understand that resistance to censorship comes from writing to many places, making the cost of deletion prohibitive.

Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.

Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk's Manifesto

Nostr is quickly establishing itself as a base layer for information exchange, one that is identity-native and value-enabled. It is distinctly different from systems that came before it, just like Bitcoin is distinctly different from monies that came before it.

As of today, the focus of nostr is mostly on short text notes, the so-called "type 1" events more commonly known as tweets.[^fn-kinds] However, as you should be aware by now, nostr is way more than just an alternative to twitter. It is a new paradigm. Change the note kind from 1 to 30023 and you don't have an alternative to Twitter, but a replacement for Medium, Substack, and all the other long-form platforms. I believe that special-purpose clients that focus on certain content types will emerge over time, just like we have seen the emergence of special-purpose platforms in the Web 2.0 era. This time, however, the network effects are cumulative, not separate. A new paradigm.

Let me now turn to one such special-purpose client, a nostr-based reading app.

[^fn-kinds]: Refer to the various NIPs to discover the multitude of event kinds defined by the protocol.

Reading

I'm constantly surprised that, even though most people do read a lot online, very few people seem to have a reading workflow or reading tools.

Why that is is anyone's guess, but maybe the added value of such tools is not readily apparent. You can just read the stuff right there, on the ad-ridden, dead-ugly site, right? Why should you sign up for another site, use another app, or bind yourself to another closed platform?

That's a fair point, but the success of Medium and Substack shows that there is an appetite for clean reading and writing, as well as providing avenues for authors to get paid for their writing (and a willingness of readers to support said authors, just because).

The problem is, of course, that all of these platforms are platforms, which is to say, walled gardens that imprison readers and writers alike. Worse than that: they are fiat platforms, which means that permissionless value-flows are not only absent from their DNA, they are outright impossible.[^2]

Nostr fixes this.

The beauty of nostr is that it is not a platform. It's a protocol, which means that you don't have to sign up for it---you can create an identity yourself. You don't have to ask for permission; you just do, without having to rely on the benevolence of whatever dictator is in charge of the platform right now.

Nostr is not a platform, and yet, powerful tools and services can be built and monetized on top of it. This is good for users, good for service providers, and good for the network(s) at large. Win-win-win.

So what am I talking about, exactly? How can nostr improve everyone's reading (and writing) experience?

Allow me to paint a (rough) picture of what I have in mind. Nostr already supports private and public bookmarks, so let's start from there.

Imagine a special-purpose client that scans all your bookmarks for long-form content.[^fn-urls] Everything that you marked to be read later is shown in an orderly fashion, which is to say searchable, sortable, filterable, and displayed without distractions. Voilà, you have yourself a reading app. That's, in essence, how Pocket, Readwise, and other reading apps work. But all these apps are walled gardens without much interoperability and without direct monetization.

[^fn-urls]: In the nostr world long-form content is simply markdown as defined in NIP-23, but it could also be a link to an article or PDF, which in turn could get converted into markdown and posted as an event to a special relay.

Bitcoin fixes the direct monetization part.[^fn-v4v] Nostr fixes the interoperability part.

[^fn-v4v]: ...because Bitcoin makes V4V practical. (Paywalls are not the way.)

Alright, we got ourselves a boring reading app. Great. Now, imagine that users are able to highlight passages. These highlights, just like bookmarks now, could be private or public. When shared publicly, something interesting emerges: an overlay on existing content, a lens on the written Web. In other words: swarm highlights.

Imagine a visual overlay of all public highlights, automatically shining a light on what the swarm of readers found most useful, insightful, funny, etc.

Further, imagine the possibility of sharing these highlights as a "type 1" event with one click, automatically tagging the highlighter(s)---as well as the author, of course---so that eventual sat-flows can be split and forwarded automatically.

Voilà, you have a system that allows for value to flow back to those who provide it, be it authors, editors, curators, or readers that willingly slog through the information jungle to share and highlight the best stuff (which is a form of curation, of course).

Zaps make nostr a defacto address book[^fn-pp] of payment information, which is to say lightning addresses, as of now. Thanks to nostr wallet connect (among other developments), sending sats ~~will soon be~~ is already as frictionless as leaving a like.

[^fn-pp]: The Yellow Pages are dead, long live The Purple Pages!

Value-for-value and participatory payment flows are something that traditional reading apps desperately lack, be it Pocket, Instapaper, Readwise, or the simple reading mode that is part of every browser.

A neat side-effect of a more structured way to share passages of text is that it enables semi-structured discussions around said passages---which could be another useful overlay inside special-purpose clients, providing context and further insights.[^5]

Further, imagine the option of seamlessly switching from text-on-screen to text-to-speech, allowing the user to stream sats if desired, as Podcasting 2.0 clients already do.[^3]

Imagine user-built curations of the best articles of the week, bundled neatly for your reading pleasure, incentivized by a small value split that allows the curator to participate in the flow of sats.

You get the idea.

I'm sure that the various implementation details will be hashed out, but as I see it, 90% of the stuff is already there. Maybe we'll need another NIP or two, but I don't see a reason why this can't be built---and, more importantly: I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be sustainable for everyone involved.

Most puzzle pieces are already there, and the rest of them can probably be implemented by custom event types. From the point of view of nostr, most everything is an event: bookmarks are events, highlights are events, marking something as read is an event, and sharing an excerpt or a highlight is an event. Public actions are out in the open, private actions are encrypted, the data is not in a silo, and everyone wins. Especially the users, those who are at the edge of the network and usually lose out on the value generated.

In this case, the reading case, the users are mostly "consumers" of content. What changes from the producing perspective, the perspective of the writer?

Writing

Back to the one thing that nostr got right: information is easy to spread but hard to stifle. In addition to that, digital information can be copied perfectly, which is why it shouldn't matter where stuff is published in the first place.

Allow me to repeat this point in all caps, for emphasis: IT SHOULD NOT MATTER WHERE INFORMATION IS PUBLISHED, and, maybe even more importantly, it shouldn't matter if it is published in a hundred different places at once.[^fn-torrents]

What matters is trust and accuracy, which is to say, digital signatures and reputation. To translate this to nostr speak: because every event is signed by default, as long as you trust the person behind the signature, it doesn't matter from which relay the information is fetched.

This is already true (or mostly true) on the regular web. Whether you read the internet archive version of an article or the version that is published by an online magazine, the version on the author's website, or the version read by some guy that has read more about Bitcoin than anyone else you know[^fn-guy]---it's all the same, essentially. What matters is the information itself.

[^fn-guy]: There is only one such guy, as we all know, and it's this Guy: nostr:npub1h8nk2346qezka5cpm8jjh3yl5j88pf4ly2ptu7s6uu55wcfqy0wq36rpev

Practically speaking, the source of truth in a hypernostrized world is---you guessed it---an event. An event signed by the author, which allows for the information to be wrapped in a tamper-proof manner, which in turn allows the information to spread far and wide---without it being hosted in one place.

The first clients that focus on long-form content already exist, and I expect more clients to pop up over time.[^4] As mentioned before, one could easily imagine prism-like value splits seamlessly integrated into these clients, splitting zaps automatically to compensate writers, editors, proofreaders, and illustrators in a V4V fashion. Further, one could imagine various compute-intensive services built into these special-purpose clients, such as GPT Ghostwriters, or writing aids such as Grammarly and the like. All these services could be seamlessly paid for in sats, without the requirement of any sign-ups or the gathering of any user data. That's the beauty of money proper.

Plagiarism is one issue that needs to be dealt with, of course. Humans are greedy, and some humans are assholes. Neither bitcoin nor nostr fixes this. However, while plagiarism detection is not necessarily trivial, it is also not impossible, especially if most texts are published on nostr first. Nostr-based publishing tools allow for OpenTimestamp attestations thanks to NIP-03, which in turn allows for plagiarism detection based on "first seen" lookups.

That's just one way to deal with the problem, of course. In any case, I'm confident that we'll figure it out.

Value

I believe that in the open ~~attention~~ information economy we find ourselves in, value will mostly derive from effective curation, dissemination, and transmission of information, not the exclusive ownership of it.

Although it is still early days, the statistics around Podcasting 2.0 and nostr zaps clearly show that (a) people are willing to monetarily reward content they care about, and (b) the willingness to send sats increases as friction decreases.

The ingenious thing about boostagrams and zaps is that they are direct and visible, which is to say, public and interactive. They are neither regular transactions nor simple donations---they are something else entirely. An unforgable value signal, a special form of gratitude and appreciation.

Contrast that with a link to Paypal or Patreon: impersonal, slow, indirect, and friction-laden. It's the opposite of a super-charged interaction.

While today's information jungle increasingly presents itself in the form of (short) videos and (long-form) audio, I believe that we will see a renaissance of the written word, especially if we manage to move away from an economy built around attention, towards an economy built upon value and insight.

The orange future now has a purple hue, and I believe that it will be as bright as ever. We just have a lot of building to do.

---

Further Reading

• A Vision for a Value-Enabled Web
• The Freedom of Value
• The Rediscovery of Money
• Lightning Prisms

NIPs and Resources

• Nostr Resources
• value4value.info
• nips.be
• NIP-23: Long-form content
• NIP-57: Event-specific zap markers
• NIP-47: Nostr Wallet Connect
• NIP-03: OpenTimestamps attestations for events

Originally published on dergigi.com

---

[^1]: Paywalls work against this nature, which is why I consider them misguided at best and incredibly retarded at worst.

[^2]: Fiat doesn't work for the value-enabled web, as fiat rails can never be open and permissionless. Digital fiat is never money. It is---and always will be---credit.

[^3]: Whether the recipient is a text-to-speech service provider or a human narrator doesn't even matter too much, sats will flow just the same.

[^4]: BlogStack and Habla being two of them.

[^5]: Use a URI as the discussion base (instead of a highlight), and you got yourself a Disqus in purple feathers!

[^fn-torrents]: That's what torrents got right, and ipfs for that matter.

@ 7ec127c0:9a5d2fe0

I awoke to the smell of mole sauce simmering in the kitchen.

My wife’s aunts were staying with us after our Mexican wedding, and they decided to cook mole chicken with rice for lunch.

For those who don’t know, a mole sauce typically has fruits, nuts, chocolate, chili peppers, and spices like cinnamon or cumin.

It is every bit as good as it sounds, and my brother-in-law said the meal they cooked was one of the top 5 things he’s ever eaten.

That’s saying something.

Obviously.

Dalia’s aunts were incredible. They seemed to have a smile plastered on their face from sun up to sun down. My friend complained of having an upset stomach, so they concocted a homemade ginger and lime drink with alka-seltzer for him.

He said it tasted like Sprite.

My sister was afraid her 9-month-old baby wouldn’t be able to eat the mole, so they made him a simple rice soup to eat. Then they picked him up and spoon fed it to him.

With a big smile.

I couldn’t believe all that was happening. Her aunts were in the kitchen all day slaving away making some of the best food I’ve ever eaten, and when I told them they didn’t have to cook anymore, they said:

“Don’t worry, we love doing this, Tom.”

Pretty soon they announced they were making tamales, which wasn’t exactly music to my ears.

I hate tamales.

But they bought a big pan to steam them in, a bunch of banana leaves, and started preparing the “masa,” tomato sauce, and meat for this dish.

Despite my hatred of tamales, I wanted to learn how to make them. It looked like an interesting process, and trust me when I say they nearly had a heart attack of joy when I told them I wanted to learn.

Pretty soon me, my friend Jon, my sister, and Dalia were all standing together preparing tamales. First we spread the masa on the banana leaf, placed a piece of pork in the center, bathed the masa with rich tomato sauce, and folded the tamale up into a nice little rectangle.

My mouth started watering.

‘What! How can my mouth be watering!?’ I thought.

‘I don’t even like tamales!’

A few hours later the tamales were ready. I braced myself because not eating the tamales would probably be offensive to my new family. There was no choice but to eat them.

I unwrapped my tamale and took my first bite.

It was…………good? Wait, it was amazing! Wait, it was f***ing phenomenal!

When I woke up the day after my wedding, I had no idea we were about to have some of the best food I’d ever eaten in my life. It was more than welcome because quite frankly I felt so tired.

At the end of this beautiful day I realized just how beautiful Mexican culture really is.

I always knew it, but this was the first time I actually got to interact with and enjoy Mexican culture like this firsthand. Dalia’s aunts, like her, hail from the state Veracruz. It hugs the gulf coast and is home to some of the most beautiful mountains, beaches, and farmland you’ll ever see.

Sure it’s more rural, and few gringos actually go there, but I feel this is where “Mexico” actually is — for better and for worse.

One morning her aunts rubbed an egg all over my body, cracked it open into a cup of water, and used it to analyze my soul.

I didn’t believe a word of it, but I will tell you one thing.

Dalia’s aunts have something that I’ve scarcely seen before: unbridled joy for life, serving others, and a heart as pure as gold.

How can I get that, too?

It certainly has something to do with their culture. I’ve never seen one American act like them in my entire life. Not one.

For all the freedom and progress and financial prosperity we have, I’ve never seen one American act as happy as them.

I swear on my life.

And that makes me, oddly enough, give credence to the fact that they believe in the power of a cracked egg to read my soul.

Clearly they already know something I don’t about life and happiness and meaning. Who am I to judge what they believe about an egg, then?

Dalia and I have already discussed moving to Veracruz to be closer to her extended family. I think we might just have to follow through on that one.

I think I’ll be happy I did.

@ 7ab79bc0:9385ad99

Bitcoin ist vieles. Bitcoin die Währung ist teilbar, austauschbar, einfach transportierbar, haltbar, prüfbar, knapp, universell akzeptiert und leicht sicherungsfähig. Bitcoin das Netzwerk ist staatenlos, dezentral, zensurresistent, erlaubnislos, diskriminiert nicht, vertrauenslos, pseudonym, open source, es basiert auf Konsens- und Anreizmechanismen und Verifizierung sowie Berechnung (wahrscheinlich habe ich sogar viele weitere Eigenschaften vergessen), aber ist Bitcoin auch wirklich unpolitisch, wie so oft behauptet?

Es wird häufig behauptet, dass Bitcoin unpolitisch sei. Aber was genau soll das bedeuten? Die einfachste Erklärung ist, dass Bitcoin für jeden frei zugänglich ist und von jedem benutzt werden kann, egal für welchen Zweck. In der Theorie auch für politische Zwecke, egal welcher Richtung. Bitcoin ist Politik in dieser Hinsicht egal. Denn das Bitcoin-Netzwerk richtet nicht, es diskriminiert nicht und es hat keine Meinung. Eine Transaktion ist eine Transaktion, egal wer der Urheber oder der Sender ist und egal, wer der Empfänger ist. Transaktionen müssen nicht gekennzeichnet werden und somit gibt es keine Möglichkeit für das Netzwerk zu entscheiden, ob eine Transaktion gut oder schlecht ist, dazu genutzt wird, um Guthaben von einer Wallet in eine andere zu schieben, oder von einem Land in ein anderes Land geschickt wird, um dort moralisch fragwürdige Motive zu unterstützen. Insofern ist Bitcoin unpolitisch: Das Netzwerk diskriminiert, oder besser gesagt beurteilt nicht aufgrund politischer Neigungen.

Aber dies ist eigentlich nur die Definition für die eingangs erwähnte Eigenschaft von Bitcoins Wertfreiheit (meiner Meinung nach eine bessere Ausdrucksweise für "Bitcoin diskriminiert nicht").

Aber Nichtdiskriminierung bzw. Wertfreiheit bedeutet nicht unbedingt unpolitisch oder apolitisch. Die Definition dieses Adjektivs bedeutet streng genommen:

[1] sich nicht für Politik interessierend, kein Interesse an politische Themen zeigend

[2] keine Steigerung: nicht die Politik betreffend, nicht zur Politik gehörend

Die erste Definition, da sind wir uns sicherlich einig, sollte erfüllt sein. Bitcoin interessiert sich nicht für Politik. Bitcoin ist ein Netzwerk, ein Protokoll, ein System. Bitcoin interessiert sich nur für sich selbst. Seinen eigenen Erhalt, und die im Protokoll festgesetzten Regeln: Etwa alle 10 Minuten wird ein neuer Block produziert, egal wie viel Rechenleistung dem Netzwerk zur Verfügung steht, egal wie viele Transaktionen hinzuzufügen sind, egal wie viele Netzwerkteilnehmer partizipieren.

Bei der zweiten Definition wird es allerdings etwas komplizierter. Bitcoin wurde von Satoshi als Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System ins Leben gerufen, das die inhärenten Schwächen des heutigen, vertrauensbasierten Modells löst. Satoshi identifizierte das Problem schon in 2009:

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.

Der Genesis Block selbst enthält die wohl bekannteste aller Nachrichten, die jemals in der Bitcoin-Timechain verewigt wurden:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

Damit ist die Konzeption und die Erschaffung des Bitcoin-Protokolls an sich schon ein politischer Akt. Bitcoin stellt eine Alternative zu unserem derzeitigen Geldsystem dar und soll oder könnte es, im besten Fall, sogar ersetzen. Bitcoin positioniert sich als Gegenstück zum Staat - dem derzeitigen Wächter und Herrn über das Geldsystem. Der Staat ist eine von Natur aus politische Instanz. Wenn man also mit etwas konkurriert, das dem Staat obliegt, wird es automatisch politisch. Satoshi selbst war zumindest indirekt vom Libertarismus und der österreichischen Ökonomie beeinflusst.

Das bedeutet keineswegs, dass jede Person, die Bitcoin verwendet, automatisch einem politischen Akt unterworfen wird, oder selbst anarchistische, libertäre oder liberale Ziele verfolgt. Allerdings bleibt nicht von der Hand zu weisen, dass Bitcoin und sein Ziel, eine Alternative zum heutigen vorherrschenden Geldsystem zu erschaffen, dadurch eine inhärent politische Bekundung ist.

Wenn Bitcoin also nicht apolitisch oder unpolitisch ist, aber auch nicht explizit politisch, dann könnte man behaupten Bitcoin sei zumindest anti-politisch. Der per Definition politische Staat und die Staatsgewalt über das Geldsystem sind der erklärte Gegenspieler von Bitcoin. Damit stellt sich Bitcoin als Kontrahent zu einem System auf, das die Gewalt in die Hände einiger Weniger legt. In der Politik gewinnen oder herrschen diejenigen, die die populärste Meinung vertreten (wenn es gut läuft), oder die meiste Gewalt hinter sich bündeln (wenn es nicht so gut läuft). Im Bitcoin-Netzwerk gewinnen diejenigen, die am effizientesten die Anreizstrukturen nutzen (Miner, Mining-Pools, Lightning-Routing-Channel Betreiber, etc.), oder Bitcoin am effizientesten für sich nutzen und damit dem Ökosystem zum Wachstum verhelfen (Unternehmer, Experten, Entwickler, etc.). Die politische Gesinnung dieser Netzwerkteilnehmer spielt dabei in erster Linie absolut keine Rolle. Es ist völlig egal, ob ein Node-Betreiber zu Hause Pickelhauben sammelt oder im Che Guevara T-Shirt Bitcoin-Protokolle schreibt.

Das heutige Geldsystem hat viele Nachteile, alle aufzuzählen würde den Rahmen sprengen, jedoch lassen sich einige prägnante leicht identifizieren: Rent-Seeking, des Bitcoiners liebstes Thema der Cantillon-Effekt, Geld- oder Münzentwertung und Geldmarktpolitik vereinen alle das gleiche zugrunde liegende Problem. Sie unterliegen alle der politischen Einflussnahme auf das System zum Vorteil einiger (privilegierter) Weniger. Denn was für die wenigen individuellen Vorteilsnehmer aussichtsreich und lohnenswert ist, ist für das Kollektiv schädlich und finanziell schädigend. Bitcoin stellt dazu die Alternative dar. Zwar lässt sich argumentieren, dass die vorhandene Menge und damit das Vermögen bereits heute ungerecht verteilt ist. Allerdings birgt diese Verteilung lediglich Vorteile für die Individuen, ohne jedoch das Kollektiv zu schädigen. Besitzer von großen Mengen bitcoin können genau so viel oder so wenig Einfluss auf das System nehmen, wie diejenigen, die verhältnismäßig wenig besitzen.

Wenn es irgendetwas von Wert gibt, ob Geld, Edelmetalle, oder sonstige Wertgegenstände, wird es auch immer Menschen geben, die davon mehr besitzen als andere - das ist ein unumstößlicher Fakt der Natur und auch Bitcoin wird daran nichts ändern können. Allerdings bietet Bitcoin die nötigen Anreizstrukturen, den eigenen Anteil zu vermehren. Wie schon erwähnt, werden Unternehmergeist, Expertenwissen und aufgebrachte Arbeit derjenigen, die das Netzwerk voranbringen, belohnt. Im Gegensatz zum aktuellen System, in dem oft nicht nur Unternehmergeist und Arbeitsleistung belohnt werden, sondern auch politische Einflussnahme, Prestige und Macht, oder sogar schon die Nähe und der Zugang zu diesen einflussreichen Interessengruppen. Korruption, Lobbyismus und politische Vorteilsnahme führen deshalb zu unproduktiver Arbeit, bei der einzig und allein der Begünstigte profitiert.

Bitcoin eliminiert diese politische Vorteilsnahme und ist dadurch schon anti-politisch.

In diesem Sinne ist Bitcoin also politisch, wie alles politisch ist oder zu einem politischen Thema gemacht werden kann. Ich habe in einem früheren Artikel bereits beschrieben, dass der Staat für viele Menschen die Rolle einer Art Religion eingenommen hat und dass Bitcoin in gewisser Weise für den Staat das ist, was der Buchdruck damals für Religion war.

Religion ist eigentlich unpolitisch, obwohl man behaupten darf, dass Kirchgänger gewisser Religionen im Allgemeinen im gleichen Bereich des politischen Spektrums wiederzufinden sind, macht dies Religion nicht von Natur aus politisch. Doch die Trennung von Kirche und Staat kann wohl als hochpolitisch bezeichnet werden.

Wo Diderot, Rousseau und Voltaire eine Berufung auf die Vernunft als universelle Urteilsinstanz propagierten und einen Kampf gegen Vorurteile und für die Hinwendung zu Naturwissenschaften, religiöse Toleranz und eine Orientierung am Naturrecht einleiteten, streben Bitcoin und seine Befürworter eine Abkehr von den staatlich gesteuerten und (Fiskal- und Geld)politisch aufgeladenen Finanz- und Wirtschaftsinterventionen und eine Berufung auf Werte wie Dezentralität, Zensurresistenz und Selbstbestimmtheit an.

Dasselbe gilt für die Trennung von Geld und Staat. Geld ist eigentlich unpolitisch, aber die Trennung von Geld und Staat ist hochpolitisch. Auch der Missbrauch von Geld zum Erreichen von politischen Zielen ist hochpolitisch. Wie eingangs erwähnt, wird Bitcoin so politisiert - nur eben als Gegenentwurf. Als anti-politische Alternative zum politischen Fiat-System mit all seinen Fehlern.

Was ich damit sagen will, ist, dass Bitcoin per se politisch ist. Es ist eben nur ein anderer Entwurf zu dem politischen Denken, das heute vorherrscht. Bitcoin ist und bleibt erlaubnislos und wertfrei, damit ist die Nutzung von Bitcoin erstmal im Generellen unpolitisch. Solange bis auch einzelne Anwendungsfälle von politischer Natur sind. Bitcoin-Spenden an Wikileaks haben eine politische Tragweite. Bitcoin-Spenden an den Freedom-Convoy in Kanada sind politisch. Bitcoin-Spenden an Hodlonaut sind politisch, auch wenn es dabei um die hauseigene Politik im Bitcoin-Ökosystem geht.

Man kann also nicht ohne weiteres sagen "Bitcoin ist unpolitisch". Es ist richtiger zu sagen, dass Bitcoin keine politische Meinung vertritt und sich nicht zu politischer Einflussnahme instrumentalisieren lässt. Bitcoin ist ein Protokoll, ein Netzwerk, und kümmert sich nur um sich selbst. Aber Bitcoin ist sehr wohl politisch. 🫳🎤

Sven

@ 16e0365d:8e521573

Earlier this week I made a note (@note1h4p5zvdn98gkqdandm7j00f3v5m4nr3wg5yspa8xre8hrcppxgkqv03t4m) about my thoughts on the current state of nostr, and more specifically, nostr adoption. I wanted to clarify some points & elaborate more on that note. I’m glad there was some discussion surrounding this topic, but I think some things were taken out of context so I just wanted to follow up.

1. I’m a hardcore bitcoin maxi with unwavering conviction. There is no better money for the world, and the internet, than bitcoin. I believe talking about bitcoin and spreading the word about it is one of the greatest ways to contribute to the movement for those of us who aren’t developers and don’t work for bitcoin companies. I’ve also learned that there is a time and place for orange pilling and that there’s nothing a no coiner hates more than a person trying to force some strange magic internet money on them 24/7 when their “bank account works just fine” (lol). Nothing I said here was meant to sound like I’m telling people to just stop talking about bitcoin entirely and I realize it may have sounded that way, so I apologize for that. The entire point of the note was to try and get us thinking about ways in which nostr can branch out and become a place even nocoiners desire feel naturally drawn to.

2. We are early. To both bitcoin and nostr. Many people don’t know anything about bitcoin. Even less know anything about nostr. Since I came back and scrolled I’ve seen a lot of new users popping up and the nostr welcoming committee doing its thing as always. I think I poorly worded part of the note when I said “nostr adoption is fully tied to bitcoin adoption”. I think a better way to encompass what I was saying is that with the current nostr environment “nostr adoption will correlate to bitcoin adoption”. What I meant by this part was that there are a lot of people who will not even consider Nostr because of bitcoin, and therefore, they won't even try nostr until they understand bitcoin isn’t some scammy enterprise. Whether you agree or disagree, I honestly don’t care and it really doesn’t matter whether we agree in the grand scheme of things. This was just an opinion I formed based on my personal experiences of purple pilling and orange pilling.

3. Because we are so early, I am of the belief that the easiest way to get normies to adopt nostr and feel comfortable with it is by just explaining the basics and letting them play around with it on their own. By basics I mean: how to set your pfp, how to add and remove relays, what the different clients are, how the protocol actually works. In my opinion (and depending on who the new person is) zaps are a different discussion because that entails the person being comfortable with bitcoin and nostr (again, you can disagree with me, these are my opinions). Newborn ostriches already have to get comfortable using a new protocol, and I think adding the bitcoin factor on top of that can be spooky for them - in fact, I’ve seen them get spooked by this. Again, this depends on the audience you’re speaking to. I’m not here to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do, and I have no authority to do so. I’m just writing down my perspective, so if you feel that explaining zaps is helpful in purple pilling someone, then by all means do so. All I know is that I will save the zap conversation for a second discussion, instead of including it in the first.

4. I’m not a developer and from a non-developer standpoint, all of the devs building on top of nostr blow my mind every time I come to this place. Nothing I said in my previous note, nor anything I say in this note is meant to be a nudge at any devs.

With all of that said, I think the main issue with new users feeling uncomfortable is (1) the lack of content discovery and (2) the abundance of repetitive content. Most people are used to being fed their preferred content by an algorithm, instead of having to go out looking for it. Currently, users have to browse the spammy global feed, hashtags, and others profiles just to find someone who has common interests. By the time they do that, they’re inevitably going to be exposed to the bitcoin conversation here, which may scare them off because it will feel unavoidable (reminder: I’m not telling you to stop talking about bitcoin). With that in mind, I think it would be cool to see two things made easier: (1) content discovery and (2) avoiding certain content. What are my suggestions to solve this?

Again, I’m not a developer, and I’m certainly not telling developers what to do, but I think pulling some ideas from old socials are worth a discussion. If someone wants to act on these, cool. If not, also cool. I’m just making suggestions:

1. Searchable words/phrases: it would be nice to be able to just search words and show notes containing those words (this would also be helpful for finding some of your own past notes). “Sports” “Art” “Doctors” etc. whatever your interests are, this would make it incredibly easier to discover content that you like. Hashtags are good but anyone can add any hashtag to the end of a note even if the note has nothing to do with that hashtag (see: plethora of bitcoin posts under #grownostr). Perhaps even having clients recommend a certain hashtag (#introduction) for your first post upon sign up could be beneficial. I think there's a client that does this but I can't remember so I apologize for not giving you the props, whoever you are.
2. Trending topics: by seeing what topics are being talked about the most, you wouldn’t need to search anything to find a topic you may be interested in, and can hop right into the discussion. (would this be considered an “algorithm”? I wouldn't consider it one) Nostr.band is great for this, but integration into clients would be incredible. Obviously, bitcoin, zaps, etc would probably always be trending, which brings me to my next idea.
3. Mute words: someone says they don’t want to join nostr because they don’t want to hear about bitcoin all day? Cool, just mute the word bitcoin and your client won’t show you any notes containing the word bitcoin. This would also allow for individuals to mute words that could be offensive to them like racial slurs. Some of you are going to say this is censorship, and if you believe that it is, you have a very broad (and wrong) definition of censorship.
4. Nostr Welcome guides: of course we have welcome guides already. I’ve probably seen about 10 or so of them. But they all mention zaps near immediately. I think there should be more guides that either don’t mention zaps/bitcoin, or at least mention it as a secondary aspect instead of a main part of setting up your account. After all, zaps aren’t required to use nostr (remember when we used nostr without zaps? feels like years ago) and I’m sure in the future there will be plenty of people who don’t use them at all, at least for a while.

Debunking Nostr Misconceptions: Lastly, at some point I’m going to write an article, or even make a website that debunks nostr misconceptions. Number 1 being that nostr is a bitcoin project. I will be pretty busy these next couple weeks and then I’ll have a break before being booked all summer for the bar exam, so if anyone wants to assist me in making this, or make your own version, please do. I think this could be extremely helpful in circulating outside of nostr so that people who don’t know much about it can read about what nostr truly is, and hopefully give them to courage to test it out.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

@ 7ec127c0:9a5d2fe0

“This is a fucking disaster,” I said in front of my wife.

We saw a line of red on Google Maps directing us to our home in Mexico City.

One section of red said +27 minutes with a car crash emblem next to it.

My stomach was burning because of a recent bout with gastroenteritis, and seeing that we had an hour and fifteen minute drive to travel just 16 miles infuriated me.

‘I hate living in this city.’ ‘Why do people drive like morons here?’ ‘Why are these roads built like shit?’

I thought.

I kept thinking these things as the pain in my stomach grew and grew and grew. We slowly approached a stretch where two roads merged before diverting off into two separate roads again.

It was madness.

Cars, vans, tractor trailers, and motorcycles vying for position, creaking into new lanes, cutting each other off, and doing their best given the absolutely moronic design of merging two roads together before dividing them up into two roads again 30 meters later.

This is the hell I was in just yesterday coming back home from picking up my marriage certificate with my wife.

I wish I could tell you I handled this situation well, but I didn’t.

Add in a couple wrong turns (which added even more time to our journey) and you start to see the shit show that it was.

As I sat in my car with my wife, I realized that since my blood was boiling, it was setting her on edge too.

I’m ashamed to say it’s the first time I ever thought about that.

When you think of the traditional “man” we saw so much of in 80’s and 90’s movies, they always seemed to maintain their composure.

These characters are what many today might call “toxic males.”

Fuck. If they were toxic, then give me the nearest vat of poison to drink.

I don’t think most people would consider maintaining your composure toxic, though. It’s something that should be celebrated. In fact, losing your composure constantly is the mark of a toxic male.

I saw something on Twitter the other day that said “Men who can’t control their emotions aren’t real men.”

I mostly agree with that.

We’re all human at the end of the day, so even the most stoic of men lose their heads at some point. But how can I become a man who does it less?

I look at myself and realize that I still have so far to go in terms of improving myself. During childhood, my Dad was the type of guy to get set off at the smallest of things (not anymore though).

I never thought that maybe — just maybe — that seeped into my own behavior somehow.

I remember how I felt when I was with him. I felt scared, hopeless, and just wanted him to calm down so I could feel more at ease.

I don’t want people to feel that way around me at all.

Honestly, I never thought I had much of a problem with any of this. I always thought I was a pretty chill guy, but the reality is I’m worse than I thought.

I’m weaker than I thought.

It’s fine to feel emotions and be upset and even feel down about how your life is going. But now that I’m a husband I realize I need to nip this problem in the bud.

Because me being calm and composed is something she needs, too.

And stress is only going to heighten the older I get. What’s going to happen when I have kids? Or when I go through financial hardship? What then?

I got to be ready.

I got to improve now so I can be prepared later on.

So, what’s the question every good man needs to ask themselves eventually?

How are my actions affecting my loved ones?

Start there.

@ eb639195:1862a146

Adapted from a four-part Twitter thread on April 26, 2023

I have been pacing around this idea, trying to find a good way to convey it. Maybe I'll find it eventually.

Water fills the shape of the container it's in. The shape of the Bitcoin Twitter container has contorted the community from a thoughtful community on bitcointalk, to a nuance-free, shitposting community. Any idea taking more than 280 characters, not only wasn't said anymore, but was often not passed down to newer members of the community. It is responsible for the cartoonish caricature of the maxi, not even himself can live up to.

Satoshi invisioned a peer to peer electric cash system free from intermediaries. Yet every day, we discuss this wonder through a platform acting as one, deciding what we see, where we are in the algorithm, who gets shadowbanned, or worse. (See picture. Luke got banned (this time) for replying to a meme Elon posted on either 4/15 or 4/16/23)

We should learn a lesson from Satoshi's gift, and consider an open protocol, over a walled garden. As Elon attempts to make Twitter become the WeChat of the West, regardless of the privacy implications, ask yourself, "Should Bitcoiners continue to rely on Elon to communicate?"

Of course, we have in Nostr, found a means of communication as free as our money. We do not ask Elon for permission to hear eachother's ideas, we simply share them, alongside with value measured in sats, the greatest money man has ever known. I expect, much like the changes that happened to ourselves when we first discovered Bitcoin, we might see some changes in the community as well.

A little more friendly, a little more thought out. Of course, not all at once, but with those that provide value to eachother rewarded with sats, faster than one may expect. Man makes Bitcoin, then Bitcoin fixes man. First out of the grasp of fiat. Then free from the Twitter shaped-glass. No longer contorted. No longer shadowbanned. Just free transfer of value and information, unencumbered.

@ 6903089d:bd117177

Kinesis

Introduction

Kinesis is a protocol designed to distribute Bitcoin amongst individuals (we will refer to as investors) based upon criteria of their choosing. It is up to the investors that comprise the network to self sort by digesting presented Projects. It is a network to facilitate the exchange of Bitcoin between investors based upon ideas. By introducing a Project and allowing distribution of funds to take place based upon public and selectively programmable rules executed by software we will harness the signal which is generated and transmitted when funds are transferred from one investor to another.

Investors will indicate their interest in the project with the amount of funds they are willing to supply to the project and the frequency of which those funds are sent.

Funds will be redistributed to the investors who have also expressed interest in the project (via the direct supply of funds). These funds will be distributed based upon the amount of funds that have been supplied by the investor. Each investor will own a percentage of the Project and that percentage is determined by the amount of funds contributed to the total amount of funds the Project has accumulated. Each investor will receive a percentage of the distribution payment equivalent to the percentage owned of the Project by the investor.

This will create a community or network of individuals united by the ideals or goals of the Project. Individuals that have expressed and demonstrated their willingness to support the Project by providing funds to it.

Due to distributive nature, wealth of the project is not * Static * Centralized

This is opposed to the traditional model where wealth is held centrally and statically in an account owned by the firm.

The wealth of the project lies in sovereign control of the investors who are actively choosing to support the Project.

The wealth of the project is signaled by the amount of circulatory transactions contained within it.

As investors are paid equivalent to the percentage in which they have contributed the incentive is to continually provide funds to the project. We can assume that the investor has interest in the Project and a desire for it to succeed. We can also assume that the investor would want to increase the amount of the Distribution Payments they receive by increasing the amount they have contributed to the Project.

This is an exchange of funds not an expenditure of funds, although it is unlikely that an investor would receive a positive net gain from most Projects. In Projects that would yield a negative net income the loss to the investor would have been consumed by the needs of the Project, regardless of whether the Project is determined to have been a success or failure.

Bitcoin represents true wealth and the willingness to part with a hard money is a True, honest, and accurate representation of one's personal values. This is also NOT without risk. Distribution payments are not guaranteed nor is success of the Project.

Anticipated results

Network Effect

Because the distribution payments are only received by other investors who have also decided to provide funds to the project it can be assumed that fellow investors are serious and interested in the project. The amount of circulatory transactions contained in a project is also a signal to potential investors of the strength of the project. Due to the nature of Bitcoin and the fact that these circulatory transactions are initiated by investors making a decision to “opt in” this signal is pure and unadulterated, it is also responding to the present moment similar to how a living organism is responding to its environment. Therefore, not only is this signal pure and unadulterated, it can be seen as a measurement of overall health of the Project.

Generating a pure, unadulterated, real-time, health signal/measurement of the Project will provide a novel and information dense metric to which there is nothing we can compare in our current economy.

This signal will make it easy for market actors to decide if a project is something they are interested in and would like to become an investor of. It is likely that most Projects would leave all account balances open to public view. Full transparency, aligned with specifically stated objectives and goals.

Distributed and Decentralized Wealth

The existence of the Escrow Account makes it possible for centralized funding of a Project. However the amount held in escrow is determined by the project creator or consensus vote of the investors. It is in the best interest of the project and the investors to hold as little as possible and only what is necessary within the Escrow Account. The amount of funds supplied to the Distribution Account is corollary to the strength of signal the Project is able to provide to the market thus potential investors.

The greater the amount allocated to the Distribution Account the greater the wealth of the project is decentralized as the wealth of the project is held in the sovereign control of each investor. The survival of the Project is dependent upon the continued supply of funds from the investors. We can assume that investors will only continue to opt in and provide funds if the Project continues to offer value.

Account Explanation

Genesis Account

The Genesis account will not hold any funds. The Genesis Account is for record keeping. Each individual that pays into the project first pays into the Genesis Account, those funds are then immediately moved into a different account (Escrow or Distribution).

The Genesis Account serves several purposes * It publicly shows the total amount invested into the Project. * It provides a total in which to create distributed ownership of the Project.

Investors will contribute funds to the Genesis Account. The percentage of the amount contributed relative to the total amount of the Genesis Account will become equivalent to the percentage of ownership the investor is awarded.

Seeing how the Genesis Account will not hold actual funds the number represented in the Genesis Account will NOT have value. This number will behave more like a receipt. It will reflect the amount purchased and indicate the ownership percentage of the project. Distribution Account

The Distribution Account is a holding place for funds that belong to the Project. The account will execute “Distribution Payments” to each investor based upon the amount of the project they own according to the percentage of wealth they have contributed to the Genesis Account.

These Distribution Payments will be programmed first by the creator of the project and can later be modified by consensus voting from members of the project.

Distribution Payments can be executed based upon a number of criteria Time - Payments are made every (x) days or every (x) months. Amount - Payments are made each time the Distribution Account reaches (X) wealth

Escrow Account

Certain projects will require funds to complete. A Project can create an Escrow Account to hold funds for whatever desire or necessity the Project dictates. As money comes in from investors a certain portion of funds can be directed to the Escrow Account until an agreed upon amount is reached, at which point any surplus is deposited into the Distribution Account.

The Escrow Account can have various rules. For example a rule could be created that makes the Escrow Account a multisig account and requires the signatures of all investors that own 10% of the project in order to spend funds from the Escrow Account.

Project Application

The criteria for a project can be anything, an idea, a business, or even a law or policy.

A project is proposed by an individual. The underlying point and explanation of the project will be explained using documents, graphs, etc. and using a Nostr like protocol the information will be posted and distributed to the public where investors can take interest and begin sending funds.

I want to create a bike path from point A to point B within my local community.

Hello,

I'd like to propose a project for the completion of a bike path that begins at (x) and ends at (y). I have received several estimates from the following contractors (A,B,C,D) and estimated cost of the project is 10,000.

Escrow Account Rules and Limitations Escrow will begin after Distribution Payments of 125% of estimated cost are executed (10,250) Escrow will accumulate at a rate of 50% of contributed funds, with the remaining 50% going to Distribution. If 10,000 is not reached by date (x) the project will be terminated and funds returned to originating wallets based upon ownership percentage. Expenditure of Escrow funds will require signatures from each investor owning 10% or more of the project.

Distribution Account Rules Distribution Payment will be executed once the Distribution Account holds 2,000. Distribution payments will be paid based on ownership percentage of the Project based upon how much each investor has contributed to the Genesis Account.

Other Rules and Limitations Project alteration proposals can require (x%) Project alterations can be decided by consensus voting, ⅞ for example Votes would be equivalent to ownership percentage Participation in the project is imperative. If an investor fails to cast a vote or participate in a required way their ownership percentage is destroyed and also removed from the Genesis Account. Thus increasing ownership percentage of all other investors.

@ 6903089d:bd117177

The Pursuit of BTC

One of my greatest interests in life is to understand the world around me. I think this is a natural compulsion that every human is born with. I also think this is a particularly masculine trait that I have a deep resonance with.

Unfortunately given the confusion around gender in our society I feel the need to clarify this statement before I can further elaborate on it. As the Hermetic principle states: Gender exists on all planes. Masculine is not equal to Male. When referring to masculine and feminine energy I am not referring to Men and Women. Although the Man expresses masculine energy to a greater degree than does typically a woman and vice versa. The physical form of the sexes expresses the energy of masculine and feminine in different ways. Masculine and Feminine energies also have distinctive and unique consciousness associated with them. This is also expressed by men and women.

There can be nothing without creation. In order for anything to exist, creation must take place. Creation can not take place in neutrality. Opposition is necessary. We call this opposition positive and negative, masculine and feminine, man and woman, anode and cathode.

Masculine consciousness is penetrative. It is action orientated. It is doing. Masculine energy desires to penetrate and explore consciousness. Consciousness of the individual and of the universe. To understand oneself and to understand the world around us.

In order to understand the world around me I have found it necessary to seek Truth. The truth of nature and the principles that rule and govern the universe.

I love my life. I love all of the experiences that are contained within it and I have an insatiable drive and desire to improve my life. To explore what it means to live and to be alive. To learn about and understand the thoughts and constraints that I have which detract from my ability to live a happy and healthy life. I consider it to be self-evident that there is something very wrong with the world we live in. Seeking an answer as to what the problem is has been the source of my deepest interest.

How does this problem manifest in myself personally? How does it change and affect my behavior, my health, my happiness? How does this problem manifest in my relationship with others, with my mother, my father, my spouse, my children, my friends, my coworkers?

As with any complex topic, and I would argue that there is no more complex a topic than this, there are a multitude of answers; all contributing and compounding to the problem or the issue. But first I want to clearly articulate what the question is and what the problem is.

Why is our culture so fucked up? Why do I see so much hate and anger in the world around me? Why is everyone sick? Why is everyone on a prescription drug? Why have health and happiness become the pot of gold at the base of the rainbow?

The simplest answer I have discovered is this; Its the money.

Investigating, researching, and understanding money has allowed me to understand the world around me with unbelievable clarity. The knowledge I have gained has changed the way I think, the way I interact with myself, the way I interact with others and the way I interact with my environment. Each in a positive way and has ultimately caused a cumulative increase in the overall satisfaction and joy I have within my life.

@ dc65ebf1:774b5156

When it comes to Proof of Work (PoW) vs Proof of Stake (PoS), it is apparent that PoW allows for decentralization in network control, while PoS inherently centralizes control of networks to larger stake holders (basically fiat 2.0, Cantillon effect). If bitcoin is to be an upgrade to the current fiat system, it must utilize PoW to make money creation costly, while keeping the network decentralized.

One major problem with fiat money is that money creation is free and the ones controlling the money printer have every incentive to keep creating money for free. Much similarities can be drawn between the fiat money system and PoS token networks; most notably the ability to create monetary tokens without cost and centralized control of the monetary policy and the monetary network.

By using PoW, money creation is not free and each miner must input value (sunk cost of infrastructure plus variable cost of electricity) in order to create value. In other words, skin in the game; where mal-investment will be punished and efficiency will be rewarded. At the same time, anyone can opt into the PoW competition as long as they can secure an internet connection, a miner, and a sufficient of electricity. As such, PoW networks are much more decentralized and does not suffer from the Cantillon effect like PoS networks.

But not all PoW networks are created equal. In fact, I would argue that there is only one PoW network that is a sound monetary network: the bitcoin network. I have such a claim because the bitcoin network is the only true decentralized network that does not have a leader, company, a foundation, or a small group of people running it and controlling it. Bitcoin consensus is extremely hard to change due to its decentralized nature, and that is a great thing. One might argue, the breakthrough from bitcoin is the discovery of absolute scarcity (21 million hard cap); however, this absolute scarcity is only achieved and enforceable through decentralized consensus. Therefore, the importance of decentralization in the network is paramount.

When it comes to monetary policy, immutability and predictability allows for users of the money to plan for the future and make sound economic calculations / decisions. Examples such as using a variable measuring tape to build a house have been given to describe the fiat monetary policy, which can change on a whim. I believe the same can be argued for PoS networks or other centralized PoW networks, which centralizes control of the network. When control is centralized, monetary policy can be changed by those in control, in favor of those in control. The more the centralization, the easier the monetary policy gets changed.

Fact of the matter is that PoW or PoS isn't the only property determining whether a monetary network is sound or not sound. PoW simply allows for decentralization where PoS does not. Yet, PoW networks can also be centralized and centrally controlled (for example, litecoin, ravencoin). As such, PoW is only one piece of the sound money puzzle. Other pieces include the difficulty adjustment, absolute scarcity, immutable ledger, predictable monetary policy, and the most important piece, decentralization. It is with these pieces combined that bitcoin arises to be the best money in the history of mankind.

Just my 2 sats. Keep working and keep it real.

PS The last sentence was totally giving me Captain Planet vibes. The following had to be done.

@ dc65ebf1:774b5156

TLDR: I ran 23km in the rain and it was very tiring. I finished the run and walked home. Then I wrote a piece about my run.

......

I opened the front door and took a step into the crisp cold air. My whole body was instantly hit with a chill. Looking at my watch, the reading said two degrees Celsius. "At least it's not freezing." I told myself as I lifted my head up. As I saw the consistent, fine but thick drizzle of rain, I cursed.

But a drizzle like this one would only make the run slightly uncomfortable; Such discomfort would not stop me from running. I went out the front yard and took my first steps. The rain was gently tapping on my sweater, But it would get absorbed quickly by the cotton textile.

I started with a steady pace, my legs felt strong; Strong enough to tackle this lengthy route, Which I ran more than ten times in the past year or two. Continuing my stride, I propelled myself forward; Meanwhile staying on course. My body started to warm and my heart began to race. The blood was flowing and perspiration began to ooze from my hair follicles. Yes, my armpits and groin were starting to sweat And probably starting to stink too.

I kept pace until approximately the fifteenth or sixteenth kilometer. At which point my sweater was completely soaked. Soaked by sweat from inside out and rain from outside in. At which point my socks and shoes were totally wet. Wet by the splashing of numerous puddles along my path. At which point my hands were almost frozen. Almost frozen by the stinging chill of the surrounding air and the cold rain. At which point my legs were completely drained. Drained by continuously propelling my body forward for well over an hour. At which point my mind was emptied. Emptied by directing all my focus and energy to the act of running. At which point, I lost pace and became slower. But there was another seven kilometers to run. I was still seven kilometers from home. The run must continue for me to get home.

My leg muscles grew more painful with each additional step. My breath became heavier with each stride forward. My heart pounded harder with each meter gained. While suffering from this familiar yet arduous routine, I tasted something salty in my mouth. Must be the mixture of sweat and rain rolling into my mouth. I also tasted something salty in my mind. Must be the mixture of losing pace and feeling weak getting to my head.

I reminded myself of the numerous times that I had completed running this route. I told myself that giving up and walking home is not an option. I assured myself that this will be all over soon. I promised myself of the sense of accomplishment waiting for me at the finish. And so I kept on laboring forward; At times limping; At times stumbling; At times faltering; But never stopping.

I started to focus my mind on the rhythm of my heart. I adjusted my breath to follow the heart's tempo; And also adjusted my steps to follow my breath's pace. Enduring the fatigue and the exhaustion, I continued on my path towards the finish set in my mind.

Huff, puff, step, step. Huff, puff, step, step. Huff, puff, step, step. Huff, puff, step, step.

With the finish in sight, I increased my speed as much as I could. Taking bigger steps and larger strides, I sprinted towards the finish with every bit of energy left within me.

As I reached the finish spot, I became not only drenched in rain and sweat; I was also drenched in senses of relief, satisfaction, and accomplishment. Although too out of shape to pursue a record time, The twenty-three kilometers of running was ultimately completed. Keeping in mind the run was just a short training exercise for a marathon, I lowered my head, Cursed, And walked home.

@gnilma 2023.02.22

@ 7cb276c9:a857ba7e

We had always been curious about the Glowworm Caves in New Zealand, and how they were full of magic and mystery. So we decided to go and have a look for ourselves. We packed some candles and matches, and some bread and cheese, and set off for the Waitomo village, where we hoped to find a guide who knew the secrets of the cave.

We were lucky enough to meet a friendly chap, who claimed he was a descendant of the Maori chief who first discovered the cave. He led us down some stairs and into a dark tunnel, where we got on a small boat. He told us to hush and keep our eyes on the ceiling. As we floated along the stream, we saw thousands of tiny blue-green lights sparkling like jewels in the black velvet. They were the glowworms, he said, a rare species of insect that glows in the dark.

We were spellbound by the sight, and felt like we were in a fairy tale. The guide explained that the glowworms use their light to lure their prey, and that they spin sticky threads to trap them. He also pointed out some of the cave formations, such as icicles and pillars, that had been shaped over millions of years by dripping water. We learned a lot about the cave and its creatures, and enjoyed the enchanting atmosphere of the glowworm grotto. But then something happened that interrupted our serenity with a jolt. The boat suddenly hit a rock and started to sink. We panicked and screamed for help. The guide told us to calm down and grab the life jackets. He said that he had a radio and could call for help. He also said that there was another exit from the cave nearby, and that we could walk there if we had to. He said that everything would be fine, and that we should not worry. We tried to believe him, but we were scared. We did not want to drown in the dark cave, or get lost in the maze of tunnels. We did not want to be eaten by the glowworms, or whatever else lurked in the shadows. We wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

Luckily, help arrived quickly. Another boat came to rescue us, and took us to safety. We were relieved and grateful. We thanked the guide for his bravery and his jokes. He apologized for the accident and said that it was very rare. He said that he hoped we enjoyed our tour anyway, and that we would come back again someday. We smiled and nodded, but we knew we would never come back. We had seen enough of the glowworm caves for one lifetime. We learned a lot about the cave and its creatures, but we also learned something else: sometimes magic can be dangerous.

@ 7ec127c0:9a5d2fe0

@ 7f5c2b4e:a818d75d

Данное руководство изначально было написано мною на английском, а также доступно на французском благодаря nostr:npub1nftkhktqglvcsj5n4wetkpzxpy4e5x78wwj9y9p70ar9u5u8wh6qsxmzqs.

---

Привет, ностровитянин!

Nostr -- это совершенно новое явление, и я бы хотел поделиться парой шагов, которые сделают ваше знакомство и взаимодействие с протоколом более плавным.

👋 Добро пожаловать

Поскольку вы уже читаете этот пост, можно предположить, что вы уже присоединились к Nostr, загрузив приложение (например, Damus, Amethyst или Plebstr) для вашего мобильного устройства или открыв веб-клиент Nostr (например, snort.social, Nostrgram, Iris). Будучи новичком важно следовать шагам, предложенным выбранным вами приложением -- приветственные сообщения предоставляют все основы, и вам не придется возиться с дополнительными настройками, разве что вы сами этого захотите. Если вы наткнулись на этот пост, но у вас еще нет "аккаунта" Nostr, вы можете следовать этому простому пошаговому руководству или любому другому гиду на ресурсе NOSTR FILES. Ресурс даст ответы на все возможные вопросы о Nostr, ну а в этот гид займет всего пять минут и поможет разобраться в азах взаимодействия с Nostr и сделать знакомство с протоколом более эффективным.

---

🤙 Развлекайтесь

Nostr создан для того, чтобы люди могли общаться, быть услышанными и получать при этом удовольствие. В этом весь смысл (конечно, есть множество серьезных сценариев использования: Nostr может использоваться борцами за свободу и разоблачителями, такими как Эдвард Сноуден но эта тема заслуживает отдельной статьи или даже книги), поэтому если вы чувствуете, что что-то кажется вам обременительным, пожалуйста, обратитесь к более опытным пользователям, и мы будем рады помочь. Взаимодействовать с Nostr совсем несложно, но у него есть несколько особенностей, которые могут показаться необычными привыкшими к традиционным платформам, поэтому задавать вопросы -- это нормально (и даже поощряется).

Вот неофициальный список амбассадоров Nostr, которые будут рады помочь вам разобраться в этом новом феномене:

nostr:naddr1qqwdpyxshngtr59s6xqarqwskrgtf5976xqdrzeqfehhxarjqgs87hptfey2p607ef36g6cnekuzfz05qgpe34s2ypc2j6x24qvdwhgrqsqqqaf3z55qd4

---

⚡️ Настройте Запы

Запы -- это одно из первых отличий, которое можно заметить, присоединившись к Nostr. Они позволяют пользователям Nostr мгновенно передавать ценность и поддерживать создание полезного и увлекательного контента. Это стало возможным благодаря Биткоину и сети Лайтнинг. Эти децентрализованные платежные протоколы позволяют мгновенно отправить несколько сатов (наименьшая единица в сети Биткоин) так же легко, как поставить лайк чьему-то посту на традиционных платформах. Мы называем эту модель Value-4-Value, и вы можете узнать больше об этой модели монетизации из этой статьи.

Вам следует настроить запы, даже если вы не считаете себя создателем контента -- люди сочтут некоторые из ваших заметок ценными и, возможно, захотят отправить вам несколько сат.

Самый простой способ начать получать ценность на Nostr требует выполнения лишь пары шагов:

0 Скачайте Wallet of Satoshi [^1] (вероятно, это лучший выбор для тех, кто впервые слышит о Биткоине и сети Лайтнинг) на свое мобильное устройство [^2]

1 Нажмите "Receive"

2 Нажмите на Лайтнинг-адрес, который появится на экране (строка, похожая на адрес электронной почты), чтобы скопировать его в буфер обмена.

3 Вставьте скопированный адрес в соответствующее поле вашего клиента Nostr (в поле может быть написано "Bitcoin Lightning Address", "LN Address" или что-то в этом роде в зависимости от используемого приложения). 

---

📫 Получение Nostr-адреса

Nostr-адрес, часто называемый "идентификатором NIP-05", выглядит как адрес электронной почты и:

🔍 Делает поиск вашего аккаунта проще (теперь можно делиться простым адресом, похожим на имейл вместо замысловатой строки случайных символов) 

✔️ Является аналогом верификации аккаунта в традиционных сетях (чтобы получить такой адрес вам нужно либо иметь свой домен, либо знакомого, который не против предоставить вам такую верификацию).

---

Вот пример Nostr-адреса: Tony@nostr.21ideas.org

Его легко запомнить и затем вставить в любое приложение Nostr, чтобы найти нужного пользователя.

---

Если вы являетесь участником русскоязычного Биткоин- и Ностр-сообщества, вы можете получить Nostr-адрес @nostr.21ideas.org. Для этого просто напишите мне личное сообщение в Nostr.

Чтобы получить адрес Nostr, вы также можете воспользоваться бесплатным сервисом Nostr Check (от nostr:npub138s5hey76qrnm2pmv7p8nnffhfddsm8sqzm285dyc0wy4f8a6qkqtzx624) или платный, например Nostr Plebs (от nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424). Оба варианта предлагают разные преимущества, и вы сами вольны решать, какой из них использовать. Другой способ получения адреса Nostr -- использование расширения для браузера. Подробнее об этом подходе здесь .

---

🙇‍♀️ Изучите основы

Nostr сильно отличается от традиционных социальных платформ, поэтому базовое понимание того, что это такое, будет полезно для любого новичка. Не поймите меня неправильно, я не предлагаю вам изучать язык программирования или технические детали протокола. Я имею в виду, что видение общей картины и понимание разницы между Nostr и Twitter / Medium / Reddit очень помогут. Например, здесь нет паролей и логинов, вместо них у вас есть закрытые и открытые ключи. Я не буду углубляться в эту тему, потому что вся эта информация доступна на ресурсе NOSTR FILES.

Информация, представленная на ресурсе, также поможет вам защитить ключи Nostr (т.е. ваш аккаунт), поэтому важно ознакомиться с этими материалами.

---

🤝 Общайтесь

Возможность общаться с замечательными людьми -- вот что делает Nostr особенным. Здесь каждый может быть услышан и никто не может быть исключен. Есть несколько простых способов найти интересных людей на Nostr:

• Найти людей, на которых вы подписаны в Twitter: https://www.nostr.directory/ - отличный инструмент для этого.

• Подписаться на людей, на которых подписаны те, кому вы доверяете: Посетите профиль пользователя, чьи интересы вы разделяете, проверьте список людей, на которых он подписан, и подпишитесь на них.

• Откройте глобальную ленту: В каждом клиенте Nostr (Nostr-приложении, если вам так удобнее) есть вкладка, позволяющая перейти к Глобальной ленте, которая объединяет все заметки всех пользователей Nostr. Просто подписывайтесь на понравившихся вам пользователей (будьте терпеливы - вы можете столкнуться с приличным количеством спама).

---

🗺️ Исследуйте

Эти 5 шагов - отличное начало, которое значительно улучшит ваш опыт, но есть еще много интересного! Nostr -- это не замена Twitter! Возможности протокола ограничены только воображением пользователей.

Взгляните на список интересных и полезных проектов Nostr:

• https://nostrapps.com/ список приложений Nostr

• https://nostrplebs.com/ - получить NIP-05 и другие привилегии Nostr (платно)

• https://nostrcheck.me/ - Nostr-адрес, загрузка медиа, релей 

• https://nostr.build/ - загрузка и управление медиа (и многое другое)

• https://nostr.band/ - информация о сети и пользователях Nostr

• https://zaplife.lol/ - статистика запов

• https://nostrit.com/ - отложенные посты в Nostr 

• https://nostrnests.com/ - Twitter Spaces 2.0  

• https://nostryfied.online/ - резервное копирование информации о Nostr.

Больше полезных инструментов Nostr -- в одноименном разделе ресурса NOSTR FILES

---

📻 Релеи

После знакомства с Nostr обязательно ознакомьтесь с моим руководством

по Nostr-релеям. Это не та тема, о которой стоит беспокоиться в самом начале вашего пути, но она определенно важна для изучения в дальнейшем. Я уже упоминал, что благодаря Nostr каждый может быть услышан; как отметил nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft: "Это не значит, что вы должны слушать всех подряд". Подробности -- в статье..

---

*Спасибо за ваше внимание, и до встречи на той стороне кроличьей норы.

Нашли этот пост ценным?

Zap ⚡ 21ideas@getalby.com

Подпишитесь: nostr:npub10awzknjg5r5lajnr53438ndcyjylgqsrnrtq5grs495v42qc6awsj45ys7

Загляните на сайты моих проектов:

• https://www.21ideas.org/

• https://nostr.21ideas.org/

---

[^1]: существует гораздо больше кошельков, поддерживающих лайтнинг-адреса, и вы можете выбрать тот, который вам больше нравится. Подробнее о лайтнинг-адресах можно узнать из этого поста

[^2]: не забудьте вернуться к кошельку и сделать резервную копию своего аккаунта

@ 7ec127c0:9a5d2fe0

Hello Nostrich's!

Is that even how you say it? I hope so. 

My name's Tom Kuegler, and I write online. Most notably I write on Medium, where I have over 60,000 followers.

My friends Carmen and Duncan introduced me to Nostr a few days ago, and I've been fascinated with this place ever since.

I want this experiment to succeed. Badly.

If we ever needed a new place to convene online as bloggers, it's now.

Medium.com, a really great blogging site for much of the last 7 years, is nosediving into the ground. 

Substack is a cool alternative, but I'm still not super convinced it's going to generate meaningful results for me.  And with social media platforms that censor people, have crappy algorithms, and take more and more control from their users, we need a place like Nostr to help shake up the status quo.

I typically write about life lessons, travel tales, and writing advice, but before I start publishing that stuff I want to take a second to talk about Nostr and the 1 thing I believe it must do to succeed.

Let's get to it.

It Needs A Community Outside The Traditional Bitcoin/Crypto Space

A few years ago I dove into a platform called Bitclout. It was a decentralized platform from what I can remember - much like Nostr's various applications. There were a few key differences of course, but more or less their concepts were the same.

A few weeks into my time there, Bitclout launched NFT compatibility for its users. Soon after, my feed got flooded with JPEG's to the point where I simply couldn't find content from any of my writer friends anymore. I stopped spending time there soon after.

I was literally force fed content about crypto and bitcoin all day long and I couldn't take it anymore. And that's coming from someone who loves Bitcoin!

In my opinion, Nostr desperately needs to grow outside the traditional crypto space in terms of its user base and attract writers of all different backgrounds.

That's going to be tough for a variety of reasons, but it needs to be done nonetheless.

So, what should you do if you're a Nostr user who only writes about crypto, Nostr, and the future of this space? Nothing! Keep doing what you're doing. We need you as well. 

I guess the only thing I'd ask, kindly, is to consider lending your support to writers who come here and write about other topics. That's so important.

I've taught thousands of writers about how to present themselves better online, and the one thing they need the most is support. Without support they won't have any hope their words actually mean anything and they'll quit soon after.

Support is the spark that lights the fire of hope for the writing community - hope that their writing will benefit them either financially or spiritually.

For Nostr to succeed, and attract a wide user base of people who don't necessarily care too much about crypto, it needs to make space for content that's not about Nostr, crypto, or blockchain technology. 

We need normal people to come here. 

A big part of making that happen comes down to welcoming and supporting them when they open that door. 

I'll try to do my part as well.

In my opinion, that's one big thing Nostr must do.

@ a0952eb0:3958ec6d

This is my very first nostr web article 😄

The main version permanently lives at https://libreleaf.com/making-biochar-on-the-cheap/

I decided to write this article because I was getting a lot of interest and questions regarding my biochar experiments on nostr.

Biochar has many amazing properties that bring many benefits to your homestead. This article isn’t about all the good thing biochar can do for you, there are plenty of those already on the net. Rather this article is about how you can make your own biochar on your property for very little out of pocket expenses.

More accurately this article is about how I have made biochar on my own.

Resources I highly recommend watching before making your first batch of biochar.

• Youtube – Biochar. Best method for producing charcoal for biochar.
• Youtube Playlist – Biochar Workshop: What, Why and How?
• Youtube – Top Reason Why Biochar Doesn’t Increase Crop Yields & 5 Ways to Fix it

Method #1 – The Conical Hole in the Ground.

For this method all you need is a shovel. I learned about this by watching the video Youtube – Biochar. Best method for producing charcoal for biochar.

Dig a hole in the shape of a cone.

Separate your wood into piles based on thickness, small (kindling), medium, large.

Build a fire in the hole with your kindling wood. As the kindling burns place medium sized wood on top of the burning kindling. Lay the wood horizontally. As it starts to burn lay larger pieces.

As the wood burns carefully smash the fire down with your shovel. This effectively smothers the wood below due to lack of oxygen (O2). This lack of O2 coupled with the high heat of the burning wood above initiates pyrolysis turning the wood into biochar.

https://libreleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Biochar01-1024x576.jpg

When you bash the pile down the fire will start to die, revitalize it by adding more kindling, then medium sized wood then large and repeat the bashing process. do this until your hole is completely filled.

Once you are happy with your results quickly douse the fire with water. Dousing has the effect of shattering the biochar into smaller fragments creating more surface area for all the good critters to thrive.

https://libreleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Biochar02-1024x576.jpg

Method #2 – The 55 Gallon Drum Biochar Retort

I learned this method by watching Youtube Playlist – Biochar Workshop: What, Why and How? and trying to recreate what I saw in the video.

For this method you will need:

• 55 gallon drum with a lid
• 4 – 6 inch diameter Stove pipe at least 24 inches long
• A coupling to attach pipe to lid (I don’t know what they’re called)
• Angle grinder with cut off disc or something that will cut metal
• Drill with metal bits
• Sheet metal screws

Important: None of these measurements are critical, this is just what I did. There’s room for improvement.

The Barrel

Drill 8 1/2″ holes 3″ from the top of the barrel

Drill 8 1/4″ holes below every other 1/2″ hole and 8 1/8″ hole above (see pic)

Cut 4 2-3″ equilateral(ish) triangular holes with angle grinder 1/2″ from the bottom of the barrel.

https://libreleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Biochar-Retort01-1024x705.jpg

Cut the appropriate sized hole in the lid for your coupling

Affix your coupling to the lid with sheet metal screws.

Affix your chimney to the coupling.

https://libreleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Biochar-Retort02-1024x576.jpg

The Retort – 35 gallon drum

In my case I couldn’t find a 35 gallon drum for my retort so I’m using a small garbage can with a lid.

Drill 5 1/2″ holes in the bottom of your retort (see pic)

https://libreleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Biochar-Retort03-1024x576.jpg

Fill your retort with stick and twigs and stuff. Make sure there’s a variety in the size of things and there’s breathing room. If you pack it too tightly you may not get a full pyrolysis.

Place the lid on your retort, pack the sides with wood vertically, and on top of the lid.

Light the fire. Once the fire is burning nicely place the lid with the chimney atop your barrel and let it burn.

It usually takes a couple of hours for the burn to complete.

Optionally when the fire is done burning and using good quality welding gloves, remove the lids to the barrel and retort then douse the biochar.

I don’t do this because I don’t like getting burned so I wait until the next day to see the results.

https://libreleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Biochar-Results02-1024x576.jpg

My next task is to figure out how to grind it up.

I have also used the biochar for grilling food. It works great! I’m never buying charcoal again.

https://libreleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Biochar-Results03-1024x576.jpg

Please if you have any questions or comments you can find me on nostr.

If you found value in this then please send some value back in the form of sats on the lightning network via nostr or my Alby address kolomona@getalby.com

My nostr public key is npub15z2javq62eh2xpms7yew0uzqsk4dr7t3q3dq4903uuxdyw2ca3kstx6q95

nostr:npub15z2javq62eh2xpms7yew0uzqsk4dr7t3q3dq4903uuxdyw2ca3kstx6q95

@ ff4991fc:306dd257

Bitcoin is a form of digital currency that has been gaining popularity in recent years. Despite the controversy that surrounds it, there are several reasons why Bitcoin is good for our society. In this article, we will explore some of these reasons.

Decentralization

One of the most important features of Bitcoin is its decentralization. Unlike traditional currencies, Bitcoin is not governed by any central authority or government. This means that there is no single point of failure that can be exploited by malicious actors. It also means that people can make transactions without the need for an intermediary, such as a bank.

Transparency

Bitcoin is transparent in that all transactions are recorded on a public ledger. This means that anyone can view the transactions that have taken place, and there is no way to alter or delete them. This transparency can help reduce fraud and corruption, as it makes it easier to track transactions and hold people accountable for their actions.

Financial Inclusion

Bitcoin has the potential to help improve financial inclusion, particularly for people who are unbanked or underbanked. In many parts of the world, people do not have access to traditional banking services. Bitcoin can provide an alternative means of transferring money and making payments, allowing people to participate in the global economy.

Low Transaction Fees

Bitcoin allows for low-cost transactions, particularly when compared to traditional banking services. This can be particularly beneficial for people who need to send money across borders. Traditional banking services can be expensive and slow, while Bitcoin transactions are fast and affordable.

Security

Bitcoin transactions are secured through complex mathematical algorithms that are extremely difficult to breach. Additionally, Bitcoin wallets are secured using private keys, which means that only the owner of the wallet has access to their funds. This high level of security can help prevent fraud and theft.

Conclusion

Bitcoin is not without its challenges, but there are several reasons why it is good for our society. It provides a decentralized, transparent, and secure means of making transactions, which can help reduce fraud and corruption. Additionally, it can help improve financial inclusion and provide low-cost transactions. As Bitcoin continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how it impacts our society and the global economy.

@ 5401d3df:6dbf448a

Hello professor!

March 23, 2023

I wrote this essay as an attempt to address various critiques and misunderstandings of Bitcoin and blockchain technology I have heard from scholars during my undergraduate studies in international business. Thus, I am proposing an alternative view, beyond mere buzz and hype.

TL: DR

Bitcoin is a tool for the economic empowerment of 8 billion people. Bitcoin is time. Bitcoin is digital scarcity. It is number zero. It is Venice. It is the second coming of Christ. Finally, it is hope for a better future. There is no second best.

You may disparage it, call it a cult, or pretend it does not exist. Its presence is manifesting itself every ten minutes as new transactions are being appended to the chain in perpetual motion.

Tick tock, next block.

PROLOGUE

As academic experts, I know you are able to do your own research and change your stance when faced with overwhelming evidence against your predispositions. Therefore, I will try to provide a basis for this exploration and introduce you to the basic principles on which this emergent community rests. In the footnotes as well as at the end, I will append sources which I find to be the most valuable for understanding the phenomenon from various perspectives. I highly recommend checking them out with an open mind and not let bias affect your perception of what might be the largest paradigm shift in history.

ARGUMENT #1

Bitcoin, not crypto.

Firstly, you are making a very common mistake of conflating Bitcoin with “crypto”. The two, however, are completely antithetical. Bitcoin is a truly decentralized monetary protocol that has functioned for well over a decade while maintaining 99.9% uptime. It had no pre-mine of coins, ICO, or foundation. It has been developed anonymously and evolved organically throughout the years without any successful hard forks, i.e., major changes to the structure and functioning of the network. The Bitcoin network has only witnessed optional protocol upgrades which increased its security and efficiency, such as the most recent TapRoot, or its predecessor SegWit; however, Bitcoin’s core software is backwards compatible. Everyone who runs a Bitcoin node can still run the original copy of the blockchain and participate in the network.

Proof of Work

Bitcoin currently represents 99% of all Proof-of-Work hash power in the “crypto” ecosystem and is secured by the most powerful computing network in the world . Proof-of-Work is a critical part of the blockchain because it acts as a bridge between the physical and digital world, transforming electricity into cryptographic hashes and manifesting immutable consensus parameters on the protocol. There is no working blockchain without Proof-of-Work. There is no other use case for blockchain technology apart from creating an immutable, decentralized, and transparent ledger of transactions with its native currency. It is the only roundabout solution to the omnipresent Byzantine general’s problem of trusting an intermediary. Satoshi Nakamoto created the protocol and timestamped its genesis block to prove that there were no earlier blocks. Since its inception, anyone could participate in the network. The anonymity of its creator ensures there is no counterparty risk that could control or endanger Bitcoin’s existence and it was further ensured by the fact that its creator never spent his coins and left the network after working on it for a few years to give room to its organic evolution. This was arguably the highest moral act of any historic figure and crucial to creating an ethical monetary system. Since its inception, Bitcoin has operated exactly as intended, producing a block of transactions every 10 minutes without anyone being able to compromise its Proof-of-Work mechanism.  

~~Crypto~~

No other “crypto” has any of these inherent properties. All of them are deemed to be unregistered digital securities with counterparty risk because they pass the Howey test. Bitcoin is the only digital, absolutely scarce commodity, which means it is completely neutral . You cannot sue it, stop it, or change it without a significant investment beyond the capability of any organization or a group thereof. It was designed to solve a simple double-spend problem and protect its users against hostile actors. Its incentive structure awards honest participants who work to the benefit of its ecosystem and punishes the attackers . Unlike any other crypto token, Bitcoin’s software cannot be altered by a small group of developers, because it requires the network consensus of nodes and miners to change its code . Such attempts failed miserably, most recently during the 2017 Blocksize War.

ARGUMENT #2

Cyber-Manhattan

Secondly, I have heard you claim on numerous occasions that Bitcoin has no use case and is too slow to transact, which is yet another misconception. Bitcoin’s base layer protocol is a foundation. Think of it like a block of granite in Manhattan . It is there to last, and hardly to be moved. Its role is to provide a sound foundation for the erection of a digital economy. 1. Any monetary energy individuals choose to store there is stored for all eternity. This is achieved by its security protocol and its deflationary monetary policy. Because there are only 21 million coins and no one can change that, your share of those coins will remain intact forever. This is the essential part of a perfect monetary medium because it does not erode purchasing power, while still allowing these coins to be divided into infinitesimal units to transact with them. Hence the equation: 1BTC = 1BTC.

The problem with the base layer, however, is that it is extremely slow, producing approximately 12,000 transactions per hour. The transaction fees will likely keep increasing with time, because the miner subsidies get cut in half every 4 years until they are fully terminated around the year 2140.

There's Layers to this Game.

So, to understand the solution, we must apply a layered approach. Once you have the granite block on which you can store your value, you can start building an economy. In 2018, The Bitcoin Lightning Network white paper was launched . It perfected a solution which was already discussed by Satoshi Nakamoto a decade earlier to create a protocol for payment channels, wherein bitcoin transactions could run a million times faster at near zero cost by sacrificing some of the security.

Struck by Lightning

The Lightning protocol proved to be a perfect solution to the liquidity problem and has since grew exponentially and seems to have near-infinite scaling potential. It allows users to send instant, low value transactions globally at any time, for effectively no cost. 2. The ultimate use case of this protocol is that it allows Bitcoin to bank the unbanked people of the world, which amount to nearly 2 billion adults. Expats can finally send remittances to their families in the developing world without incurring excessive Western Union fees. Furthermore, Western Union usually takes a month to send the money and its subsidiaries are miles away from people’s homes. The Lightning Network allows users to send thousands of dollars on a Sunday afternoon anywhere over IP for a nickel.

After the second layer, which is akin to the buildings on Manhattan, there is room to create a native economy within those buildings. Centralized businesses can be built on top of those two layers to offer any other service and utility in the ecosystem, such as custodial services, exchanges, wallet applications, hardware storage devices, communication protocols like Nostr , etc. This is how an organic monetary system that is adapted to the digital age evolves into a perfect Darwinian organism.

Social Media Housekeeping

To add a third use case, besides the ultimate store of economic energy and integration of the global economy into a single payments system which is faster, cheaper, and better, we need to look at the digital economy. Internet has been lacking a native currency for decades and many attempts have failed. Because of that, intermediaries had to oversee transactions to ensure there are no double spends and theft. What this entailed was the emergence of expensive and redundant organizations which performed their job sub-optimally. Internet became pervaded with scammers, bots, DDoS attacks and hackers. Social media platforms were the main victims of that. Try using any social media app today and witness the saturation of bots with fake giveaways and scams, creating fake followers and trashing your account. The problem is the absence of physical cost, or skin in the game, in the digital domain. There is zero cost for malicious behavior but infinite upside. 3. Bitcoin and the Lightning Network are the solution to this problem because they can be implemented into any digital domain and clean the cyberspace of malicious activity. How? By introducing monetary costs for posting, creating accounts, sending messages, and punishing the malicious actors. Lightning allows you to automate these transactions and make them instant, irreversible, and low cost. This way, Twitter or other platforms can monetize malicious behavior by introducing monetary deposits for account authentication. Orange verification checks are a promising solution.

Usecaselessness

With this, I have postulated three revolutionary use cases for Bitcoin, but I could go on forever, because the implications of creating an immutable monetary standard outside the control of any political or other institution are infinite. We finally have a solution for the age-old problem even alchemists attempted to solve of creating “artificial gold” - a substance which would be better than gold in its monetary properties. It could only be created after the discovery of the digital realm. The fact that it was created on the free market despite all odds and attempts at destroying it speaks for itself. What has not killed it, made it stronger. “Antifragility” means that a system absorbs the energy of its attackers and reinforces itself, like a black hole. This was evident in China’s attempt to destroy Bitcoin miners. Bitcoin’s hash rate has only exponentially increased since then along with its security.

ARGUMENT #3

Dante and ChatGPT

I reserved the best for last. As an introduction to this final argument, I have sought the help of the “Oracle”, a name I tend to ascribe to ChatGPT, which seems to be getting increasingly omniscient with each input of data it receives. I asked it where would Dante Alighieri place those who indulge in gambling within his Divine Comedy. Here's the answer I received:

In Dante's "Divine Comedy," gamblers would be placed in the eighth circle of Hell, which is reserved for those guilty of fraud. Specifically, they would be placed in the fifth bolgia (or ditch) of the eighth circle, along with those guilty of malversation (corruption) and peculation (embezzlement).

The sin of gambling is considered a form of fraudulent activity because it involves taking money from others through deceptive means or chance, rather than through honest labor or trade. In the fifth bolgia, the souls of the fraudulent are punished by being immersed in a river of boiling pitch and guarded by demons with whips. This punishment symbolizes the sticky and deceptive nature of their sins, which trap and ensnare others.

With that, I would like to address the final commonly heard critique, namely that Bitcoin is akin to gambling. I would turn this statement on its head and state that Bitcoin is the only relative certainty, everything else is uncertain. The explanation is the following:

• Its supply schedule is set in stone, and we know exactly how many coins will be issued following a predictable schedule. This is achieved by leveraging the strengths of mathematics on which the whole system is based.

• The history of transactions is transparent and verifiable all the way back to the genesis block. The famous mantra within the Bitcoin community is “Do not trust, verify”, which is contrary to the traditional monetary system that depends on people’s trust in the politicians running it.

• For 14 years, no one has lost money on a 4-year time horizon by acquiring and holding Bitcoin. Its price has appreciated by 100% annually and it continues to monetize, even with all the financial crises, pandemic, and continual pushbacks from the authorities.

• The most certain thing for the last 14 years has been encapsulated in another famous Bitcoin slogan - “Tick tock, next block”. Despite massive economic calamity during and after the covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing financial collapse of 2023, Bitcoin continued to produce a block of transactions every 10 minutes and securing its users’ wealth.

It is disingenuous to say Bitcoin is akin to gambling, when literally the whole world needs to speculate on various assets to preserve their purchasing power which is perpetually diminishing if held in their domestic currencies that are continuously being devalued. The problem with current fiat money is that people need to earn it twice - initially by working, and later when they need to preserve the value of their labor, which is being eroded by inflationary monetary policy. To this end, they invest it in speculative assets to try and beat the inflation rate, only to end up either in the same place or worse-off because they compete against professional investors. Average worker has become a part-time investor trying to preserve their wealth instead of focusing on being productive with their time . Bitcoin offers the ultimate alternative, because it protects people’s purchasing power both from theft through confiscation, as well as monetary inflation .

Gamblers Unmasked

ICOs, NFTs, Web3 and the Metaverse are all examples of crowdfunding and marketing campaigns by developers of “crypto” projects. This inevitably designates them as unregistered digital securities because they all pass the Howey test. Circle, Terra Luna, FTX, Mount Gox are examples of the ultimate destiny awaiting such snake oil salesmen shilling unregistered digital securities disguised as decentralized assets. Investing money in such projects means gambling your luck about which of these pump and dump schemes will pump and which will be dumped by its majority holders of (mostly)pre-mined tokens.

Furthermore, another vivid example of gamblers are central bankers who capriciously concoct our monetary policy and politicians who foolishly try to steer the profound and overcomplex machine that is our economy. Change the interest rate there, print money here, lend it to this and that lobbyist and tax the prudent farmers. Make sure to keep coming up with excuses for why printing money is good for stimulating economic growth and why you should be in charge of it. Pretend that gambling with people's money is not an addiction which gives you a better kick than any other substance. This is their modus operandi.

Socialism is untenable.

The economy is an organic mechanism which consists of billions of acting individuals who make economic decisions. As long as people possess free will, there is no mathematical model which could tell central planners how to direct resources and money to production processes better than those entrepreneurial individuals can do themselves. Bitcoin helps shine a light on this issue and exposes the inefficiency of centralized allocation of money. Constantly meddling in the money supply inflates market bubbles and causes business cycles, sending shockwaves of price volatility over the economy. Finally, it falsifies all prices and indicators because they have to be adjusted for the unmeasurable inflation rate. Fix the money, fix the world.  

Measuring Economic Activity

I would like to offer an alternative perspective, viz., expressing all other assets in terms of Bitcoin’s 21,000,000 units, to see exactly why it is the only stable and predictable system. Because its supply is strictly limited, it represents the only closed value system out there and allows us to express the volatility of all other open systems in its units. When you express any open system in terms of a closed one, the value of the former continuously trends toward zero. Mathematically, this is akin to dividing any fixed number with infinity. What we derive from that is a trendline of various assets depreciating against Bitcoin's fixed supply in a volatile manner. In other words, Bitcoin is demonetizing all assets (real estate, gold, stocks, bonds, currencies, etc.) whose value has been appreciating because people used them as a way to store their value outside of the dysfunctional fiat money. Thus, Bitcoin’s value either rises to infinity or collapses to zero. There is no middle option.

EPILOGUE

Instead of opposing and disparaging it, people need to start embracing Bitcoin as the only workable solution to the problem of corrupt fiat money, which is creating exorbitant differences between people and favoring the wealthy politicians, banksters, and businessmen at the expense of the poor. Bitcoin provides an alternative to the obsolete monetary system of the Industrial era and adapts it to the Information Age. It is the magical internet money, and it works exactly as intended . Countries and corporations already began embracing it and the first movers will have a significant advantage in the forthcoming digital economy. El Salvador was the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender and set a precedent for all other nation states to follow . Their results are astonishing.

I have manifold reasons for being enthusiastic about Bitcoin. Foremost amongst them is returning power and freedom to the sovereign individual instead of the welfare state and finally exterminating the fiat parasite which has been plucking at our prosperity for the past century. Another reason is that it is creating a separate economy, full of opportunities and hope. Numerous e-businesses are emerging and providing valuable services to global users and equipping them with the universal digital monetary commodity that allows people to finally get out of debt slavery and save their money for future use, while still being able to send it anywhere cheaply and instantly. Last but not least, it reinstates morality that has been absent for a long time, which is evident in profound life changes that Bitcoiners experience once they fully adopt the idea.

P.S.

I hope my essay was not too long to read. I have tried to be as concise as I can considering the scale of the topic. Hopefully, it also made you reconsider your position and open to further exploration of this phenomenon. For this purpose, I have prepared a comprehensive list of books, white papers, articles, websites, and videos that I find most important for people starting to get their feet wet in the ocean of ideas that is Bitcoin.  

Sources:

Books:

1. Ammous, S. (2018). The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved March 22 2023, from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1738722
2. Ammous, S. (2021). The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization. Saif House 2021.

White papers:

1. Poon, J., & Dryja, T. (2016). The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments. Retrieved March 22 2023, from https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
2. Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Retrieved March 22 2023, from https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Presentations:

1. Global Bitcoin Mining Data Review Q3 2022. Bitcoin Mining Council. Retrieved 26 March 2023, from https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022.10.13-BMC-Presentation-Q3-22-Presentation.pdf

Articles:

1. Dear Crypto & Fiat Bros—An open letter to the confused and dismissive. | dergigi.com. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://dergigi.com/2022/11/19/dear-crypto-fiat-bros/
2. Dear Family, Dear Friends—A letter to all of you who still have no bitcoin. | dergigi.com. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://dergigi.com/2020/04/27/dear-family-dear-friends/
3. Bitcoin Is Time | dergigi.com. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://dergigi.com/2021/01/14/bitcoin-is-time/
4. Bitcoin’s Meme Wars. (2023, March 21). Dergigi.Com. https://dergigi.com/2023/03/21/bitcoin-s-meme-wars/
5. Magic Internet Money—The Magical Origins of Bitcoin. (2021, November 2). Dergigi.Com. https://dergigi.com/2021/11/02/magic-internet-money/
6. Breedlove, R. (2022, June 24). The Number Zero and Bitcoin. Medium. https://breedlove22.medium.com/the-number-zero-and-bitcoin-4c193336db5b
7. Verstovšek, K. K. (2023, March 1). Bitcoin vs CBDC. Bitcoin Društvo Slovenije, Medium. https://bitcoindrustvoslovenije.medium.com/bitcoin-vs-cbdc-ce4cacafedad*
8. *My own article in Slovene

Websites:

1. WTF Happened In 1971? (n.d.). WTF Happened In 1971? Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ 14. Hope.com. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://www.hope.com/en/websites
2. Bitcoin Books. (n.d.). Bitcoin Resources. Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://bitcoin-resources.com/books/
3. Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://nakamotoinstitute.org/
4. Nostr, a simple protocol for decentralizing social media that has a chance of working. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://nostr.com

Videos:

1. The Saylor Series—YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2jAZ0x9H0bQFY6wIbQfnrnIlqMcSHd6X
2. Michael Saylor—Bitcoin VS Ethereum—YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://youtu.be/Of0Ojk9yVWE
3. FYM News: Michael Saylor Explains Bitcoin on Tucker Carlson Today - full interview (720p) - YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://youtu.be/wdJFeSY8UVk
4. BTC117: Bitcoin and the Start of the Information Era w/ Luke Broyles - YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://youtu.be/695SjcxoejY
5. ‘Buying Bitcoin Now is Like Buying a Land in Manhattan 100 Year Ago’—Michael Saylor—YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://youtu.be/LTVhx2ouwXk
6. El Salvador Becomes The First Country to Declare Bitcoin Legal Tender w/ Jack Mallers of Strike—YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_59hrgTiRJU
7. Security vs. Commodity. And why #Bitcoin is the latter. Michael Saylor live @ BTC22 | with subtitles—YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2023, from https://youtu.be/--zIMJcy8C4

Written by Klemen K. Verstovšek

@ 32092ec1:8e9fd13a

Bitcoin maximalism, to many, has evolved from a belief that bitcoin is the only crypto asset worth owning to a belief that bitcoin is the only asset worth owning. In addition, many observe that those who declare themselves to be bitcoin maximalists have also declared their allegiance to many other lifestyle choices. This was well articulated by Jameson Lopp in his blog post “A History of Bitcoin Maximalism.”

While some (myself included for a while) embrace the title of bitcoin maximalist, perhaps out of spite given that it was originally intended to be a derogatory term, I eventually have decided to reject it. While I do not own any other crypto assets, and I do believe that bitcoin offers the best risk adjusted investment across many asset classes, it is not, nor could it ever realistically be, my only investment. Due to the ambiguity of the definition of a “bitcoin maximalist” to some, even the fact that I have equity in my primary residence may call into question my status as a bitcoin maximalist. Although most people likely agree that this point of view is nonsensical, I feel that it is also completely pointless to take the time to defend the purity of my “bitcoin maximalism;” and so, I reject it. In place of the bitcoin maximalist label, I hereby declare myself to be a truth maximalist.

The truth is that 99% of non-bitcoin crypto assets are completely worthless; specifically, what I mean is that they literally add zero net positivity to humanity. The remaining 1% of non-bitcoin crypto assets may indeed serve some limited improvements to existing systems or other alternative benefits; however, these crypto assets are also, in my opinion, already highly over valued given the magnitude of the problems they are intending to solve. Most of the incremental improvements offered by cryptos are related to marginally improving systems based on fiat money and the banking industry both of which bitcoin intends to largely obsolete and are still net negative to humanity and designed to syphon wealth from the powerless to the powerful.

I do believe that open source, decentralized, cryptographic solutions will play additional roles in society and offer an opportunity to disrupt many existing centralized solutions. However, most of these solutions will not be investable assets, just as the internet itself is not an investable asset.

I believe it also to be true that investment properties intended for yield generation come with a host of additional costs and risks that are rarely properly accounted for when assessing the value of these assets. After accounting for the probability weighted costs of evictions, seizures, taxes, maintenance, inflation, and loan interest, I find it difficult to justify these investments over bitcoin held in self-custody.

Many other investable assets that simply sit on a bank’s balance sheet (e.g., stocks, bonds, etc.) can easily be seized if any number of three letter agencies decided that you should not have these assets. This can be done with no due process and does not require any in depth investigation to determine the validity of their claims. I believe that the probability of these types of seizures is much higher for known bitcoiners who are also critical of the government and the media, especially if current financial systems begin to collapse and/or if bitcoin’s value dramatically increases.

Beyond seizure of your individual assets, as the world begins to divest from the highly inflated store of value assets listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ due to seizure risks at the sovereign level, the risk of extreme inflation adjusted devaluation of your portfolio should also be considered. Compounding this risk is the opportunity cost associated with the fact that some of the wealth that may be withdrawn from the US stock market is also likely going to flow into bitcoin. These risks are rarely accounted for or quantified when determining the value of a stock portfolio in contrast to simply holding bitcoin in self-custody.

My opinions on these matters are common among bitcoiners who are largely labeled bitcoin maximalists. However, the title of truth maximalist also fits nicely when trying to counter some of the softer points made in Lopp’s blog post mentioned above. My thesis is that most people who have adopted the bitcoin maximalist “lifestyle” choices have done so as a result of their quest for truth, not as a result of their desire to virtue signal their status as bitcoin maximalists.

The truth is that a carnivore diet is much healthier than governments, media and academia would like you to believe (disclosure: I have never tried a carnivore diet)

The truth is that weightlifting is more beneficial than cardio to overall health (disclosure: I am not into weightlifting)

The truth is that traditional gender roles are beneficial to mental health (disclosure: although my wife is a full-time, stay-at-home mom, my marriage is far from perfect).

The truth is that extreme consequences from greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are extrapolatory and predictions have historically failed miserably (disclosure: I do not think there is zero risk of extreme disasters from excessive levels of carbon in the atmosphere).

The truth is that seed oils are terrible for you (disclosure: I have ingested seed oils since discovering this).

The truth is that COVID vaccines pointlessly add risk to healthy people and children (disclosure: I received two doses of the COVID vaccine prior to realizing this truth and my wife still disagrees with me on this).

The truth is that natural health solutions are often more beneficial than big pharma would like you to believe (disclosure: I have not used any exotic natural remedies).

The truth is that modern art and architecture is garbage (disclosure: this is only a personal opinion).

The Truth is that Jesus Christ died on a cross and ascended into Heaven in order to save the world from sin (disclosure: although I have always been a Christian, over the last year or so I have dedicated a significant amount of time researching this and so far, everything is supporting this to be literally true and much more easily believable than you might think).

Maybe you disagree with some of these things that I have determined to be true. But let me ask, have done your own research? What is your basis for a counter argument to any of these truths? Did you verify or are you trusting someone else’s opinion? If you are trusting someone else’s research, did you investigate their credibility or determine if they have significant biases? Certainly, my opinions on the topics listed above not always based on exhaustive independent research, but I did approach each with skepticism and did not always believe these things with conviction prior to looking into them. I think any bitcoiner would agree that if you are trusting fiat funded academia, government organizations or mainstream media, you may need to do more research.

The truth is that I will continue to seek the truth and I will encourage others to do the same. The truth is that I welcome new information and listening to opinions that counter my beliefs. When choosing to have strong conviction in minority opinions about the truth, it is extremely valuable to be able to articulate and refute the points that are contrary to your beliefs. It is also important to be able to change your mind when presented with sufficient evidence against your opinion. This is what it means to be a truth maximalist. It just so happens that the truth is that bitcoin is the only crypto asset worth investing in. Don’t believe me? Prove it.

786973

@ 433788cd:4a73ef09

Good morning,

We're excited to welcome you all to another fantastic evening of lively discussions, networking, and all things Bitcoin! Join us tonight at 6pm at the Cellar for our weekly Bitcoin meetup. Whether you're a seasoned Bitcoiner or new to the world of Bitcoin, you're sure to find something of interest. Come share your insights, ask questions, and connect with like-minded individuals in our thriving community.

https://www.meetup.com/lexingtonbitcoin/events/gsjvtsyfcgbhc/

Once again we look forward to seeing everyone tonight! Here's a look at some of the news events over the last week in Bitcoin that we'll discuss tonight:

Bitcoin is now available in the Telegram @wallet - Telegram's @wallet bot now offers an integrated custodial bitcoin wallet, enabling over 700 million users to buy, receive, send, withdraw, swap, and sell bitcoin via Telegram's peer-to-peer marketplace using a user-friendly web interface, which also supports instant swaps of BTC, USDT, and TON at favorable rates. - The platform's "Buy & Sell" section simplifies bitcoin transactions, allowing users to select their preferred payment method, either via bank card or the P2P Market; however, some features may require phone number verification, and buying bitcoin with a bank card requires identity verification

Coinbase gets Bermuda license, plans to launch offshore exchange in coming weeks - Coinbase has obtained a license from the Bermuda Monetary Authority to operate in the offshore jurisdiction of Bermuda, reflecting the company's commitment to expanding its international business amidst increasing regulatory hostility toward the crypto industry in the U.S.; Bermuda is known for its early adoption of a comprehensive legal framework for digital assets in 2018. - Coinbase is planning to launch an offshore derivatives exchange in Bermuda as early as next week, with products such as perpetual swaps and other exotic crypto-related derivatives that are largely unavailable in the U.S. due to regulatory restrictions; the company is also looking to expand operations in Abu Dhabi as part of its "Go Broad & Go Deep" strategy

Gemini Foundation — A Non-US Crypto Derivatives Platform - Gemini has announced the upcoming launch of Gemini Foundation, a non-US crypto derivatives platform that will offer a BTC perpetual contract denominated in Gemini dollars (GUSD) as its first derivatives contract, followed by an ETH/GUSD perpetual contract; however, the platform will not be available to customers in the United States, and its services will be accessible in several countries including Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, South Korea, Switzerland, and Turkey, among others. - This development by Gemini parallels a similar move by Coinbase, which is also expected to launch an offshore derivatives exchange this week, and has previously expressed concerns regarding the absence of regulatory clarity in the United States

AgoraDesk Free and Open Source Mobile Apps are Now Officially Out of Beta - The AgoraDesk mobile app, a private and open-source Bitcoin peer-to-peer trading platform, has officially come out of beta and is now available for download on both iOS and Android platforms. The app boasts a range of features including in-app proxy support, Tor/I2P domain connection, user experience optimized for easy trading, extensive security testing, no Google Services required, light/dark themes, stable notifications, and support for 32 languages - In the newly released version 1.1.0, updates include a limit of 25 attempts for the pin code before the app logs out, improvements to the proxy settings screen, the addition of BTC transaction costs in fiat currency, and a fix for an error related to the captcha dialog.

Trezor Launches Coinjoin Integration with Wasabi Wallet - Trezor Suite has launched an optional feature called "coinjoin" that enhances privacy by making Bitcoin transactions untraceable. Coinjoin strips personal data from Bitcoin transactions, taking back users' right to financial privacy, as Bitcoin transactions inherently carry data about coins' history and can potentially reveal user identities. - The service is using Wasabi Wallet which has been criticized for using coin analysis on it's input transactions

Tornando Cash dev Alexey Pertsev freed pending trial - Alexey Pertsev, a Tornado Cash developer who was arrested by Dutch authorities in August over allegations of facilitating money laundering, has been granted release and will return home next week, pending trial. Pertsev's release comes with the condition of wearing an ankle monitor, and he will celebrate his birthday at home on April 261FaviconThe Block: Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev freed pending trial2FaviconThe Block: Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev freed pending trial. - The arrest of Pertsev, a Russian national, followed the U.S. government's decision to add Tornado Cash, a crypto mixing service, and 44 associated Ethereum and USDC wallets to its Specially Designated Nationals list. The U.S. Treasury claimed that Tornado Cash had repeatedly failed to stop the laundering of funds for malicious cyber actors. Pertsev has denied the charges and a further investigation hearing is scheduled for May 24.

Silk Road Dark Web Fraud Defendant Sentenced - James Zhong was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for committing wire fraud in September 2012 by unlawfully obtaining approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road dark web marketplace. Zhong executed a scheme to defraud Silk Road by creating multiple accounts, triggering over 140 rapid transactions, and tricking Silk Road's withdrawal-processing system to release approximately 50,000 Bitcoin into his accounts. Zhong later received 50,000 Bitcoin Cash in a hard fork coin split and exchanged it for an additional 3,500 Bitcoin, resulting in approximately 53,500 Bitcoin of total crime proceeds. - The U.S. Government seized over 50,000 Bitcoin of crime proceeds from Zhong's home in Gainesville, Georgia, and Zhong voluntarily surrendered 1,004.14621836 additional Bitcoin. The seized Bitcoin was valued at over $3.4 billion at the time of seizure and over $1.57 billion today. The court entered final orders of forfeiture for the seized Bitcoin, $661,900 in cash, metal items, and Zhong's 80% interest in RE&D Investments, LLC, a Memphis-based company with substantial real estate holdings

How to stop the onion denial (of service) - Onion services on the Tor network have faced denial-of-service (DoS) attacks exploiting the asymmetric nature of the onion service rendezvous protocol, where a small message from a malicious client triggers significant work by the service, making it difficult to distinguish between good and bad clients. To mitigate this, the Tor Project has provided scaling options, agile circuit management, and protection against CPU exhaustion to help operators build their own DoS detection and handling infrastructure. - Two potential long-term solutions are proposed: (1) defenses based on anonymous tokens, where good clients acquire tokens (e.g., via CAPTCHAs or donations) to prioritize their access during a DoS attack, with potential applications including restricting malicious Tor exit node usage and registering human-memorable names for onion services; and (2) defenses based on Proof-of-Work (PoW), where clients solve PoW puzzles before accessing the service, allowing the PoW difficulty to adapt dynamically based on attack volume, and enabling motivated clients to bid for attention with better proofs

Strom: Lightning/Nostr Enabled OCPP Bridge - Strom is an open-source application that enables charge point owners to accept lightning payments for electric vehicle charging sessions. The application can be run locally or on a hosted provider, and each charge point is configured with a unique nostr identity and LNURL friendly URL address. Payments made to the LNURL-p initiate charging sessions over the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP), while LNURL-w is used to stop charging sessions. Unused prepaid amounts can be refunded - The Strom application includes features such as dynamic pricing, enabling tariff models based on energy spot markets or dynamic energy contracts. Charge points communicate with Strom via OCPP 1.6 over a websocket. Additionally, Strom could be extended to support the Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI), allowing e-Mobility Service Providers to make charge points publicly available and support lightning payments through payment streaming for ongoing sessions

LND v0.16.1-beta: Bug Fixes and Optimizations - LND v0.16.1-beta is a minor release that introduces a range of important bug fixes and optimizations. - A notable update is the increase in the default CLTV (Check Lock Time Verify) delay from 40 to 80 blocks, lengthening the CLTV delta value from ~7 to ~13 hours, to help prevent unnecessary force closures due to mempool backlog or node downtime

Mutiny Node v0.2.6: BDK Core + IndexedDB - Mutiny Node v0.2.6 has adopted bdk 1.0-alpha, which is expected to resolve various issues with syncing. - The release also includes a transition of all storage to indexedDB, along with an in-memory clone, to enhance both the speed and safety of data persistence

LNbits v0.10.4 Released - The "Yvette2" release of lnbits features a series of changes and improvements to the codebase, including fixes for pre-installed extensions, the removal of the virtual environment (venv) from lnbits, documentation updates, improvements to code readability and formatting, and the addition of localization to the lnbits frontend. - A variety of bugs were addressed, including the proper handling of exceptions for already paid internal invoices, fixes to admin access, and improvements to error handling for lndrest.

BlueWallet v6.4.1 - Payment Codes Released - Highlights include fixes to price rates and currency search functionality, startup performance enhancements, accessibility improvements, Payjoin implementation fixes, GUI styling improvements, and the addition of support for Bip47 payment codes - The release enables Bip47 payment codes through a development backdoor for testing and feedback purposes. The first phase of Bip47 implementation includes the ability to get a payment code, receive on a Bip84 account, view transaction history, and use unspent transaction outputs (utxos) for sending payments. The release also includes various fixes, changes, and new features such as Bitstamp support for iOS widgets and watchOS, CoinGecko integration, improved app startup speed, and secure keystore key handling

These are just some of the topics we'll be discussing tonight. Free free to bring any topics of discussion for the group that you find interesting! We all want to learn this journey together.

Hope to see you all out tonight!

@ 40b9c85f:5e61b451

Introducción a Nostr

Esta guia se mantendra actualizada en https://bitcoinbarcelona.xyz/intro_nostr

Index

1. Que es nostr?
2. Como funciona?
3. Como usar nostr
4. En que momento se encuentra nostr?
5. Por que nostr es importante?
6. Gracias!
7. Que es nostr?
   • Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays / Notas y otras cosas transmitidas por los relays
   • NOSTR es un protocolo
     • "Si una plataforma es un castillo(twitter, facebook, etc.), un protocolo es un río: nadie es su dueño, y todo el mundo es libre de nadar". Edward Snowden
     • Nostr hace posibles redes sociales globales, descentralizadas abiertas y resistentes a la censura. Es nuevo y puede resultar confuso al inicio, pero también es genial.
     • Nostr no es una plataforma, no es una empresa, no tiene un servidor central.
       • A diferencia de Twitter o Facebook, Nostr es descentralizado. No hay servidores centrales ni empresas que controlen lo que puedes publicar y lo que otros pueden ver, no hay ninguna entidad central. Nostr es resistente a la censura y de código abierto. La licencia de Nostr es simplemente "Dominio Público".
         • https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
     • Piensa en Nostr como una red social, que puede funcionar de forma similar a Twitter, en la que puedes crear publicaciones o "notas" (como un tweet), dar "me gusta" a publicaciones, seguir a personas, repostear publicaciones (como un retweet), intercambiar mensajes directos, e incluso hacer tips a través de lightning network⚡.
     • El diseño de nostr esta basado en tres componentes esenciales, clientes, relays y eventos o notas. Cada usuario usa un cliente y estos se conectan a relays para recibir y enviar eventos.
       • Los relays son servidores que solo guardan y reciben peticiones para servir eventos. Cualquier persona puede correr su relay o usar uno publico.
       • Los clientes o apps son interfaces para conectarse a relays e interactuar con la red de nostr. Hay muchos casos de uso para los clientes. Social, mensajería, juegos, etc.
       • Las notas, eventos o mensajes son las publicaciones o interacciones que suceden en nostr. Toda interacción en nostr representa un evento o nota.
       • La identidad en nostr o los perfiles, están basados en pares de llaves (publica y privada), como bitcoin, si tienes el control de tu llave privada puedes enviar mensajes o eventos e interactuar. La gente puede encontrarte e interactuar contigo a través de tu llave publica
     • El protocolo define un conjunto de reglas que relays y clientes utilizan para comunicarse (como Bitcoin, el correo electrónico o Bittorrent). Nostr no es una aplicación ni una "plataforma", pero muchas aplicaciones o clientes pueden construirse sobre Nostr.

8. Como funciona?

   • Identidad o perfiles en nostr
     • La identidad en nostr esta basada en pares de llaves, una privada y una publica, como en Bitcoin o PGP/GPG. Un par de llaves conforman una identidad o perfil con la que se podría empezar a publicar o interactuar en nostr.
       • Puedes obtener o generar tantos pares de llaves como quieras, son ‘infinitas’ y no tienes que pasar ningún tipo de proceso kyc para generar nuevos pares de llaves.
       • No hace falta estar conectado a internet para generar nuevas claves, puedes generarlas offline.
       • No necesitas permiso de nadie para generar u obtener tus llaves
       • Existen diferentes métodos para generar nuevas claves
         • Con un gestor de llaves como alby o nos2x (recomendado)
         • Con openssl openssl rand -hex 32
         • Startr para generar tu par de llaves y almacenarlas en un archivo encriptado y portable
         • Con rana o nostril para ‘minar’ llaves.
           • Ej. nostr:npub1gzuushllat7pet0ccv9yuhygvc8ldeyhrgxuwg744dn5khnpk3gs3ea5ds
     • Una vez generadas tus nuevas llaves podrás utilizar cualquier cliente y empezar a agregar metadatos que quedaran asociados a tu llave publica. Ej. Foto de perfil, handle, nombre, nip05, LN address, etc. De esta forma cuando alguien busque tu clave publica en algún cliente también vera los metadatos asociados a ella
       • Los metadatos asociados a tu llave púbica también conforman un evento, en este caso kind 0 para metadata y kind 3 para tu lista de contactos o follows
     • 💡Toda interacción representa un evento que envías o recibes de relays, seguir a una persona, escribir una nota, darle ‘me gusta’ a una nota, enviar un mensaje directo.
     • Llave publica
       • Piensa en la clave pública como tu nombre de usuario (como tu @handle en Twitter) o un identificador único
       • Aspecto de una llave publica:
         • Diferentes formatos, misma llave
           • Bech32:
             • nostr:npub1gzuushllat7pet0ccv9yuhygvc8ldeyhrgxuwg744dn5khnpk3gs3ea5ds
           • HEX (antiguo):
             • 40b9c85fffeafc1cadf8c30a4e5c88660ff6e4971a0dc723d5ab674b5e61b451
         • Se puede hacer la conversion entre un formato y otro con algunas herramientas como damus.io/key/ , nostrcheck.me/converter/ , o Startr.
       • Para encontrar a otro usuario de Nostr, sólo tienes que buscarlo en el cliente de tu elección utilizando su clave pública. Una vez encontrado podrás seguirlo/interactuar
       • También existen directorios que facilitan encontrar a personas:
         • https://bitcoinnostr.com
         • https://nostr.directory
         • https://nostrplebs.com/directory
       • NIP05:
         • Es un identificador fácilmente legible para tu clave pública. Facilita la búsqueda de tu perfil en Nostr. Facilita la identificación de tu cuenta. Un ID NIP05 también te proporciona en muchos clientes un ‘check’ o marca de verificación.
           • Aspecto:
             • gzuuus@mynostr.space
             • jack@cash.app
       • 💡Algo interesante es que podrías usar solo la llave publica para ver u observar el tu perfil o el de otra persona, pero sin capacidad de enviar mensajes o interactuar. Como una cartera watch only de bitcoin.
     • Llave privada
       • Piensa en tu clave privada como tu contraseña o tu llave privada de bitcoin; NO LA COMPARTAS CON NADIE. Con ella podrás firmar los mensajes o notas e interactuar con el resto de la web
       • Aspecto de una llave privada:
         • Diferentes formatos
           • Bech32:
             • nsec1g56vl9475frrxtycwc8vkvnkvpxjv9k5q97t2eyfdesw93amkx4s6sqwls
           • HEX(antiguo):
             • 4534cf96bea246332c98760ecb3276604d2616d4017cb564896e60e2c7bbb1ab
           • BIP39, mnemonic:
             • early please toss later caught book raven attract attract flower outside scene sponsor arena exotic convince rely cattle fortune scrub cluster tape shop horror
       • Tu llave privada es algo sensible y debe de tratarse con las consideraciones necesarias. Usa un gestor de contraseñas para guardarla de forma segura o alguna otra alternativa como Startr para almacenarla de manera apropiada.
       • Tu llave privada te dará acceso y privilegios para interactuar con tu perfil en nostr y los diferentes clientes. Sin embargo, si se trata de un cliente web es extremadamente recomendable (se podría decir obligatorio) usar un gestor de llaves como puede ser alby o nos2x. Estas son extensiones que instalas en tu navegador, con ellas tu llave privada estará segura y podrás usar cualquier cliente web de manera segura.
         • Si no usas estos gestores de llaves en clientes web tu llave privada podría quedar comprometida.
   • Arquitectura
     • Que es un cliente de nostr?
       • Clientes
         • Para utilizar Nostr, debes usar un cliente. Hoy en día hay muchos y esto es solo el principio.
         • Un cliente es una aplicación diseñada para interactuar con el protocolo de nostr, es simplemente una interfaz con la que puedes conectar con relays de tu elección, recibir actualizaciones de las cuentas que sigues (consultar tu feed), enviar notas, e interactuar. Hay clientes web, móvil, clientes nativos de escritorio, etc.
         • Los clientes son como la aplicación de telegram o twitter por ejemplo.
         • Para publicar algo en Nostr, escribes una nota en tu cliente favorito, lo firmas con tu llave privada y esta se enviará a tus relays configurados
         • Nostr es un protocolo abierto y, por lo tanto, los clientes son inter-operables, esto quiere decir que puedes utilizar cualquier cliente para interactuar con la red, mientras estés conectado a los mismos relays siempre obtendrás la misma información (tu perfil, follows, followers, etc) independientemente del cliente que uses.
         • El protocolo de nostr permite crear clientes para diferentes casos de uso. Por ejemplo para redes sociales como twitter, para comunicación o chat como telegram, para fotos y social como instagram por ejemplo, lector de rss, etc.
         • Nostr tiene el potencial de sustituirlos a todos
       • Clientes recomendados:
         • Web:
           • snort.social snort.social - Nostr interface
           • iris.to Iris – The nostr client for better social networks
         • Android:
           • Amethyst
           • Nostros
         • Ios:
           • Damus
         • Escritorio (avanzado):
           • Bija
           • Nostr_console (CLI)
           • Gossip
     • Notas, eventos o mensajes
       • Se denominan notas, eventos o mensajes a todas las publicaciones o interacciones que suceden en nostr.
       • Toda interacción en nostr representa un nuevo evento.
         • 💡Toda interacción representa un evento que envías o recibes de relays, seguir a una persona, escribir una nota, darle ‘me gusta’ a una nota, enviar un mensaje directo.
       • Los eventos a nivel de protocolo están construidos en formato JSON, un lenguaje ampliamente utilizado en el mundo de la programación y comunicación en protocolos web como las APIs.
       • El formato JSON esta basado en una estructura {Clave:Valor} y puede almacenar diferentes campos dentro de un mismo registro
       • Los eventos de nostr tienen diferentes campos que conforman su estructura y determinan de que tipo de evento se trata (nota, ‘me gusta’, follow, etc.)
       • El tipo de evento se especifica en el campo “kind”
       • Aspecto de un evento: json { "id": "4376c65d2f232afbe9b882a35baa4f6fe8667c4e684749af565f981833ed6a65", "pubkey": "6e468422dfb74a5738702a8823b9b28168abab8655faacb6853cd0ee15deee93", "created_at": 1673347337, "kind": 1, "tags": [ ["e","3da979448d9ba263864c4d6f14984c423a3838364ec255f03c7904b1ae77f206"], ["p","bf2376e17ba4ec269d10fcc996a4746b451152be9031fa48e74553dde5526bce"] ], "content": "Walled gardens became prisons, and nostr is the first step towards tearing down the prison walls.", "sig": "908a15e46fb4d8675bab026fc230a0e3542bfade63da02d542fb78b2a8513fcd0092619a2c8c1221e581946e0191f2af505dfdf8657a414dbca329186f009262" } json { "id": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded sha256 of the the serialized event data>" "pubkey": "<32-bytes lowercase hex-encoded public key of the event creator>", "created_at": "<unix timestamp in seconds>", "kind": "<integer>", "tags": [ ["e", "<32-bytes hex of the id of another event>, <recommended relay URL>"], ["p", "<32-bytes hex of the key>, <recommended relay URL>"], ... // other kinds of tags may be included later ], "content": "<arbitrary string>", "sig": "<64-bytes hex of the signature of the sha256 hash of the serialized event data, which is the same as the 'id' field>" }
     • Que es un relay?
       • Relays
         • Un relay es un servidor alojado por ti o por otra persona; cualquiera puede montar y gestionar un relay.
         • Los relays funcionan como bases de datos que guardan notas de personas y las reenvían a otras. Ej. Dame todas las notas de esta llave pública entre este rango de fechas
         • Un relay es ‘tonto’. Tanto la firma como la presentación de las notas sucede de lado del cliente.
         • Para obtener actualizaciones de otras personas, se pregunta a varios relays si saben algo de esas otras personas.
         • Hay relays públicos y de pago
         • La url de un relay tiene este aspecto: wss://eden.nostr.land
         • Los relays usan el protocolo websocket (wss://…) para conectar con los clientes. Websocket es un protocolo web moderno que permite la comunicación asíncrona y canales de comunicación bidireccionales que se mantienen abiertos. Esto es ideal para recibir actualizaciones en tu feed sin tener que actualizar la pagina web.
         • Un relay propio o auto hospedado se podría ver como una forma de hacer backup de tu actividad en nostr, si tienes tu propio relay para tus notas/eventos nadie podrá borrarlos nunca. Si usas un relay publico o de pago y este desaparece, también lo harán tus notas o eventos que tengas alojados en ellos.
         • Poco a poco se hará más fácil tener un relay propio e incluso que este retransmita o haga mirroring(reenvíe) a otros con más ‘visibilidad’ para que tus notas sean visibles a la red.
           • 💡Hay diferentes implementaciones de relays. Las diferencias son los lenguajes de programación en las que están escritos y diferentes características o funcionalidades.
           • 💡Se están desarrollando nuevas implementaciones de relays llamados ‘proxys’ que tienen la función de retransmitir tus eventos a una serie de relays públicos, de esta forma tu solo te conectas a un relay proxy y este se encarga de conectarse a otros relays para retransmitir tus eventos CC. https://github.com/Dolu89/nostr-proxy https://github.com/MutinyWallet/blastr https://github.com/getAlby/http-nostr-publisher
       • Relays públicos
         • Los relays públicos son abiertos y puedes usarlos para mandar y recibir notas.
           • Puedes encontrar una lista de relays públicos con información y estadísticas sobre ellos en https://nostr.watch/
       • Relays de pago
         • Los relays de pago tienen restringida la escritura para los usuarios no registrados, pero cualquier usuario podría leer.
           • Un relay de pago tiene la ventaja de filtrar spam y de ser mas estable/confiable.
           • Por supuesto el pago es con bitcoin.
           • Pues encontrar una lista en https://relay.exchange/
     • Diferentes tipos de arquitecturas, nostr vs twitter
       • Arquitectura de nostr: Descentralizada, mientras halla un relay en común podrás ver los mensajes de los otros.
       • Arquitectura de twitter: Centralizada, no existe libertad y puedes ser fácilmente expulsado o censurado

9. Como usar nostr

   • Todo el mundo usa un cliente. Puede ser un cliente de escritorio, web, móvil, etc. Para publicar algo, escribes un post, lo firmas con tu clave y lo envías a múltiples relays. Para obtener actualizaciones de otras personas, preguntas a varios relays si saben algo de esas otras personas. No hace falta “confiar” en los relays. Las firmas se verifican en el lado del cliente.
   • Configuraciones para usar nostr Como ya habrás percibido la experiencia de usuario de nostr es modular, osea tienes diferentes clientes con los que puedes interactuar en la red, tienes una serie de relays publicos y privados. No hay una unica manera de usar nostr y esto es bastante llamativo y se aleja del modelo convencional de redes sociales a las que estamos acostumbrados donde entras y la experiencia de usuario esta bien definida y acotada. En nostr cada uno diseña su experiencia de usuario, elige sus clientes favoritos y los relays a los que se conecta.
     • Como selecciono los relays a los que me conecto y a cuantos?
       • La selección de relays y el numero de ellos a los que te conectas realmente variara en función del caso de uso. Pero en general conviene conectarse a algún relay ampliamente usado (puedes ver una lista en https://nashboard.space/ en la sección “MOST CROWDED RELAYS”) y sobre todos a los relays que usen las personas que sigas para estar seguro de que recibes actualizaciones con sus nuevos eventos. Normalmente en los clientes encontraras la información de que relays usan las personas a las que sigues.
       • También conviene entender que mientras a mas relays estés conectado mas conexiones abiertas tienes y mas consumo de datos y batería tendrás. Esto es importante sobre todo si usas nostr en el móvil.
       • Una cantidad optima de relays no hay, pero digamos que con un numero entre 5 y 10 relays bien seleccionados tienes mas que suficiente.
   • Bitcoin y nostr
     • Nostr fue creada por un bitcoiner y desarrollador de lightning bien conocido (fiatjaf) Por lo tanto bitcoin y ln están bastante presentes en el diseño de nostr. Hoy en día el protocolo ofrece un nivel sin precedentes de integración con LN en comparación con cualquier otra plataforma o medio de comunicación social.
       • De forma nativa puedes establecer una ln address como un metadato mas en tu perfil para recibir pagos o tips.
         • Esto significa también poder pagar o tipear fácilmente a cualquier usuario de la red.
       • Muchos clientes hoy en día tienen un botón para dar tips o “zaps”.
       • Zaps (NIP-57) esta es una nueva forma de tipear que tiene asociados unos metadatos para hacer la función de tips mas social e interactiva con nostr. Adios like, hola Zap!
     • Otros proyectos interesantes relacionados con bitcoin y nostr:
       • Joinstr, implementación de coinjoin sobre nostr
       • Mostro, intercambio p2p sobre nostr
   • Consejos de seguridad y privacidad al usar nostr:
     • Llaves privadas
       • Gestión de tu llave privada
         • Tu llave privada te da acceso a gestionar tu perfil, publicar, reaccionar. Guárdala debidamente en tu gestor de contraseñas (bitwarden, lastpass, no bloc de notas) o en un archivo de Startr
         • En clientes web es prácticamente obligatorio usar extensiones como alby o nos2x
     • Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
       • Si no usas una extension para el navegador como alby o nos2x puede haber filtrado de llaves privadas al copiar/pegar directamente en clientes web.
         • Solución:
           • nos2x and Alby
     • Protección de tu dirección IP
       • Los operadores de relays pueden conocer tu ip pública cuando te conectas a su relay. (Realmente como cualquier página web en internet)
         • Solución:
           • Usa una VPN o TOR
           • Usa relay conocidos y de confianza
           • No hagas click en enlaces extraños
           • Usar tu propio relay junto con un VPS y reverse proxy para que este se encargue de retransmitir a otros relays públicos (avanzado y en desarrollo)
     • Suplantación de identidad
       • Cualquiera puede crear un nuevo par de llaves y usar la foto/datos de una persona conocida. Por eso debes verificar los perfiles antes de interactuar con ellos. No te fíes de DMs aleatorios o de “envíame un bitcoin y te devuelvo dos”
         • Solución:
           • WoT (web of trust) es un concepto con bastante historia utilizado en PGP, GnuPG y otros sistemas criptográficos basados en pares de llaves para establecer la autenticidad del enlace entre una clave pública y su propietario.
             • Metadata asociada al perfil, mientras mas datos relacionados con el propietario mas verificable es.
           • Verificación NIP05, es una especificación nativa de nostr, relacionado con WoT. Si un perfil tiene una dirección nip05 con un dominio de internet bien conocido es una buena forma de verificar la autenticidad del perfil
     • Mensajes privados
       • Los mensajes privados en nostr son eventos iguales que las notas publicas pero encriptados, por lo que solo son legibles por el receptor y poseedor de la llave privada asociada a la llave publica. Aun que nadie puede leer el contenido, cualquiera podría ver que ha habido una interacción entre dos llaves publicas (ojo)
       • La manera mas segura y privada para intercambiar mensajes privados con otra persona seria usar un relay propio o uno “desechable”.
     • Borrar
       • En nostr si quieres borrar una nota tienes que hacer una petición a los relays a los que hallas enviado la nota para borrarla.
     • Bloquear y mutear
       • En nostr puedes bloquear y mutear usuarios. El bloqueo es una opción que ofrecen algunos clientes (Ej. snort.social). El muteo es una especificación nativa de nostr y es simplemente otro tipo de evento. Ojo, tu lista de muteados es publica.
10. En que momento se encuentra nostr?
    • Nostr se creó en 2020 y está en continuo desarrollo
    • Es el inicio, a penas se esta viendo todo el potencial que tiene este protocolo.
    • Cada vez están llegando mas personalidades reconocibles a nostr como Jack dorsey, Edward Snowden, Anita posch, etc.
    • El desarrollo está siendo frenético y excitante. Cada día salen nuevos clientes o actualizaciones. (Puedes encontrar una lista curada de proyectos en nostr en nostr.net)
    • Tu también puedes crear o desarrollar sobre nostr, es muy divertido y agradecido. Cada vez existen mas librerías para diferentes lenguajes de programación. Usa tu lenguaje favorito, no necesitas aprender uno nuevo.
    • El crecimiento de la red se esta acelerando.
    • Estadísticas
      • https://nostr.band/stats.html

11. Por que nostr es importante?

    • Es un protocolo abierto y de dominio público. Los protocolos abiertos son nuestra mejor baza para un futuro libre.
    • Ante la creciente restricción de la libertad de expresión y el control de los contenidos en plataformas centralizadas, Nostr supone un cambio trascendental como herramienta para la libertad de expresión.
    • No hay ningún algoritmo entre bastidores que decida lo que ves y lo que permanece oculto o que fomente tendencias, publicidad o propaganda; ves lo que quieres ver. No echo chambers
    • Además, Nostr es simplemente divertido. La gente experimenta, se ayuda mutuamente y trabaja unida por un futuro menos sombrío.
    • Nostr en su diseño es similar a bitcoin en algunos aspectos y puede conformar una capa de comunicación social muy interesante que integre Bitcoin de forma nativa.

12. Gracias!

    Si te ha gustado el contenido y piensas que te ha aportado valor considera hacer un tip a su autor:💜

    Gzuuus

    snort.social - Nostr interface

    Ln address: gzuuus@getalby.com

    Nostr:nostr:npub1gzuushllat7pet0ccv9yuhygvc8ldeyhrgxuwg744dn5khnpk3gs3ea5ds

Canal de nostr_es en telegram

https://t.me/nostr_es

@ 1967650e:73170f7f

Predicting the price of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is an ongoing challenge due to the volatility and unpredictability of the market. In this article, we explore a Python-based price prediction pipeline that combines machine learning techniques and deep learning algorithms to forecast Bitcoin's closing price. The code for this pipeline can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/amar-muratovic/bitcoin-price-prediction-pipeline.

Key Components

1. Data Acquisition and Preprocessing: The pipeline uses the CCXT library to fetch historical price data for Bitcoin (BTC/USD) from the CryptoCompare API. The data is then preprocessed, resampled, and saved into a CSV file for further analysis.

2. Feature Engineering: The pipeline uses three input features - High, Low, and Open prices - and the target variable, which is the Close price.

3. Model Ensemble: The pipeline trains an ensemble of four models: Linear Regression, Bayesian Ridge, Support Vector Regression, and Random Forest Regressor. The predictions from these models are averaged to produce the final forecast.

4. Deep Learning: The pipeline also incorporates a neural network with two hidden layers and early stopping to prevent overfitting. The neural network is trained on a subset of the data.

5. Hyperparameter Tuning: Grid search and cross-validation are used to fine-tune the models and optimize their hyperparameters.

6. Model Evaluation: The pipeline evaluates the models using mean squared error (MSE) and R^2 score, which measure the accuracy of the predictions.

Implementation Details

The pipeline starts by importing necessary libraries and modules, followed by loading the Bitcoin price data from a CSV file. The data is preprocessed, resampled, and saved into a new CSV file. The input features and target variables are defined, and the data is split into training and testing sets.

An ensemble of machine learning models is trained on the data, and predictions are made using these models. The ensemble approach aims to combine the strengths of different models to produce more accurate predictions. The predictions from each model are averaged to produce the final forecast.

A neural network with two hidden layers is created and trained on a subset of the data. Early stopping is used to prevent overfitting by monitoring the validation loss and stopping the training when it stops improving.

Hyperparameter tuning is performed using grid search and cross-validation to optimize the models' performance. This process helps identify the best combination of hyperparameters for each model.

Finally, the models are evaluated using mean squared error (MSE) and R^2 score. These metrics help measure the accuracy of the predictions and the performance of the models.

Conclusion

The Bitcoin price prediction pipeline presented in this article combines various machine learning techniques and deep learning algorithms to forecast the closing price of Bitcoin. This ensemble approach aims to improve prediction accuracy by leveraging the strengths of different models. While predicting the price of cryptocurrencies remains a challenging task, this pipeline provides a solid foundation for further experimentation and improvements. To explore the code further, visit the GitHub repository at https://github.com/amar-muratovic/bitcoin-price-prediction-pipeline.

@ a60e79e0:1e0e6813

Super happy to announce the long overdue relaunch of Bitcoiner.Guide

Why the relaunch?

Since leaving my fiat job late 2021 to work full time in Bitcoin @Foundation, the site has not received as much of of my attention as I'd like. This was for a few reasons:

1. I became a Father
2. Working at a Bitcoin startup is BUSY!
3. The way I'd hacked the site together originally was pretty messy and made updates more difficult that they needed to be
4. The previous point also made it difficult for others to contribute

In my role Foundation I get to do Bitcoin education, in one form or another, every single day. It's literally my dream job! But I also have knowledge in other areas and topics that are not directly related to everything we do at Foundation, that I want to share with others.

Aside from making things easier for me to manage, the new layout and features are also designed to keep me accountable for producing more regular educational content, hopefully with input from all of you too!

So, what's new?

• Updated theme to make navigation easier (which also includes a much needed search feature!)
• Addition of new Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced user journeys. These pages contain a curated list of content for those that don't know where to start.
• Addition of a new Vote page where you can help decide on the next project or topic to be covered. This is built using a self-hosted BTCPay crowdfund instance.
• Addition of contribution guidelines to make it easier for you to get involved, no matter how technical you are!
• Addition of Nostr based encrypted DM feature for those burning questions (no Nostr account required) H/T to the awesome nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft for building the tool leveraged for this!
• Everything is now managed under a single GitHub repo, with the exception of the Seed Tool.

Hope you all like, please do get involved by creating issues or PRs for things you'd like adding or updating. Alternatively, just vote on the next topic you want to see covered!

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Big thanks to my pals nostr:npub1u5tha063x5cv95yjgzpmvjm74htlhp00eslym764cuafynysrjnshmdu5e and nostr:npub18h0w55nsp839ezxnggf00jd2xc6yl0ht62mf5p8wwllu8s80wdcs83ws8m for their input.

@ 0a821ca3:e0efcce3

Long time ago, finance was trustless - without counterparty risk. People would hold goods and barter or use valuable items such as metal coins as money.

Then came all sorts of banks and other trusted financial intermediaries - an important evolution that enabled international trade - based on several parties trusting banks to provide value in return for IOUs.

Trustless finance

Since 2010, a technology innovation, the digital p2p value transfer protocol - public infrastructure - enables digital p2p finance without counterparty risk. It is trustless - not requiring any trusted counterparties - instead many counterparties that do not have to be trusted guarantee the transaction.

This fundamentally changes finance. Regulation had been put in place to ensure trusted counterparties could indeed be trusted. Trustless finance makes such regulation redundant.

Role for banks

Banks may perceive trustless finance as a competition - the opposite is true. While trustless finance will drive several evolutions in the finance space, banks are uniquely positioned to support less tech savvy customers in the use of trustless finance - for example through the setup of custodial wallets, …

Therefore banks have an interest in embracing trustless finance asap - as already covered in a previous consideration, game theory is at play here - if certain banks are slow in embracing trustless finance (through their own will or due to inappropriate regulation), they will be eclipsed by other banks who are faster at adopting trustless finance.

Additionally, banks will have opportunity to play an important role in trustless finance liquidity management - this is somewhat technical - lightning network inbound liquidity is a scarce asset - banks can charge their clients fees for such liquidity. Additionally, over time, p2p peg solutions will emerge. Banks (or banks on behalf of their clients) can achieve a return on the long side of the p2p peg swaps.

@ c753997e:9fe20adc

source article

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Apr 24, 2023, 9:30 AM CDT

India's oil importers sometimes experience delays in paying for the Russian crude when it's above the $60 a barrel price cap set by the G7, but most of the current Indian imports from Russia are priced below that cap, a senior Indian official said on Monday.

"Nobody stops us from buying Russian oil at above the price cap level provided. We are not using western service," India's oil secretary Pankaj Jain said at an event as carried by Reuters.

The EU and G7 banned on December 5 maritime transportation services, including insurance and funding, from shipping Russia's crude oil to third countries if the oil is bought above the price cap of $60 per barrel.

India and the other key Russian oil buyer, China, haven't joined the so-called Price Cap Coalition of mostly Western nations that imposed the price cap on Russia's crude oil if the cargoes are using Western insurance, shipping, and financing.

In case of purchases above the $60 price cap, Indian importers are arranging themselves the payment settlements, the Indian oil secretary said.

India will buy the oil it consumes from "wherever we have to" if the economics are beneficial for the country, Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told CNBC earlier this year. "Today we feel confident that we'll be able to use our market to source from wherever we have to, from wherever we get beneficial terms," the minister said.

So far this month, India and China have snapped up Russian cargoes at prices above the price cap, according to Reuters estimates on trading source data. India is estimated to account for over 70% of the Urals shipments in April, and China is receiving 20% of those shipments so far this month, according to Reuters estimates.

Russia has been India's top crude oil supplier for months now, and beat Iraq as the top oil supplier to the world's third-largest importer for the 2022/2023 fiscal year ended March 2023.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

@ a6e3fee8:a1e557ee

Traduzione dell'articolo Why I Left My High Paying Engineering Job In Corporate America For Bitcoin di Eric Podwojski su Bitcoin Magazine del 15 settembre 2022

Il percorso tradizionale che la società americana ha tracciato per voi è stato progettato per sopprimervi. Bitcoin vi libera

Introduzione

Dicembre 2019 - Ero seduto nell'ufficio del mio manager, pronto a discutere di una possibile promozione, di un bonus di fine anno e di un aumento di stipendio. All'epoca, avevo quasi due anni di esperienza alle spalle (dopo l'università) e stavo svolgendo il mio primo lavoro retribuito. Lavoravo come ingegnere civile e progettavo gasdotti fuori Washington D.C.

Il mio manager di allora era un ingegnere professionista molto rispettato, con più di 15 anni di esperienza. All'inizio della riunione mi passò un post-it giallo strappata con scritto "8,2% + 500 dollari + Sr. Design Engineer". Era la mia ricompensa per quasi due anni di duro lavoro e dedizione presso questo studio di ingegneria. Volevo urlargli in faccia, ma decisi di spiegare con calma che un tipico aumento di stipendio per una promozione è del 10-20%, che l'inflazione è di almeno il 2% all'anno e che il bonus è apprezzato ma non significativo. La sua risposta è stata "meh" e ho lasciato quell'incontro rendendomi conto che il sistema in cui avevo giocato per tutta la vita era stato progettato per tenermi a terra. Ero pronto a cambiare le cose.

Il mio background

Prima di parlare di Bitcoin e del percorso che mi ha portato a cambiare la situazione in cui mi sono trovato seguendo il sistema tradizionale americano, vi illustrerò il modo in cui sono stato cresciuto nel sistema.

Sono cresciuto in un quartiere di periferia, prevalentemente bianco, di classe medio-alta. Ho due genitori affettuosi che mi hanno sempre accompagnato agli eventi sportivi e mi hanno dato tutto quello che ho chiesto. Ho frequentato uno dei migliori sistemi scolastici pubblici dello Stato e mi sono diplomato tra i top 10% della mia classe. Il sistema in cui sono cresciuto mi ha trattato molto bene e non ho mai pensato agli aspetti negativi. Sono stato ammesso alla Penn State University dove ho scelto di studiare ingegneria a partire dal 2014.

Dal 2014 al 2018 ho sgpbbato per ottenere una laurea in ingegneria energetica. Ho fatto parte di una confraternita, facendo festa senza sosta. Mi sono anche iscritto ad alcuni club, tra cui il Blockchain Club (la motivazione che mi ha spinto a comprare bitcoin per la prima volta). Anche in questo caso, stavo seguendo il percorso che il sistema mi aveva indicato perché mi trattava così bene.

Nel 2018, appena terminata la scuola, ho trovato lavoro presso un'azienda di ingegneria come progettista. La retribuzione non era paragonabile a nessuna di quelle che avevo percepito prima. Ero entusiasta! Con il passare degli anni ho iniziato a pensare al percorso che mi avrebbe riservato questo lavoro. L'azienda rendeva molto chiara la crescita professionale. Ogni due anni circa si otteneva una promozione con un aumento di stipendio, con la prospettiva di salire la scala aziendale fino a ricoprire il ruolo di vicepresidente dopo più di vent'anni. In teoria sembra un'ottima cosa, ma sapevo anche, grazie a un precedente mentore, che una volta che un ingegnere inizia a guadagnare uno stipendio troppo alto, l'azienda di solito lo licenzia e lo sostituisce con uno più giovane e meno oneroso. Mentre ero seduto alla mia prima riunione per la promozione, mi è venuto in mente questo pensiero. Sapevo che il sistema a cui stavo partecipando non aveva in mente il mio interesse.

Liberazione

Dal 2020 ho iniziato ad imparare di più sulla finanza personale, da autodidatta. Ho imparato che l'inflazione riportata dal CPI non è obbligatoriamente esatta e che la vera inflazione era probabilmente più alta, soprattutto quando il governo americano ha iniziato a inondare il sistema monetario con trilioni di dollari per far fronte alla pandemia COVID-19. Ho capito che, per quanto bene potessi fare nel mio lavoro di ingegnere, non sarei mai riuscito a superare l'inflazione. Avrei vissuto una vita collezionando nuovi titoli senza essere effettivamente pagato per vivere una vita sostanzialmente migliore.

All'inizio del 2021 il prezzo di Bitcoin inizia a salire dopo un ciclo negativo. Avevo investito in Bitcoin dal 2017, quindi a questo punto avevo un gruzzolo di dimensioni accettabili. Mentre il mio patrimonio netto stava aumentando in termini di dollari, ho fatto un viaggio in snowboard a Jackson Hole, nel Wyoming. Quella settimana nella natura mi ha aiutato a chiarire i miei pensieri sulla mia carriera professionale. Quando sono tornato da quel viaggio, ho iniziato immediatamente dato le due settimane di preavviso per il mio lavoro da ingegnere.

In uno stato di azione e concentrazione immediata, mi sono immerso completamente in Bitcoin con l'intenzione di intraprendere una strada professionale in questo nuovo ed entusiasmante settore. A questo punto conoscevo già le basi di Bitcoin e dell'economia, ma mi sono immerso ulteriormente nella tana del bianconiglio. Ho istruito altri su Bitcoin per migliorare la mia comprensione e ho creato una rete di contatti con tutti i possibili operatori del settore. Alla fine ho fatto domanda ad alcune aziende di Bitcoin e ho ottenuto un ruolo nel team commerciale di Bitcoin Magazine.

Come liberarsi

Liberarmi dal sistema a cui ho partecipato per tutta la vita è stata la decisione migliore che abbia mai preso. Ecco come l'ho fatto e una guida su come potete farlo anche voi.

Passo 1. Avevo molti risparmi

La prima cosa da fare è sapere esattamente a quanto ammontano le vostre spese mensili. Successivamente mettete da parte abbastanza contanti o bitcoin per vivere almeno per 6 mesi se non doveste avere alcun reddito. Personalmente avevo più di 12 mesi di risparmi che mi hanno dato sicurezza.

Fase 2. Ho fatto il salto e ho lasciato il mio lavoro

Una volta che avete risparmi a sufficienza, il passo successivo è decidere strategicamente quando lasciare il vostro lavoro fiat. Potete lavorare a progetti Bitcoin mentre svolgete il vostro lavoro fiat. Si può anche fare domanda di lavoro alle aziende Bitcoin mentre si lavora con un lavoro fiat. Personalmente, ho trovato più facile immergermi completamente in Bitcoin lasciando prima il mio lavoro fiat.

Fase 3. Ho creato contenuti educativi su Bitcoin

Un pilastro del protocollo Bitcoin è la proof-of-work. Se volete lavorare per un'azienda Bitcoin insieme ad altri fantastici Bitcoiners, dovete dimostrare di essere degni di essere assunti. Se non sapete scrivere codice, la prova di lavoro può consistere nell'avviare un podcast, una newsletter, uno show su Youtube, ecc. Fate qualcosa per Bitcoin.

Passo 4. Ho fatto rete

Mentre state facendo la prova del vostro lavoro per la rete Bitcoin, fate qualcosa per la vostra rete personale. Partecipate a Bitcoin Twitter, alle chat di gruppo su Telegram, agli incontri di persona e alle conferenze come la Bitcoin Conference. Inviate ad altri Bitcoiners dei messaggi di auguri. Prestate il vostro tempo libero per aiutare le persone. Ho scoperto che i Bitcoiners sono molto disposti a restituire se si è genuini.

Passo 5. Ho fatto domanda a Bitcoin Magazine

Al giorno d'oggi ci sono agenzie di lavoro dedicate all'assunzione di talenti Bitcoin. Tenete d'occhio gli annunci di lavoro e candidatevi a qualsiasi posizione che susciti il vostro interesse. Non è necessario che sia la posizione perfetta, perché di solito è possibile spostarsi all'interno di un'azienda o usarla come trampolino di lancio per un futuro lavoro in Bitcoin. Consiglio di utilizzare BitcoinerJobs.com per trovare posizioni aperte presso grandi aziende Bitcoin.

Passo 6. Ho seguito incessantemente i responsabili delle selezioni

Una volta che vi siete candidati a una posizione, cercate i responsabili delle selezioni dell'azienda sui social media e contattateli. Iniziare una conversazione con loro mette immediatamente il vostro curriculum in cima alla lista. Si noti che ho instaurato un rapporto precedente con CK (general manager di Bitcoin Magazine), in modo che sapesse che valeva la pena raccomandarmi.

Conclusioni

Spero che questo articolo vi abbia aiutato ad aprire gli occhi sul sistema in cui vivete e vi abbia fornito la prova che esiste un modo per liberarsi. Ho in programma di continuare a sviluppare Bitcoin attraverso la rivista Bitcoin Magazine e i miei contenuti educativi personali su Bitcoin per altri. Ora avete la possibilità di liberarvi dal sistema e di lavorare in un settore emergente divertente e pienamente soddisfacente. La vostra vita può essere drasticamente diversa se iniziate ad agire subito!

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milanotrustless.com

v4v --> milanotrustless@getalby.com

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Prossimo Bitcoin Beach Milano:

Giovedì 27 aprile alle ore 20.00

c/o City Life Cafè - via Masaccio 18

@ 1739d937:3e3136ef

The adoption of new technology follows an S-shaped path over time. Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. New technology almost always triggers new business formation. For entrepreneurs and builders, it's critically important to understand how your business fits into this larger adoption curve because different stages strongly favor different business models.

Technology Adoption 101

It's a well-documented fact that new technology tends to be adopted in a predictable pattern. First, innovators find and begin to use the new technology. These folks are almost always technical and deeply understand the underlying tech. The early adopters come next, followed by early and late majority, and finally, the laggards begrudgingly capitulate.

We are incredibly early. If you're reading this, you are undoubly an innovator. It's still hard to use the product (hence the need for sites like nostr.how) and hard to see what it's going to become in the future.

We've seen this play out with many different technologies over the last 200 years. As you can see, the adoption cycle is speeding up over time because of our increasingly faster and broader communication networks.

Another thing we've seen play out in each new technology adoption is the creation of hundreds or thousands of new businesses to serve various parts of the market around the new technology. Most of these businesses fail over time, but some succeed and become long-term institutions.

The adoption curve and business models are reflexive

Imagine the birth of a new technology. It's been created by a handful of people who are truly cutting-edge in how they think and how they apply that thinking (GM @fiatjaf 🤙). As they share what they've created, others will glimpse the future and adopt this new technology too. Before too long, someone will start a business based on the technology.

The idea that new technology drives business formation is easy to grasp. It's also easy to see that this relationship is reflexive in nature. As businesses create products & services and chase customers, they are inherently driving new awareness and adoption.

As adoption progresses, the nature of the technology itself and the market tend to change in very predictable ways. The types of products & services that are valued and the types of customers that value those products & services are therefore a function of the adoption cycle.

Ultimately, businesses exist to provide value to their customers. The challenge for entrepreneurs is create a product or service that delivers value to enough customers such that the business can become profitable and self-sustaining. However, finding that product-market fit is easier said than done.

Understanding the reflexive nature of technology adoption and business formation, I believe it's possible to stack the odds in your favor as an entrepreneur. Let's explore each stage.

Innovators & Early Adopters

In the earliest days of a new technology, the innovators and early adopters are building for folks like themselves. Building, in and of itself, it's very difficult and requires a deep knowledge of the underlying tech to even make progress.

In this stage, it's common to see founders and businesses making quick early progress. However, it's rare that these extremely early companies go on to build lasting businesses and capture large shares of the market.

Don't believe me? Here's a simple one. The IRC protocol led to creation of Hipchat, Hipchat was eventually bought by Slack. All these services are basically the same, built using almost identical technology, but the adoption of messaging tools allowed for very different business models and different levels of success. By the time Slack came along, the market was thousands of times larger.

Sidebar: If you build it, they will come...and other bullshit.

An all too common error that founders make, especially in the VC-funded tech world, is to build as if they are further along in the adoption cycle than they really are. The thinking is that if you build something innovative, useful, and truly novel; people will find it and engage with it. This is, at best, wishful thinking. When a technology is brand new, it's extremely difficult to describe what it is and even harder to articulate why it matters. Often, even the earliest users can't agree on what it's for.

I believe this is actually a feature, not a bug, as it gives a nacsent technology to find its feet and become resilient enough for larger-scale adoption. But it is a source of consternation for many early founders looking for product-market fit with customers who aren't ready for what they're selling.

Phase 1: Developer tools

In the earliest days of a nascent technology, the only people using it are the creators & builders who can see and understand its long-term potential. The tech is often very hard to use and confusing. No one has figured out how to properly explain it to anyone who doesn't already deeply understand the technology at a foundational level.

During this phase (which pre-dates even the concept of "early adopters"), the most important things being built are developer tools that enable more (and more interesting) use cases to be built in less time. When I say developer tools, I mean that in the broad sense. This can be software development kits, but it can also be infrastructure or physical tools that must be built to more easily utilize physical technology as well.

Who are the customers of these tools? And will they pay? This is the most common pushback people building in the picks and shovels spaces get, and they are good questions.

When your customers are the early developers and entrepreneurs you have to have low time preference and play the long game. In the early days, your customers are groups of developers and tiny newly formed businesses. These groups are notoriously hard to market to and hard to monetize. But as adoption marches forward, these developers and businesses will be seen as visionary, and many will go on to succeed. This gives the makers of early developer tools a front-row seat to better understand what's working and what is needed to push adoption and usage to the next level.

Phase 2: Early adopter consumers

As development begins to flourish on a new technology platform so too will the earliest of the early adopters arrive. Within the cambrian explosion of new products that come with all this development activity, there will be a handful that are truly novel and exciting. These products will capture the zeitgeist of the time and propel the technology further to the forefront of our collective social consciousness. In other words, consumers will start talking about it, and many more users will show up and begin using the technology. These are the true early adopters of the technology. They don't need to know anything about the underlying tech to understand what value they get from using these new products.

However, even for the businesses that have built one of these exciting early products, the path forward is not preordained. While they have an early head start and exciting traction, history is full of first movers who never properly capitalized on what they'd created. (e.g. MySpace, Friendster, Yahoo, etc.)

Late adopters and businesses

Phase 3: Late adopter consumers

As more of the market adopts the new technology, the slower-to-adopt consumers will start to arrive. These consumers are less technologically savvy and often are introduced to the technology by someone they know who was part of an earlier wave rather than finding and adopting it themselves.

At this point, the market sizes start to become absolutely enormous, and, often, whichever businesses come out ahead at this stage, whether because of network effects, brand reputation, or otherwise, will take a dominant share of the market – at least for a while.

Phase 4: Businesses

In almost all technological advances, the first to understand and use the advance are the innovators (the actual builders of the technology); next come consumer adopters who are running towards novel new uses of technology that solve real problems for them. The last users of a new technology will be businesses. They are almost always last for a few reasons:

1. They are slow. Consumers can make a decision (rational or not) and act on that decision in the same second. Businesses are groups of individuals and take longer to come to consensus, make decisions, and then take action.
2. They are more conservative. Businesses must be more conservative in adopting new technology because they have more to lose in revenue, brand reputation, etc. This naturally makes them more adverse to change, even if that change promises improvements. This, in a nutshell, is the concept of the innovators dilemma.

This is obviously a continuum. Solo-preneurs and SMBs will be quicker to adopt, Enterprises will be slower moving, and large governments will be comically slow, often adopting technology only once it's nearly obsolete.

Because of this relationship between size and speed of adoption, it makes sense then that any new venture focused on bringing a new technological advancement to businesses needs to be very careful about who they're targetting and when.

Think of it this way. The more complexity inherent in the organization you're trying to sell to, the further along in the adoption cycle you need to be to be successful.

How does this relate to Nostr

We're still insanely early in developing the Nostr protocol and network. Getting started with Nostr is still somewhat technical. So many of the products we're all using day to day barely work. And yet, here we all are. We can see how this new technology can bring value to our lives while also (hopefully) making the world a better place. We are the definition of innovators.

Many new projects have been started, and several businesses are already growing out of those projects. Venture funding is starting to arrive, which will only accelerate business creation.

Hopefully, at this point, you've got more clarity on how technology adoption drives business creation and how that business creation drives further technology adoption. Ideally, if you're an entrepreneur or thinking of becoming one, this post has also helped you better understand where we are in the cycle, where we're going, and what's likely to work.

In any case, I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, thoughts, and rebuttals.

• Primal (Web): @JeffG
• Nostr link: nostr:npub1zuuajd7u3sx8xu92yav9jwxpr839cs0kc3q6t56vd5u9q033xmhsk6c2uc
• npub: npub1zuuajd7u3sx8xu92yav9jwxpr839cs0kc3q6t56vd5u9q033xmhsk6c2uc

@ 0a821ca3:e0efcce3

Policy considerations

[I am going to write this consideration step by step - partly because blogstack doesn't allow to save drafts - and partly because what follows here will be a huge effort. ]

The SEC chair Gary Gensler has argued since a while that bitcoin is a commodity and other digital tokens risk being unregistered securities. This consideration benchmarks various digital tokens - based on a set of properties which can provide insight into their nature as protocol or unregistered security.

First, following properties may indicate the difference between a decentralised protocol and a company issuing unregistered securities:

To which parties were tokens allocated during the launch phase?

Fair distribution of tokens seems a prerequisite for a protocol. Is tempore non suspecto required to achieve a fair token distribution? Pre-mining is a clear indication of unfair token distribution. The existence of a foundation or company holding a significant share of the tokens equally indicates a centralised token distribution.

Does the initiative have a CEO or team? Who pays that team?

Having a CEO or team indicates centralisation and potentially causes the initiative to be permissioned, not permissionless - not permissionless is not trustless - if someone can take away permission, you have to trust that party.

Does token ownership give protocol governance rights?

If token ownership gives protocol governance rights, there is a risk that the protocol ends up benefiting large token holders more - rather than benefiting all participants in a similar way.

Does the token obtain yield from consensus mechanism?

If the token obtains yield from the consensus mechanism - in the very long term - the token holdings of large holders will increase - results in a plutocratic world.

Do token holders get new issuance awards?

Indicates that the token has conventional investment security properties (yield / dividend).

How many nodes does the network have?

More nodes ensure higher probability of decentralisation, which in turn increase p2p nature - few nodes drive risk of trusted or permissioned structure (and then the benefit of a cryptologic solution over a conventional database is limited)

What is the governance process for protocol evolutions?

The more decentralised the governance, the more the protocol users are protected from malicious or centralising forces.

bitcoin

To which parties were tokens allocated during the launch phase?

The global digital p2p value transfer protocol was developed in tempore non suspecto. In 2011, three years after the genesis block, the total token market cap was less than USD 35m - very immaterial. While River Financial research indicates that the protocol inventor, with pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto still holds about 1.1m btc in 22000 addresses - or about 5% of total supply - these tokens have never moved so far. Beyond that, no hodlers with a holding of more than 100 000 btc - or 0.5% of supply - have been identified so far.

This implies a distribution that is as ‘fair’ as it gets - comparing to other cryptologic tokens. If anything, the bitcoin protocol token allocation is not perfect. The bitcoin token allocation is the least convincing of all protocol properties - and could eventually be considered being an argument that even bitcoin is not a protocol.

This being said, no foundation or company backs bitcoin - bitcoin has no marketing budget.

Does the initiative have a CEO or team? Who pays that team?

Bitcoin doesn't have a CEO or a dedicated team. The bitcoin core development team consists of about 50 developers - more info can be found in this NYDIG report - Coinmarketcap provides insight in who funds the team.

Does token ownership give protocol governance rights?

No, while the BIP process has some level of governance among the core team, the node operators decide which software version they adopt and use - and ultimately decide on which evolutions of the protocol they want to use. In that context, some have for example created a proof of stake version of Bitcoin - it has not seen broad adoption.

Governance by node operators is the ultimate global democracy. Many people can be node operator - it does not require holding the respective token - it does not require a powerful computer (200 EUR should get you all the hardware required to run a bitcoin node) - it even does not require exceptional computing skills. Governance is not driven by miners or token holders.

Does the bitcoin token obtain yield from consensus mechanism?

No, the consensus mechanism issues new btc tokens and distributes transactions fees. These new tokens and transaction fees are 'won' by miners - bitcoin token ownership does not help getting additional btc tokens.

Do token holders get new issuance awards?

No, new issuance is distributed among proof of work miners, who have to invest in computers and electricity to power these computers (soon miners will be paid to consume such electricity, as ample excess electricity will be produced).

How many nodes does the network have?

The website Bitnode reports about 17500 reachable nodes and estimates some 47k total nodes - including nodes behind firewalls or NAT.

What is the governance process for protocol evolutions?

Already described above, eventually every user of the protocol decides which version or fork that users would like to use.

Cardano

To which parties were tokens allocated during the launch phase?

Does the initiative have a CEO or team? Who pays that team?

Does token ownership give protocol governance rights?

Does the token obtain yield from consensus mechanism?

Who funds the consensus mechanism?

Do token holders get new issuance awards?

How many nodes does the network have?

What is the governance process for protocol evolutions?

| Head | Head | Head | Head | Head | Head | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data | Data |

| | btc | eth | bnb | xrp | ada | doge | matic | dot | dot | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Pre-mine | ? | Data | Data | Data | Data | | CEO | ✓ | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Governance | ✓ | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Token yield | ✓ | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Consensus funding | ✓ | Data | Data | Data | Data | | New issuance | ✓ | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Network (# nodes) | 17k+ | Data | Data | Data | Data | | Protocol evolutions | ✓ | Data | Data | Data | Data |

@ 89e14be4:a4fdd02c

Onlyzaps, let's get started.

It's been a turbulent few days, where I've been able to have wonderful conversations but I've also seen how my little resonance box in nostr has been totally polarized in a dizzying way.

I will try to express my conclusions after 3 days of turbulence in this article.

Dopamine, likes and rewards.

The thesis about the brain reward system and the implication that likes have in modern society is more than proven and has had disastrous consequences especially in children and adolescents. I don't think this debate needs to be reopened, it is true, it is a problem and social networks have exploited it to limits that border on illegality. Meta, Twitter, TikTok, there is none that has not taken advantage of this to maximize profits, these companies have destroyed one (or several generations) and we have not yet seen the consequences of this.

Nostr came as a breath of fresh and clean air, it proposed a free communication protocol, resistant to censorship and very resilient to possible attacks by the establishment. Months later, a multitude of applications and services gravitate around the protocol, offering the user a multitude of alternatives on how to interact with each other.

I also remember, months ago, how it was argued that one of the main virtues of nostr is the absolute freedom of the user to decide what he wants to see, about whom, and in what order, without the intervention of algorithms or other systems to distort our experience in the protocol.

Damus, the greatest.

My first impulse last Friday 21/04 when I received the latest Damus update was obviously to test it and give feedback, as far as I was able, to its developers. I immediately realized that something was not quite in line with my principles, as soon as this option was activated you automatically affected the experience of other users by hiding the (controversial) like button without their consent and in a unilateral way.

After 5 minutes I deactivated this option, I was totally baffled as to how this had crept into the roadmap of the most used application by all. The breach was born and I couldn't believe this was happening.

My feed started to fill up with people proud of having activated this new feature along with many others (less noisy) who were baffled, discouraged or downright sad to see how many had fallen into this trap we had set for ourselves.

12 hours later a patch arrived that mitigated the problem, but the damage was already done. The breach was growing.

Horrified, I was a spectator of how what had always been my little corner of love, cordiality and companionship had become, let me sum it up quickly, Twitter.

The first algorithm had been born, distorting the way others could interact without their consent.

Influencers, content creators or in our case, mostly devs.

I don't know exactly what it must feel like for someone who receives hundreds of interactions every day on their social app, probably it must not be something easy to manage. From this point of view, I perfectly understand how many influential people have activated this option to try to minimize the noise they receive and to somehow filter their day to day life on nostr.

I fully understand that many people are in favor of eliminating one of the biggest attack vectors that corporations use to classify and influence us at their mercy.

I also think that many of them have not pondered the consequences of activating a feature that affected (I'm not talking about the last build) so deeply in the way their followers, fans and people who respect them in one way or another interacted with them.

I launch a question here, was it necessary a badge on the profiles that activate this? Isn't it a way to divide this kind of badges? I don't think it was a good decision either. Many users felt as if this was a kind of barrier (or small Berlin wall, as I have read in some post) between the wealthy elite who don't want your likes, but your zaps and the rest of the users.

The name, was not the most accurate.

Onlyzaps, is quite a statement of intent. It's a catchy name and certainly has a humorous component to it, but it clearly leads one to think that what they are looking for is zap over other interactions.

I'm sure there's no double standard here, it wasn't a strategy to maximize zaps on accounts with more followers (as many say), I think it was simply a poorly chosen name.

On the other hand, I throw a question, if the goal was to remove likes, why not put an option in the client that simply says "disable likes"?

That's it, easy, non-intrusive, I still don't understand why the reasonable option was not chosen.

Conclusions

I feel some responsibility for what happens in nostr, I have always been like that, protective and somewhat righteous, especially when my inner self definitely slaps me with the red flag insistently. I am aware that I am just one more, many will think, this guy does not play a role, he should not feel responsible for anything. It's true, but I can't avoid it.

I think that when an application acquires relevance it also acquires a responsibility towards its users, didn't anyone think that such a change would bring consequences?

Other apps have a similar feature and much less intrusive, also wider, not only likes, you can hide what you want, for you of course, not for others, here is the key. I'm sure no one talked about this feature before, it was done well and that's why it didn't generate controversy.

At this point I'm still wondering if this new "feature" was something consensual or just an occurrence. Yes, I know it's only been released in trial version, but I can bet 5 satoshis that this will be coming to everyone in a short time without anyone being able to do anything about it.

After 3 days nostr is now a more polarized place, less united and consequently more fragile. Some of the people who had connected with me the most have left, others are still wounded trying to throw good vibes to others to redirect the situation, honestly, I thought nostr would be different, but so far the reality has put me back in my place, I'm still perplexed.

@ 1bc70a01:24f6a411

Unless you have some private projects that require secrecy, you should just organize conversations on nostr.

Smart bootstrapped founders know that one of the best ways to garner attention is by building in public.

By posting on Nostr, you are in essence building in public. This has many benefits:

1. Free marketing for your project
2. Recruit other designers. If they see that there are others, they are more likely to join your cause.
3. Attract talent (people who are interested in the project will likely want to work on it). Find development help.
4. Attract funding (even sats from plebs, bounties on your behalf, etc…)
5. Help nostr grow. By getting outside the siloed communication channels, you help add activity to Nostr. When people see that it’s busy, they are more likely to participate. Nobody wants to use a dead social network (even though nostr is so much more than a social network).

How to organize on Nostr without channels or groups

A common objective is “but there is not a good client for group chat”.

Nostr IS the group chat. It's just a much larger group. All you need is a way of organizing conversations.

Enter hashtags.

Hashtags allow people to track conversations so you can see if someone is discussing #nostrdesign for example.

“But, I forget to use hashtags!”

Ok, make a SUPER simple client that automatically inserts the hashtag into the message. Hardcode if if you need to for the time being.

Clients like Snort already let you follow hashtags so it’s a matter of bookmarking it and just checking it whenever you’re online.

Don’t want a bloated client? No problem. Clone Snort, remove everything but the posting and reading functionality. Use the client only for posting and for reading that specific hashtag. Congrats, you just created your own public channel! The best part? Everyone can see it without signing up for any siloed platforms.

Act

Do it now. Close the group and let everyone know you’re using nostr from now on. No excuses, no waiting. Just do it. It may be hard and painful at first, but you'll get used to it. Who knows, it may be enough motivation to build great clients that do one thing very well. Let’s go!

@ 639f00f4:9cabb7e5

I'm just now trying out blogstack and Nostr at the same time.

"Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"

@ a008def1:57a3564d

NIP-05 addresses are everywhere. Many clients show them under every message with a blue or purple check. Some clients don't show the address but just show the check. I'll make the case that NIP-05 addresses have their place but we are using them wrong. They are good for identity sharing but wore than useless for verification.

NIP-05 is a Verification Anti-Feature

At face value, a valid NIP-05 address verifies that: 1. the account was created by the identity they are claiming to represent. 2. the account hasn't been compromised and is still operated by this identity.

This is underpinned by the widespread usage of a blue or purple check mark connected to the address. An equivalence is created with the once hallowed blue check, back in the glory days of the other bird app.

NIP-05 fails so badly at both of these types of verification that it gives a false impression of identity verification. This makes it an anti-feature. It's worse than useless for verification.

The vast majority of accounts use one of over a dozen NIP-05 verification-as-a-service domains. This includes enough public figures for it not to raise an eyebrow, even for a keen observer, to see a public figure they don't follow to use a service like this.

Even if these services have robust procedures to prevent a scammer assuming someone else's identity, another one could be setup.

Do you think Lyn Alden's NIP-05 address is:

• lyn@NostrVerified.com or;
• lyn@Nostr-Verify.com

One of these is her actual NIP-05 and the other is an unregistered domain name that a scammer (or NVK) could register and use today.

If the account has been compromised the attacker would change the NIP-05 to use one of the above services as soon as the account owner updated the npub reference hosted on the domain.

All the while users are presented with a comforting blue or purple check which they interpret as confirming the account is run by the identity they are claiming to represent.

Even is we halted these services, scammers could still register a domain name that could conceivably belong to the account and use that instead eg. LynAldenFinance.com and we'd face the same problem.

NIP-05 is for Meat-Space Identity Sharing

NIP-05 is a useful tool but we have got its value and the UX all wrong.

You should use it in a phone call, podcast or face to face conversation:

"You can find me on nostr by searching for DanConwayDev@Nostr-Check.com in your favorite nostr client."

Or in response to a question like "How do I follow fiatjaf?" you could say:

"Search for fiatjaf.com in your nostr client."

In an online conversation it is still best to say:

"Search for npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 in your client".

I'm not sure we are at the stage where sharing a link to "nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6" is going to consistently work. Also, I'm not convinced linking to the npub on a specific web client is the right UX either.

NIP-05 User Interface Recommendations

Here's some actions clients could take to address this:

1. Clients should phase out displaying NIP-05 addresses on any feeds.
2. Clients should stop associating NIP-05 with a check of any colour. Its time to say goodbye to check altogether. The blue check has been dragged through the mud and the expectation on nostr that it relates to NIP-05 would be hard to shift?
3. Clients should only display it on a detailed profile view and only if the associated npub appears correctly in the nostr.json.
4. Clients should stop displaying it to other users as invalid if they cannot connect to, or find a nostr.json on, the domain. In this case the address should not be displayed at all. In my experience, it is almost always invalid for this reason.
5. Clients should treat an account with a NIP-05 which points to a different npub as suspicious and take action to either not display posts, or display posts with a warning. Currently there is a 'boy who cried wolf' problem with invalid NIP-05 addresses.

Conclusions

Yes, its time to say goodbye to the blue/purple check as it fails to provide the verification it seems to promise.

This is the first of short series of posts on Nostr Identity Display, Verification and Recovery. These thoughts have have emerged whilst designing Nostr Authorisation Groups, as part of wider work on GitHub Alternative on Nostr. See Key Challenges for a GitHub Alternative on Nostr naddr1qqyxxdmyvsmrqdn9qywhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68yttsw43zuam9d3kx7unyv4ezumn9wspzpgqgmmc409hm4xsdd74sf68a2uyf9pwel4g9mfdg8l5244t6x4jdqvzqqqr4guzzjrgj

@ d0debf9f:ea4b466c

Why wireguard?

If you are already sold on why you need this, skip to the next section.

A motivational story

The year is 2025. You're at the small coffeshop you found on btcmap and want to pay for your morning double expresso.

A LN invoice flashes before your sleepy eyes, you pull out your phone and try to open your Zeus wallet connected to your sovereign self-custodial LN node running in your basement.

You wait for Zeus to load. And you wait. And you wait. And you wait some more. The barista gets impatient, there is a line of NPCs behind you rushing to get to their fiat mines.

Finally you curse, pay with your slave VISA CBDC card and uninstall Zeus as you walk out.

The Issue

You used Tor to connect to your node. Tor was being DDOSed by some state-level actors.

You're using Tor because either it was the easiest thing to setup, or it was just the default in your node distribution.

Have you stopped to wonder if it really makes sense to use an anonymity network designed to be censorship resistant just to connect to your own home server?

You obviously don't want to expose your node to the public internet (which would expose what you are using as well as make you vulnerable to attacks).

The Solution

The best solution (as far as I'm aware of) is to connect to your home node using an encrypted VPN point-to-point tunnel using something called WireGuard.

The only information you leak to potential traffic sniffers is encrypted UDP packets (which are already hard to sniff) to your home IP address, which is pretty harmless information.

The (not ideal) Alternative

Many people find Wireguard hard to setup on its own (don't worry, that is why I wrote this guide) and prefer a more seamless corporate solution based on Wireguard called Tailscale.

Tailscale has 2 major drawbacks:

• It's an additional third party that knows every encrypted packet you send over it as well as all your public IPs.
• It's permissioned and requires setting up an account, not very sovereign

Setup

Requirements

• Access to your home router admin page: if your node is behind a NAT (usually that is the case when it's behind a home router), you're going to need to forward a port to your node LAN IP. If you don't know how to do this, you can try to follow the guide for your router model at portforward.com.
• Either a fixed home public IP address, or a domain name that points to your dynamic home IP address. Even if you don't have this, you can still follow the guide and manually update your home IP in the configuration file.
• Shell root access in your node.

Node setup

Gather network information

Find your node's LAN IP address:

bash $ ip -human --brief address show lo UNKNOWN 127.0.0.1/8 ::1/128 eth0 UP 192.168.1.2/24 metric 1024

In this case, the your node's LAN IP is 192.168.1.2.

Find your home public IP address:

bash $ curl ipecho.net/plain

### Install wireguard tools

The wireguard module is actually built into any modern linux kernel by default, what we actually need to install is the tooling to generate valid wireguard cryptographic keys.

For debian/ubuntu based distros:

bash $ sudo apt install wireguard For other distros, check wireguard.com/install.

Generate keys

You manually need to generate 1 keypair for each device (called peer) that will use your wireguard VPN (including your home node).

To generate a keypair for your node (let's call it node):

bash $ wg genkey | (umask 0077 && tee node.key) | wg pubkey > node.pub

This will create 2 files: node.key and node.pub containing your private and public keys, respectively. Keep these files safe and after being done configuring wireguard you can even delete them.

Create extra keypairs for your other devices, e.g.: * Your phone: bash $ wg genkey | (umask 0077 && tee phone.key) | wg pubkey > phone.pub * Your laptop: bash $ wg genkey | (umask 0077 && tee laptop.key) | wg pubkey > laptop.pub Create as many as you wish.

Configure the tunnel

Using a text editor create and edit the file /etc/wireguard/mytunnelname.conf with the content:

``` [Interface] Address = 10.0.0.1/24 ListenPort = 50000 PrivateKey =

[Peer] PublicKey = AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.2/32

[Peer] PublicKey = AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.3/32 ```

Subsitute *_KEY with the relevant keys found in the files you generated earlier (which you can see the contents using cat node.key for instance).

Generate configurations for the other peers

For your phone/laptop, create a files (can be anywhere, does not matter) with the contents: * phone.conf ``` [Interface] Address = 10.0.0.2/24 PrivateKey =

[Peer] PublicKey = AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.1/32 Endpoint = :50000 ```

• laptop.conf :

``` [Interface] Address = 10.0.0.3/24 PrivateKey =

[Peer] PublicKey = AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.1/32 Endpoint = :50000 ```

Now you need to either transfer these files to their respective devices (how you do it is your business) or generate an easy to use QR code to use to configure your phone.

Optional: generate QR code for the phone configuration

Install qrencode

bash sudo apt install qrencode

Print the QR code on your terminal:

bash $ qrencode -r phone.conf -t ansiutf8

Or save it (and transfer) as png image:

bash $ qrencode -r phone.conf -o phone.png

Run wireguard the wireguard tunnel

bash $ sudo systemctl enable --now wg-quick@mytunnelname.service

Now when you do ip -human --brief address show you should see an extra interface:

lo UNKNOWN 127.0.0.1/8 ::1/128 eth0 UP 192.168.1.2/24 metric 1024 mytunnelname UNKNOWN 10.0.0.1/24

Open UDP wireguard port

If your node has a firewall, we need to open our chosen UDP port (50000).

If using ufw:

bash $ sudo ufw allow 50000/udp

if just using iptables:

bash $ sudo iptables -A UDP -p udp -m udp --dport 50000 -j ACCEPT

Home router setup

Forward port 50000 UDP to your node's LAN IP. If you don't know how to do this, you can try to follow the guide for your router model at portforward.com.

Phone setup

1- Install the wireguard app, you can find links in wireguard.com/install.

2 - Open the app 3 - Click on the + button 4 - Choose if you want to import the phone.conf configuration file, the your generated QR or input everything manually. 5 - Activate the tunnel by tapping the switch

You should have a working tunnel between your node and your phone. You can try pinging your phone wireguard IP (10.0.0.2) from your node's terminal (ping 10.0.0.2) to check that it is working.

Now on every app you connect to your node (e.g. Zeus), instead of using the onion address, you can just use your node's wireguard IP (10.0.0.1).

Laptop setup

If it's a linux laptop: place (and rename) laptop.conf to /etc/wireguard/mytunnelname.conf and do:

bash $ sudo systemctl enable --now wg-quick@mytunnelname.service

Ping your node wireguard IP ping 10.0.0.1 to make sure it's working.

Now you can use that IP instead of the onion address to connect to your node (e.g. in Sparrow).

Help

If you have questions feel free to contact me (NIP-05: sommerfeld@strisemarx.com).

@ 7eeb0857:a8e7720e

As the world of digital assets continues to evolve, many investors and users of cryptocurrencies find themselves navigating the complexities of the tax landscape. One such complexity involves the tax implications of holding a cryptocurrency that undergoes a protocol upgrade, specifically a change in the consensus mechanism. This scenario describes the ETH merge (the Merge) in September 2022, when Ethereum changed from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus.

Earlier today, the IRS published unofficial guidance (CCA 202316008), which provides non-taxpayer-specific advice regarding the tax implications for an individual holding a cryptocurrency native to a blockchain that undergoes a protocol upgrade. The document answers two main questions:

Does an individual realize gain or loss on their units of cryptocurrency because of the protocol upgrade? Does the individual have an item of gross income due to the protocol upgrade? To provide some context, let’s look at a hypothetical scenario. While the document doesn’t directly reference the Merge, the scenario described relates closely to what happened, so we will use it in our example:

Joe previously purchased and now holds 10 ETH in a wallet. In September 2022, the Ethereum blockchain changes its consensus mechanism from PoW to PoS – this is the protocol upgrade in question, also referred to by many simply as the Merge.

The document concludes that Joe does not realize gain or loss under §1001 of the Internal Revenue Code (Code) on their 10 ETH due to the protocol upgrade. Additionally, he does not have an item of gross income under §61(a) of the Code due to the protocol upgrade.

Here’s why: the protocol upgrade affects the consensus mechanism by which future transactions are validated and blocks are added to the Ethereum blockchain after the date of the Merge. However, it does not alter past transactions or blocks, including Joe’s 10 ETH. The existing ETH remain unchanged by the protocol change, and there isn’t an exchange of those ETH under §1001. Therefore, Joe continues to own the same 10 ETH before and after the upgrade, and the protocol upgrade does not result in a realization event from which he realizes gain or loss on their existing 10 ETH.

Similarly, Joe does not derive any accession to wealth from the upgrade. His 10 ETH remain unchanged, and he does not derive any separable economic benefits, such as cash, services, or other property (including other cryptocurrencies) from the upgrade. Without an accession to wealth, the protocol upgrade does not result in Joe having an income inclusion within the meaning of §61(a).

In conclusion, when it comes to protocol upgrades that change the consensus mechanism of a blockchain, individuals holding cryptocurrency native to that blockchain do not realize gain or loss and do not have an item of gross income due to the protocol upgrade, according to the CCA.

This is an interesting and important concept to consider against the language of Rev. Rul. 2019-24, which provides that airdrops of new cryptocurrencies following hard forks are taxable. In the case of the Merge (and most other hard forks), there wasn’t an airdrop of ETH. Rather, due to the fork, there were two resulting chains (ETH and ETHW), each of which could possibly be considered the old chain (or the new chain). The CCA references Rev. Rul. 2019-24 in a few places, but only for background purposes – the CCA does not revoke the Ruling.

So, this new guidance may bring more questions than answers. We know, for example, that airdropped crypto is considered income when received, but how do we know what the IRS considers to be the “new” cryptocurrency? When analyzing the Merge, is ETH considered the legacy currency, or is it ETHW? Or is it up to Joe to decide?

The lack of clarity makes it difficult for many taxpayers to comply with the law. It’s clear that we will need better guidance from the IRS on this issue. Otherwise, poor Joe has his work cut out for him.

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

Due to a bug you might have to scroll down a LOT to find the main content.

With more than 4000 products listed, it's time to extract some numbers.

The following is a breakdown of how many products fall into each verdict and meta-verdict:

| Meta / Verdict | ok | stale obsolete
defunct discontinued | Comment | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | fewusers | 194 | 1229 | Once stale or obsolete, these products have little chance to ever make an impact in the Bitcoin ecosystem. We don't look deeper into these. We started tracking them just in case. Only few were defunct when we first added them. | | custodial | 671 | 310 | This is what the bulk of Bitcoiners use apparently. The most popular mobile Bitcoin "wallets" are custodial (or the rather similar no-send-receive). | | wip | 202 | 639 | For some products we do archaeology and assign verdicts even after they are defunct but that's rather low priority. 202 to go ... for now. | | nosource | 235 | 151 | Most of these are defending their closed-source-ness with prevention of fake copy apps. Either way, nobody can check if they are playing by the rules. | | nowallet | 146 | 119 | Products that look like they might be wallets get looked into and we keep them around to not look into these again and again. Should we hide them somehow? | | nobtc | 105 | 69 | We currently don't analyze products that don't also manage BTC. | | nosendreceive | 84 | 30 | MercadoPago and PayPal have more than 100 million users each - and usually users cannot cash their bitcoins in or out to a self-custodial wallet. | | vapor | 77 | 2 | Most of these are hardware products. | | noita | 32 | 12 | "no interface to authorize a transaction" - No screen. No buttons. Mostly NFC tags that can sign transactions to avoid leaking the key but they sign whatever. | | ftbfs | 19 | 22 | "failed to build from source" - these products share source but we failed to build them in the latest version. | | unreleased | 34 | 6 | Mostly hardware products that were announced and maybe even do a pre-sale already but haven't delivered yet. Once defunct, these are the "vapor ware". | | fake | 4 | 34 | Luckily most of these are available only for a short time after being classified as "fake" but some blatant fakes survive longer than others. | | nonverifiable | 20 | 16 | These are self-custodial, share code and many are working on reproducibility. We track these closely. | | diy | 18 | 13 | Mostly hardware products. When you do it yourself, it is on you to be transparent. | | prefilled | 12 | 11 | Yep. These exist. And people use them. When funds move, it might have been the provider or the client. Both have plausible deniability. | | plainkey | 13 | 7 | These are mostly NFC tags in varying form factors that surrender the private keys to a companion app to do whatever with them. | | obfuscated | 8 | 9 | If we had more resources, we probably would find more products for this verdict. | | reproducible | 9 | 2 | Few verdicts contain fewer products than this - most transparent - verdict. But there is a backlog of hardware wallet projects and later desktop wallets but the latter is a hard problem to solve. | | sealed-plainkey | 6 | 3 | A verdict exclusive to bearer tokens. | | sealed-noita | 3 | 0 | A verdict exclusive to bearer tokens and until some open source "secure element" comes around, the top verdict there. |

@ def7bdbc:8ce3f0c5

[dit artikel dateert oorspronkelijk van maart 2015 - Misschien, oh, misschien... in Google Docs

Het fileleed in België neemt toe. Recent hebben zowel Peter De Keyzer als Andreas Tirez een lans gebroken voor een variabele wegentol of congestietaks. Ook minister Ben Wuyts hield een moedig pleidooi.

Ik onderschrijf hun pleidooi. België wordt immers steeds meer geteisterd door files: in zeven jaar is de filezwaarte in ons land verdubbeld (zie grafiek). Door die files wordt de bestaande weginfrastructuur niet efficiënt gebruikt, wat tot welvaartsverlies leidt.

In een ideale wereld, lijkt een slimme wegentol inderdaad optimaal om het fileprobleem te verminderen. Ideaal veronderstelt dat zulk een slimme tol zeer snel kan ingevoerd worden, want het probleem is vandaag prangend, en dat de kost om ze in te voeren zeer laag is.

Misschien kan op heel korte termijn politieke consensus gevonden worden om de variabele wegentol in te voeren? Misschien kan men zeer snel een technologie-aanbieder vinden, die in razend tempo een team ambtenaren, infrastructuur en processen uitbouwt? Misschien evolueert de technologie ook zodat de kost om een inningssysteem, bv. via smart phone, te bouwen zeer laag wordt?

De realiteit is echter dat de implementatie van een variabele wegentol wellicht jaren duurt en de overheid, de weggebruikers of beiden de inningskost zullen moeten dragen. De inningskost zou op dit moment ongeveer 10% van de opgehaalde taks zijn, wat zich verhoudt tot een gemiddelde inningskost in België van 1.4% (footnote 4).

Misschien kan een ‘domme’ verhoging van brandstofaccijns wel op zeer korte termijn hetzelfde gewenste effect (minder files) bereiken? De inningskost lijkt in ieder geval bijna nul (1 getalletje veranderen in een aantal computers), en dit duurt wellicht maar een dag of twee.

Een hogere brandstofaccijns heeft ook een aantal effecten die een congestietaks niet teweegbrengt: automobilisten zouden in principe zuiniger en dus voorzichtiger gaan rijden, wat normaal ook het aantal ongevallen en dus onvoorspelbare files verlaagt. Zelfs snelheidsboetes worden ‘overbodig’, want overdreven snelheid resulteert al snel in meerverbruik, waarvan de kost ruim de kost van een boete x pakkans kan overschrijden. Ook ingewikkelde berekenen over verbruik van wagens en ‘theoretische’ zuinigheid, bv. van een Porsche 918, worden compleet overbodig, enkel het echte verbruik telt.

Tegenstanders noemen een verhoging van brandstofaccijns asociaal. Is hij asocialer dan een kilometerheffing waar de regering nu op broedt? Overigens zou de opbrengst van een brandstofaccijns rechtstreeks moeten terugvloeien naar verlaging van andere belastingen, mogelijk via belastingkrediet of een vorm van basisinkomen en eventueel deels naar een versterking van openbaar vervoer. Het lijkt in ieder geval niet wenselijk dat zulk een maatregel de totale belastingdruk zou laten stijgen, maar dat is een politieke discussie.

Tegenstanders wijzen op mogelijke internationale verschillen in brandstofprijzen. Vanaf april 2016, zal de ‘slimme’ kilometerheffing dit probleem alvast voor het vrachtvervoer deels opvangen (1). Wie speltheorie kent, kan zich inbeelden dat het misschien net België is dat een gelijkaardige verdere accijnsverhoging in Nederland, waar accijnzen nu al meer dan 0,1 Eur/L hoger zijn, net tegenhoudt. Minimale internationale samenwerking kan hier waarschijnlijk helpen.

Tegenstanders opperen (ietwat paternalistisch) dat accijnsverhoging geen impact heeft op autogebruik, omdat ‘mensen niet begrijpen dat ook accijnzen een kost per km impliceren’. Daar is een oplossing voor: iemand kan een leuke gadget maken, die op basis van verbruik en afgelegde weg, de impliciete ‘km-heffing’ berekent!

Tegenstanders’ ultieme argument is dat brandstofaccijns een ‘domme’ belasting is, die het doel voorbijschiet en een lineaire vermindering van de vraag naar vervoer zou teweegbrengen. Dat is waar, al lijkt ze minder dom dan de belasting op arbeid (die een lineaire vermindering van werkgelegenheid meebrengt).

Wellicht denken voorstanders van km-heffing (die tegen verhoogde accijnzen zijn), dat zijzelf die km-heffing zullen kunnen vermijden en anderen zullen betalen (de ultieme belasting: betaald door de andere). Dat is natuurlijk naïef, want dat kan niet voor iedereen gelden. Een beetje zoals vragen aan mensen of ze zichzelf een betere chauffeur vinden dan anderen…

Misschien, kan een verhoogde brandstofaccijns de files wel al op korte termijn verminderen, vrijwel zonder implementatiekost? Misschien resulteert het bestaan van zulk een ‘domme’ belasting dat er versneld wordt gewerkt aan een ‘slimmere’ variabele wegentol? Misschien kunnen we alvorens die wegentol in te voeren en het totale overheidsbeslag te verhogen (tenzij de inningskost bijna nul zou zijn), er eerst voor zorgen dat de nog ‘dommere’ belasting op arbeid vermindert?

Misschien kan het concept wegentol intussen ook aan lagere inningskost ingevoerd worden op specifieke punten, bv. voor de Kennedy-tunnel, ipv meteen grootschalig voor alle wegen van België (met een inningskost van 100 Eur/auto/jaar)? Leren stappen voor je gaat lopen, zegt de uitdrukking (of hoe ging die ook weer?)!

PS: Nog even een paar cijfers: Personenwagens rijden in België 80 miljard kilometers per jaar (2), en verbruiken dus ongeveer 4 miljard liter brandstof (5 l / 100km). Eur 0,1 accijnsverhoging per liter geeft dus uitzicht op meer dan Eur 400 miljoen tax-shift (en dan zitten we nog onder de brandstofprijs van Nederland), vrijwel zonder extra inningskost. De On-Board-Unit (OBU) uit het De Tijd artikel van 18 april, zou 130 tot 150 Euro (per jaar?) kosten (1). Voor 5,5 miljoen wagens in België (3), zou de slimme kilometer heffing dus resulteren in meer dan 550 miljoen ‘inningskost’ of tax-lift. Misschien is / komt er technologie die maar 10 - 20 Euro per jaar kost, dan wordt een slimme wegentol wellicht haalbaar voor personenwagens, voorlopig lijkt het slimmer om files te helpen verminderen via brandstofaccijnzen (en tegelijk een echte tax-shift te bewerkstelligen).
Nog een paar kleine berekeningen: * Nu bedraagt de km-heffing voor een diesel (7L/100km , 1 Eur accijns) ongeveer 0,07 Eur/km * Hoeveel km-heffing (gemiddeld) had men voor ogen? 1 Eur/km => dus 10,000 - 15,000 Eur voor een gemiddelde pendelaar? Wellicht niet. Wellicht eerder ongeveer 0.1 Eur/km * Bovenstaande schatting lijkt niet zo ver van de realiteit, KULeuven schat 0,07 tot 0,125 Eur/km (6) * Dus het volstaat om accijns met 1.4 Eur / L (10 Eur / 100 km, aan 7 L / 100km) op te trekken om het volledige effect van een km-heffing te bereiken… * Wil men echt 100 Eur inningkost om 1,000 Eur km-heffing te innen? * Wat wel realistisch lijkt qua inningskost, zijn enkele specifieke heffingen, bv. tol om door Kennedy-tunnel te rijden

Bronnen: 1. http://www.tijd.be/nieuws/archief/Kilometerheffing_trucks_vanaf_april_2016.9623515-1615.art 2. http://statbel.fgov.be/nl/statistieken/cijfers/verkeer_vervoer/verkeer/afstand/ 3. http://statbel.fgov.be/nl/statistieken/cijfers/verkeer_vervoer/verkeer/voertuigpark/ 4. https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http://www.oecd.org/site/ctpfta/Table-5-3-updated.xlsx 5. http://m.knack.be/nieuws/belgie/weyts-opbrengst-kilometerheffing-geschat-op-181-miljoen-euro-per-jaar/article-normal-627271.html 6. http://www.tmleuven.be/project/vergroeningfiscaliteit/index.htm

@ 20092d3b:dffed9bc

This is a just a test to see if I can reach my relays.

@ 9a576bd9:538775f4

Picture source

Nostr

Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) is a new, simple, open and censorship resistant protocol, currently the developers are focused on building a decentralized social network based mainly on public and private keys.

To achieve this, clients will connect to different relays and publish messages called events. Nostr uses the notion of a simple relay and a smart client that will take care of signing the events using a pair of keys to authenticate the person.

https://nostr.how/the-protocol

With this approach, everything is public, i.e. it is easy to know who you are talking to in the case of a private discussion (message content is encrypted) or how often you publish content.

The website https://www.nostrapps.com/ has some interesting and necessary resources to start interacting with Nostr

For more details, JohnOnChain’s article on Discover Bitcoin (in French) can be read here: https://decouvrebitcoin.fr/nostr/

The mixnet

Nym is building an infrastructure to protect your privacy, this is the first block necessary to ensure total freedom on the Internet.

Similar to Tor or i2p, Nym’s mixnet adds 2 components necessary to achieve their goal and completely protect the users of the network:

• False traffic to prevent an ISP for example to know when a person interacts with a service (website, bitcoin wallet, …)

• Regular time interval in the transmitted information to avoid deducing the application used (telephony, web browsing, …)

It is therefore on this new value proposition that we wanted to experiment with the members of Pineapple Proxy on this infrastructure.

Nostr on Nym

Using Nym’s mixnet cannot therefore protect the metadata generated when a person interacts with the protocol, but it can prevent your ISP from knowing that you are using Nostr, which relay you are interacting with, how many times you connect, or what potential interactions you have.

A second interesting point is that a relay operator can easily link your public key with your geographical location based on your IP.

It is essentially on these elements that we decided to experiment with Nostr-nym, an application that allows any relay operator to make it accessible on the mixnet in order to protect the privacy of users. We focused on a generic application in order to support all relays (future and current).

The only difference for a user will be to specify an nym-client id (similar to a domain name) instead of a URL in their Nostr client.

A crucial step still needs to be developed, the fact that a Nostr client can use a relay only accessible via the mixnet. For demonstration purposes, a command line light client could be developed to test the proposed concept.

So ?

Nostr on Nym is for us a solution that would allow any user to have a right to privacy and freedom of expression without even asking the question thanks to this model that offers it by default.

It’s also the time to collaborate and assemble a common brain to reach the goal of seeing Nostr as a protocol using Nym to carry information. This collective intelligence has already given birth to an explanation of Nostr and a demonstration of Nostr-Nym, all available here.

Ressources

What is Pineapple proxy

We're a zesty collective of whacky, warm individuals who are passionate about making privacy convenient for everyone, an inalienable human right. We believe in collective intelligence, empathy, and collaboration as how we'll make privacy a meaningful reality. Give us a visit on pnproxy.org

Nostr

npub to find:

• No Trust Verify: npub1n8mkcvn56gaj9mk598nu3uyp3mqrwazt0rdxsmwddk3ghesfs46qpwc6ac

• Pineapple proxy: npub1vyvyqme882zq3ajw0r0x975p3akd9llcrlgled98qjd8jjhzl9wqut2pt0

Clients (non-exhaustive list)

• https://snort.social

• https://app.coracle.social/

• https://iris.to/

• https://damus.io/ (iOS)

• https://github.com/vitorpamplona/amethyst (Android)

Complements

• https://nostr.how

• https://www.nostrapps.com/

• https://github.com/nostr-protocol/

• https://www.nostr.net/

Nym

• https://nymtech.net/

• https://nymtech.net/docs/

• https://nymtech.net/developers/

About No Trust Verify

We are members of the #VerifyValley. We support the Nym Technologies network and contribute to it since the testnet. We are happy to strengthen the mixnet with our mixnodes and our gateways.

Developer of pastenym.ch and isnymup.com

✅ Hosted in Switzerland
✅ Guaranteed commission: 5%.
✅ Bandwidth: 10 Gbit/s

Identity keys:

NTV1 : APxUbCmGp4K9qDzvwVADJFNu8S3JV1AJBw7q6bS5KN9E

NTV2 : 4yRfauFzZnejJhG2FACTVQ7UnYEcFUYw3HzXrmuwLMaR

NTV3 : ESPa5xnwZ7BebSX9SGmUbeYgNtkUeJo8PtbBx7JhzEHA

Do not hesitate to contact us:

| Website | Twitter | Telegram | Linkedin | Matrix |

@ f57d8cf5:2602f7c9

It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle. - Satoshi Nakamoto!

The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global "social" network once and for all. - fiatjaf!

@ 1bc70a01:24f6a411

You may remember a documentary on Netflix that discussed the negative effects of social media - Social Dilemma. It sparked many discussions in various circles, but nothing came of it.

Well, today I want to talk about making social media healthier, if not for ourselves, but for our kids.

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity with Nostr to reshape social media clients from scratch. Let us not blindly copy existing social media behavior. After all, the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Let’s not be stupid and make social media just as, if not more addicting than before.

The big TLDR; is that social media addictive mechanisms harm self image in kids. At the time where they should be building confidence, the mechanics of social media make them feel insecure. I can only imagine the downstream effects into adulthood, but on society level it can’t be good.

Some organizations even exist to supposedly move this subject forward, but after reviewing their content, I see nothing substantial put forward. One such organization “Center for Human Technology” seems to say the right things but puts no effort into offering any actual solutions.

Strategies to make social media healthier

Let’s brainstorm some actual things we can do to limit social media addictiveness, reduce social influence and manipulation.

Boost self-esteem

Vanity metrics can play a positive role but the wrong kind of metric is more harmful than not. Follower count immediately comes to mind. You see people obsessing with their follower count, and even those not realizing they are obsessed are constantly comparing themselves to one another. You are probably one of those people. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and close down your account right now, and create a fresh one to start over. I’ll wait.

Still here? I thought so. Short of constantly deleting our accounts, we can do something else - not showing a follower metric at all.

Remove followers metrics

As drastic as this sounds, removing followers is a huge step forward to better mental health. We don’t need to see how many people follow us. As long as you can see who you follow, it shouldn’t matter who is following you.

This goes beyond Twitter-like apps. Subscriber counts on YouTube channels, on email lists, none of these things need to exist. The number of people you send something to should be irrelevant. Think about it - how does it impact the content of your message whether you have 100 followers or 10,000? It doesn’t.

Avoid algorithms at all costs

Algos are excellent at hijacking attention. They know what you like and keep feeding off you to keep you hooked. Let’s end this stupidity once and for all and say no to algorithms.

I also came to a realization that “algorithmic choice” is an illusion. The “best” algorithm will by definition be the winner and the most popular. Clients will implement the thing that people crave most until “better” algorithms get more users hooked on a client. Who doesn’t want that for their platform? Everyone. Attention is money. Attention is harm.

If we want to create a better future for our children, we’ll say no to algorithms. This means we have to accept that people will gravitate towards “cheaters” who do include “useful” algorithms in their clients. It also means we have to be willing to forgo larger profits.

Perhaps well-thought out policy can be introduced in the future that limits the harm of algorithms, but in the meantime we can take matters into our own hands and simply say no.

Improve happiness levels

Avoid news feeds

Thanks to nostr we can create clients that only handle news feeds, so we don’t really need to include them in social clients.

News keeps people down because negative news gets most clicks. We can avoid this whole issue just by not including news feeds in social applications. Less clickbaity headlines, less rage, more productive conversations.

If you still crave news, go ahead and use that nostr client designed specifically for news consumption.

Of course, we can’t stop people from sharing the news, but we can avoid algos that surface it, and avoid creating feeds specifically designed for news consumption.

News also consumed a lot of time and spreads misinformation. You get scenarios where neither of the arguers read the article in full and are arguing about something that’s not even reported. It’s painful to watch.

Then you have situations where the news is actually a narrative spun by some organization or individual who wants to influence social behavior. They may report correct information or completely misrepresent facts.

News is “bad news”. Just don’t build it into social clients intentionally.

Create happiness clients

One thing I have not seen any social media do is ask whether a piece of content makes you feel positive, neutral or negative.

In theory, we should be able to create clients that prioritize positive content. I know I said avoid algorithms at all costs, but if you wanted to create a happiness portal, you could cheat a little and ask people to market content as positive, neutral or negative, and then surface only the positive.

In my opinion this is not an ideal way to go about it, because you’re creating a different type of bubble, one where people ignore the reality of things. Yet, it is a possibility if we want to alter our mood by putting algos to work for us. At the very least it would be a fun experiment!

Reduce addiction / Save time

Disable notifications by default

You hear countless stories of people feeling better in their lives after disabling notifications. Why not make this the default behavior? “But, people won’t know if the app works!” Yeah.. it has to start some place. If we want change, we need to make tough decisions. If you want to be less extreme about it, you could disable most notifications by default, while not touching the “critical” ones. Personally, I don’t think any notification is critical, you should be completely in control over your attention and that any notification is a major intrusion into your consciousness.

With notifications disabled, we can regain time and attention. Society as a whole might think more clearly and be in the moment. I think it would be a huge step forward.

Delay notifications

Nothing sucks more time than notifications. That tiny red dot begging to be tapped. One solution to make notification less addicting short of turning them off is to delay them. We can purposely set a timer to show notifications in a delayed fashion rather than right away. This way people or kids don’t need to constantly check to see who replied or messaged you. Something as simple as a 3 minute notification delay may be sufficient to curb the constant checking behavior.

Delay reactions

Dopamine is fun, but constant dopamine in real time is unhealthy. Real time reactions force us to stare at our screens waiting for the next reaction.

We can lessen this addictive behavior by introducing delayed reactions to notes. Instead of reactions coming in real time, introduce a delay of 1-5 minutes. If you know that you won’t see any responses to your post for at least 5 minutes, it makes it easier to put down the phone and not have to constantly look to see who liked your note.

Improve Transparency

Once media organizations get on nostr, I think there’s a lot we can do to make them more transparent, accountable, and less manipulative.

One thing we can do is to create meta data for media accounts to indicate their funding sources. Everyone should be able to see who funds a certain organization (as discovered by anyone in the community and voted on by the community in terms of accuracy).

The idea is that someone could dig up funding sources for an organization and add them as meta notes to the account. The community can then collectively decide if this is accurate or inaccurate, giving others an idea if there is a certain bias involved.

Think about the Greenpeace ordeal currently happening. A meta note to indicate that Ripple, a “competing” cryptocurrency is funding them would add a lot of transparency to their claims. I think people would be less likely to believe the nonsense they are spewing.

Create a record of accuracy

Fueled entirely by the community, people could verify the accuracy of claims and indicate that in meta data. Other members can then review those claims and vote on them as well. With enough people involved, you could see if there is a sufficient sample size to indicate whether a media organization has been accurate or inaccurate in the past.

One thing we’d need to watch out here is bot manipulation. Said organizations could hire out malicious services to make it seem they are more accurate than they are typically. We’d have to think of some ways of preventing that.

The sheer lack of ratings on a claim should raise an eyebrow and whether something is to be believed or not.

The right to be forgotten

I know I will catch a lot of heat for this one. “The internet never forgets!” This is what the vast majority of people will say right away. That’s fine… but hear me out…

As builders and developers, we can form a consensus that social media data should be forgotten after x amount of time. Yes, anyone can screenshot it, mirror, put it on their own relay, rebroadcast it, yada yada yada… I get it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t create a consensus by which many builders, relay operators can voluntarily abide. It may not be a bulletproof solution, but it’s an effort that counts.

When we speak in the real world, unless recorded, our words are forgotten. A person should not be judged by a stupid thing they said yesterday, a week ago, a year ago. We can’t be in the right all the time - all people make mistakes and say and do stupid things. However, online, your word remains forever. Various servers cache, duplicate, at zero cost. I totally get that. Yet, we can still design an experience where that information disappears from our feeds, unless actively surfaced with some specific intent to surface it. I think this is a worthwhile effort that developers should consider today.

In cases where information should be saved for good reasons, someone will save it. Entire clients can and will exist to index everything, but that doesn’t mean every single client should surface every single note. People have a right to be wrong and to not be constantly harassed for what they said or did if they no longer feel or act that way.

Let’s have this conversation because no one else will

This article is meant to be a conversation starter. I really think we should weave it into the Nostr conferences as a crucial segment worth exploring and discussing. If we don’t do this, no one will. The world will continue to get gamified, attention hijacked and kids will continue suffering, depressed, lacking confidence and the tools needed to create a better world for their own kids. Let’s not fall sleep at the wheel and actually do something about it.

What other ideas do you have? Share the article and attach your own ideas.

@ 1bc70a01:24f6a411

In one of his earlier talks, developer and entrepreneur Rob Walling who was previously founder of drip.com said something seemingly small but profound (paraphrased):

To increase conversion rates (people sticking around to keep using your product, and ultimately paying), get people to their “aha!” moment as quickly as possible.

The “aha!” moment is where it clicks for the user exactly why this product is awesome. It's the shortest path to awesome. Once the user sees the value in the product, they are more likely to stick around.

Product designers and developers who are aware of this, know that the name of the game is providing value, and hopefully overdelivering, as quickly as possible. This means setting aside their own desires to showcase the product in its full glory, and focusing on the essentials - minimizing the number of steps required to get to the aha moment.

Design by omission becomes important. What to not include becomes equally, if not more important as what to include. So does reducing friction. The fewer, less painful steps involved in getting insane value out of a product, the better.

This concept is a great rule of thumb for every product founder. Instead of thinking “what feature should I add to make people love this product?”, founders should be thinking “what features do I absolutely need for people to love this product?” Then de-emphasize everything else.

Nostr clients are no different from a typical startup - they should be trying to figure out the “aha!” moment, and how to get the user to it as quickly as possible.

A useful exercise I often perform is to reverse the process and start at the end - the action the user needs to take to have their minds blown. Once you figure out what that action is, work backwards to the steps where they first land on the product page, or install the app, whatever that may be. The goal is to cut out as many steps in-between as possible.

I’ll demonstrate with a hypothetical, but practical example.

Let us assume we are building a music app where people can earn sats when others listen to their tracks.

Nostr has several layers and steps that most people typically go through, for example:

1. Generate key pair
2. Save keys warning
3. Pick a username
4. Import follows (perhaps)
5. In some cases add relays
6. Navigate to some sort of a feed, either from follows or general
7. You typically need to set up your profile if you want people to take you seriously
8. Have to figure out what sats are, why anyone should care? What are these play tokens?
9. If care enough, find settings to connect a wallet
10. Learn about wallets (now you leave the platform to do a bunch of reading), chances are you are gone for good.
11. Connect a wallet, test a payment.
12. Do something for someone to find your action worthy of a zap / perhaps upload a track?
13. Aha moment! You can get paid easily and fast just for interacting with people.

Perhaps you’ll also have a realization that your comments are showing cross-platforms which supercharges your content distribution, but for now we don’t need to worry about this.

Of course, some of these steps may be optional, but if we are talking about someone who knows nothing about nostr, sats, zaps, key pairs, that’s 12 steps to get to some realization of what is possible.

12 steps!

The barrier to seeing value is very steep unless you already understand the benefits of decentralized social platforms, know about bitcoin and understand the possibilities.

Sadly, this is not what an average user looks like.

In fact, if you look on Nostr.band, the stats show that the number of profiles with an LN address has remained largely flat for a long time. It’s likely that these people are mostly bitcoiners who already understand the value proposition of a lightning payment.

Now, let’s work backwards and just think through which steps could potentially be eliminated. Keep in mind, we are talking about a music client.

Let us assume that the aha! moment is someone getting paid for their creative work (music). I think this is a safe assumption.

Final step: Pay bills with your creative work

This is going a bit beyond the aha moment, but we’ll roll with it.

Let’s ask some questions…

• What’s the fastest way to demonstrate that a user can collect payments for uploading tracks? How about a web client that is visible without logging in? Perhaps you can see some songs right away and notice that they are earning money? It’s not a personal aha moment, but it’s a preview.
• Can we get the user to skip signup entirely?
• Can the user upload a track as step 1?
• Can they see their local currency as a payout option?
• Can they collect payment in their local currency?
• Do they need to know what sats are? At least initially?
• Do they need to care about relays and everything that this entails?
• Do they really need to connect a wallet to get paid?
• Do they really need to follow anyone to see a feed?
• Are usernames even important to see the value in this product?
• Do they need to learn about cryptographic key pairs? How can we delay this step?

Having asked all of these questions, we can draft an ideal scenario. It may not be realistic, far from it, but at least we know what an ideal and amazing journey would look like.

1. Land on a website and see that people are getting paid in your local currency for the same work you offer. Hey, maybe I should try this? 🤔
2. What’s this.. a button to upload music? Ok, I have a file sitting on my drive, or have a link handy, let’s do it! Go ahead and add the track (as few steps as possible). Holy shit, I can add splits? Sounds crazy.. ok, let’s keep going.
3. Now that I’ve made progress in adding some information, it seems I need to sign up to finish. Makes sense. One or two clicks, I’m in and my track is added.
4. Aha moment: I go eat dinner, come back an hour later and see that I’ve just earned $5. It ain’t that much, but it didn’t take long! Turns out new tracks go into the new tab and people can stream them which goes directly to your wallet.
5. Final step: I click a button to cash out, in my local currency. The funds arrive in my bank account. Now I can pay my bills.

It may not be a feasible flow, or even a desirable one, but at least we can see that an amazing journey might only take 3-4 steps. It is still using the old money rails for some parts of the app, but the artist can get paid for their work fast and can come to a realization that there might be something to this.

We don’t need to create this specific journey and outcome, but we can use it as a baseline.

As a technical founder / developer you will have a better idea of what is possible. Perhaps new services need to be created to get to our end state? This exercise gives us a lot to think about.

In our example, we might be able to:

• Let users preview the product without signing up
• Have built-in wallets that require no additional setup (with the ability to customize your experience later in the options)
• Display earrings in local currencies while slowly introducing sats, zaps (surely there is an API that can handle sats to local currency conversion in real time? If not, maybe it has to be created?)
• Allow users to cash out into local currency. Why do we need to keep them in sats? Why not let them make their own option? If this is not possible to do - Why? What service needs to exist to allow lightning-enabled apps to tap into easy, plug and play fiat conversion?
• Let users discover relays later on instead of right away to keep them from being overwhelmed.

Even if some of these things are not technically feasible, at least we are now thinking about the flow from a user’s perspective and empathize with them. We start thinking about their time, their needs, their existing frustrations and how we might be able to brighten their day.

This user-centric approach helps founders skip the fluffy parts and focus on the guts that truly matter.

New founders specifically tend to enjoy adding features, thinking the next one will do the trick, only to be disappointed.

I encourage Nostr client developers to start thinking about their users as customers who are looking to solve their own problems.

• How might you make that journey as effortless as possible?
• What is your customer truly seeking? Is it distribution? Is it attention? Is it money?
• Are you delivering it in as few steps as possible?
• Can the “customer” take a more familiar path to get to the same decentralized destination that we all love?

@ ce35f2f8:22931a55

In 1992, Pepsi launched a marketing campaign in the Philippines that promised a grand prize of one million pesos to the lucky winner who found the number "349" under the bottle cap. Many people across the country who were living in poverty saw this as an opportunity to change their lives. They celebrated, believing they had won the prize, and even went to the Pepsi factory to claim it. The situation turned chaotic, and the police had to intervene.

However, the executives at Pepsi were not prepared for the number of people who had won. If they paid everyone who had the winning bottle cap, it would cost them over $30 billion US dollars and would bankrupt the company. As a result, they announced that the winning number was a mistake, but as a goodwill gesture, they offered everyone with a "349" bottle cap 500 pesos, equivalent to about $18. This was a significant disappointment for the winners who had believed they would win $50,000.

The situation led to riots, and people started throwing Molotov cocktails into the windows of the Pepsi factory and bombing trucks. The riots left many people injured, and five people lost their lives. A group of winners formed the Coalition 349 and sued Pepsi, but the company only had to pay a fine of 150,000 pesos, which was insignificant to them. Many people saw this as a corporation giving false hope to people in poverty, only to take it away.

There were also reports that Pepsi hired mercenaries to bomb their trucks and make it seem like the Coalition 349 had done it. Pepsi denies these allegations, but the incident remains a dark part of their history.

This was not the only time Pepsi faced trouble over a contest. In 1996, they started a campaign where people could earn points by purchasing Pepsi products and win prizes from the "Pepsi Stuff Catalog." In a commercial, they claimed that for 7 million points, a person could win a Harrier Jet. A business student named John Leonard realized that he could buy 7 million Pepsi points for $700,000 and sued the company for false advertising when they failed to send him the jet. Pepsi won the case, and they changed their commercial to include "just kidding" at the end.

Despite their controversies, Pepsi also had one of the greatest marketing campaigns ever with the Cola Wars against Coca-Cola. The rivalry between the two companies was intense, and both went to great lengths to win over customers. The Cola Wars eventually died down, but the competition between the two companies remains strong to this day.

@ ce35f2f8:22931a55

The E900 Pro headphones are an affordable and high-quality option for audiophiles on a budget. With a price range of $30-40, these headphones offer an impressive range of features that are sure to satisfy music lovers and sound enthusiasts alike.

The E900 Pro headphones come equipped with 40mm drivers that deliver powerful, clear sound. They also offer noise isolation technology that helps to block out background noise, allowing users to fully immerse themselves in their music. The headphones have a frequency response range of 20Hz to 20kHz, providing a full range of sound that is crisp and accurate.

The headphones also have a stylish and modern design that is sure to catch the eye of anyone who sees them. The ear cups are made from soft, comfortable materials that allow for extended listening sessions without discomfort. The adjustable headband ensures a secure and comfortable fit, and the foldable design makes them easy to store and transport.

Another great feature of the E900 Pro headphones is the in-line microphone and remote control. This allows users to easily switch between their music and phone calls without having to remove their headphones. The microphone is also perfect for making voice recordings or participating in online gaming sessions.

Overall, the E900 Pro headphones are a great choice for anyone looking for a high-quality and affordable set of headphones. With their powerful sound, noise isolation technology, comfortable design, and in-line microphone, they offer a range of features that are sure to impress even the most discerning audiophile. At a price range of $30-40, these headphones are a steal and are sure to provide hours of listening pleasure for years to come.

@ 34c0a532:5d3638e4

Most bitcoiners have their own, much different definition of what it means to orange pill a person. I’ve seen mentions of getting a taxi driver to download a lightning wallet and sending the payment in sats to them. Is that truly orange-pilling? Hmm… no. It is a great first step, but what makes you believe that that person won’t go on to shitcoins after learning about the ease of using cryptocurrency?

So, let’s define what that is in the terms of this guide.

To orange pill someone means to get them to take the first step into learning about bitcoin, money, self-custody, being sovereign, and to teach them to start questioning the world of lies we’ve been fed our entire lives.

Too poetic? Okay, here’s a more specific one:

To orange pill someone means showing them how to send and receive a bitcoin transaction, explain to them the importance of keeping their seed words safe, and showing them more articles, books and guides so they can go further down the rabbit hole.

I think that’s better, don’t you?

No matter what your definition of orange-pilling is, let’s discuss a few things first.

Orange-pilling comes from the scene in the Matrix where Morpheus offers the blue and the red pill to Neo.

This your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more. ~ Morpheus

The fact that the terms comes from the Matrix is absolutely perfect, because the Matrix is based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Everybody knows the Matrix so let’s talk about the Cave. Inside the cave, people are chained up, in the dark. The only thing they can do is talk to each other and stare forward, where there’s a dim light on the cave’s wall. Someone is moving around objects, throwing shadows on the wall. The people can never see the three-dimensional object, they can only see a shadow, a projection of it, so their world is limited by that knowledge.

Someday a group of people manage to break out of the Cave. They go out into the light, their eyes hurt, the world is massive, they get a panic attack by the lack of a rock ceiling on top of them. It’s vast, it’s too much to bear. And they run back into the cave and tell everyone what they saw, that it’s too bright, too open, too much everything. Objects are real, there’s light everywhere and colours. So many colours, not just the flame, the rock and the shadow.

And they don’t believe them. Maybe they even get angry at them and attack them. Who are these fools to claim that the world is not what they think it is? Who are they to suggest that we’ve all been lied to all our lives?

And that’s the first thing you need to keep in mind when trying to orange pill someone.

Why do some people find it so hard to believe in bitcoin?

The answer is simple. It’s because understanding bitcoin requires acknowledging you’ve been tricked your entire life.

The culture shock is real, I’ve been through it. The stages are as follows:

What is money? You start to learn what money really is, and how fundamentally flawed the Keynesian system has become. You see that the only way forward is by a hard money standard, whether that’s gold or bitcoin. Then you realise that in a world of information, the only logical step is bitcoin. Then why bitcoin? You start to read about it’s properties. It’s antifragile, decentralised. Why is that important? Nobody can control, it great. Why is it like gold that can be attached to an email? Then there’s the anger and disbelief. We’ve been fooled. Why doesn’t everybody see this? You read everything about bitcoin, you listen to podcasts, talk on bitcoin twitter and nostr with other plebs. Nobody seems to have all the answers but they make far more sense than the lies of the mainstream media. You talk to your friends and family, you come off as crazy at best. As I said, you have to acknowledge the trauma the other person is going through. It’s a culture shock, and not many want to go through with it. Think of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, people who got out into the world went back and told everyone that there’s more to life than the shadows on the wall. Or, the same allegory being told by the Matrix, with Cypher wanting to go back, to forget.

We call that Bitcoin Derangement Syndrome, BDS. It’s hilarious but it’s so real. Many early bitcoiners, people who have spend years of their lives either advocating for it or working on it, some making or losing fortunes in the process, go back to the fiat world, shift gears completely, rant and rave against bitcoin and dive back in the Matrix, the Cave, taking the blue pill. They want to be fiat rich, they lie and delude themselves that everything is okay in the world and if they get just enough money they’d be okay.

But they won’t. This is real, and no matter how many lies they tell themselves things will not change unless we change them ourselves. Babies are dying, that’s true. In wars, in artificially induced poverty, in carrying on with the Keynesian ways of thinking of endless imperial expansion and exploitation.

I’ll be honest, bitcoin rewires your brain.

Do you really wanna force that on people?

Yes?

Then let’s read on.

Why is it sometimes so hard to explain, persuade or convince people about bitcoin? Here’s a harsh truth. It’s because you’re the counterparty risk.

When your car breaks down, you go to a mechanic, you seek expert knowledge. He tells you what’s wrong and you generally accept it. Why? Because unless you’re an expert on cars, you don’t have pre-existing knowledge about this specific situation. Nature abhors a vacuum. The mechanic’s knowledge and expertise fills up that vacuum of knowledge.

Why is it different with bitcoin, then?

Because most people believe they already understand money. There’s no vacuum for their knowledge to fill. Like a woman going to a male gynecologist thinking she knows better because she’s the one with the female body, a nocoiner believes they know better because, see? They have been handling and making money all their lives! Who are you to claim things aren’t how they used to think they are?

Yes, sure. You’re the one with the female body, you’re the one with the wallet. But have you actually taken the time to study it? Have you invested the necessary six years in medical school or the 100 hours it takes to grasp bitcoin?

No.

But they don’t accept that. When you make statements about bitcoin, it collides with their pre-existing frame of reference. When that happens, their mind reflexively casts doubts on the new information, actively fights it and rejects it, because it doesn’t conform to what they know. Their mind is the bearer asset, you are the counterparty risk.

Okay, great. How do you overcome this, then?

By taking the time with them. You can’t force someone to get orange-pilled, it’s not shoving knowledge down their throats. They have to do it themselves, so you start small. Plant a seed. Make them question what they know. That tiny seed, just like in Inception, will grow and push aside the other propaganda in their minds, leaving some space for new information to fill the void.

“Why did they stop having money backed by gold?”

That’s one seed.

“Who prints all these new billions?”

Another. Take your pick, it depends on the person you’re talking to.

A good question makes the nocoiner access their accepted knowledge. They usually think they have the answer and you should listen to it, not shutting it down. Ask them to research it further, to back their claims, to look things up. If they don’t have the knowledge, a new vacuum is created and their curiosity will want to fill it up.

Nocoiner: Bitcoin isn’t backed by anything.

You: Okay. Then what would make good money in its place?

Make them talk by asking questions. As they talk, they’ll realise they have massive gaps in their knowledge. You can help them then, but they themselves have to fill up those gaps by asking more questions and getting them to talk more. Why? Because if someone tells something to themselves they will believe it much easier than having you say it to them. Try and lead them to conclusion, a revelation.

When persuading someone, the person talking the most is the one really getting persuaded. Why? Because when you talk you engrave those words into your brain as facts.

Nocoiner: Bitcoin wastes too much energy.

You: How do you determine how much is too much energy to use?

You will never change their minds, they have to change it themselves. You can only help show them the way, they’re the ones that have to do it. Questions are the key to that process.

Tell them less, ask more.

What questions make people curious about bitcoin? You never know, it depends on what ails the person. Think about their pain. If they’re living in Turkey or Argentina, for example, their pain is massive inflation. You might say, “You’re already using USD to protect your monetary value against inflation, right? How about adding BTC to the mix?”

People in those countries generally grasp this concept a lot quicker. The local lira is the crap kind of money, they spend it often. The USD is the good kind of money, they save it, spending it only when absolutely necessary. And gold is the best kind, keeping it hidden in safes and mattresses. Only to be spent in an emergency. They don’t have the financial privilege to insulate them from the need for bitcoin, they already get these layers of hardness in their money, so bitcoin is a lot easier for them.

“What is money?” is another good question. Most people will answer it, and of course it will be flawed and all over the place. Then you might say, “It’s the promise of future value,” and then discuss how bitcoin has a monetary policy that’s planned out for the next 120 years and how nodes and miners facilitate that design. And especially point out how hard it is to change.

“What happened in 1971?” That’s a good one. Get them to look up the fiat monetary system and figure out how it’s not backed by anything. Get them angry at the Keynesian economists, how they’ve ruined entire countries. 2008 money crisis? Inevitable, under the fiat standard. Forget about bitcoin, point your finger towards the rot. It’s all historical fact, they can’t call you a conspiracy theorist. Most people still think that money is backed by gold. Get them to tell it to other people, see their reactions.

This was a part of my guide. Let me know what you think. Soon to be posted at https://georgesaoulidis.com/how-to-orange-pill-people/

@ ce35f2f8:22931a55

If you're like most people, you probably have a lot of applications installed on your computer. Over time, these applications can take up a lot of storage space and slow down your computer. Fortunately, there is a solution: BCU, or Bulk Crap Uninstaller.

BCU is a free, open-source program that makes it easy to uninstall multiple programs at once. It supports a wide range of programs, including Steam games, apps, Chocolatey packages, and Microsoft Store apps. BCU can also detect and uninstall orphaned programs and help you clean up your startup programs.

Using BCU is simple. After you download and install the program, simply select the applications you want to uninstall and click "Uninstall." BCU will then remove the selected applications from your computer, along with any leftover files and registry entries.

One of the most useful features of BCU is its ability to uninstall multiple programs at once. This can save you a lot of time and effort, especially if you have a lot of applications installed. You can also use BCU to create custom uninstall profiles, which can be helpful if you frequently install and uninstall the same set of programs.

Another benefit of using BCU is that it can help you identify and remove leftover files and registry entries that can accumulate over time. These files can take up valuable storage space and slow down your computer, so removing them can help improve its performance.

In conclusion, if you're tired of having a ton of storage used up on your computer, consider using BCU to free up some space. With its easy-to-use interface and powerful uninstallation capabilities, BCU is a great tool for keeping your computer clean and running smoothly. Try it out today and see the difference it can make!

@ d61f3bc5:0da6ef4a

The idea that a user can sign a note and publish it to any number of relays is incredibly simple and powerful. That signed note can then be relayed further and with every new copy it becomes harder to censor. This core simplicity has made Nostr very popular with developers and users.

However, the brunt of the work is currently being done by just a handful of relays:

Given today’s network topology, it is not clear how Nostr could support say 100M users. In addition, the current breed of Nostr clients – while being impressive achievements of decentralized social media – suffer from sluggish UIs when compared to their legacy centralized counterparts.

Let’s consider an approach that might help with scaling, UX, and perhaps even decentralization.

Caching Services

Imagine a service with the following characteristics: - Stores all public Nostr content. Connects to all known Nostr relays and collects content in real time: user metadata, notes, reactions, all events. In short, the entire public Nostr network.

• Can keep full archive or pruned content. Content can be pruned when the allocated disk space runs out. Service operators can decide how much of Nostr they wish to keep.

• Provides fast response times. Clients connecting to the service can expect response times that match or beat the legacy centralized networks. Most content is served from the RAM.

• Provides simple aggregations. Counters for likes, replies, reposts, zaps, and sats zapped are included with every post in the feed.

Such a service is definitely useful for many different applications. But wouldn’t standing up a service like this introduce a centralizing factor to Nostr? Let’s take this thought experiment a step further.

Now imagine that anyone can stand up a caching service with minimal effort and a modest hosting budget. Imagine that caching services are built in a standard and open manner, so that they can interoperate, sync content, and help bootstrap new instances. Considering the incentives, we could end up with hundreds of Nostr caches all over the Internet. Each new copy makes Nostr more robust.

Client Behavior

For Nostr clients, there are pros and cons to using a caching service. The obvious benefits are the UI speed and the improved UX. The downside is that a certain amount of trust is placed in the caching service. Let’s take a closer look at how this would work and how trust could be reduced.

The client connects to a caching service and immediately receives and displays the full feed for the specified user. To reduce trust, the client connects to a subset of relays in the background and fetches the content for comparison. Since all content is signed, the caching service can only lie by omission. The client displays and clearly visually marks any content it found on the relays that was not sent by the service. If the user loses confidence in a cache instance, they could simply point their client to another one, or turn caching off altogether. The client should be fully functional when caching is turned off. The ability to work with a caching service is an extension of Nostr client functionality, not a replacement for standard client capabilities.

When it comes to publishing, there are no changes to the standard Nostr client behavior: all content is published directly to the relays. Caching services should be viewed as a transient layer whose purpose is to improve the UX and reduce the load on the relays.

A Scaling Scenario

Let’s now imagine that Nostr is a raging success. The network has grown to 100M active users. There are hundreds of Nostr apps and services, thousands of active relays. Apps range from highly specialized “micro apps”, to the more elaborate Nostr “everything apps”, dedicated Nostr browsers, and other amazing things we can’t even imagine today.

In this scenario, it is likely that Nostr apps will use a range of caching strategies to serve their users. The most popular apps, with millions of active users, are likely to invest in their caching infrastructure. The up-and-coming apps that wish to compete with the best, but don’t yet have a lot of users are likely going to stand up small scale caching services and grow them as their userbase grows. Finally, there would be a number of apps that don’t use a caching service at all.

The beauty of this outcome is that even users who have millions of followers could publish their content to a handful of low-powered relays. As long as those relays are publicly accessible, the caching services will pick up their content and dramatically reduce the load on them. In addition, taking down any individual cache instance does nothing to hurt Nostr. Users can simply point their clients to any other cache instance, or the relays themselves. Censorship is strictly harder in a world where caching services exist. Those who wish to enforce censorship would have to take down all the relevant relays plus all the cache services.

Conclusion

Caching solutions for Nostr are inevitable. They are very useful, and the incentives are there for them to be built. The only question is whether they will be done in an open and interoperable way or a closed and proprietary way.

If you’ve made it this far, I know what you’re thinking: “Can we see this in action?”

Yes! A preview of this concept is available at primal.net.

The app itself is not fully functional yet, but you can definitely see caching in action. It’s fast. :)

We are actively developing Primal, so make sure you check back often. We have many juicy features in the pipeline. Feel free to reach out with feedback and feature requests. If you are going to Nostrica, then I’ll see you there in a few days! 🤙

@ ce35f2f8:22931a55

If you use any of the popular Chromium-based browsers such as Edge, Chrome, Qutebrowser, or Opera, you may be vulnerable to a type confusion exploit that could compromise your computer's security. This exploit, known as "type confusion," can allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on your computer and gain access to sensitive information such as passwords and financial data.

The type confusion exploit is a type of memory vulnerability that occurs when a program mistakenly assigns a value of one type to a variable of another type. This can cause the program to behave in unexpected ways, which can be exploited by attackers to gain control of the system.

Fortunately, the developers of Chromium-based browsers are aware of this exploit and have released updates to fix the vulnerability. If you are using Chrome, you should upgrade to version 112.0.5615.121 or newer as soon as possible. If you are using a different Chromium-based browser, make sure you are on the latest version available for that browser.

In addition to updating your browser, there are a few other steps you can take to protect yourself from the type confusion exploit. First, be cautious when clicking on links or downloading files from unknown sources. Second, use strong passwords and two-factor authentication to protect your accounts. Finally, consider using a reputable antivirus program to detect and block any malicious software that may try to exploit this vulnerability.

In conclusion, the type confusion exploit is a serious threat to the security of Chromium-based browsers. By updating your browser and taking other precautions, you can help protect yourself from this vulnerability and keep your computer safe from malicious attacks.

@ 3f770d65:7a745b24

Habla is a new blogging platform that's based on Nostr. Or as various Nostr client developers like to call it:

"A way to get Derek Ross to stop sending walls of text".

You can edit posts, which is very nice.

@ de7ecd1e:55efd645

Web 1.0

The web was proposed in 1989, by Tim Berners-Lee but had been conceived decades earlier. The proposal was not read for a full year, and, after that, allowed as a side-project with the infamous words, "vague, but exciting".

The first version added hyperlinks to existing browser technology. Bundled together were:

• HTTP and the first server
• the first web browser, which was also an editor
• HTML which was based on SGML

Importantly a new type of variable was created, the hyperlink, originally the UDI (Universal Document Identifier). This was later standardized as the URI, with an intent to go beyond just documents to describe Things as well.

Web 1.0 was in competition with Gopher at the time, and Gopher was winning. However, there was a rumour that Gopher might charge some royalties on their protocol, say, to enterprise customers, and with that, the people flocked to the web and made it take off as a grass roots movement.

HTTP was a formal specification in 1997 a full 8 years later, and the architecture of the world wide web was published in 2004, 7 years after that.

Web 2.0

As the web grew as a system, businesses started to spring up around it. A product was a browser called Mosaic, made by Marc Andreessen. While Mosiac added multi media, it also removed the editing functionality in the original browser, a tragic loss.

Without editing built in, the web needed central servers to allow user generated content. These servers grew in time to become giants. A technology added on this was AJAX, which allowed browsers to interact with servers asynchronously to generate richer applications and realtime updates.

This system of greater usability was branded "Web 2.0", popularized by Tim O'Reilly. It was not a formal upgrade of the web, so considered somewhat cheeky by some, the inventor of the web calling the term "jargon". Jargon it is, but the term stuck, and the web did go to a next level, adding important things like search, commerce, and the social web.

With the increased centralization of servers came other problems, such as pervasive tracking, monopolistic effects, censorship and information engineering.

Web 3.0

Web 3.0 was a term coined by Tim Berners-Lee, to represent a radical new idea, which allowed both data and documents to be denoted, on the web. This is of course a radical old idea which was in the web 1.0 proposal, a so-called "semantic web", but with the name 2.0 already co-opted, Tim decided to call it web 3.0.

The was formalized in the RDF (resource definition framework) which made extensive use of XML. Later it was renamed Linked Data, sometimes called the web of data. This has been popularized by schema.org which allows commonly used terms to be put in web pages, allowing easier search, and link previews.

Berners-Lee continues to work on a project called Solid, which stands for "Social Linked Data" (a term I coined in 2012), with the aim of making Linked Data more social, and benefiting from same usability upgrades and lessons learned from "Web 2.0"

The full web 3.0 stack is standardized at the w3c, though has grown over time, leading to a somewhat complex system, and steep learning curve for new developers.

A note on the deceptively named web3. This was an attempt by VCs (including Marc Andreessen again) and others to co-opt the web brand. The main aim was an affinity scam to sell tokens to the unsuspecting public. The issue is that it is not the web at all. In this case Berners-Lee did speak out against it:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/04/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-wants-us-to-ignore-web3.html

Towards Web 4.0

The first 3 "versions" of the web work well enough. However, the web itself is ephemeral. The average age of a link is 100 days. And there is no good mechanism at web scale to ensure the integrity or version control of information on the web. A possible approach to the next version of the web would be towards a Temporal Web. I wrote a post about this here:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rww/2021May/0006.html

A significant innovation in recent times is that of Bitcoin, which is a web scale timestamp server. It orders records (blocks) in time, robustly and securely, creating a permanent record. It also, for the first time in history, creates a global currency that is strongly resistant to money printing by fiat.

These two systems working together could create a robust temporal backbone to the web, allowing commerce without rent seeking, and creating whole new business models that are more decentralized, and act in the interests of the users, competing with each other with better services, rather than, serving privacy intrusive monopolies.

Web 5.0

What web 5.0 will look like, nobody knows. However the aim of the original proposal was to have both humans and machines working together. A semantic web was needed for that, to make it easier for machines to participate. Although machines are often censored or blocked on the large platforms, or, even worse, act with perverse incentives to spam users with adverts, noisy information and propaganda.

One guess about web 5.0 could be a web of machine agents, virtual assistants, working together with people to act in the interests of people. This builds on a Temporal web as machines can then evolve over time and the best ones will emerge, in an evolutionary way. Artificial Intelligence can further be folded into the system to optimize its utility to humanity.

A note on web5: This was an earnest attempt to push back on web3 and remove some of the more corrupt aspects, such as copious use of money printing. It has some alignment with the web, but it is not web 5.0, however, I hope it produces something interesting. Never fight an affinity scam with an affinity scam.

IMHO a promising project in this area is Nostr. It reuses the websockets standard to relay information from one user to another which is signed. Importantly, it is grass roots, as the original web was, has already integrated fast cheap payments, with bitcoin and the lightning network in many apps. Unlike the semantic web, it has a very easy developer experience which has seen high uptake from developers. Additionally, the tagging system allows integration with time chains paving a cow path for a temporal web, and then perhaps humans and agents co existing for mutual benefit. We are still early, but time will tell how the web evolves.

Opinions are the views of the author

@ aa55a479:f7598935

Nostrica is the shit.

@ ce35f2f8:22931a55

Intel recently launched its new Arc Alchemist GPUs, which received mixed reviews upon their initial release. However, after several driver updates, the performance of the GPUs has improved significantly.

The Arc A770, priced at $350, is still considered too expensive for what it offers. Although the Arc A750 was originally priced at $290, Intel has recently lowered the price to $250, making it a more appealing option for consumers.

In our previous review of the Arc A750, we suggested that it needed to cost closer to $220 to compete with AMD's Radeon 6650 XT. However, with the improved performance brought by the drivers, our recommended price has been revised to $240. The updated cost-per-frame figures show that at 1080p, the A750 just beats out the RX 6600 as the best value GPU, reducing the cost per frame from the 6650 XT by 5%. While this is great news, it may not be enough to sway consumers away from the more popular AMD Radeon 6650 XT.

However, at 1440p, the A750 becomes the more obvious choice, offering a 14% saving per frame compared to the 6650 XT. At $250, the A750 is a great price for an entry-level GPU, and we highly recommend it to consumers looking for a good value GPU.

In terms of overall performance, we didn't see much improvement across most of the games we tested, with a 2% average increase in performance when excluding Counter-Strike. The massive 120% gain in Counter-Strike largely contributed to the overall 9% boost in performance.

While the Arc A750 is slightly slower than the A770 and its competition, it has some potential advantages, including ray tracing support and upscaling performance. Intel's GPU graphics chip has dedicated units for accelerating every part of both technologies, especially upscaling performance. However, ray tracing support may not be very useful on entry-level GPUs, as halving the already low frame rates isn't desirable for most consumers.

For the best upscaling performance with the A750 or A770, Intel's XeSS needs to be implemented in games. Currently, the Radeon RX 6650 XT has an advantage in this area, as more games offer FSR than XeSS. However, Intel appears committed to making Arc work and has provided good driver support for new games, so we hope that this level of dedication continues.

@ 5df413d4:2add4f5b

Wake in the Blue Hour of morning and walk Luluku Road. It is cool now. The air is fresh and new. The night’s rain recedes to a vast, blue cloudlessness. To the east, the day’s first light cracks over the ocean horizon while high above the waning glimmer of the more stubborn stars still cling to the cerulean sky.

https://i.nostrimg.com/22fc25b691fa5139948caf7d7bb71b28778914cf52d7c10fb1dfb04866cacfb6/file.jpeg

A singular time. A threshold. That noiseless place where night once more slips through the fingers of the ever-pursuing daylight. Luluku Road is stillness. No dog-walkers, no joggers, no running men. The birds are yet still silent. The humming night insects now quiet, hiding from the approaching light.

https://i.nostrimg.com/c6877a8ba8ae9c47ec12a9b1fb759fe937c88c1229f6445156fc80224cbedff2/file.jpeg

https://i.nostrimg.com/2eac0c15ccd0cc8f32af51d4dc4ba0d392f7bad385209e26275adebe1b5058ff/file.jpeg

But do they see you, all the sleeping people? Will they feel the traces of your presence? Will they sense that you’ve been there, shuffling past the houses in the shadow of the dawn? O, Morning Ghost, if you linger long enough, would you become them also, living in their clothes and skin? Not so much homeless, but still never at home…

https://i.nostrimg.com/9d48fe1ff66a68c31f569a579ce8d7d230c97ae3eb88bea23c5ff93de5a2bff2/file.jpeg

Just now, someone on their morning drive, it would seem, off to some unknown somewhere. Taking the curves, lazy and wide, coasting, almost floating until they reach the crossing where you are. No longer alone - with a quick flash of their lights - you see and are seen. Acknowledged by the new day.

https://i.nostrimg.com/92136030b185f21a92520fac5c331b81e57b7fb7554fd45b04ef05515bd982fc/file.jpeg

Ahead, just beyond the neighborhood, the Ko’olau rise. The Windward. Jutting up, straight skyward. Sheer things, less like a mountain range than some massive cresting wave. Looming over, all awe and terror and serenity, making thatch huts of the grand homes, dwarfing the little things we have made.

https://i.nostrimg.com/222696fab2bf783d2302771190b5dc7c72318370d2813a237bc73b3fa06eadf0/file.jpeg

https://i.nostrimg.com/973bd0972e16c2d98c449d0fdb0fa38d6f4e98a1fd84f08cb091999593db5908/file.jpeg

The sun is almost up now. It is time to leave. Time to be someone else, somewhere different from here. Doing things from other people, and not yourself…living in the day. But still thinking of the mountains, wondering at them, all the sleeping people, all the people you might have been.

https://i.nostrimg.com/7fdf731886ff9ba395075ab9c74d5f03313521438dd743840a6797a9d9c987c1/file.jpeg

Luluku Road. Oahu, Hawaii.

There are secrets to be found. Go there.

@ 7ab79bc0:9385ad99

In meinen letzten Artikeln habe ich schon oft und viel über Miner geschrieben. Diese Woche möchte ich mich mit dem vorgeschlagenen Stratum v2 Protokoll beschäftigen, das die Abhängigkeiten von Minern und Mining Pools umkehrt. Dazu wollen wir erstmal ein paar generelle Konzepte in Erinnerung rufen.

Aufgabe von Minern Wer sich nochmal genau mit dem Ablauf von Mining befassen möchte, dem rate ich Ausgabe #41 zu lesen.

Wir erinnern uns, dass es im Bitcoin-Ökosystem drei große Gruppen gibt, die sich nicht jeweils ausschließen. Es gibt die Miner, die Node-Betreiber und die Nutzer. Diese schließen sich nicht gegenseitig aus, da man auch in zwei oder sogar drei dieser Gruppen verhaftet sein kann. Die Miner übernehmen Aufgaben, die die anderen zwei Gruppen nicht leisten können und dafür werden sie durch den Anreizmechanismus belohnt. Denn durch ihre Arbeit gewährleisten sie die Sicherung des Netzwerks (je höher die aufgebrachte Hashrate, desto schwieriger werden Angriffe), sie validieren, sortieren und fügen Transaktionen dem Netzwerk hinzu und darüber hinaus helfen sie dabei bitcoins zu verteilen (zumindest bis alle ca. 21 Millionen bitcoins in ca. 100 Jahren erschlossen wurden). Warum die Analogie zum Mining schwierig ist, haben wir schon öfter besprochen, kurz und verständlich auf den Punkt gebracht hat es diese Woche Gigi in einem kurzen Beitrag.

🌐Bitcoins Are Not Mined, They Are Issued over Time

Mining Pools Ich habe Mining-Pools detailliert in einem Artikel letzten September beschrieben. Wer sich mit dem Thema nochmal eingehender beschäftigen möchte, kann das in Ausgabe #17 tun.

Doch TL;DR für all diejenigen, die keine Zeit oder Lust haben, hier in Kürze: Die immer weiter steigende Hashrate im Netzwerk, ausgelöst durch immer größer werdende Mining-Operationen und immer leistungsfähigere ASIC Chips, führt dazu, dass es kleine und auch mittelgroße Miner immer schwerer haben erfolgreich Bitcoins zu minen, und damit Profite zu erzielen.

Mining-Pools bieten da Abhilfe, indem sie Minern die Möglichkeit bieten, ihre Hashrate zu bündeln und somit eine größere Wahrscheinlichkeit erzeugen, im Wettkampf um die Winner-take-all-Prämie, einen Teil der Belohnung in Form von Block-Subsidy und Gebühren einzustreichen (➡️ Block Reward). Je mehr Miner sich in einem Pool zusammenschließen, um somit die Hashrate zu bündeln, desto wahrscheinlicher wird, dass dieser Zusammenschluss von Minern den nächsten Block findet. Damit sinkt natürlich die einzelne Auszahlung pro Block, jedoch steigt die proportionelle Anzahl der Blocks, die dieser Pool erfolgreich produzieren kann.

Diese Rechnung lohnt sich neben Mining-Farmen auch für die meisten kleinen und mittelgroßen Miner, da so ein stetiger Fluss von Einkommen wahrscheinlicher wird, als ab-und-zu (oder nie) den Jackpot zu knacken. Das Problem bei Mining-Pools besteht in der Bündelung der Hashrate unter einer übersichtlichen Anzahl von Betreibern, denn erstens macht es jede Konzentration einer bestimmten Sache für Angreifer einfacher, diese eine große Einheit ausfindig zu machen und gezielt zu attackieren. Und zweitens verschiebt sich die dezentrale Wahrheitsfindung zugunsten einer zentralisierten Entscheidungsfindung.

Denn bisher sind es die Mining-Pools, die über die Architektur der Blöcke bestimmen, also darüber, welche Transaktionen in den nächsten Blockkandidaten gepackt werden. Dies ermöglicht Mining-Pool-Betreibern sowohl Transaktionen zu zensieren (black listing), als auch Transaktionen auszuwählen, die nicht unbedingt im besten Interesse der Miner (z.B. Transaktionen mit geringen Gebühren, obwohl es welche mit hohen Gebühren gegeben hätte), oder gar des ganzen Netzwerks sind (z.B. leere Blöcke, um das Netzwerk zu verlangsamen) (white listing). Diese vermeintliche Macht der Pool-Betreiber muss nicht unbedingt von ihnen selbst ausgenutzt werden, bietet aber auch Regierungen und anderen Apparaten einen leichten Angriffsvektor, wenn diese versuchen wollen, das Netzwerk, bzw. einzelne Transaktionen gezielt zu zensieren, indem sie Mining-Pools unter Zwang setzen.

Wie in dieser Grafik leicht ersichtlich, gibt es heute einige wenige Pools, die einen deutlichen Anteil der globalen Hashrate bündeln. 80% (!!!) der Hashrate wird von den größten vier Pools bestimmt, und immerhin 55% (also mehr als die Hälfte - immer noch nicht cool) von den beiden größten. Dies macht Pools natürlich zu einem leicht bestimmbaren Angriffspunkt mit einer riesigen Zielscheibe auf dem Rücken.

Besteht überhaupt eine solche theoretische Möglichkeit, dass z.B. Foundry USA im Rahmen einer hypothetischen Verpflichtung durch Dritte (Regierung, Finanzaufsicht, Geheimdienst, etc.) mit der Zensur bestimmter Transaktionen beginnen könnte? Die Antwort ist: theoretisch erstmal ja. Auf technischer Ebene könnte es passieren. Doch Miner würden sehr schnell erkennen, dass etwas im Busch ist und ihre Hashrate auf andere Pools verlagern (dies muss nicht mal aus altruistischen Gründen geschehen, sondern einfach weil theoretische wirtschaftliche Anreize verloren gehen).

Transaktionsauswahl Wie schon erwähnt, sind Mining-Pool-Betreiber heute dafür verantwortlich Transaktionen für den nächsten Block vorzuschlagen. Das bedeutet der Betreiber hat die volle Kontrolle darüber, wie der nächste Block im Mining-Prozess aussieht und die Miner und Mining-Farmen werden sozusagen zu Lieferanten von Hashrate, um diesen Vorschlag umzusetzen. Pools stellen den einzigen Koordinierungspunkt zwischen den teilnehmenden Hardware-Betreibern dar. Es bleibt dem Miner natürlich selbst überlassen, welchem Pool er sich anschließt (und ob sich überhaupt einem Pool angeschlossen wird) und auch der Wechsel von einem Pool zum nächsten ist relativ simpel und schnell vollzogen. Es bleibt jedoch dabei - Betreiber sind verantwortlich für die Auswahl von Transaktionen, die in die Kandidaten-Blöcke eingefügt (oder unterlassen, sprich zensiert) werden sollen. Es besteht also eine zusätzliche Bürde für jeden Miner zusätzlich zu kontrollieren, dass keine Transaktionen ausgeschlossen werden, oder Transaktionen sauber ausgewählt werden.

“Bitcoin is dead.” “Mining is over.” “They will regulate Bitcoin.” “Censorship will come.” - Peter Todd

🌐Marathon Miners Have Started Censoring Bitcoin Transactions

Ob nun ein Pool-Betreiber oder Miner durch Zwang dazu geführt wird, individuelle Transaktionen hinzuzufügen, oder auszulassen, oder ob es aus eigenem Antrieb heraus geschieht (wie im obigen Artikel von MARA beschrieben: der von Marathon kontrollierte MARA Pool hatte entschieden, nur Blöcke mit OFAC-konformen Transaktionen zu produzieren und damit Transaktionen von und zu Adressen zu zensieren, die vom US-Finanzministerium auf die schwarze Liste gesetzt wurden, was einen großen Aufstand hervorrief und kein anderer Miner schloss sich dem Beispiel an. MARA veröffentlichten nach nur einem Monat in einer Pressemitteilung, dass keine Transaktionen mehr gefiltert würden.) ist dabei zunächst egal.

Doch eine Umkehrung der Verantwortlichkeit würde die Verantwortung zu den einzelnen tausenden Hardware-Betreibern (Minern) verschieben, die zentrale Entscheidungsgewalt der Pool-Betreiber auflösen und einen großen Angriffspunkt im Netzwerk eliminieren.

Wie alle anderen Computer-Netzwerk, besteht auch Bitcoin aus Protokollen, mit denen die Kommunikation zwischen Teilnehmern und Regeln festgelegt werden und die geschilderten Bedrohungen werden durch das aktuelle Protokoll ermöglicht, das von Minern und Mining-Pools verwendet wird, um miteinander zu kommunizieren: Stratum V1.

Stratum v2 Wie bei allen Sachen im Bitcoin-Ökosystem, gibt es keine zentrale Organisation, die Verbesserungen im Protokoll oder, wie in diesem Fall, in untergeordneten Protokollen vorschlagen und umsetzen kann. Es bedarf immer einer Gruppe von Entwicklern, die ein Problem im derzeitigen System erkennen und einen passenden Lösungsvorschlag unterbreiten. So auch bei Stratum. Das originale Stratum-Protokoll (v1) wurde 2012 eingeführt und wird seitdem weitgehend unverändert eingesetzt.

Bei der Stratum v2 Reference Implementation (SRI) handelt es sich um eine kostenlose, unabhängige, Open-Source-Variante von Stratum v2. Aber Justus, heißt das etwa, es gibt noch andere Stratum v2 Varianten? Bingo, Zweiter, es können beliebig viele Varianten erstellt werden. Alleine die Mining Pools entscheiden darüber, welches Protokoll, also welche Software, für sie und ihr Geschäftsmodell am besten funktioniert. Und die kürzlich vorgestellte Variante, die SRI, ist das bis dato umfangreichste und am weitesten unterstützte Update des Protokolls. Denn sowohl Braiins, ein Anbieter von Mining-Pools und Mining-Software (inkl. einer eigenen Variante von Stratum v2), als auch Foundry USA, der derzeit größte aller Mining-Pools, sind aktive Unterstützer des Projekts.

SRI ist also das wichtigste Protokoll-Update seit 2012. Aber was genau macht v2 so wichtig und wo liegen die Schwächen von v1?

In der aktuellen Version 1 ist Datenübertragung zwischen Minern, aber auch zwischen Minern und Pool-Betreibern nicht verschlüsselt. In v2 wird Kommunikation verschlüsselt und gewährleistet so Integrität und Vertraulichkeit der übermittelten Informationen. Dies soll vor allem vor sogenannten Man-in-the-Middle-Angriffen schützen, bei denen Dritte die Übertragung von Hashrate zwischen Minern und Pools abfangen (sogenanntes Hashrate-Hijacking), und diese als die eigenen weiterzuleiten und somit Auszahlungen zu stehlen.

Das v2 Protokoll ist vollständig binär. Das heißt, Datenübertragungen werden nicht in Menschen-lesbarem Textformat (ASCII Code), sondern in Computer-lesbarem Binärformat vorgenommen, was unnötige Datenmengen eliminiert. Dies und einige andere Leistungsverbesserungen machen den gesamten Prozess bis zu 20% performanter.

Stratum v2 dezentralisiert das Bitcoin-Mining erheblich, denn Miner bekommen die Möglichkeit, die Transaktionen fortan selbst auszuwählen, wodurch das Netzwerk zensurresistenter wird. Dies wird mit Hilfe von weiteren untergeordneten Protokollen erreicht, die es Minern ermöglichen, Transaktionen über ihre Nodes auszuwählen. Dies ist ein wichtiger Meilenstein bei der Demokratisierung der Transaktionsauswahl im gepoolten Mining und eliminiert die oben beschriebenen Risiken.

Konkret haben die Entwickler ein neues dezentralisiertes untergeordnetes Protokoll geschaffen, das sich Job Negotiator (JN) nennt. Achtung, jetzt wird es etwas technisch: Miner betreiben ihre eigenen Knoten, die eine neue Vorlage direkt vom Vorlagenanbieter erhalten. Die neue Vorlage enthält den Merkle-Pfad der Transaktionen, die vom Anbieter ausgewählt wurden. Für den neuen Block muss ein neuer Job erstellt werden, also sendet der JN des Miners eine Nachricht mit einem vorgeschlagenen Satz von Transaktionen an den Pool-Betreiber. Der Betreiber akzeptiert dann die Vorlage oder lehnt sie ab. Wenn der Vorschlag der Miner akzeptiert wird, werden sie benachrichtigt, dass sie mit dem Mining beginnen und ihre anteilige Hashrate an den Pool senden können.

Kurz gesagt: Miner schlagen vor, welche Transaktionen in einen Block kommen und nicht andersrum. Alle sind glücklich, alle sind froh und darüber hinaus geschieht dies natürlich blitzschnell, sodass für die Miner und den Pool kein Nachteil gegenüber anderen Mitbewerbern entsteht, denn beim Mining zählt jede Millisekunde, wenn es darum geht erfolgreich den nächsten Block produzieren zu dürfen, oder nicht.

Was sind die Anreize für die Pool-Betreiber, dieses neue Protokoll zu verwenden, wenn sie damit ihr Gewaltmonopol aufgeben?

Relativ einfach: Pool-Betreiber mögen diese Verantwortung eigentlich gar nicht. Sie haben sie irgendwie geerbt und sind mit dieser großen Verpflichtung gegenüber dem Netzwerk und sich selbst irgendwie im Unreinen. Ein bisschen so wie bei Morty, Aaliyah, Djibrail, Laila, Issa, Leonora, Naima und Amaya.

Pool-Betreiber mögen es also nicht so in der Öffentlichkeit zu stehen und permanent angegriffen zu werden, des Weiteren birgt die Transaktionsauswahl auch ein gewisses Haftungsrisiko, das sie gerne von sich weisen würden.

Die beiden anderen grundlegenden Merkmale des Stratum v2 Protokolls sind, wie oben beschrieben, natürlich auch Sicherheits- und Leistungsverbesserung. Alleine für diese Attribute würde es sich schon lohnen, auf das neue Protokoll umzusteigen.

Die neue Variante des Protokolls (SRI) wurde erst kürzlich öffentlich und als Open-Source Code zugänglich gemacht. Es bleibt also nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis sich nach Braiins und Foundry auch die anderen Mining-Pools (sehr wahrscheinlich) nach einer gründlichen Test-Phase dem Update öffnen.

Former National Security Council Chief of Cybersecurity on Censoring Bitcoin

Besonders in Zeiten, in denen Gegner von Bitcoin in halb-öffentlichen Reden über Pläne sprechen, wie man das Bitcoin-Netzwerk kontrollieren, bzw. für seine Zwecke benutzen kann, ist es wichtig die oben besprochenen Angriffs-Vektoren zu minimieren.

Carole House, ehemalige Direktorin für Cybersicherheit des Nationalen Sicherheitsrates des Weißen Hauses, sprach bei einem Event an der Universität von Princeton und sagte "sie würde lieber mehr Hashrate in den USA sehen, damit sie Miner zwingen können, das Netzwerk zu zensieren" und dass es "nicht nur darum ginge, Minern zu sagen, dass sie bestimmte Transaktionen nicht in Blöcke einbauen, sondern auch nicht auf Blöcken mit nicht konformen Transaktionen aufzubauen, damit diese Transaktionen nirgendwo in der Kette ankommen".

Die zeugt davon, dass Menschen wie Carole House ein substantielles Verständnis von der Bitcoin-Technologie besitzen und dieses Fachwissen dafür verwenden werden, Wege und Mittel aufzutun, wie man Bitcoin zumindest attackieren kann.

🫳🎤 Sven

@ a60e79e0:1e0e6813

Why non-KYC?

With the recent news that the worlds biggest Bitcoin on ramp intends to start selling blockchain analysis software to the U.S government, it felt only right I try to steer people away from their shady practices. Think about that for a second, the same people that sell you your bitcoin also want to sell tools to the U.S government so that they can track you on chain.

To buy bitcoin from Coinbase or any other KYC exchange, users will need to provide personal information. Usually this info is in the form of name, address, drivers license, and in some cases a selfie holding a piece of paper with the name of the exchange and the date.

KYC information not only ties your personal identity to any bitcoin you purchase, but also creates a huge honey pot of sensitive information at risk of being stolen due to incompetent security practices at some of these companies. Once you purchase bitcoin via KYC, no amount of coinjoining or elaborate spending techniques will erase the fact that on X date and at X time, this person bought X amount of bitcoin from this exchange.

If this doesn't sound like much a problem to you and you don't see it as a threat then that's cool. KYC exchanges generally offer a slicker user experience which is attractive to Bitcoin newcomers, just be aware of the tradeoffs. Once you give up that data, they have it forever.

However, if the above is a concern for you, there are plenty of alternatives.

Enter Bisq...

What is Bisq?

Bisq is a decentralised bitcoin exchange that users access via desktop app that runs over the Tor network. It requires no KYC information and enables users to buy or sell directly with one another without a trusted third party. Bisq secures trade funds using a 2 of 2 multi-sig escrow system and encrypts all communications between the two parties.

Your first trade using Bisq

I'm a firm believer that a lot of people shy away from decentralised exchanges because generally there are some extra steps a. There are no central Bisq Servers, it is completely peer to peer and non custodial. You are always in control of your own funds.

Hopefully this brief walkthrough of a Bisq trade will show you that it's not as scary as you might have first thought! I have blanked out any sensitive information to preserve my privacy. This whole trade took me 10 minutes which includes taking screenshots along the way for this article. Depending on your chosen payment method your trade time may vary.

1. Download and install Bisq and you will be met with the home screen

2. Click on account and add the payment method you intend to use to purchase bitcoin with. There are nearly 30 different methods on offer including Faster Payments, Revolut and SEPA.

3. Now that your payment method is setup you can go to the 'Buy BTC' tab and see the sellers offering bitcoin in exchange for your chosen payment method. Here you can see the BTC price, percentage difference compared to the 'spot' price and the quantity of bitcoin for sale from each seller. Once you have found an offer you like, click 'Take offer to buy BTC'.

4. This will take you through to a screen this screen for you to check and confirm details before entering the trade. When you are happy, hit 'next step'.

5. You now need to fund your trade wallet with a small amount of bitcoin which acts as a security deposit. This is usually around 15% of the trade size. The seller also has to post a deposit on their side.

6. You can now confirm the offer and start the trade

7. You will now have a very short wait while the Bitcoin network confirms the trade’s transaction which puts both parties security deposits into the escrow multi-sig.

8. After one confirmation on chain you will then see a window with the sellers details for you to send payment to.

9. Once you have sent the payment, press the button to confirm you have done so and then wait for the seller to confirm they have received your funds. At this point you can also chat with your trading partner via end to end encrypted messaging buy pressing 'Open trader chat'.

Once the seller confirms receipt of funds, the purchased bitcoin along with your security deposit will be released into your Bisq wallet.

10. Thats it, your first trade is now complete! You can now either withdraw your bitcoin to an external wallet or leave in your Bisq account.

The tradeoffs with buying non-KYC

As simple as buying on Bisq is, there are some tradeoffs to be aware of.

1. You need BTC before you trade to form a security deposit. Not a problem if you have been around for a while but could become an issue if you want to use Bisq as your first buy. Your best option in this instance is to get some bitcoin from a friend or family member.

2. KYC free bitcoin often attracts a premium above the spot price which can put some buyers off. As I discussed earlier, this is about tradeoffs and I would personally would be happy to pay 5-8% above spot price for the luxury of keeping my personal data safe.

If you are not in a rush to purchase then you can also set up a 'Buy Offer' where you can let the Bisq network know that you are willing to purchase an amount of bitcoin at a certain price relative to the market value. If a seller comes along and likes your offer they can take you up on it.

3. Decentralised exchanges can sometimes suffer from liquidity shortages when compared with larger centralised entities. If you are looking to buy larger amounts more frequently, you may struggle.

4. Although it has never happened to me, sometimes peer to peer trading doesn't work out as intended and users will need to go through the dispute resolution process. Fortunately due to the way Bisq's incentive structures are built, these instances are few and far between.

As with most things Bitcoin related, the whole KYC/Non-KYC debate is nuanced and full of tradeoffs. I get it, the most common fiat onramps like Coinbase and CashApp make life very easy to buy, particularly for newbies, but please take a second to consider the tradeoffs and look into the alternatives before giving away your personal information so readily.

KYC is forever.

The next time you decide you want to stack some sats I urge you to give Bisq a try!

To read more about Bisq visit their documentation page and have a read of this article by @ElkimXOC which provides a VERY in depth look at Bisq including instructional videos.

This is a re-post of the original guide found at Bitcoiner.Guide for the purposes of testing long form Nostr content. Thank you for reading.

@ 89e14be4:a4fdd02c

I am aware that my words are not always politically correct, but I embraced bitcoin and nostr precisely because of its free and resilient spirit. I am a free soul and so are my words.

I have been using Damus continuously for 6 months (how time goes by!) and I have always been a happy user and I have felt that the program evolved in a coherent way within what I "sense" the community is asking for.

Also in the last few weeks I have seen how we have received some updates, which in my opinion, have not been well thought out before launching them.

The responsibility acquired when many people start using your tools is huge, there are two ways to approach this, the first one, and I saw this a lot in open source projects in the early 2000's, is to consider the project as your own and therefore if you don't like what I do, make a fork. The second, which defines more my way of thinking, is to consider the project as something that was never yours, but from the beginning it was always something free and for the whole community (if its license is open source obviously, I'm not talking about proprietary projects).

This last update of Damus, for me has meant my first frontal rejection to a feature, that in my way of seeing things, goes absolutely against the freedom of the user, forcing him to monetize many of their social interactions.

In my opinion, a social network, social protocol, communication protocol or whatever you want to call it, must emulate in the virtual world the interactions that we have been doing offline for 100,000 year ago. And honestly, I don't pay pennies every time I agree with a friend or family member's way of thinking, but I give them a hug, express my support or simply give them a smile.

Monetizing every interaction is a fatal mistake, discouraging new users to interact with others and forcing others to "ground" every interaction towards the material, earthly and outside the "emotional" realm?

This is not a criticism to Damus developers, I'm sure they have done it with the best intentions, but I think, and this is just an opinion of one more user, that this kind of decisions should be agreed before, maybe via polls? 😜

@ 7f5c2b4e:a818d75d

Nowadays, people mostly use smartphones to consume content. This quick guide will show you how to make your interaction with Nostr apps on your smartphone seamless.

This guide will come in handy for those who already have some experience using Nostr, and already secured their Nostr keys, configured Zaps⚡️, explored a few Nostr related apps, and maybe fine-tuned their relay connections. If you are a new-joiner, I suggest you start with this quick onboarding guide.

Intro

Nostr is often mistaken for a social media platform, however this perception couldn’t be further from the truth. Social media is just a drop in a bucket of what Nostr is capable of – from polls to media management tools to Marketplaces. The second most beautiful thing about Nostr after its censorship resistance is the interoperability it provides for all the apps built on top of it. Moreover, it allows you to use a single identity – the identity you truly own – to interact with all these apps. All you’ve gotta do is generate a pair of Nostr keys and use them for authentication.

But is it convenient – and most importantly, secure – to paste your Nostr private key in every web app you want to check out? Not at all! That is why Nostr developers implemented the NIP-07 improvement, which allows you to use key management tools (e.g. Alby) to securely login and interact with Nostr apps. NIP-07 is widely adopted on desktop devices; many users enjoy the stitchless experience of automatically logging into various apps, while securely storing their own keys. Sadly, many are now aware that the same seamless experience is available on mobile…

A Million Tiny Worlds

Being an open protocol, Nostr inspires dozens of developers to build their projects on top. This is extremely positive for the development of the ecosystem building up around censorship resistant communications…

However, such approach has its downsides, particularly in terms of UX – using so many apps and having to log in to each one has got to be inconvenient, right? Wrong! But let’s first describe the potentially inconvenient situation one may find himself in – without realizing the problem, there is no point in searching for a solution.

The problem

Imagine the following scenario:

You are hanging out with fellow nostriches via one of the most popular Nostr apps – be it Damus or Amethyst – and stumble upon a note containing a link to one of the Nostr web apps. Possibly, one mentioned below:

• https://habla.news/ – Nostr based blogpost platform by nostr:npub107jk7htfv243u0x5ynn43scq9wrxtaasmrwwa8lfu2ydwag6cx2quqncxg (think censorship resistant Medium)
• https://badges.page – Nostr badges management platform | by nostr:npub107jk7htfv243u0x5ynn43scq9wrxtaasmrwwa8lfu2ydwag6cx2quqncxg (check out this article | by nostr:npub10mxnle348mzv2dnj0ylgz3zu9gceenc29x9fr4m6mnars66j7vxsnkn8mj for more info on badges)
• https://nostrnests.com/ – Twitter Spaces alternative that rewards | by nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424
• https://wavman.app/ – Nostr compatible open-source music player | by nostr:npub1yfg0d955c2jrj2080ew7pa4xrtj7x7s7umt28wh0zurwmxgpyj9shwv6vg

... Or perhaps you want to log in to one of the Nostr web clients like https://nostrgram.co/ | by nostr:npub1t9a59hjk48svr8hz6rx727ta6kx53n5d6fw8x26vsua0zytpl87sa6h4uw

Clicking such links redirects you to your default mobile browser, which allows you to (sometimes) see the contents of the website. However, posting, liking, let alone zapping ⚡️ won’t be feasible until you log in with your Nostr private key, and, as I mentioned above, pasting your private keys into web interfaces is not the best practice.

Seamless Nostr experience comes to Mobile

When it comes to content consumption, smartphones and tablets have become a decent replacement for desktop computers, which led to exponential growth of mobile internet traffic over the last decade. Mobile browsers are now providing UX that is not far from what desktop browsers have to offer.

The functionality we will look into today is mobile browser extensions, particularly the ones that offer support of Lightning Network (LN) and Nostr protocol.

Not all mobile browsers offer extensions functionality; you should choose a browser according to the OS you are running.

Android: * Firefox * Kiwi

iOS: * Orion * Safari (Nostore extension available, but it does not support LN)

Setting up

The most popular browser extension among nostriches and LN users is Alby [^1]. I’ll be using Alby with the Orion browser on iOS for this guide. Android users will have to follow similar steps to set up the extension with either Kiwi or Firefox.

💡Pro Tip Set up your Alby account on desktop first – it will be much more convenient + you’ll be using this extension on your computer anyways – be it for Lightning logins or to use Nostr web client like snort.social.

Let's walk through the process step by step:

1 After downloading a browser, head to the settings.

2 Tap on Extensions (Add-ons in Firefox).

3 Tap “+” to add an extension.

4 Choose either Chrome or Firefox extension (both work for Alby).

5 After being prompted to Chrome (or Firefox) Web Store search for Alby.

6 Tap on the banner that will appear.

7 Tap Add to Orion.

8 Confirm your intention.

9 You’ll see a welcome screen asking you to set a password to secure your mobile extension. Think of it as a PIN code you would use to unlock your wallet. Make sure to set something you will definitely remember to avoid resetting in the future.

10 Assuming you’ve already set up your Alby account on your desktop, tap Login. Otherwise, tap Sign up – the process will be identical to the one described by nostr:npub1cly0v30agkcfq40mdsndzjrn0tt76ykaan0q6ny80wy034qedpjsqwamhz in her step-by-step guide.

11 If you’re logging in, simply paste your ⚡️ address and password into the corresponding fields.

12 You will be presented with a dashboard; tap “꠵”.

13 Tap Accounts (if by this time you have more than one, choose the one you’d like to be using now).

14 Scroll down to the Nostr section and paste your Private Key into the corresponding field (if you are starting from scratch, it’s a good idea to double-check that the private key is in place)

That’s it. You can now authenticate yourself in any Nostr web app, login to numerous web apps via lightning, send and receive sats and much more … all from the palm of your hand.

On the screenshots below, you can see that the Login button appeared on habla.news (15). With the installed extension, you can also log in to badges.page (16) and other Nostr platforms, while keeping your Nostr keys safe (17).

Lots of work ahead

Hope this guide was useful, please share your feedback and suggest edits. I believe this article has room to improve, and I will be happy to zap ⚡️ useful recommendations. The same goes for Nostr protocol and associated apps – the developers are working hard on improving each and every aspect of the ecosystem, but Nostr is still a baby, so it too has plenty of room to grow. If you notice any bugs or come up with ideas to improve the protocol or particular apps, contact the devs – they are always happy to improve UX.

The most precise illustration of Nostr developers’ routine

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My other writings:

• A step-by-step guide on Nostr relays -- a concise, yet thorough instruction on how to improve your connectivity while preserving device battery: https://lnshort.it/nostr-relays
• "Welcome to Nostr" -- a quick guide to get the newly-joined nostrich up and running in no time: http://lnshort.it/nostr-welcome

---

Thanks for reading and see you on the other side of the rabbit hole.

nostr:npub10awzknjg5r5lajnr53438ndcyjylgqsrnrtq5grs495v42qc6awsj45ys7

---

Found this post valuable?

Zap ⚡ 21ideas@getalby.com

Follow: npub10awzknjg5r5lajnr53438ndcyjylgqsrnrtq5grs495v42qc6awsj45ys7

Check out my project: https://bitcal.21ideas.org/about/

---

[^1]: a step-by-step guide on using Alby extension made with 💜 by melissa

@ a9fdc6bc:199d21a2

On April 18 police from the National Operations Department (NOA) of the Swedish Police raided the Mullvad VPN office in Gothenburg. They had a search warrant and intended to seize computers with customer data.

In line with their no logs policies they didn't keep any data or logs on their customers. They argued the police had no reason to expect to find what they were looking for and any seizures would therefore be illegal under Swedish law. After demonstrating that this is how their service worked the police left empty handed.

When you use a VPN you are trusting the VPN provider to keep your online activity private and the only why they can do that is if they don't keep logs of what you do online. If you don't thrust them you can't use them and don't be fooled by free VPN providers, if you are not paying for the service you are the product and they are selling your data to make money.

I only know of a few reputable VPN providers that I trust with my data and Mullvad is one of them. Proton VPN and iVPN are also great options. https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subject-to-a-search-warrant-customer-data-not-compromised/?ref=nobsbitcoin.com

@ 5df413d4:2add4f5b

On Jan 19th, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, the largest consumer bank in the US, shared his views on bitcoin with CNBC’s Squawk Box. And phew, let me tell ya, it’s a veritable tour de force of status quo FUD (Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.) and logical fallacy. So, gather round frens! Let’s deconstruct the highlights of Mr. Dimon’s take on bitcoin to examine why it is all completely wrong.

Tweet

Bitcoin is a hyped-up fraud, a pet rock!

For the opening salvo, we get a nice 1980s spin on the age-old “Bitcoin is a fad” / Tulip Mania mantra. This is the gold standard (pun intended) of a priori arguments against bitcoin. If one decides, axiomatically and in their own mind, that bitcoin is a fad, then no amount of empirical evidence to the contrary may sway them.

Along with a priori reasonings, this argument generally works best in tandem with deep appeal to both authority and incredulity. Mr. Dimon, being one whom society is told not only understands but controls money, wields the former expertly and implicitly with his every statement — given his position, this would be the case even if he did not want or intend for it to be so. He’s Jamie Dimon, a name synonymous with money, America’s friendly-faced rich uncle — he should know best, right? To the latter, dismissing bitcoin as a fad brings soothing conform to the minds of those irreconcilably bound to the status quo. For such a person it is easy to believe that bitcoin is too exotic, too transformational, too disruptive to be successful because it is also extremely convenient to believe the same. It denies that anything transformational is happening, and therefore absolves them of having to grapple with, make, or accept changes that they would prefer not to — a dangerous magical thinking in the face of rapidly accelerating monetary and technological evolution.

So, in making this argument, Mr. Dimon willfully ignores the large and clear body of observational evidence that bitcoin is not a fad. Examination of bitcoin’s hashrate (compute power directed towards the bitcoin protocol at significant cost of money, time, effort, and management) and number of bitcoin holders shows a steady and strong upward trend over the past 14 years despite extreme fluctuations in bitcoin’s USD price, exchange hacks and crashes, and roiling global regulatory animus. Rather, observation would suggest a continuously and growing number of people, the world over, find both real and enduring value in bitcoin — the opposite of a fad if there ever was one.

Blockchain, not Bitcoin!

For his second trick, Mr. Dimon presents “Blockchain, not bitcoin!” When host, Andrew Sorkin, raises that firms like BlackRock are investing in bitcoin infrastructure as a counterpoint, Mr. Dimon wastes no time to aggressively reframe the conversation around blockchain, “No, that’s different — blockchain is a technology ledger system that we use to move information […] That’s a technology ledger type of thing that we think will be deployable. But remember, we’ve been talking about that for twelve years too, and very little has been done.”

What a pivot! It is hard to believe that Mr. Dimon’s changing the subject to “blockchain technology” is accidental. It certainly could not have been lost on him that just days prior BlackRock had added bitcoin eligibility to its 15B USD Global Allocation Fund while also committing a new 17M USD loan to bitcoin miner Core Scientific. Hence, the question was about bitcoin, but Mr. Dimon’s answer was about “Blockchain.” Which is to say, it was a purposeful and evasive non-answer.

Further, by Mr. Dimon’s own admission, the bank’s 12-years long engagement with “blockchain” has yielded scarcely little fruit. Conversely, what has bitcoin achieved over the past 12 years? Well, since Jan 19th, 2011 bitcoin has monetized from 0.32 USD to some 23,000 USD on the day of this interview, weathering eight 50%+ price corrections and an ATH of nearly 69,000 USD in between. It is on the balance sheet of Fortune 500 companies. It is legal tender in El Salvador. And it is estimated to be held by at least 100M people, globally. “Blockchain” or distributed ledger is simply a single component element, along with proof of work, decentralization, equitable supply and issuance rules, and first mover advantage which have enabled bitcoin to be the emergent, revolutionary monetary phenomenon that it is. In short, it should be clear to anyone seeking the truth of the matter that bitcoin, not blockchain, is the key innovation here.

How do you know its gunna stop at 21 million!

Next, Mr. Dimon hits a crescendos by rejecting that bitcoin’s supply is fixed at 21 million coins, “Well maybe its gunna get to 21 million and Satoshi’s picture is going to come up and laugh at you all — and by then satoshi will have taken out billions of dollars!” Lets be clear here, this is not some technical or economic argument based on evidence or logical reasoning, this is purely argumentum ad ignorantiam, appeal to ignorance. The premise here is that as we can neither time-travel into the 2140s (when the last bitcoin is mined) nor prove with absolute certainty that there is not some heretofore undiscovered corruption in the Bitcoin Core code that will one day, someway, somehow, result in violation of the 21 million supply cap — therefore, Mr. Dimon’s assertion that bitcoin’s supply is not fixed must be taken as correct.

This is, of course, absurd. But it is subtle, pernicious and, sadly, can be quite convincing FUD to the many people attenuated to the new theology of accepting all things digital as majik, unbounded from fundamental mathematics or the laws of physics. Believing that “anything is possible” through technology can also be used as false refutation if something, say, the corruption of bitcoin’s supply cap, is presented as not possible. Yet, bitcoin’s supply cap of 21 million is defined in the protocol source code — a code that is downloaded and run independently on each bitcoin node. As the code is open source and constantly audited, in actuality, we are left with overwhelming evidence that bitcoin’s supply is fixed to 21 million, and no evidence that it is not. And in the realm of empirical reasoning, where we all should be operating - Jamie Dimon most of all - this is as good as it gets.

FTX was a “Decentralized Ponzi Scheme”

Ok, so in no uncertain terms, FTX was a centralized Ponzi scheme. There was never, for a single moment, anything decentralized about FTX, Alameda, or any of their “crypto projects.” Host Joe Kernen, before he is cut off by Mr. Dimon, aptly points out that conflating FTX’s criminality with bitcoin would be like conflating Bernie Madoff’s criminality with the very concept of banking itself — an overreach, and one that Mr. Dimon certainly would not agree with himself (JP Morgan having been Madoff's primary banker and all, under Mr. Dimon's tenure no less...). All of this is important to remember because what Mr. Dimon does here is a sly and savvy heuristic attack on the very idea of decentralization. Giving that decentralization is the organizing framework that underpins bitcoin’s security and network resilience, this can and should be viewed as an attack on bitcoin, albeit an indirect one. So, Mr Dimon, even when disparaging the crypto criminals at FTX, seems unable to help himself from doing so in a way that falsely misdirects ire at the bitcoin ethos.

Conclusion

Jamie Dimon is wrong about bitcoin. His arguments are dismissive, dare I say lazy, ignore empirical evidence, and rely overwhelmingly on logical fallacy and topic/conclusion misdirection. It can be tempting for established bitcoiners to simply disregard Mr. Dimon as an “enemy of bitcoin,” yet his positions — no matter not shallow, simplistic, or wrong — represent the thinking of Boomer money holders and their Gen X corporate manager allies writ-large. While Bitcoin itself requires no change to prove these people wrong and obsolete their worldviews, we bitcoiners likely do ourselves a service in being able to deconstruct (its important to understand which fallacies are being employed) and rationally refute these type of “Blue Chip” attempts to obscure the truth and slander bitcoin.

Remember, FUD is the mindkiller — reject it and destroy it wherever it is found.

@ d3411006:abd84a80

教程版本v1.2 作者： @玛雅idgui 🐰ᥬ[🐶]᭄🌿 cndx@btcdv.com

作为第一个长博客文，v1.2更新加上链接，之前4月17日v1版本先简单介绍下纯文字版复制过来，后面v2，v3等会补充详细内容和图片链接等优化，敬请关注和期待，谢谢。

0～简介

本文从入门到精通，通俗易懂地系统介绍Nostr的原理及使用技巧，希望能帮你少走很多弯路和加深对Nostr的理解。章节安排顺序如下，文会较长请耐心看或跳到自己想看的位置。 1. ～加密账户私钥签名，这是Nostr的 #BTC 起源和底层逻辑。 2. ～协议各实现端入门，快速地进入到 #Nostr 的世界。 3. ～中继的选择配置，影响Nostr使用效果的关键配置 #Relay 列表维护。 4. ～如何证明你是你，介绍设置 #NIP5 和徽章 #NIP58 的方法与意义。 5. ～闪电ZAP打赏，⚡闪电网络 #Lighting 钱包打赏 #ZAP 和投票调查 #NIP69 。 6. ～图床及看图应用介绍，可以发带图的文和看被墙的图。 7. ～社区共识底线呼吁，为了社区更好不能做或呼吁少做的事儿。 8. ～感谢及进一步本文更新完善计划。

1～加密账户私钥签名

大家都已知Nostr协议是主要由BTC生态开发者们开源维护。可知其思想最早可追溯到中本聪时期。在最早期的QT核心钱包中，就在文件菜单中醒目位置设有消息签名和验证消息功能，这也被后来各Core版本和甚至竞争币版本继承，其实那就可视为Nostr的最早萌芽。即可以有大量的信息由私钥签名发出来，而别人可验证确实是此币地址拥有私钥者发的，别人无法伪造。将这些签名信息按一定格式规则来细化定义，以及加个收集整理记录转发这些签名信息的中继服务器，中继们平等因此像全节点样点对点，但不主动相互传播需用户广播才传播而已，那么就基本发展成Nostr协议了。

底层的加密账户，Nostr与比特币以及狗狗币等各种各样的竞争币都是互通的，均是椭圆曲线非对称加密账户。具体使用来说，脑口令工具 ahr999.com 和助记词工具 vbtcv.com 等，都是可以快速生成用于Nostr的nsec私钥和npub公钥。各种私钥数据相同仅仅只是不同编码，另外公钥npub可转化为两个可能比特币地址，比特币地址若公开过公钥能转化编码到npub，用这条甚至从创世区块地址，找到了中本聪的npub即其Nostr账户，已经有人去关注了。

通过脑口令，或者助记词词组来生成个自己的npub，而不是靠实现端随机生成会较好。一方面是容易记忆尤其通过脑口令，可避免遗忘丢失私钥，另一方面是避免实现端伪随机私钥，而实际使用的其能控制的账户，虽然这种情况极少发生。用法很简单打开上面两工具页面，随便输入脑口令，或者助记词中点随机，下方种类下拉选择Nostr。从生成中选择自己喜欢的npub最好筛选前后含义较好（如有个AI的以npub1sat开头），多些数字6和8，不要出现数字4或不好含义的字串词。npub可能要跟随一生，不要轻易选定，当然若只是给小号用那可随意。

2～协议各实现端入门

通过聚合导航网址 8Nostr.com 或者 NostrURL.com 可以超链接到各Clinet实现端，进而快速进入Nostr的世界。

2.1 ～网页实现端

这个最快且跨端，各手机或电脑等只要有浏览器即可访问。缺点是因没有缓存每次都加载头像，可能较慢。一些较复杂的NIP也较难在网页端实现支持。目前较好用的是 iris.to 或者 app.coracle.social ,还有flycat.club 主打博客。搭建相对较简单，未来可以会有更多。点击进入后输入上面脑口令或助记词生成的nsec私钥登录即可，如不太放心也可输入公钥npub只读模式，或者通过Alby浏览器插件登录，在需签名时会有交互。

2.2 ～手机APP实现端

大陆用户访问苹果APP商店和较正规的安卓应用商店或平台，都是找不到的。苹果用户点击链接，安装测试版Plebstr或Nostrmo等。而安卓用户，建议到Github，从源头上下载，开源代码的安卓应用最新的发布，开源而更加安全可靠，紫水晶Amethyst 或者 Nostros 较推荐前者，功能最全实现了大多数NIP，且可各Note自动翻译为自己母语。若不能访问Github有个链接YUN到百度云盘，也可下载。

2.3 ～电脑实现端

也有很多，但一般用电脑浏览器网页端即可。而iris推出了个电脑端，点链接去其Github选择 iris_0.1.0_x64_en-US.msi下载即可在Windows电脑上安装，比直接访问网页要快些。各端的处理方式不同，因此大家最好用些通用的，如直接写npub或note引用，目前好像只Amethyst支持Markdown格式，因此考虑支不支持都格式较好的，如前面加井号空格标题变大，就算不变格式也影响不大。

3～中继的选择配置

说是抗审查不会封号而有些人却抱怨被墙了直接上不去，有些人抱怨信息内容太少而有些人却又抱怨垃圾信息太多，有些人抱怨加载太慢太卡。而种种这些类似负面现象，可能别人却没有这些问题，关键在于您的Relays中继列表的设置情况。设好Relays是决定Nostr使用效果的关键。另外要隔段时间就维护列表，删除不能连接和增加些新的中继Relays。

【中继设置数量个数】一般刚进入各实现端，会默认连接几个或十几个较大较常用的Relays，而墙精准墙住，因此默认状态的各实现端一般是不能用的。需要添加一些好Relays后，才开始能用。全球Relays有几百个且不断增多，加上未公开而被收录的估计有千多个，添加过多会较耗网络而较卡，因此建议添加几十个，可能最好50个左右会较好。另外千万注意，不要加上了高频大量发广告的坏Relays，会卡到几乎不能操作。有人担心中继设置太多，会影响隐私，其实个Note本来就是公开，各Relays本来就是可以去主动获取聚合的。动态IP和VPN等也能较好保护自己的位置信息。

【怎么判断中继好坏？】首先知名的可放心加上如： wss://universe.nostrich.land wss://offchain.pub wss://relay.plebstr.com wss://relay.nostrich.de wss://nostr.beta3.dev 当然他们未来也可能变坏，并不绝对好。最好访问：8nostr.com/relays 在右上角输入找到的Relay地址，观察一会儿看看。若很久都没信息或信息是很久前的，可能被墙或很少人用，若信息很多是刷屏广告，那么直接别用。

最后注意，在添加或删除完后，要记得点击一下公开保存或发布按钮，这样Relays列表信息就跟随自己账户，在所有实现端同步了。注意出意外列表少时别保存发布防止之前写的被覆盖。可以看别人的中继列表参考，可点击加入自己列表，有时有的显示为空即其用各实现端默认Relays列表从未编辑保存过。在Amethyst上可看到某Note的头像下方，一般有自己与发布者共同的维系可见的Relays的灰色小图标们，从哪里获取当前此Note，遇到好内容也可点击Note右上角菜单，点再次发送给中继的广播，帮其传播到自己的Relays列表。只要大家都积极广播好文，就算是作者设的Relays少也可很快点对点传播到大多数公开Relays上，让更多人看到。

4～如何证明你是你

NIP05认证，有些人觉得没用，那是因未到需要用时。不仅仅只是防止别人模仿你的号。另外例如若自己私钥不小心丢失或被盗公开了，那么怎么证明你是你引导用户到你的新号呢，只要NIP05认证修改到新号即可。因此不要图省事随便注册个免费的NIP05，最好用自己或朋友的域名来认证。各设置NIP05认证，是确定你是你的关键。徽章NIP58也可辅助，尤其作为名人，可收到很多徽章，从而别人较难冒充你而设这么多徽章，来证明你的号才是真的。徽章NIP58只是增加仿号难度，注意不能杜绝。

要通过网页 badges.page 来操作徽章展示和创建和颁发徽章，有点风险可用浏览器插件签名操作。目前暂时还没有实现端能全整合进去，未来应该会有。Amethyst目前版本还只是展示徽章和展示创建和颁发过程。

5～闪电ZAP打赏

区别于其它社交平台的很重要的一点是：深度整合使用几乎零手续费且秒速确认的闪电网络⚡️LN来对用户和其Note打赏。这种打赏称为ZAP。因为其是基本有打赏记录的，可以看到某用户共收了多少聪，即给其打赏的个用户的单次打赏ZAP排行榜。但具体因哪个Note获得的打赏要去查较麻烦。

闪电钱包选择是关键，推荐：getalby.com 几乎零门槛免费注册即可用，可自定义用户名，其还有浏览器插件。手机端建议配合BlueWallet或Zeus使用，以便手机端打赏。若较大额为安全，建议Phoenix可备份，但有门槛，创建通道要花费一笔。不少人推荐WoS可惜苹果较难安装，安卓也没在Github上找到。注册后编辑资料将像邮箱格式的 cndx@getalby.com 填写到闪电lud16那里，便可接收别人的Zap打赏了。而点击会调用闪电钱包也可去给别人打赏。

选项投票调查NIP69，采用ZAP的方式来给各选项投票。目前好像只Amethyst支持。投票贴其kind是6969故其它大多实现端不能识别，目前看都看不到。因此目前投票一般要截图下再发一次。参与只能来紫水晶ZAP实现。

6～图床及看图应用

Nostr只是文字和Emoji表情之类，并不存储图或视频。带图视频的Note，多是通过URL加载，即各图和视频的网址。而自己的图，网上并没有，那么就需要找个地方上传图，且上传后这地方还可提供图的网址，这个叫图床。有的图床集成到实现端了直接使用，可惜大多被墙了，因此需要自己找，目前找到个较好的是 void.cat 当然还有很多其它优秀图床可选。

因图床被墙，Nostr上不少图片，只看到图片链接而看不到内容。方法一是去iris网页端可以看，另一个方法是 btc.pics/img 复制Note内容放入输入框，等会儿，就有可能就能看到图了。其使用了iris的图片中转功能，大家若找到其它的实现同样功能，也可在第一行换成其它的。

7～社区共识底线呼吁

为了社区更好不能做或呼吁少做的事儿。绝对没任何底线的社交平台，难走入大众和难长久发展，因此呼吁几点： 1. ～对事不对人，文明交流讨论，不要说脏话进行人身攻击。 2. ～半透明勉强可以，但尺度太大的情色图或视频不要传播。 3. ～违法的不能做，偏激政治言论也不要讲，遇到了也不要转发和评论，无视即可。 4. ～不要挂机器人大量刷无意义内容或广告，虽然免费但不要滥用滥发，每条都尽量有意义些。

8～感谢及进一步更新完善计划

虽然很多天前就在构思篇这样较全面介绍Nostr的文章。但一方面时间不够，另外一方面也不段有新知识出来有些还没理解透希望延后些,其实还有很多如基于Nostr的小应用或小游戏等还没了解。但看到有些文章有部分误导内容，因此就花数小时时间先写了本文，将来再完善。V1版本 note1eksqxtnk263ggrrh9k3hngkht3xeulvd8zp6e359mffcn2tyex4skk0xlv

V1.2更新，修正了些文字错误，加入了一张图，和优化补充了一些细节说法。发布到flycat.club博客。

将来v2版本计划加入详细各资源链接，图片及详细分析，尤其是我之前增加有介绍相关知识的Note资源的链接。

再将来v3版本计划，加入更多技术细节，整合为一片更全面的文章，甚至电子书，尝试找找出版社看看能否出版发行，不行直接全公开随便看。谢谢大家支持和提供思路或建议。大家可一起完善。

⚡ Pay with lightning （cndx@getalby.com）🐇ᥬ[🐕]᭄🌿

@ 75bf2353:e1bfa895

The Bitcoin Piggy Bank

I am currently in the North Western part of the United States, somewhere in Washington state. I'm here meeting the newest edition of the Bond(mot my real last name) family. She wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but I sent a million sats to a bitcoin wallet created from a picture taken with my Seed Signer on the day she was born.

The Plan

I plan on giving her the seeds on her 18th birthday. Call it an Internet savings bond if you will. My aunt used to send me a $50.00 check for my birthday and Christmas. This was my favorite gift because i could use it to buy a Nintendo Game Boy games or Z. Cavarichi pants. Money is the gift that never goes out of style. Since Bitcoin works best for savings, I'm sending savings on chain, but I might also send some sats over the lightning network in the future. Hopefully she'll be able to spend some sats by the time she wants to buy cheap plastic crap from China. I am almost certain she will be able to.

How I Did It

To do this, I created a BTCPayServer, using BTCPayJungle(I regret to inform you that this server is now offline). I should send them some sats now that I think of it, but I digress. Here's how I did it:

1. 1. Sign up for an account at BtcPayJungle
2. Add a wallet, I like to just paste an xpub for wallets like these, but it's a personal preference.
3. In the Apps Tab, click "Create a New App.
4. Name the App, click Create
5. Add a title
6. De-select "User can input discount in % " and "Enable tips"
7. Navigate to https://bootswatch.com/ in a new tab.
8. Choose the theme you want. In this example. I like Quartz.
9. Click on Quartz arrow and choose the Bootstrap.css file. You can right click it to copy the URL. Add this URL to the "Custom bootstrap CSS file" field. You can also download the file and copy and paste it into the EmbeddedCSS field. Of course, if you know CSS, you can write your own code.
10. Delete all of the tea items except for one.
11. Customize the last item. It's similar to WordPress.

Here's An example(my example no longer works)

Next, I just create a QR code using my favorite QR code generating website.

You can print the QR code onto sticker paper you find at your favorite office supply store. Then, stick it onto a piggy bank. You can really put the sticker on anything you like. You could also Make a shadowbox, place a QR Code on the wall, or underneath a mattress. You're only limited by your imagination.

Blogging Bitcoin Block Height: 733,126

Value 4 Value

@ 00000000:62ad6927

Are you looking to start your own high garden experience and grow your own vegetables, to be more, you know #SVRGN ?

Here's a quick #DIY guide on how to make your own.

Preparation

When it comes to creating a high garden, there are no hard and fast rules about what your garden bed should look like. While wooden boxes are a popular choice, you can get creative and use a variety of materials to keep your garden in one place. For instance, you can often find wooden boxes for free at warehouses or other locations, but if you need inspiration, Pinterest is a great place to start. Try searching for ideas using the hashtags #HighGarden or #RaisedGarden to look for what others have created.

Wood protection

Wood burning, also known as charring, is a traditional Japanese technique called Shou Sugi Ban. This method involves burning the surface of the wood until it turns black, and then brushing off the charred layer. The resulting #wood is not only aesthetically pleasing, but it also has several benefits for outdoor use.

Burning wood for your garden box may seem unconventional, but it's actually a great way to provide natural protection against the elements and pests. Charring the wood creates a layer of protection that is highly resistant to water, pests, and rotting. The heat from the burning process causes the wood fibers to become more compact, making them less permeable to moisture. This makes the wood last longer and reduces the need for constant maintenance.

Furthermore, burning the wood also has a natural insect repellent effect. The heat causes the release of certain natural oils and resins within the wood that repel insects, which can help prevent pests from infesting your garden box. This can be especially important if you live in an area where pests are common and can quickly destroy your plants.

While burning the wood may sound daunting, it's important to note that the process should be done carefully and under controlled conditions to ensure safety and prevent damage to the wood. It's also important to use untreated wood that doesn't contain any chemicals or preservatives that could be harmful to your plants.

Aside from charring the wood, there are other options for treating the wood to protect it from outdoor conditions. Applying a clear sealer or protective oil can help repel water and prevent cracking and warping. However, if you're looking for a natural and effective way to protect your garden box, burning the wood is definitely worth considering.

In the end, the choice of how to treat your #garden box wood will depend on personal preference and the specific conditions of your garden. But if you're looking for a low-maintenance and natural way to protect your garden box, burning the wood may be the perfect option for you. Just be sure to take the necessary precautions and use untreated wood for the best results.

To protect the wood from excess moisture, you can add some protection to the inside walls of the box. However, it's important to ensure that the bottom of the box remains breathable.

Now that your garden box is ready, it's time to find the perfect sunny spot to place it. Look for a sunny location where the sun is shining for at least 6 hours per day and the ground is level and sturdy enough to support the weight of your box once you start adding layers. Keep in mind that as you add layers, your box will quickly become heavier. Therefore, it's important to choose a location that will be suitable for your box because once it's full, it will be difficult to move around.

Layers

Now it's time to add layers to your high garden. This can offer numerous benefits to your plants and make gardening easier and more efficient.

Here are some benefits of layering:

Weed suppression: By adding a layer of weed barrier fabric or newspaper at the bottom of the garden bed, you can prevent weeds from growing up through the soil and competing with your plants for nutrients and water.

Improved drainage: Adding a layer of coarse material, such as rocks or gravel, at the bottom of the garden bed can help excess water drain away, preventing water from pooling and damaging your plants. One of the key layers that many gardeners swear by is using thick branches at the bottom of the garden bed.

So why are thick branches such a great choice for layering?

First and foremost, using thick branches can help with drainage. When water is poured onto the soil, it will naturally move downwards. If the soil is too compacted or doesn't have good drainage, it can lead to standing water, which can drown the roots of plants and cause them to rot. By adding thick branches at the bottom of the garden bed, excess water can easily drain through the gaps between the branches, preventing standing water and keeping the soil healthy.

In addition to improving drainage, using thick branches can also help with aeration. The gaps between the branches provide space for air to flow, which can help prevent the soil from becoming too compact. Compacted soil can make it difficult for roots to grow and absorb nutrients, which can stunt the growth of plants.

When adding thick branches to your high garden, it's important to choose branches that are thick enough to create gaps for water and air to flow, but not so thick that they take up too much space in the garden bed. Generally, branches that are between 5 and 10 cm (2-4 inches) in diameter are a good choice.

Warmer soil: Adding a layer of insulation, such as straw or leaves, on top of the soil can keep the soil warm, extending the growing season and helping your plants thrive in cooler temperatures.

Nutrient retention: Adding layers of compost or other organic matter can help your soil retain more nutrients for your plants to use, while also improving the structure of the soil.

Reduced soil compaction: By layering different materials such as straw or leaves on top of the soil, you can reduce soil compaction. This creates a looser and more porous soil, allowing air, water, and nutrients to circulate freely.

Increased biodiversity: Adding multiple layers can create a diverse habitat for soil organisms such as earthworms and beneficial bacteria. This promotes healthy soil and enhances the growth of your plants.

Pest control: Certain layers such as crushed eggshells or coffee grounds can repel pests such as slugs, snails, and ants.

Cost-effective: Layering allows you to reuse and recycle materials such as cardboard, newspaper, and yard waste, reducing the cost of buying new soil and other gardening supplies.

Once you've added your layers, your high garden is nearly complete.

Wildlife protection

Living in an area with a large population of forest wildlife can be both a blessing and a curse for a gardener. While it's wonderful to be surrounded by nature and wildlife, it can also be frustrating when animals start to eat your precious plants. High gardens can be particularly susceptible to wildlife looking for an easy meal. However, with the proper precautions, you can protect your high garden and enjoy a bountiful harvest.

Disclaimer: The pleb of this note is not a professional gardener or horticulturist. All information and advice provided in this post were researched online, text curated by AI, and based on personal experience. Plebs should consult with a professional pleb if they have specific questions or concerns about gardening practices. However, the pleb believes that with a little research and effort, any pleb can create a high garden and enjoy the benefits of growing their own vegetables and herbs.

@ 7f5c2b4e:a818d75d

This short blog post aims to provide a step-by-step guide on connecting to the best performing relays and finding the balance between maximum connectivity and minimum load on your device

While every new Nostr user is encouraged to study the plethora of Nostr materials explaining the whole range of Nostr components, sometimes one simply looks for a quick and easy guide on how to improve connectivity and/or mobile device battery life. This is exactly what this guide is about.

I won’t talk about free relays, assuming that the client you are using is already connected to a number of those. Let’s jump directly to the paid relays – end of the day they are incentivised to deliver the best user experience in an obvious way – you pay their maintainers to do so.

Nostr.wine

The number one relay on my list is https://nostr.wine Nostr wine is a paid relay that lets you broadcast your notes to all the relay subscribers (readers). Connecting to the relay requires a one time 18,888 sat fee submission.

In addition to the general relay service Nostr Wine 🍷 offers a filter relay – https://nostr-wine.github.io/filter-relay/. For 10,000 sats/month (with significant discounts for longer subscription periods) you get access to reading from and writing to a bunch of relays.

This dramatically improves your connectivity while requiring to only connect to one relay, extending your device’s battery life and reducing overall load.

To connect to this relay follow these steps:

1. Visit https://nostr.wine/invoices

2. Enter your npub in the corresponding field

3. Pay the lightning invoice

4. Add wss://nostr.wine to the relays list in your Nostr client

New users who sign up to nostr.wine get 1 month of access to the filter relay. After that a 10,000 sat/month or up to 120k sats for 24 months must be paid as a subscription fee (believe me it’s worth it). After paying the invoice simply add wss://filter.nostr.wine/REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_NPUB?broadcast=true to your relays. Done!

All additional regularly updated information on the filter relay, including the relays it reads from (and filters) & broadcasts to is available at https://nostr-wine.github.io/filter-relay/.

Nostrich.land

A good alternative, or better yet, an addition to nostr.wine is ​​https://nostrich.land/. It will also be more appealing for the HODL freaks as it only requires a one time payment of 15k sats. Nostrich Land offers a similar experience, providing a duo of wss://relay.nostrich.land broadcasting relay and a wss://universe.nostrich.land reading and filtering relay. The onboarding process is identical to the Nostr Wine, however Universe Nostrich Land does not require monthly payments (at least at the moment).

Nostr.band

Another worthy addition to your setup is a free (for now) wss://relay.nostr.band relay. It reads from all known relays and filters notes to free your global feed from spam. You can see the details here .

Nostr.mutinywallet

This broadcasting relay will make sure you get heard: just add wss://nostr.mutinywallet.com to the list relays in your Nostr client and it will broadcast your notes to all active relays available on https://nostr.watch/.

Is that all?

These four options should do pretty good, but you are obviously free to connect to more free and/or paid relays (regularly updated list is available at https://relay.exchange/). Over time, as Nostr evolves, the approach to handling relays as well as monetization strategies will transform, however being in the know of how this works (more or less) under the hood will definitely remain a useful skill. Hope this post was valuable for you. If so, support my work.

---

See you on the other side of the rabbit hole.

Tony

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I am a self governed Bitcoin educator, working on spreading the good word about open & permissionless protocols among the citizens of post USSR countries. My projects include: * Bitcoin-only educational resource (RU) https://21ideas.org/

• Nostr documentation website (RU) https://nostr.21ideas.org/

• Important Bitcoin events and quotes database and Nostr bot https://bitcal.21ideas.org/

@ f8e6c643:03328ca9

I’m changing my approach to zaps ⚡️ by upping my default zap amount and shifting my focus from quantity of zaps sent to quality of content zapped (except for during #zapathon of course, where quantity is the goal 🤙).

Why the change? Because I believe the honeymoon phase for #zaps + #nostr is over. We’ve proven zaps work, and while they will get better with additional functionality like splits and zaptags and self-custodial solutions, they are quite functional now in this value for value environment.

Despite #Nostr being new, there are people here already delivering high quality content. If I like what they share, and if I want them to continue sharing it here, then I ought to show them a meaningful amount of support when I consume or engage with their content. Why? Because I like being here instead of wherever else they might be sharing it.

Good content deserves a decent zap when I enjoy it. I’m not a fan of paywalls for this type of interaction because it turns the interaction into a sale, and I’m not very interested in being sold something I don’t even know if I will even like. There are uses for paywalls, but it’s a backwards approach for these types of interactions. #Zaps enable communicating back to someone that their content was appreciated/enjoyed, whether or not they even expected anything in return when they posted it.

Why quality over quantity? Isn’t it better to “spread the pura vida” and just zap hundreds of people 21 sats a time for anything and everything they post? That’s not for me to decide for you, but it is for me to decide for me. I don’t fully subscribe to the idea that zaps should replace likes, because I don’t think it’s natural to add a monetary component to every human interaction. Sometimes a 💜 or 🤙 or 🫂 communicate exactly what is appropriate in that interaction.

Money and time are scarce for all of us, and I consider it more meaningful to focus on giving of my scarce money where clearly you have given to me of your scarce time. A few hundred, or even a few thousand, sats for each of THOSE interactions costs me merely a few cents or dollars of my local currency, and while that is a small amount for me to spare, we all know how good it feels to receive a 3, 4, or 5-digit #zap. Enough of those can actually start adding up to a level of value that makes it worth someone’s time to continue creating and sharing more content here.

If #Nostr is to be a place where people want to give of their scarce time and talent, then it needs to be rewarding in ways that meaningfully encourage them to do so. #Zaps are one powerful way to accomplish this. Of course, people should only zap within their means, and in a way they are comfortable with. Maybe for some that does mean focusing on quantity. That’s for each person to decide.

As for me, I believe I will find it more meaningful to focus my #zaps on the higher quality content and engagement that leaves me feeling like my day was better than it was before. 💜🤙