@ ae1008d2:a166d760

This is part one in a series of long-form content of my ideas as to what we are entering into in my opinion;The Roaring '20's 2.0 (working title). I hope you'll join me on this journey together.
"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes"; - Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. My only class I received an A+ in high school was history, this opened up the opportunity for me to enroll in an AP (college level) history class my senior year. There was an inherent nature for me to study history. Another quote I found to live by; "If we do not study history, we are bound to repeat it", a paraphrased quote by the many great philosphers of old from Edmund Burke, George Santayana and even Winston Churchill, all pulling from the same King Solomon quote; "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun". My curiousity of human actions, psychological and therefore economical behavior, has benefitted me greatly throughout my life and career, at such a young age. Being able to 'see around the curves' ahead I thought was a gift many had, but was sorely mistaken. People are just built different. One, if not my hardest action for me is to share. I just do things; act, often without even thinking about writing down or sharing in anyway shape or form what I just did here with friends, what we just built or how we formed these startups, etc., I've finally made the time, mainly for myself, to share my thoughts and ideas as to where we are at, and what we can do moving forward. It's very easy for us living a sovereign-lifestyle in Bitcoin, Nostr and other P2P, cryptographically-signed sovereign tools and tech-stacks alike, permissionless and self-hostable, to take all these tools for granted. We just live with them. Use them everyday. Do you own property? Do you have to take care of the cattle everyday? To live a sovereign life is tough, but most rewarding. As mentioned above, I'm diving into the details in a several part series as to what the roaring '20's were about, how it got to the point it did, and the inevitable outcome we all know what came to be. How does this possibly repeat itself almost exactly a century later? How does Bitcoin play a role? Are we all really going to be replaced by AI robots (again, history rhymes here)? Time will tell, but I think most of us actually using the tools will also forsee many of these possible outcomes, as it's why we are using many of these tools today. The next parts of this series will be released periodically, maybe once per month, maybe once per quarter. I'll also be releasing these on other platforms like Medium for reach, but Nostr will always be first, most important and prioritized.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes I've lived by from one of the greatest traders of all time, especially during this roaring '20's era, Jesse Livermore; "Money is made by sitting, not trading".

@ 21335073:a244b1ad

I want to see Nostr succeed. If you can think of a way I can help make that happen, I’m open to it. I’d like your suggestions.

My schedule’s shifting soon, and I could volunteer a few hours a week to a Nostr project. I won’t have more total time, but how I use it will change.

Why help? I care about freedom. Nostr’s one of the most powerful freedom tools I’ve seen in my lifetime. If I believe that, I should act on it.

I don’t care about money or sats. I’m not rich, I don’t have extra cash. That doesn’t drive me—freedom does. I’m volunteering, not asking for pay.

I’m not here for clout. I’ve had enough spotlight in my life; it doesn’t move me. If I wanted clout, I’d be on Twitter dropping basic takes. Clout’s easy. Freedom’s hard. I’d rather help anonymously. No speaking at events—small meetups are cool for the vibe, but big conferences? Not my thing. I’ll never hit a huge Bitcoin conference. It’s just not my scene.

That said, I could be convinced to step up if it’d really boost Nostr—as long as it’s legal and gets results.

In this space, I’d watch for social engineering. I watch out for it. I’m not here to make friends, just to help. No shade—you all seem great—but I’ve got a full life and awesome friends irl. I don’t need your crew or to be online cool. Connect anonymously if you want; I’d encourage it.

I’m sick of watching other social media alternatives grow while Nostr kinda stalls. I could trash-talk, but I’d rather do something useful.

Skills? I’m good at spotting social media problems and finding possible solutions. I won’t overhype myself—that’s weird—but if you’re responding, you probably see something in me. Perhaps you see something that I don’t see in myself.

If you need help now or later with Nostr projects, reach out. Nostr only—nothing else. Anonymous contact’s fine. Even just a suggestion on how I can pitch in, no project attached, works too. 💜

Creeps or harassment will get blocked or I’ll nuke my simplex code if it becomes a problem.

https://simplex.chat/contact#/?v=2-4&smp=smp%3A%2F%2FSkIkI6EPd2D63F4xFKfHk7I1UGZVNn6k1QWZ5rcyr6w%3D%40smp9.simplex.im%2FbI99B3KuYduH8jDr9ZwyhcSxm2UuR7j0%23%2F%3Fv%3D1-2%26dh%3DMCowBQYDK2VuAyEAS9C-zPzqW41PKySfPCEizcXb1QCus6AyDkTTjfyMIRM%253D%26srv%3Djssqzccmrcws6bhmn77vgmhfjmhwlyr3u7puw4erkyoosywgl67slqqd.onion

@ 7776c32d:45558888

The nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg Android app will no longer load anything for me at all, as of today.

Much worse and harder to fix, they have added a "delete" feature before fixing the "advanced search" functionality for my account. They also haven't given me any answers on the topic since nostr:npub1zga04e73s7ard4kaektaha9vckdwll3y8auztyhl3uj764ua7vrqc7ppvc told me he "couldn't repro" and left it at that.

The so-called "delete" feature is of course not actually able to reliably delete posts from nostr. It will probably hide posts from Primal's so-called "advanced search" but a more honest "hide post from Primal users and remove Primal's infrastructure from efforts to publicly preserve it" button would be more embarrassing for a VC-funded corporatist nostr app to implement.

This means the "advanced search" will never be reliable for me, when it was one of the most essential features I paid over a million sats for, the day Primal "legends" launched. Despite me being a day-1 subscriber, Primal spent the first several months ignoring my posts on the topic and keeping me blocked from search functionality to make it harder for me to use this feature to help find evidence in disputes, as I paid to be able to do; and now they've added post deletions before fixing it, so whenever they finally do "fix" it, I will still need to use a different tool in order to find posts others deny making, since this one allows the posts to simply be gone.

Being a Primal "legend" also no longer means you'll stand by your past statements and face scrutiny for them. Of course, it never did, since tons of Primal "legends" are high-follower npubs who have me muted. But at least their "legend" subscriptions meant they contributed to fund the infrastructure to help Primal keep posts forever, with no deleting.

Now, it seems like I'm the only one who had that intention. The really influential "legends" never wanted a permanent record to show their statements could face scrutiny. People like nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx + nostr:npub1rtlqca8r6auyaw5n5h3l5422dm4sry5dzfee4696fqe8s6qgudks7djtfs + nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424 and others saw me trying to hold them accountable. I'm guessing at least one of them wanted to be able to block me from using search functionality, to make it harder for me to find my past conversations with them, or their past posts on a given topic. They seem like people who would be happy I was blocked from that functionality for a long enough time to roll out post deletions and make sure the issue could never really be fixed for me. Or maybe every high-follower npub is one of those people, since none of them have really helped me with this by reposting my posts about it or anything.

In the mean time, did they fund other projects that help ensure a controllable record?

Did any of my fellow Primal "legends" give a million sats to some other project to run a nostr search engine with the same filtering options, and a permanent record of past posts? No. There is no other nostr search engine with the same filtering options and a permanent record of past posts. I can't fund such a project alone.

Do I have a tool I can use to easily make backups of a list of npubs and search their posts locally, with the same kind of filtering options, on my own system? Also no.

My best bet for reviewing my past interactions with an npub is now the list of all interactions in jumble.social which takes a while to dig through, but it's a welcome addition to nostr. Much better than nothing. Nostr.band is still my best bet for finding a given npub's past posts on a given topic.

Where are posts being stored forever right now? Hopefully more than enough relays, but apparently not Primal's. Maybe not enough overall.

My guess is, some posts will continue to end up being lost forever, or too obfuscated to find with whatever search tools I have available. Sometimes, these will probably be disputed posts that the original posters deny making, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those posters turned out to be a so-called "Primal legend" - which isn't what those words were supposed to mean when I paid a million sats for permanent post archival and search access on a decentralized, censorship-resistant social media app.

Of course, the number 1 reason I paid for Primal "legends" was to make it more embarrassing for them to censor me. At the time, it seemed like they were making the app's cache connection much slower and less reliable for me than other users, and silently filtering my posts and/or notifications for other users. I assumed they would find it too embarrassing to keep being so blatant about this, and that has worked so far. They clearly still target me, perhaps as intensely as before, but not as blatantly.

@ 4fe4a528:3ff6bf06

Bitcoin has emerged as a significant player in the financial markets, often drawing comparisons to traditional assets like stocks and gold. Historically, Bitcoin has shown a correlation with the S&P 500, reflecting the broader market trends. However, recent trends indicate a decoupling of Bitcoin from the S&P 500 and a growing correlation with gold. This essay explores the factors contributing to this shift and the implications for investors.

One of the primary reasons for Bitcoin's decoupling from the S&P 500 is the evolving perception of Bitcoin as a store of value rather than a speculative asset. As inflation concerns rise and central banks adopt expansive monetary policies, investors are increasingly looking for assets that can preserve value. Gold has long been regarded as a safe haven during economic uncertainty, and Bitcoin is increasingly being viewed in a similar light. This shift in perception has led to a growing correlation between Bitcoin and gold, as both assets are seen as hedges against inflation and currency devaluation.

Additionally, the increasing institutional adoption of Bitcoin has played a crucial role in its decoupling from traditional equities. Major corporations and institutional investors are now allocating a portion of their portfolios to Bitcoin, viewing it as a digital gold. This institutional interest has provided Bitcoin with a level of legitimacy and stability that was previously lacking, allowing it to operate independently of the stock market's fluctuations. As more institutional players enter the Bitcoin market, the asset's price movements may become less influenced by the broader economic conditions that affect the S&P 500.

Moreover, the unique characteristics of Bitcoin, such as its limited supply and decentralized nature, further differentiate it from traditional equities. Unlike stocks, which can be influenced by company performance and market sentiment, Bitcoin's value is driven by supply and demand dynamics within its own ecosystem. The halving events, which reduce the rate at which new Bitcoins are created, create scarcity and can lead to price appreciation independent of stock market trends.

In conclusion, the decoupling of Bitcoin from the S&P 500 and its coupling with gold can be attributed to a combination of factors, including a shift in perception towards Bitcoin as a store of value, increasing institutional adoption, and its unique characteristics as a digital asset. As investors seek alternatives to traditional assets in an uncertain economic landscape, Bitcoin's role as a hedge against inflation and currency devaluation is likely to strengthen. This evolving relationship between Bitcoin, gold, and traditional equities will continue to shape the investment landscape in the years to come.

Yesterday I fixed my neighbor's computer. He laughed at me for being into Bitcoin. We are still early.

@ 6389be64:ef439d32

GA, plebs. The latest episode of Bitcoin And is out, and, as always, the chicanery is running rampant. Let’s break down the biggest topics I covered, and if you want the full, unfiltered rant, make sure to listen to the episode linked below.

House Democrats’ MEME Act: A Bad Joke?

House Democrats are proposing a bill to ban presidential meme coins, clearly aimed at Trump’s and Melania’s ill-advised token launches. While grifters launching meme coins is bad, this bill is just as ridiculous. If this legislation moves forward, expect a retaliatory strike exposing how politicians like Pelosi and Warren mysteriously amassed their fortunes. Will it pass? Doubtful. But it’s another sign of the government’s obsession with regulating everything except itself.

Senate Banking’s First Digital Asset Hearing: The Real Target Is You

Cynthia Lummis chaired the first digital asset hearing, and—surprise!—it was all about control. The discussion centered on stablecoins, AML, and KYC regulations, with witnesses suggesting Orwellian measures like freezing stablecoin transactions unless pre-approved by authorities. What was barely mentioned? Bitcoin. They want full oversight of stablecoins, which is really about controlling financial freedom. Expect more nonsense targeting self-custody wallets under the guise of stopping “bad actors.”

Bank of America and PayPal Want In on Stablecoins

Bank of America’s CEO openly stated they’ll launch a stablecoin as soon as regulation allows. Meanwhile, PayPal’s CEO paid for a hat using Bitcoin—not their own stablecoin, Pi USD. Why wouldn’t he use his own product? Maybe he knows stablecoins aren’t what they’re hyped up to be. Either way, the legacy financial system is gearing up to flood the market with stablecoins, not because they love crypto, but because it’s a tool to extend U.S. dollar dominance.

MetaPlanet Buys the Dip

Japan’s MetaPlanet issued $13.4M in bonds to buy more Bitcoin, proving once again that institutions see the writing on the wall. Unlike U.S. regulators who obsess over stablecoins, some companies are actually stacking sats.

UK Expands Crypto Seizure Powers

Across the pond, the UK government is pushing legislation to make it easier to seize and destroy crypto linked to criminal activity. While they frame it as going after the bad guys, it’s another move toward centralized control and financial surveillance.

Bitcoin Tools & Tech: Arc, SatoChip, and Nunchuk

Some bullish Bitcoin developments: ARC v0.5 is making Bitcoin’s second layer more efficient, SatoChip now supports Taproot and Nostr, and Nunchuk launched a group wallet with chat, making multisig collaboration easier.

The Bottom Line

The state is coming for financial privacy and control, and stablecoins are their weapon of choice. Bitcoiners need to stay focused, keep their coins in self-custody, and build out parallel systems. Expect more regulatory attacks, but don’t let them distract you—just keep stacking and transacting in ways they can’t control.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://fountain.fm/episode/PYITCo18AJnsEkKLz2Ks

💰 Support the show by boosting sats on Podcasting 2.0! and I will see you on the other side.

@ 5df413d4:2add4f5b

𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝘄𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲, 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺𝘀, 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗿𝗲𝘆 𝗪𝗲𝘀𝘁

This book is a wonderfully cross-disciplinary exercise in fractal discovery and insight onto our world - initially the result of the author's pondering his own mortality which led to a study of longevity across organisms, and then expanded to social structures like cities and companies.

In the book, “scale" itself, conceptually, is defined as "how systems respond to changes in size." Does doubling an animal's dimensions increase its relative strength? Does doubling a city's size double it's relative rate of crime? These 2 questions introduce the key distinctions between sublinear scaling (the larger the thing, the relatively less of some characteristic it has) and superlinear scaling (the larger the thing, the relatively more of some characteristic it has), respectively.

Organisms, we discover, scale sublinearally - larger animals are more efficient requiring less energy per unit of weight, but similarly they become, relatively structurally weaker as size increases - this is why Godzilla cannot exist, he would collapse under his own weight! Further, biological metabolic rates scale sublinearlly to size, so as the organism grows, energy demands of cellular maintenance outstrips supply leading to cessation of growth and eventual death (we also find companies face a similar fate, with "costs" replacing cellular maintenance).

Cities, however, are more interesting. In terms of infrastructure they scale like organisms (sublinearlly), but in terms of emergent human outputs, they scale superlinearlly - the larger the city, the relatively more patents, companies, GDP, crime, and disease it will host. For cities, superlinear scaling of those emergent human properties, or "social metabolism" results in the creation of social capital increasingly outpacing the demands of maintenance (those being largely infrastructural) suggesting accelerating, unbounded, open-ended growth.

With regard to growth, superlinearity results in exponential growth, which the author approaches as a terrifying and dark mathematical horror. He illustrates this with what I found to be the book's most illuminating vignette…

SCENARIO: It is 11:00. A petri dish 🧫 contains a single bacteria🦠 cell. This bacteria will double every minute. The petri dish will be completely full in 1 hour. At what time is the petri dish 🧫 50% full?

If you said anything other than 11:59, you've missed the key implication of exponential growth. Exponential growth is slowly, then all at once. But let’s double down on this to really underscore that point - at what time does the petri dish in the aforementioned scenarios become just 1% full? The answer is somewhere between 11:53 and 11:54. Reflect on that.

What might this kind of acceleration in growth mean for technological advancement? For human population and biosphere carrying capacity? For resource consumption? And for how all of these things interrelate and impact each other? Quite thankfully, the book rejects Malthusianism. While still raising legitimate questions about the math of an exponentially expanding Earthbound civilization's sustainability, the author rightfully points to the imperative to harness nuclear and solar energy at-scale as our best hopes to sustain requirements both continuous population and technological acceleration.

Finally, the examination of exponentiality brings us to the deepest conundrum identified in the book - the finite time singularity - where unbounded growth cannot sustain without either (1) infinite energy or (2) paradigm shift "reset" that temporarily staves off system collapse. But wait! There's more! The mathematics of superlinearity suggest that, in absence of infinite energy, the chain of paradigm shift resets are themselves required to happen at an ever faster and faster pace, or at shorter and shorter intervals.

So, if we are confined to Earth's closed system, the need for continuous and unending paradigm shift innovations at ever-shorter intervals eventually manifests a meta-finite time singularity, the essential singularity which is perhaps, inescapable. The core insight to be extrapolated here is that if we are to overcome the singularity trap, we must drive real, constant step-function innovation and that this innovation must, almost necessarily, allow us to progressively harness orders of magnitude more energy than today - think Dyson Spheres, interstellar / intergalactic travel, quasar bitcoin mining, and so on.

CONCLUSION: Dense yet whimsical, lengthy yet very fun. Questing and questioning cover to cover. Great for anyone interested in inter-disciplinarianism and fractal thinking (the long practice of which I find lends to heightened levels of predictive intuition) (4.5/5☢️)

https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Growth-Organisms-Companies/dp/014311090X

Bitcoin #Plebchain #Coffeechain #Books #Bookstr #Nostr #NostrLove #GrowNostr #Writestr #Createstr

@ c3e23eb5:03d7caa9

CW 17 and CW 18 review

Aside from some administrative stuff, most of this weeks energy went into side-quests that were meant to quickly improve the tooling that we use, but ended up taking a lot of time instead.

I worked on - deploying a local git workflow runner for publishing packages without relying on github - modularizing the tollgate-basic repository - the janitor module

The janitor module

Now that our build pipeline is dockerized it takes us just a few minutes to package our code an publish it with NIP-94 events rather than 30 to 90 minutes of waiting for dependencies to download and compile. However, there are still multiple manual interactive steps with interruptions pauses in-between when deploying code changes to a router. This is where TollGate's janitor module comes in.

The janitor module is responsible for automating the update process of the OpenWRT package on the device. It listens for NIP-94 events on specified relays, verifies the events are signed by trusted maintainers, and downloads and installs suitable packages if they are newer than the currently installed version. The module ensures the integrity and security of the installation process by comparing the downloaded package's checksum with the file hash from the NIP-94 event. After installation, it updates the configuration files in such a way that the changes are minimally invasive in the user's interaction with the router.

I started off quickly thanks to roo code and the waterfall method. It took me just a few minutes of answering questions to create a rough outline of what needed to be built. Once I had the high level design document, I just typed test in a new roo code session and it implemented the whole thing with test cases in just one or two commits. However, it still had logic errors and it didn't build yet. Hence, my interest in the side quest.

Deploying local git workflow runner

Pushing to github just to find that there is a syntax error can be time consuming. What if we just trigger an actions runner (act) with a post-commit hook to package the code locally and publish it in parallel while we work?

It turns out that act is buggy and it only runs in specific docker containers. We use a bunch of different composite actions for uploading to blossom, generating NIP-94 events, publishing them and verifying that they were published successfully. It turns out that a lot of this stuff needs to be tweaked before it will run locally in the local container. I got quite far, but started regressing and ditched the branch at one point to refocus on the janitor which still needed attention.

Side side-quest

While struggling with the local workflow runner, I found myself putting go.mod files all over the place and I ended up treating files that were previously imported directly into main.go as separate modules. I thought this was neat and turned all the sub-directories of src/ into go modules before ditching the branch to re-focus on the janitor.

The janitor is ready!

Now I'm about half way through CW-18 and the janitor is merged into main. Abandoned branches that might include something worth salvaging include janitor and just_janitor. Perhaps we can still salvage something useful out of these branches.

Janitor demo

Lets push some changes to a branch called multiple_mints: ``` c03rad0r@CobradorRomblonMimaropa:~/TG/tollgate-module-basic-go$ git commit -m "deploy new version (0.0.17)" [multiple_mints 8739654] deploy new version (0.0.17) 2 files changed, 218 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 src/janitor/HLDD.md delete mode 100644 src/janitor/LLDD.md c03rad0r@CobradorRomblonMimaropa:~/TG/tollgate-module-basic-go$ git push logged in as c03rad0r push: github.com/OpenTollGate/tollgate-module-basic-go.git over https... remote: push: a75cb40..8739654 multiple_mints -> multiple_mints push: Writing objects: 100% (4/4) 0.90 KiB | 0.00 MiB/s, done. To nostr://npub1c03rad0r6q833vh57kyd3ndu2jry30nkr0wepqfpsm05vq7he25slryrnw/nos.lol/tollgate-module-basic-go a75cb40..8739654 multiple_mints -> multiple_mints

```

As you can see, our tollgate is configured to listen for new NIP-94 events on the multiple_mints branch: root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/tollgate/config.json { "accepted_mint": "https://mint.minibits.cash/Bitcoin", "bragging": { "enabled": true, "fields": [ "amount", "mint", "duration" ] }, "min_payment": 1, "mint_fee": 0, "package_info": { "arch": "aarch64_cortex-a53", "branch": "multiple_mints", "timestamp": 1746094039, "version": "0.0.16+a75cb40" }, "price_per_minute": 1, "relays": [ "wss://relay.damus.io", "wss://nos.lol", "wss://nostr.mom" ], "tollgate_private_key": "8a45d0add1c7ddf668f9818df550edfa907ae8ea59d6581a4ca07473d468d663", "trusted_maintainers": [ "5075e61f0b048148b60105c1dd72bbeae1957336ae5824087e52efa374f8416a" ] }

As you can see here, the package has just been built and uploaded to blossom with a corresponding NIP-94 event published to the relays: ``` Verifying event d75a2ce307188bb5b8d6d17757876de64fdb1ae6855fc7400b2545cb6b916180 on relays: ['wss://relay.damus.io', ' wss://nos.lol', ' wss://nostr.mom/']

Checking relay: wss://relay.damus.io ✓ Event found on wss://relay.damus.io!

Event details:

{ "id": "d75a2ce307188bb5b8d6d17757876de64fdb1ae6855fc7400b2545cb6b916180", "pubkey": "5075e61f0b048148b60105c1dd72bbeae1957336ae5824087e52efa374f8416a", "created_at": 1746095500, "kind": 1063, "content": "TollGate Module Package: basic for gl-mt3000", "tags": [ [ "url", "https://blossom.swissdash.site/64dd86e18d9a71b7850b5ec70d18124528fafba51b5cc601812137d93a7fabec.ipk" ], [ "m", "application/octet-stream" ], [ "x", "64dd86e18d9a71b7850b5ec70d18124528fafba51b5cc601812137d93a7fabec" ], [ "ox", "64dd86e18d9a71b7850b5ec70d18124528fafba51b5cc601812137d93a7fabec" ], [ "filename", "basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk" ], [ "arch", "aarch64_cortex-a53" ], [ "version", "0.0.17+8739654" ], [ "branch", "multiple_mints" ], [ "id", "glinet_mt3000" ] ] } ```

As we can see in the tollgate's logs, the janitor downloaded version 0.0.17 and placed the package in /tmp/. for a cronjob to install: Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Starting Tollgate - TIP-01 Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Listening on all interfaces on port :2121 Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.err tollgate-basic[5244]: 2025/05/01 10:26:54.075883 Registering handlers... Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.err tollgate-basic[5244]: 2025/05/01 10:26:54.076023 Starting HTTP server on all interfaces... Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Connected to relay: wss://nos.lol Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Subscription successful on relay wss://nos.lol Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Subscribed to NIP-94 events on relay wss://nos.lol Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Connected to relay: wss://nostr.mom Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Subscription successful on relay wss://nostr.mom Thu May 1 10:26:54 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Subscribed to NIP-94 events on relay wss://nostr.mom Thu May 1 10:26:55 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Connected to relay: wss://relay.damus.io Thu May 1 10:26:55 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Subscription successful on relay wss://relay.damus.io Thu May 1 10:26:55 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Subscribed to NIP-94 events on relay wss://relay.damus.io Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Started the timer Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Started the timer, NIP-94 timestamp: 1746095500, config timestamp: 1746094039 Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Current timestamp 1746094039, current version 0.0.16+a75cb40 Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Intersection: [basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk-0.0.17+8739654] Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Right Time Keys: [basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk-0.0.16+a75cb40 basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk-0.0.17+8739654] Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Right Branch Keys: [basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk-0.0.16+a75cb40 basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk-0.0.17+8739654] Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Right Arch Keys count: 98 Thu May 1 10:31:42 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Right Version Keys: [basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk-0.0.17+8739654] Thu May 1 10:31:52 2025 daemon.err tollgate-basic[5244]: 2025/05/01 10:31:52.497802 Timeout reached, checking for new versions Thu May 1 10:31:52 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Sorted Qualifying Events Keys: [basic-gl-mt3000-aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk-0.0.17+8739654] Thu May 1 10:31:52 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Newer package version available: 0.0.17+8739654 Thu May 1 10:31:52 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Downloading package from https://blossom.swissdash.site/64dd86e18d9a71b7850b5ec70d18124528fafba51b5cc601812137d93a7fabec.ipk to /tmp/64dd86e18d9a71b7850b5ec70d18124528fafba51b5cc601812137d93a7fabec.ipk Thu May 1 10:32:12 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: Package downloaded successfully to /tmp/ Thu May 1 10:32:12 2025 daemon.err tollgate-basic[5244]: 2025/05/01 10:32:12.994157 Verifying package checksum Thu May 1 10:32:13 2025 daemon.err tollgate-basic[5244]: 2025/05/01 10:32:13.003639 Package checksum verified successfully Thu May 1 10:32:13 2025 daemon.info tollgate-basic[5244]: New package version 0.0.17+8739654 is ready to be installed by cronjob

Now the config file reflects that we are running version 0.0.17: root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/tollgate/config.json { "accepted_mint": "https://mint.minibits.cash/Bitcoin", "bragging": { "enabled": true, "fields": [ "amount", "mint", "duration" ] }, "min_payment": 1, "mint_fee": 0, "package_info": { "arch": "aarch64_cortex-a53", "branch": "multiple_mints", "timestamp": 1746095417, "version": "0.0.17+8739654" }, "price_per_minute": 1, "relays": [ "wss://relay.damus.io", "wss://nos.lol", "wss://nostr.mom" ], "tollgate_private_key": "8a45d0add1c7ddf668f9818df550edfa907ae8ea59d6581a4ca07473d468d663", "trusted_maintainers": [ "5075e61f0b048148b60105c1dd72bbeae1957336ae5824087e52efa374f8416a" ], "update_path": null }

Now that can deploy new versions easily, lets use this tooling to deploy features that users requested :)

@ dc4cd086:cee77c06

Have you ever wanted to learn from lengthy educational videos but found it challenging to navigate through hours of content? Our new tool addresses this problem by transforming long-form video lectures into easily digestible, searchable content.

Key Features:

Video Processing:

• Automatically downloads YouTube videos, transcripts, and chapter information
• Splits transcripts into sections based on video chapters

Content Summarization:

• Utilizes language models to transform spoken content into clear, readable text
• Formats output in AsciiDoc for improved readability and navigation
• Highlights key terms and concepts with [[term]] notation for potential cross-referencing

Diagram Extraction:

• Analyzes video entropy to identify static diagram/slide sections
• Provides a user-friendly GUI for manual selection of relevant time ranges
• Allows users to pick representative frames from selected ranges

Going Forward:

Currently undergoing a rewrite to improve organization and functionality, but you are welcome to try the current version, though it might not work on every machine. Will support multiple open and closed language models for user choice Free and open-source, allowing for personal customization and integration with various knowledge bases. Just because we might not have it on our official Alexandria knowledge base, you are still welcome to use it on you own personal or community knowledge bases! We want to help find connections between ideas that exist across relays, allowing individuals and groups to mix and match knowledge bases between each other, allowing for any degree of openness you care.

While designed with #Alexandria users in mind, it's available for anyone to use and adapt to their own learning needs.

Screenshots

Frame Selection

This is a screenshot of the frame selection interface. You'll see a signal that represents frame entropy over time. The vertical lines indicate the start and end of a chapter. Within these chapters you can select the frames by clicking and dragging the mouse over the desired range where you think diagram is in that chapter. At the bottom is an option that tells the program to select a specific number of frames from that selection.

Diagram Extraction

This is a screenshot of the diagram extraction interface. For every selection you've made, there will be a set of frames that you can choose from. You can select and deselect as many frames as you'd like to save.

Links

• repo: https://github.com/limina1/video_article_converter
• Nostr Apps 101: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flxa_jkErqE

Output

And now, we have a demonstration of the final result of this tool, with some quick cleaning up. The video we will be using this tool on is titled Nostr Apps 101 by nostr:npub1nxy4qpqnld6kmpphjykvx2lqwvxmuxluddwjamm4nc29ds3elyzsm5avr7 during Nostrasia. The following thread is an analog to the modular articles we are constructing for Alexandria, and I hope it conveys the functionality we want to create in the knowledge space. Note, this tool is the first step! You could use a different prompt that is most appropriate for the specific context of the transcript you are working with, but you can also manually clean up any discrepancies that don't portray the video accurately. You can now view the article on #Alexandria https://next-alexandria.gitcitadel.eu/publication?d=nostr-apps-101

Initially published as chained kind 1's nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzp5r5hd579v2sszvvzfel677c8dxgxm3skl773sujlsuft64c44ncqy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnw3ezucnpdejz7qgewaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8xmn0wf6zuum0vd5kzmp0qqsxunmjy20mvlq37vnrcshkf6sdrtkfjtjz3anuetmcuv8jswhezgc7hglpn

Or view on Coracle https://coracle.social /nevent1qqsxunmjy20mvlq37vnrcshkf6sdrtkfjtjz3anuetmcuv8jswhezgcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsdqa9md83tz5yqnrqjw07hhkpmfjpkuv9hlh5v8yhu8z274w9dv7qnnq0s3

@ 6be5cc06:5259daf0

A seguir, veja como instalar e configurar o Privoxy no Pop!_OS.

---

1. Instalar o Tor e o Privoxy

Abra o terminal e execute:

bash sudo apt update sudo apt install tor privoxy

Explicação:

• Tor: Roteia o tráfego pela rede Tor.
• Privoxy: Proxy avançado que intermedia a conexão entre aplicativos e o Tor.

---

2. Configurar o Privoxy

Abra o arquivo de configuração do Privoxy:

bash sudo nano /etc/privoxy/config

Navegue até a última linha (atalho: Ctrl + / depois Ctrl + V para navegar diretamente até a última linha) e insira:

bash forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:9050 .

Isso faz com que o Privoxy envie todo o tráfego para o Tor através da porta 9050.

Salve (CTRL + O e Enter) e feche (CTRL + X) o arquivo.

---

3. Iniciar o Tor e o Privoxy

Agora, inicie e habilite os serviços:

bash sudo systemctl start tor sudo systemctl start privoxy sudo systemctl enable tor sudo systemctl enable privoxy

Explicação:

• start: Inicia os serviços.
• enable: Faz com que iniciem automaticamente ao ligar o PC.

---

4. Configurar o Navegador Firefox

Para usar a rede Tor com o Firefox:

1. Abra o Firefox.
2. Acesse Configurações → Configurar conexão.
3. Selecione Configuração manual de proxy.
4. Configure assim:
   • Proxy HTTP: 127.0.0.1
   • Porta: 8118 (porta padrão do Privoxy)
   • Domínio SOCKS (v5): 127.0.0.1
   • Porta: 9050
5. Marque a opção "Usar este proxy também em HTTPS".
6. Clique em OK.

---

5. Verificar a Conexão com o Tor

Abra o navegador e acesse:

text https://check.torproject.org/

Se aparecer a mensagem "Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.", a configuração está correta.

---

Dicas Extras

• Privoxy pode ser ajustado para bloquear anúncios e rastreadores.
• Outros aplicativos também podem ser configurados para usar o Privoxy.

@ 9e69e420:d12360c2

A new report from the National Sports Shooting Foundation (NSSF) shows that civilian firearm possession exceeded 490 million in 2022. The total from 1990 to 2022 is estimated at 491.3 million firearms. In 2022, over ten million firearms were domestically produced, leading to a total of 16,045,911 firearms available in the U.S. market.

Of these, 9,873,136 were handguns, 4,195,192 were rifles, and 1,977,583 were shotguns. Handgun availability aligns with the concealed carry and self-defense market, as all states allow concealed carry, with 29 having constitutional carry laws.

@ 08964cb5:51bf010f

«Reflexiones y Acción: Entre la Defensa del Patrimonio»

[English below][Deutsch unten]

Los recientes acontecimientos que han puesto en peligro mi patrimonio, así como los valores fundamentales que definen mi camino, me han llevado a tomar una decisión importante: iniciar una campaña de recaudación de fondos. Esta iniciativa no solo busca proteger lo que he construido con esfuerzo, sino también garantizar que pueda seguir adelante con proyectos y principios que son esenciales para mí.

Tu apoyo puede marcar una gran diferencia. Si deseas conocer más sobre esta causa o contribuir con tu solidaridad, te invito a visitar ›🔗 éste enlace.‹ "Reflections and Action: Safeguarding My Heritage"

---

“Reflections and Action: Safeguarding My Heritage”

The recent events that have jeopardised my assets and the core values that define my journey have led me to take a significant step: launching a fundraising campaign. This initiative aims not only to protect what I have built with hard work but also to ensure that I can continue moving forward with projects and principles that are essential to me.

Your support can make a real difference. If you’d like to learn more about this cause or contribute with your solidarity, I invite you to visit ›🔗 this link.‹

---

„Überlegungen und Handeln: Den Schutz meines Vermögens”

Die jüngsten Ereignisse, die mein Vermögen sowie die grundlegenden Werte, die meinen Weg bestimmen, gefährdet haben, haben mich dazu veranlasst, einen wichtigen Schritt zu gehen: den Start einer Spendenkampagne. Diese Initiative zielt nicht nur darauf ab, das zu schützen, was ich mit harter Arbeit aufgebaut habe, sondern auch sicherzustellen, dass ich mit Projekten und Prinzipien, die für mich unerlässlich sind, weitermachen kann.

Deine Unterstützung kann einen großen Unterschied machen. Wenn du mehr über diese Sache erfahren oder mit deiner Solidarität beitragen möchtest, lade ich dich ein, ›🔗 diesen Link zu besuchen.‹

@ fd78c37f:a0ec0833

Author: Taryn Christiansen

Introduction:

The future doesn’t look good for America. The economy is down, politics is in shambles, and, perhaps most devastating, the culture is split. The only agreement is that change is needed.

This article aims to pave a road forward. Innovation drives the economy, and great innovations change and improve daily life. Joint efforts between public institutions and private enterprise, along with the energy and momentum generated by efficient and productive programs, can be orchestrated to cultivate national pride. But those programs need to have a noble purpose. Devotion toward technologies with the potential to transform and improve people’s lives should be the goal. Due to recent advancements in biotechnology, efforts should be directed there.

Section 1 dives into the cultural divide. Section 2 outlines a way forward by examining the innovative process and how it can be implemented. Section 3 looks at the specifics of that implementation. Section 4 consists of concluding remarks about the future.

Section 1: A Divided Country

There are two competing visions dividing America. The Woke vision asserts that the United States was, and is, a fundamentally oppressive regime. The idea of a universal reason, the notion that human beings can attain progress in perpetuity through liberal democracy, science, and capitalism, is seen as nothing more than an ideological weapon used to coerce people into acquiescing to a hierarchy that benefits the few while exploiting the many – and so, out of principles of fairness and equity, the country has to be dismantled.

The Trumpian vision attempts to reaffirm American values. It aims to reestablish American exceptionalism and reinvigorate the American vision of prosperity and economic growth. It seeks to rekindle a sense of American greatness. But it does so cheaply. It is, in essence, the dying breath of a consumer culture fighting its own death. Like the first vision, it too rejects reason and discussion and the procedural processes necessary for liberal democracy. It perceives power as the proper political tool for achieving its objectives. It is not an attempt to restore the values that once characterized the country; it breaks from the American tradition in a radical direction toward a politics of entertainment.

Long ago, the country believed that the human capacity for reason – the ability to see the world clearly under the light of truth, unencumbered by bias or prejudice, free from instinct and emotion – was the torch that carries posterity forward. The founders believed the Bill of Rights and The Constitution enshrined eternal truths that reason alone made accessible. John Locke, an influential figure for the founders, stated that the primary purpose of government is to protect individuals' natural rights. We are all free and have the right to live the life we wish to live. But government is needed to ensure others do not interfere with those rights. What binds us is not a religion or creed but the mutual opportunity for each individual to form their own beliefs, to live out their own conceptions of the good. While fundamental, we will see that it is not enough. A collective purpose is necessary.

Now, the Woke vision sees this older view as wholly mythological – and for good reason. For example, there was a time when black people did not know they were descendants from Africa or the Caribbean and not naturally disposed slaves. People’s various histories and genealogies were stripped away, creating a space by which their humanity could be taken and they could be exploited. They were purposefully and intentionally cast into the shadows of history, and the culpable thought themselves perfectly justified. There was a time when moral and historical narratives depicting a grand destiny of white people conquering the West were considered to be true and that the genocide of Native peoples was not only acceptable but in fact necessary, and therefore legitimate. It has been a titanic and creative effort by great individuals and collective coalitions to get America to become self-conscious of its heinous blunders. Some of the best art and ideas of the twentieth century were born out of those efforts. The beginnings of liberation are born out of the ability to imagine a horizon beyond one’s current circumstances. And that ability for many people has been forged by courageous and heroic predecessors. But the spirit of those movements and their development into the Woke vision is a sign that it has lost its creative potential.

The Woke vision asserts that values like reason and rights are the remains of a colonial legacy. However, by negating them and failing to replace them with new values, deconstructive forces are all that remain. The country has historically failed (as well as succeeded) in living up to what reason and rights demand. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t the proper path forward. The assumption here is that they are, and they have to be creatively reinterpreted.

And the Trumpian vision fails as well. But it is worse because it never did, nor will it ever have any real creative potential. It is highly destructive. We can think about this in the following way.

The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed a single, fundamental drive governs all of organic life: the will to power. Life, in a constant struggle, perpetually strives to expand and overcome itself repeatedly. From the brute force of two animals fighting for scarce resources to the highest manifestation of human potential, such as moral systems and inspiring artwork, all are produced from the same vital energy and source: the effort to attain power and mastery over a chaotic world.

As society develops and moves away from a state of nature, the will to power transfigures itself through a sublimative process that demands the individual to repress particular instincts and act according to the strictures and constraints formulated and instituted by the collective. As Freud observed in his Civilization and Its Discontents, the push and pull between primitive and ancient instincts and civilization’s repression of them create inextricable tensions. The Yale historian Marci Shore makes an incisive observation of Trump as a symbolic figure using this context and its language: he is the release and outpouring of those repressed instincts – the license to overthrow the restraints placed on the individual. Trump is the embodiment of brute force, a blind ego striving to assert itself over the world, adopting whatever means are available to achieve its aim. He is an eruption of the repressed Hobbesian state of nature, which expresses “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death.” This is a destructive instinct, and we would be wise not to find out what follows.

Section 2: Unity Through Innovation

So, what is the solution? The country needs a ballast point. It needs national pride. Without a shared sense of identity and purpose, a sense of belonging to a larger community bound by a set of values, the country will continue to unravel. Regardless of the philosophical-level disputes and disagreements on fundamental principles that divide left from right, a collective identity needs to emerge. This article argues that, like the founders, we should turn to our institutions. We should look at how our institutions can facilitate needs by enabling individuals with the creative energy and tenacity to bring about new technologies and innovations that will transform the economy and standards of living. But not just new gadgets and services like iPhones and DoorDash but new technologies with the potential to enable people to live more fulfillingly and purposefully. New vaccines to eliminate unruly diseases, new therapies to mitigate the effects of debilitating illnesses, novel pharmaceuticals with competitive prices and cheaper means of production, and innovative mechanisms to empower people with disabilities to live as they are only able to imagine should play a major part in the mission that characterizes the country. That is a purpose to be proud of. Institutions like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should act as bows, shooting forward the individuals and companies striving to reach that mark.

There’s a lot of talk about government efficiency and the need to be more fiscally responsible. Those are good things. But efficiency needs to have a purpose. There must be a goal that efficiency works to achieve. We should not wish to live without regulatory institutions. For example, people like Balaji Srinivasan are wrong to think we’re better off in an FDA-free society. The goal should be to harness those institutions, conduct more research and development, and utilize resources more effectively to achieve the results we want as a country. Just as we should strive to continue and expand our role in the AI race, we should also aim to maintain and further develop our leadership in biotech.

But we need a new of what the historian Gary Gerstle calls political order to achieve this. Political orders are “a vision of the good life that sells important constituencies on the virtues of a way of doing politics. The New Deal order and the Neoliberal order—which are, in a sense, the reverse of each other—illustrate this.”

It is common in America to see the world through the lenses of The New Deal and Neoliberal political orders for resolving issues in the country. The latter is to let the market decide, and the former is to create government programs to achieve some conception of the good. The former is, more or less, a libertarian solution and was very popular during the 1980s. The latter took form in what is known as progressivism, and it found popular expression during the 1930s and 1940s in FDR’s New Deal programs. The basic distinction separating these two political orders is between the right and the good.

Rights are the norms of obligations and constraints necessary for us all to coexist while simultaneously maintaining what many believe is the principal value of liberal democracy: freedom and liberty (these terms will be used interchangeably). Rights are not in the business of prescribing definite ways of life or enforcing particular ends for people to pursue. Rights preserve the conditions for freedom, and people are free to choose what to do with that freedom insofar as their decisions do not infringe on another person’s right to do so as well. Freedom, then, is the absence of coercion. By having that freedom, each is allowed to exercise their powers and capabilities according to their own discretion.

In the American context, by virtue of being a human being, we are said to be endowed with inalienable rights. And those rights both protect each individual from external coercion and provide a license for certain kinds of action. I am protected from being forced to say certain opinions and adopt particular beliefs. And I have the license to speak my own opinions, expound my own beliefs, and give voice to my own personal conscience. I am protected from forced association with people whom I do not wish to associate with, from the coercion to vote for a particular candidate, from being disallowed to protest, and from adopting ends I do not agree with or value. And, of course, that means I have a license to associate with whom I wish, vote for whoever I like, protest legislation I dislike, and adopt the ends I truly value. We are all free, and we all are obligated and constrained to preserve the conditions for us all to exercise that freedom mutually.

But if that is what rights are, how does a society ensure a distribution of goods and services for everyone to enjoy and partake in? After all, a right to free speech isn’t going to ensure anyone that they will have meals for nourishment, clothing for warmth, shelter from harsh conditions. The response comes from Adam Smith: economic freedom. Everyone has a natural propensity to “truck, barter, and trade” in order to improve their condition. And by the very nature of voluntary exchange, each party benefits. By an individual living his life according to his own interests, values, and ends, he “promote(s) an end which has no part of his own intention.” The invisible hand of the market promotes the ends held by other individuals, allowing everyone to live as they see fit and to coexist harmoniously with the community. By having the political freedom of rights and the economic freedom to exchange, people cooperate spontaneously and organically. That is the spirit of the neoliberal political order.

A conception of the good is different, and its meaning can be disclosed through the great liberal philosopher Voltaire’s likely apocryphal statement, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” What Voltaire disagrees with is not someone’s right to speak but of what they are saying, and we can imagine the person to be voicing their conception of the good, their values and ends that they believe characterize the good life, the life we ought to live, and Voltaire disapproves of it. The good is concerned with the proper ends that should be prioritized in order to flourish. Socrates famously declared the unexamined life is not worth living. Well, he’s espousing a conception of the good. It is a life of the intellect, a life of rational reflection and deliberation aimed toward self-knowledge. Are one’s beliefs consistent? Does one’s actions contradict what one truly believes? Is one aware of what one truly believes? And does one have the desire to discover the truth? These are Socratic questions, and a life devoted to answering them is a Socratic one.

Now, if there is a universal conception of the good life, if human beings have particular ends that define what it means to be a human being, and if failing to fulfill those ends implies a failure to realize one’s human potential for flourishing, then rights do not secure such outcomes. Rights only ensure individuals are free to pursue such ends if they wish. And given the contingency of life, that is to say that, because people are born into conditions they did not choose but were instead thrown into them, and because some individuals are born into wealth and advantage and some are born into poverty and disadvantage, some have the privilege to achieve the ends characterizing a good life and some do not. And that is unfair. And so, government programs, central planning, and economic stewardship can be used to enable and empower the underprivileged to achieve what others are better positioned to do. This is the spirit of the New Deal political order.

The mistake is to think the appropriate social, cultural, and political issues can be resolved by only one of these political orders. It is not one or the other. Both of these political orders capture powerful intuitions about how society should best function and operate, and there should be a synthesis between them.

Now, it is common knowledge that innovation drives economic growth. As capital becomes more efficient and fewer inputs are required to produce more outputs, the economy expands. In Matt Ridely’s book, Innovation: How It Works, he demonstrates beautifully the often messy and non-rational character of the innovative process.

At the heart of that process, he says, is serendipity. As frustrating as it is to human nature, the innovative process cannot be intelligently designed into a precise instrument capable of reproducing all the wonderful fruits that result from it. There is something inherently unpredictable about it, something unruly. It is organic and spontaneous. It demands the determination of individuals willing to fail over and over again until enough experience, insight, and gradual, often painstaking, progress results in the desired effects.

Ridley observes that so many of these innovations require the rich air of freedom to stimulate the instinct for exploration and discovery. Freedom nourishes and sustains that instinct, allowing it to grow and flourish. People must be free from unnecessary regulations and constraints to focus their creative energy on projects that demand endless hours of trying countless imaginative possibilities – and failing until something works. There’s always a tremendous amount of risk-taking. People need to be free to take them.

People also need to be free to collaborate with others who are also devoted to discovering a solution to seemingly intractable problems. The division of labor, where individuals specialize in a particular task and coordinate with others who do the same to maximize efficiency and productivity, is essential to the process. There’s a reason, as Ridley notes, that many innovations take place in cities, where individuals freely associate and influence one another.

Freedom also allows room for mistakes. Ridley documents many cases where innovation is the result of a mistake, not an intentional plan of action. Innovations can often begin with an intention that has nothing to do with the innovation itself. A deliberate decision leading to a breakthrough discovery can be entirely unrelated, even frivolous. Take the example of Louie Pasteur, one of the key discoverers of germ theory. He was inoculating chickens with cholera from an infected chicken broth when he left for vacation, leaving his assistant, Charles Chamberland, to continue the experiments. Charles, for whatever reason (perhaps he thought the whole idea was crazy), forgot about his responsibility and went on vacation. When both returned, they injected a chicken with the stale broth.

It made the chicken sick but did not kill it. And so he injected the same chicken with a much more virulent cholera strain that typically and easily killed chickens – and it failed. The chicken lived. Vaccines, an innovation on inoculation, emerged. Funny enough, a similar incident occurred with Alexander Fleming. Known for being sloppy, Fleming carelessly left out a culture plate of staphylococcus and took off for vacation for a couple of weeks. When he returned, he discovered a mold had grown that was resistant to the bacteria.

Penicillin was soon developed. All this is to say that, along with Ridley, “Innovation is the child of freedom and the parent of prosperity.”

But government has also been integral to many inventions and innovations that would later revolutionize the economy and, therefore, daily life itself. Mariana Mazzucato’s book The Entrepreneurial State makes a persuasive case for the significance of public institutions in the innovative process. When the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), initially known as ARPA until 1972, was established in 1958 in response to the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, it aimed to promote ‘blue-sky thinking’ for technological initiatives. Meaning that the goal was to invest in riskier research that potentially would yield long-term gains despite not having any immediate or obvious returns on investment. DARPA pursued “ideas that went beyond the horizon in that they may not produce results for ten or 20 years.”

What makes DARPA a successful agency is its decentralized model. The philosophy is: "Find brilliant people. Give them resources. Get out of their way." DARPA hires talented and competent experts to run programs autonomously, providing them the discretion to pursue projects highlighted by their expertise, which are often considered risky. This model enables experts to connect with other researchers, facilitating collaboration and the creation of highly efficient and productive divisions of labor. And again, these are projects that likely wouldn’t find market interest because of their niche or unexplored nature. There isn’t an immediate and conspicuous payoff. And so the connected but separate-from-government model of DARPA provides scientists with a wide degree of latitude, and that freedom allows them to engage in the innovative process of trial and error and risk-taking.

Technologies developed by DARPA included ARPANET, the precursor to the internet; early GPS technology; the beginnings of autonomous vehicles; speech recognition; personal computing; and early AI.

Other agencies have also been foundational in technological advancements (for example, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided critical grants to facilitate what would become Google’s search engine algorithm). But the DARPA model is what is most interesting here.

If government programs like DARPA can be leveraged to spur more innovation, particularly in areas such as biotech, and these innovations can drive economic growth by being put into the hands of entrepreneurs, investors, and small, medium, and large firms, then this demands national effort and attention. If successful, it is a project worthy of national pride.

So, government programs and spending, if properly structured, can yield high returns on investment if people are given the freedom to explore, try things out, and make the mistakes necessary for the innovative process to be carried through. And we can look to a recent example where the absence of the efforts potentially could have been disastrous. The story of the COVID-19 vaccines is one where the lack of zeal for exploration and breakthrough discoveries could have hindered the development of mRNA research, leaving it underdeveloped when it was needed at a critical moment.

Section 3: Covid-19, The Imperative For Research and Development, and The Institutional Framework

To start, Peter Theil is popular for remarking that innovation in many industries has grown stagnant. Energy, manufacturing, and transportation, for example, haven’t seen much progress in the past half-century.

Computation, on the other hand, has surpassed the imagination. The innovations have not been in atoms but in bits. As Theil puts it, “We wanted flying cars; instead we got 140 characters.” And Ridley writes, “If cars had improved as fast as computers since 1982, they would get nearly four million miles per gallon, so they could go to the moon and back a hundred times on a single tank of fuel.” Unfortunately, we still have to visit the gas station and pay those exorbitant prices.

But biotech has gained momentum in the past decade. The COVID vaccines are an extraordinary example of this. But they wouldn’t have been ready to come to market without the previous three decades of research and development invested in them. And that research and development almost didn’t happen because people lacked the vision and the willingness to embrace the risk that great technological discoveries, inventions, and innovations always require.

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance tells this story very well. Katalin Kariko, one of the discoverers of mRNA’s therapeutic capabilities, had enormous difficulty securing funding for her research as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Those with power thought it too risky, that it didn’t show enough promise, and allocated most resources to DNA research at the time, believing it to be the more auspicious investment. Nevertheless, as so many pioneering figures have done before her, Kariko maintained her vision of unlocking mRNA’s potential for saving lives.

By sheer luck, by the fortune contained in everyday decisions that would lead to saving millions of lives several decades later, Kariko met a colleague who was researching HIV vaccines at the time, Drew Weissman, at a Xerox machine in 1997. He would be pivotal in her research. She is a biochemist, and he, an immunologist. Each provided the knowledge and expertise the other was lacking, and that was essential to their respective goals. Through the serendipity of deciding to walk to a different department to make copies at the time and place she did, Kariko encountered an opportunity to make strides in her research.

Together, however, the two still managed to collect barely enough funding. “The NIH,” which is the largest public funder of biomedical research, “rejected practically all of their grant applications.” They couldn’t get others to have the same foresight. Even after a breakthrough, where they were finally able to send mRNA information into cells without causing horrible inflammation, those in power still blinked. Fortunately, private investment supplied the gust they needed to keep their research going, and two companies created to pursue mRNA research, Moderna and BioNTech, facilitated the vaccine’s development. When Covid spread, enough progress had been made. The FDA, which has set a poor precedent for getting products to market when it matters most, streamlined the approval process and made the vaccine available.

The key features of this story are the following. The first is the lack of risk-taking by institutions and agencies whose aim should be to provide resources to those striving to innovate and push technological progress forward. The second is the lack of coordination to establish intentional environments to converge the paths of those who have the determination, discipline, and vision to bring innovation to fruition. Imagine if Kariko and Weismann didn’t meet; picture Kariko choosing to make copies somewhere else or at a different time. The future may have been radically different. And thirdly, and more optimistically, the FDA served a vital role when it mattered. As a public institution responsible for promoting the public good, they served admirably.

These three parts – funding research, coordinating talent, and the institutions facilitating the results – should coalesce into an optimally functioning whole. Researchers who are trying to shape and influence an unforeseeable future should be encouraged and rewarded. Those who possess powerful and novel ideas, along with the imagination and determination to bring them to life, should be in direct contact with one another. Their paths should cross – intentionally. And lastly, institutions should follow the FDA’s example. Slow regulatory regimes, lengthy processes and paperwork, licensing barriers, and stifling restrictions should be streamlined and transformed into facilitators for technological development and the introduction of powerful and revolutionary technologies into the market.

More funding should be devoted to riskier research. Those with novel and fresh ideas with the potential to disrupt current scientific knowledge and produce a breakthrough should be sought out. It is estimated that roughly 2-5% of the NIH’s current budget of $45 billion is allocated to high-risk research. That should be increased. Programs like the High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, which includes awards to innovative researchers and ideas, should take on a more robust role and budget than it currently does.

Furthermore, approximately 80% of the NIH budget is allocated to extramural research programs, which are external programs conducted outside of the institution itself. A larger portion of those who receive that funding should be based on their potential for innovation. Currently, as Klein and Thompson observe, the process of obtaining a research grant, which involves extensive paperwork and minutiae, is bureaucratic, cumbersome, inefficient, and time-consuming. A significant amount of energy that should be allocated toward advancing research is spent on securing the funding to do it.

Submitting an application, going through the two review processes, and being approved takes typically nine months to a year. And most fail, leading many scientists to have to apply numerous times in a year. And those doing the review process aren’t necessarily looking for cutting-edge proposals; they’re looking for what fits bureaucratic standards. Of course, this is contentious, but Kariko's story demonstrates its reality. Ridley offers another example. When Francisco Majica made critical advancements in CRISPR technology, it took him “more than a year to get his results published, so sniffy were the prestigious journals at the idea of a significant discovery coming from a scientific nobody.” Institutions must do a better job of trying and supporting novel and unexplored ideas, regardless of who or what they originate from. For example, biotech DAOs do not currently receive funding from government institutions, such as the NIH, due to the traditional legal framework used to distribute resources. Regulatory and legal changes should be implemented to maximize their potential. If there is too much emphasis on process, on bureaucratic procedures and standards, fruitful and rich opportunities suffocate.

The NIH budget also allocates funds to intramural research programs, which are internally connected to the NIH itself. These research programs account for roughly 10% of the NIH’s total budget. A highly promising model to adopt is the DARPA model articulated in Section 2. The NIH should adopt something similar. It should allocate resources to decentralized programs to bring together the best scientists to generate breakthrough ideas. Those programs should be spaces where scientists are free to pursue visionary projects.

Smaller biotech firms, startups, and those without robust forms of funding are often forced to pursue ideas that will capture immediate investment attention. And because of the burdensome and costly bureaucratic processes, investors are justly skeptical about anything risky and cutting-edge.

For example, regarding the FDA approval process, small molecule drugs like pharmaceuticals generally take ten to fifteen years to reach the market. On average, one drug costs $1-2 billion to move through the process, and less than ten percent of those who enter clinical trials succeed. Biologics, such as vaccines and gene therapies, typically take ten to twelve years to reach the market and have a slightly higher success rate than small molecule drugs, ranging from 12 to 15 percent. Those are extensive periods of time, the costs are astronomical, and few can maintain the resources to climb the mountain. This discourages bold enterprise – and it leads to higher prices as well. Due to the cumbersome approval process, the FDA offers exclusivity to companies that bring a product to market, both to reward innovation and to allow companies the opportunity to recoup the tremendous losses incurred by the approval process. This can lead to monopolistic pricing. Innovation should not be rewarded by harming the consumer. Innovation should lift the tide that raises all boats. And so the innovative process shouldn’t be exclusive to those with enough capital to take risks. It should be available to anyone with the tenacity to actualize a bold and promising idea. That’s not to say the process should be less rigorous and methodical. It’s that it needs to be more efficient. But not just efficiency for efficiency's sake; it needs to be efficient toward the right ends and outcomes, and innovation should be a leading goal.

Therefore, a primary goal of the FDA should be to stimulate market interest by expediting the most innovative technologies emerging from research programs driven by the NIH and its innovation initiatives. It’s very important that private research continues innovating as well, and increases in private investment toward manufacturing and research – like Johnson & Johnson’s recent announcement – is good. But new technologies, drugs, vaccines, and therapies should be a central mission of the institutional framework advocated for here – and the process should begin with creativity for creativity’s sake. The profit motive should be employed after realizing a passionate and creative vision. Those truly motivated by inspiration, the people who have the will to manifest something novel and unimaginable, are generally the worst at navigating the business aspect - not always, but often. And the energy pushing them forward is a precious and scarce resource. And so institutions like the FDA and NIH should foster, rather than stifle, their capabilities and opportunities for creating meaningful contributions to the country and the world. The FDA has a history of being slow and untimely when it comes to processing and approving applications for moving to clinical trials. For example, the AIDS epidemic is a stain on the institution’s reputation. When AIDS spread across the US in 1980, it took scientists three years to identify HIV as the cause, five years for the FDA to approve the first blood test to screen for the virus, and seven years to finally get a drug to market. The response to COVID-19 should be the golden standard by which the FDA operates.

Section 4: Human Being and Its Essence

Now, let’s ask the following: what does this have to do with national pride? How does this provide a new vision for the country?

In Alex Karp’s new book, The Technological Republic, he criticizes Silicon Valley for forgetting its roots in developing technology for national purposes. The foundational technology that defines Silicon Valley originated from government programs like DARPA and NASA, which had a clear purpose. They had a mission, and the achievements under those programs demonstrate that.

But now Silicon Valley has shifted to the consumer. Innovations in Silicon Valley generally make life more convenient, comfortable, pleasant, breezy. Goods and services satisfy all our wants and preferences. New apps, better features on social media, increasingly competent virtual assistants, faster food delivery services, endless streams of television and movies and videos, smart appliances, and more and more advanced phones pervade everyday life. The goal is always immediate gratification. There is no horizon that these products look up to. Everything is here and now.

This takes us back to our discussion of rights and conceptions of the good. Silicon Valley isn’t tethered to any real purpose or collective aim. Its goal is to let the market decide. There is no moral or spiritual integrity, no conception of the good that permeates Silicon Valley and its products. Nothing is off limits because it is the consumer’s right to choose. If there is a want, if enough people are willing to buy, Silicon Valley will produce it. No substantive conviction guides their innovations. What does Silicon Valley stand for? It certainly has a creative spirit – just look at all the devices we have today – but that spirit lacks a purpose, and so it wanders aimlessly chasing the fleeting nature of the consumer.

It’s perfectly understandable that Silicon Valley has severed itself from its military roots. Not only would it lose a substantial portion of revenue if it returned to those roots, but there is, of course, a moral dilemma at the heart of most military endeavors, and it is wise to take that seriously. And the Tech sector should not aim to impose a conception of the good on the consumers. The issue is its obsession with the consumer. There are more pressing areas of concern that warrant attention. The wealth of talent in Silicon Valley is better spent in those areas. And it should be done through the efficient use of public institutions.

The new vision is one where taxpayer dollars are used for purposeful and meaningful projects that generate new technologies and innovations that contribute to people’s real needs, not just their wants and preferences. Genuine pride involves courage and bold risk for the sake of principle. It consists in having the determination to carry through an arduous enterprise. And we should be proud as a country if a joint effort between the public and private sectors achieves collective ends.

And at the heart of this pride should be the creative process. Albert Einstein wrote that great scientific discoveries – the new ideas that are leaps in progress toward the expansion of human knowledge – are, again, not the inevitable product of a rigid, refined, and precisely applied method. He believed the great discoveries, the ones that establish new scientific paradigms that enrich society with so many practical fruit, result from a cosmic feeling, a kind of religious experience born out of feelings of awe, wonder, and mystery that are produced by the intellectual and spiritual effort to understand the rational order of the cosmos. He writes, “Enough for me (is) the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifest itself in nature… I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research.”

Reaching for and clinching a new and profound idea is not a mechanical and algorithmic activity. Regardless of how finely one specifies the rules of procedure or how regimented the institutional standards for scientific knowledge are prescribed, intuition, sensitivity to the world and its objects, amazement at the experience of observing the world and its causal relations, in short, the feelings and moods of the subject investigating the object, are integral to the discovery of scientific ideas. Methods are pivotal in locating and developing the precise, logical nature of those ideas, but initial contact with them demands variables that are not reducible to fixed procedures. Ideas powerful enough to change the world and better the human condition originate in cosmic feelings of wonder and curiosity and are not strictly an output of a mechanized division of labor.

AI will outrun the human capacity for intelligence. This is a likely prediction. And so what will it mean to be a human being then? For centuries, philosophers have distinguished human beings from other parts of nature by invoking our seemingly unique capacity for reason. We have the ability to contemplate, reflect, and grasp the physical laws governing the cosmos. We can harness those laws and employ them to manipulate our environment, alter its forms, and recombine its parts, allowing us to raise our living standards beyond our ancestor’s imaginations. We are highly intelligent beings, and our intelligence has been regarded as our distinguishing mark.

AI erodes this image. This new technology is becoming, and perhaps already is, a concrete realization, an externalization of what history thought was uniquely our own. The reality that reason isn’t special, that it is nothing more than a physical product of an accidental evolution, a wisp of luck, has become more and more firmly impressed upon the mind over the last two centuries. AI will make it indelible; it is the final proof. And so what is a human being? What distinguishes us?

The answer is in our spontaneous acts of creativity, in our ability to produce beauty in art, complexity in design, and in our profound capability to experience wonder. Again, the innovative process discussed above cannot be rationally formed into a precise instrument. As frustrating as it is, as much as it bumps against our instinct to make everything intelligible and known, our ability for spontaneity and creativity, our capacity to fail over and over again until we receive those moments of imaginative brilliance, cannot be reduced into a definite set of rules and procedures.

And so as the world changes, as everything alters before our eyes, we have to value what makes us distinctly human. We need a new Enlightenment, one that celebrates our creativity and our will to manifest what we can internally envision. Our self-respect as individuals and collectives lies in our instincts for curiosity, inquiry, discovery, and the creative and imaginative processes that animate them.

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Bitcoin and Fixed Income was Written By Wyatt O’Rourke. If you enjoyed this article then support his writing, directly, by donating to his lightning wallet: ultrahusky3@primal.net

Fiduciary duty is the obligation to act in the client’s best interests at all times, prioritizing their needs above the advisor’s own, ensuring honesty, transparency, and avoiding conflicts of interest in all recommendations and actions.

This is something all advisors in the BFAN take very seriously; after all, we are legally required to do so. For the average advisor this is a fairly easy box to check. All you essentially have to do is have someone take a 5-minute risk assessment, fill out an investment policy statement, and then throw them in the proverbial 60/40 portfolio. You have thousands of investment options to choose from and you can reasonably explain how your client is theoretically insulated from any move in the \~markets\~. From the traditional financial advisor perspective, you could justify nearly anything by putting a client into this type of portfolio. All your bases were pretty much covered from return profile, regulatory, compliance, investment options, etc. It was just too easy. It became the household standard and now a meme.

As almost every real bitcoiner knows, the 60/40 portfolio is moving into psyop territory, and many financial advisors get clowned on for defending this relic on bitcoin twitter. I’m going to specifically poke fun at the ‘40’ part of this portfolio.

The ‘40’ represents fixed income, defined as…

An investment type that provides regular, set interest payments, such as bonds or treasury securities, and returns the principal at maturity. It’s generally considered a lower-risk asset class, used to generate stable income and preserve capital.

Historically, this part of the portfolio was meant to weather the volatility in the equity markets and represent the “safe” investments. Typically, some sort of bond.

First and foremost, the fixed income section is most commonly constructed with U.S. Debt. There are a couple main reasons for this. Most financial professionals believe the same fairy tale that U.S. Debt is “risk free” (lol). U.S. debt is also one of the largest and most liquid assets in the market which comes with a lot of benefits.

There are many brilliant bitcoiners in finance and economics that have sounded the alarm on the U.S. debt ticking time bomb. I highly recommend readers explore the work of Greg Foss, Lawrence Lepard, Lyn Alden, and Saifedean Ammous. My very high-level recap of their analysis:

• A bond is a contract in which Party A (the borrower) agrees to repay Party B (the lender) their principal plus interest over time.

• The U.S. government issues bonds (Treasury securities) to finance its operations after tax revenues have been exhausted.

• These are traditionally viewed as “risk-free” due to the government’s historical reliability in repaying its debts and the strength of the U.S. economy

• U.S. bonds are seen as safe because the government has control over the dollar (world reserve asset) and, until recently (20 some odd years), enjoyed broad confidence that it would always honor its debts.

• This perception has contributed to high global demand for U.S. debt but, that is quickly deteriorating.

• The current debt situation raises concerns about sustainability.

• The U.S. has substantial obligations, and without sufficient productivity growth, increasing debt may lead to a cycle where borrowing to cover interest leads to more debt.

• This could result in more reliance on money creation (printing), which can drive inflation and further debt burdens.

In the words of Lyn Alden “Nothing stops this train”

Those obligations are what makes up the 40% of most the fixed income in your portfolio. So essentially you are giving money to one of the worst capital allocators in the world (U.S. Gov’t) and getting paid back with printed money.

As someone who takes their fiduciary responsibility seriously and understands the debt situation we just reviewed, I think it’s borderline negligent to put someone into a classic 60% (equities) / 40% (fixed income) portfolio without serious scrutiny of the client’s financial situation and options available to them. I certainly have my qualms with equities at times, but overall, they are more palatable than the fixed income portion of the portfolio. I don’t like it either, but the money is broken and the unit of account for nearly every equity or fixed income instrument (USD) is fraudulent. It’s a paper mache fade that is quite literally propped up by the money printer.

To briefly be as most charitable as I can – It wasn’t always this way. The U.S. Dollar used to be sound money, we used to have government surplus instead of mathematically certain deficits, The U.S. Federal Government didn’t used to have a money printing addiction, and pre-bitcoin the 60/40 portfolio used to be a quality portfolio management strategy. Those times are gone.

Now the fun part. How does bitcoin fix this?

Bitcoin fixes this indirectly. Understanding investment criteria changes via risk tolerance, age, goals, etc. A client may still have a need for “fixed income” in the most literal definition – Low risk yield. Now you may be thinking that yield is a bad word in bitcoin land, you’re not wrong, so stay with me. Perpetual motion machine crypto yield is fake and largely where many crypto scams originate. However, that doesn’t mean yield in the classic finance sense does not exist in bitcoin, it very literally does. Fortunately for us bitcoiners there are many other smart, driven, and enterprising bitcoiners that understand this problem and are doing something to address it. These individuals are pioneering new possibilities in bitcoin and finance, specifically when it comes to fixed income.

Here are some new developments –

Private Credit Funds – The Build Asset Management Secured Income Fund I is a private credit fund created by Build Asset Management. This fund primarily invests in bitcoin-backed, collateralized business loans originated by Unchained, with a secured structure involving a multi-signature, over-collateralized setup for risk management. Unchained originates loans and sells them to Build, which pools them into the fund, enabling investors to share in the interest income.

Dynamics

• Loan Terms: Unchained issues loans at interest rates around 14%, secured with a 2/3 multi-signature vault backed by a 40% loan-to-value (LTV) ratio.
• Fund Mechanics: Build buys these loans from Unchained, thus providing liquidity to Unchained for further loan originations, while Build manages interest payments to investors in the fund.

Pros

• The fund offers a unique way to earn income via bitcoin-collateralized debt, with protection against rehypothecation and strong security measures, making it attractive for investors seeking exposure to fixed income with bitcoin.

Cons

• The fund is only available to accredited investors, which is a regulatory standard for private credit funds like this.

Corporate Bonds – MicroStrategy Inc. (MSTR), a business intelligence company, has leveraged its corporate structure to issue bonds specifically to acquire bitcoin as a reserve asset. This approach allows investors to indirectly gain exposure to bitcoin’s potential upside while receiving interest payments on their bond investments. Some other publicly traded companies have also adopted this strategy, but for the sake of this article we will focus on MSTR as they are the biggest and most vocal issuer.

Dynamics

• Issuance: MicroStrategy has issued senior secured notes in multiple offerings, with terms allowing the company to use the proceeds to purchase bitcoin.

• Interest Rates: The bonds typically carry high-yield interest rates, averaging around 6-8% APR, depending on the specific issuance and market conditions at the time of issuance.

• Maturity: The bonds have varying maturities, with most structured for multi-year terms, offering investors medium-term exposure to bitcoin’s value trajectory through MicroStrategy’s holdings.

Pros

• Indirect Bitcoin exposure with income provides a unique opportunity for investors seeking income from bitcoin-backed debt.

• Bonds issued by MicroStrategy offer relatively high interest rates, appealing for fixed-income investors attracted to the higher risk/reward scenarios.

Cons

• There are credit risks tied to MicroStrategy’s financial health and bitcoin’s performance. A significant drop in bitcoin prices could strain the company’s ability to service debt, increasing credit risk.

• Availability: These bonds are primarily accessible to institutional investors and accredited investors, limiting availability for retail investors.

Interest Payable in Bitcoin – River has introduced an innovative product, bitcoin Interest on Cash, allowing clients to earn interest on their U.S. dollar deposits, with the interest paid in bitcoin.

Dynamics

• Interest Payment: Clients earn an annual interest rate of 3.8% on their cash deposits. The accrued interest is converted to Bitcoin daily and paid out monthly, enabling clients to accumulate Bitcoin over time.

• Security and Accessibility: Cash deposits are insured up to $250,000 through River’s banking partner, Lead Bank, a member of the FDIC. All Bitcoin holdings are maintained in full reserve custody, ensuring that client assets are not lent or leveraged.

Pros

• There are no hidden fees or minimum balance requirements, and clients can withdraw their cash at any time.

• The 3.8% interest rate provides a predictable income stream, akin to traditional fixed-income investments.

Cons

• While the interest rate is fixed, the value of the Bitcoin received as interest can fluctuate, introducing potential variability in the investment’s overall return.

• Interest rate payments are on the lower side

Admittedly, this is a very small list, however, these types of investments are growing more numerous and meaningful. The reality is the existing options aren’t numerous enough to service every client that has a need for fixed income exposure. I challenge advisors to explore innovative options for fixed income exposure outside of sovereign debt, as that is most certainly a road to nowhere. It is my wholehearted belief and call to action that we need more options to help clients across the risk and capital allocation spectrum access a sound money standard.

Additional Resources

• River: The future of saving is here: Earn 3.8% on cash. Paid in Bitcoin.

• Onramp: Bitcoin, The Emergent Asset Class

• MicroStrategy: MicroStrategy Announces Pricing of Offering of Convertible Senior Notes

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Bitcoin and Fixed Income was Written By Wyatt O’Rourke. If you enjoyed this article then support his writing, directly, by donating to his lightning wallet: ultrahusky3@primal.net

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Nostr: a quick introduction, attempt #2

Nostr doesn't subscribe to any ideals of "free speech" as these belong to the realm of politics and assume a big powerful government that enforces a common ruleupon everybody else.

Nostr instead is much simpler, it simply says that servers are private property and establishes a generalized framework for people to connect to all these servers, creating a true free market in the process. In other words, Nostr is the public road that each market participant can use to build their own store or visit others and use their services.

(Of course a road is never truly public, in normal cases it's ran by the government, in this case it relies upon the previous existence of the internet with all its quirks and chaos plus a hand of government control, but none of that matters for this explanation).

More concretely speaking, Nostr is just a set of definitions of the formats of the data that can be passed between participants and their expected order, i.e. messages between clients (i.e. the program that runs on a user computer) and relays (i.e. the program that runs on a publicly accessible computer, a "server", generally with a domain-name associated) over a type of TCP connection (WebSocket) with cryptographic signatures. This is what is called a "protocol" in this context, and upon that simple base multiple kinds of sub-protocols can be added, like a protocol for "public-square style microblogging", "semi-closed group chat" or, I don't know, "recipe sharing and feedback".

@ fd0bcf8c:521f98c0

Collapse.

It's a slow burn.

The LA Fires started decades ago.

Hemingway said, when asked how he went broke:

"Slowly, then all at once."

That’s how collapse happens. Slowly, then suddenly.

Campfire

Ever build one?

You gather wood. Stack the foundation. Set the fuel. Light it up.

If it catches, keep going. Got to stoke it. Feed it. Watch it. In time, the fire's good.

Process It takes time.

Time to gather, build and ignite.

People come at the end. When the flame's dancing.

Like Sunday dinner.

People gather when food's ready. But, only the cook was in the kitchen.

Slow

Societal collapse's similar.

It takes years.

Decades.

Centuries.

A slow cook.

When people notice, the meal’s made. By the time they smell the fire, the forest’s already burning.

People see collapse, but it fell long time ago.

LA

Water, ran dry. Power went out. Fuel stations, empty. Help wasn't on the way.

Politicians politicking.

Making feel-good promises. People believed them. All bad decisions. One after another. They voted for it.

In time, it adds up.

Then, it falls down.

Shift

Analog to digital I work in animation.

Started analog, paper and pencil. It went digital. Scanners, tablets and all.

Veterans, didn't see it coming. Die-hards, refused to acknowledge. They went out of work. Those who adapted—they run the shows now.

Lockdowns

2008, I started a studio.

100% remote. A virtual company.

Some laughed. Others got angry. Said it wouldn't work. They couldn't see.

2020 comes with lockdowns.

Everyone scrambles. Those already digital, thrived.

The rest, shutdown.

History

The Wheel We carried goods. Then came the wheel.

Movement exploded. Trade thrived. Cities rose.

Hunter-gatherers? Left behind.

Collapse wasn't sudden. It was quiet. A shift.

The new formed. The old faded.

Change was inevitable.

Gunpowder

War changed.

Castles crumbled. Swords became relics. Power shifted.

Empires that adapted, thrived. Those that didn't, vanished.

Adapt or die.

The Internet

Borders blurred. Knowledge spread. Walls fell.

Old industries resisted. New empires emerged.

Collapse? No. A new frontier.

Borderless commerce. Shrinking government.

Info and influence, moving fast.

Bitcoin

Money, redefined.

No banks. No middlemen. Just code.

Governments dismiss it. Institutions fear it. But change ignores permission.

A ledger, transparent. A system, unstoppable. Like the internet rewrote communication, Bitcoin rewrites money.

Each invention displaced the old world.

Each collapse brought new opportunity.

Repeats

Mayans Built pyramids. Charted the stars. Cities thrived.

Then, slow decline.

Deforestation. Drought. Conflict.

People scattered.

Cities abandoned.

By the time the Spanish arrived, the fall was old news.

Romans

Not a fall. A fade.

Corruption. Inflation. Invasions. Cracks formed.

The West crumbled. The East endured.

Rome never vanished. Its laws, language, culture? Still here.

Japan

Collapse? No. Reinvention.

Shoguns fell. Meiji rose. Feudal to industrial. War crushed it. Post-war rebuilt it.

The '90s?

A peak. Tech giant. Economic force.

Then, stagnation. Aging population. Debt. Decline.

Still here. Still strong. But no longer rising.

Rhyme

US

Once a colony. Then an empire.

England ruled. America rose. Industry boomed. The 20th century belonged to the U.S.

A superpower. Factories roared. Gold backed the dollar.

A nation built on sound money.

Then, fiat. Paper promises. The gold standard abandoned.

Inflation crept in. Prices rose. Debt piled up. Each decade, the dollar bought less. Wages stagnated. Savings eroded.

Easy money, easy people.

Debt fueled bubbles. Each crash, deeper. The system, fragile.

Wealth concentrated. Time and energy, lost meaning.

A quiet nihilism grew.

People worked more. Gained less. Purpose eroded. Culture followed.

A nation distracted, chasing illusions of prosperity.

Today

The debt's bigger. The politics, fractured. The system strains. The foundation shifts.

The old fades into new.

What's next?

Every collapse starts slow. Then, all at once.

Change

Collapse is change.

It's natural. We see it throughout history.

Like a campfire—fire consumes, but it also brings warmth. Like dinner—before the meal, there’s preparation, transformation. Like LA fires—destructive, painful, but from the ashes, renewal. Possibly.

"To decompose is to be recomposed. That's what nature does. Nature, through whom all things happen as they should, and have happened forever in just the same way, and will continue one way or another endlessly."—Marcus Aurelius

Collapse isn’t the end.

It’s transition.

Preparing

"The Romans were reluctant to acknowledge change, and so are we." —The Sovereign Individual

Florida has hurricanes.

Happens every year. The news reports. Satellites confirm paths. Some, listen and prepare. Others, don't.

The storm comes.

Those prepared, benefit. The rest, suffer.

Like the old animators. They resisted. Now, they’re gone.

Collapse has warnings. How to prepare:

Mindset

Stay calm. See the patterns. Change is constant. Opportunity hides in disruption. Zoom out. Fear distorts judgment.

Skill Development

Learn adaptability. Master digital tools. Understand money. Grow networks. Invest in knowledge, not just assets.

Philosophy

Think long-term. Collapse spans generations. Pass down wisdom. Build resilience. Grow beyond survival—thrive.

Action

Own less, know more. Create. Don’t just consume.

Be part of what’s next.

Conclusion

The fire’s already burning. You can tend it—or watch it burn everything down.

There's a saying:

"There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened."—Pat Riley

Be the former.

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Rare Passenger / block height 880 440

@ 76c71aae:3e29cafa

On social media and in the Nostr space in particular, there’s been a lot of debate about the idea of supporting deletion and editing of notes.

Some people think they’re vital features to have, others believe that more honest and healthy social media will come from getting rid of these features. The discussion about these features quickly turns to the feasibility of completely deleting something on a decentralized protocol. We quickly get to the “We can’t really delete anything from the internet, or a decentralized network.” argument. This crowds out how Delete and Edit can mimic elements of offline interactions, how they can be used as social signals.

When it comes to issues of deletion and editing content, what matters more is if the creator can communicate their intentions around their content. Sure, on the internet, with decentralized protocols, there’s no way to be sure something’s deleted. It’s not like taking a piece of paper and burning it. Computers make copies of things all the time, computers don’t like deleting things. In particular, distributed systems tend to use a Kafka architecture with immutable logs, it’s just easier to keep everything around, as deleting and reindexing is hard. Even if the software could be made to delete something, there’s always screenshots, or even pictures of screens. We can’t provably make something disappear.

What we need to do in our software is clearly express intention. A delete is actually a kind of retraction. “I no longer want to associate myself with this content, please stop showing it to people as part of what I’ve published, stop highlighting it, stop sharing it.” Even if a relay or other server keeps a copy, and keeps sharing it, being able to clearly state “hello world, this thing I said, was a mistake, please get rid of it.” Just giving users the chance to say “I deleted this” is a way of showing intention. It’s also a way of signaling that feedback has been heard. Perhaps the post was factually incorrect or perhaps it was mean and the person wants to remove what they said. In an IRL conversation, for either of these scenarios there is some dialogue where the creator of the content is learning something and taking action based on what they’ve learned.

Without delete or edit, there is no option to signal to the rest of the community that you have learned something because of how the content is structured today. On most platforms a reply or response stating one’s learning will be lost often in a deluge of replies on the original post and subsequent posts are often not seen especially when the original goes viral. By providing tools like delete and edit we give people a chance to signal that they have heard the feedback and taken action.

The Nostr Protocol supports delete and expiring notes. It was one of the reasons we switched from secure scuttlebutt to build on Nostr. Our nos.social app offers delete and while we know that not all relays will honor this, we believe it’s important to provide social signaling tools as a means of making the internet more humane.

We believe that the power to learn from each other is more important than the need to police through moral outrage which is how the current platforms and even some Nostr clients work today.

It’s important that we don’t say Nostr doesn’t support delete. Not all apps need to support requesting a delete, some might want to call it a retraction. It is important that users know there is no way to enforce a delete and not all relays may honor their request.

Edit is similar, although not as widely supported as delete. It’s a creator making a clear statement that they’ve created a new version of their content. Maybe it’s a spelling error, or a new version of the content, or maybe they’re changing it altogether. Freedom online means freedom to retract a statement, freedom to update a statement, freedom to edit your own content. By building on these freedoms, we’ll make Nostr a space where people feel empowered and in control of their own media.

@ 08964cb5:51bf010f

«Reflexiones y Acción: Entre la Defensa del Patrimonio»

[English below][Deutsch unten]

Los recientes acontecimientos que han puesto en peligro mi patrimonio, así como los valores fundamentales que definen mi camino, me han llevado a tomar una decisión importante: iniciar una campaña de recaudación de fondos. Esta iniciativa no solo busca proteger lo que he construido con esfuerzo, sino también garantizar que pueda seguir adelante con proyectos y principios que son esenciales para mí.

Tu apoyo puede marcar una gran diferencia. Si deseas conocer más sobre esta causa o contribuir con tu solidaridad, te invito a visitar ›🔗éste enlace.‹

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"Reflections and Action: Safeguarding My Heritage"

The recent events that have jeopardised my assets and the core values that define my journey have led me to take a significant step: launching a fundraising campaign. This initiative aims not only to protect what I have built with hard work but also to ensure that I can continue moving forward with projects and principles that are essential to me.

Your support can make a real difference. If you’d like to learn more about this cause or contribute with your solidarity, I invite you to visit ›🔗this link.‹

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"Überlegungen und Handeln: Den Schutz meines Vermögens"

Die jüngsten Ereignisse, die mein Vermögen sowie die grundlegenden Werte, die meinen Weg bestimmen, gefährdet haben, haben mich dazu veranlasst, einen wichtigen Schritt zu gehen: den Start einer Spendenkampagne. Diese Initiative zielt nicht nur darauf ab, das zu schützen, was ich mit harter Arbeit aufgebaut habe, sondern auch sicherzustellen, dass ich mit Projekten und Prinzipien, die für mich unerlässlich sind, weitermachen kann.

Deine Unterstützung kann einen großen Unterschied machen. Wenn du mehr über diese Sache erfahren oder mit deiner Solidarität beitragen möchtest, lade ich dich ein, ›🔗diesen Link zu besuchen.‹

@ e7bc35f8:3ed2a7cf

In the heart of Romania’s 2024 presidential election, a seismic shock rattled the foundations of its democracy. Just days before the final runoff, the Constitutional Court made an unprecedented move: it annulled the entire election, citing evidence of Russian interference that propelled a far-right nationalist, Călin Georgescu, to a surprise lead. Was this a bold reflex to safeguard democratic integrity against foreign manipulation, or a chilling cancellation of the people’s voice, silencing millions who had cast their ballots? As Romania grapples with this historic decision, the line between protecting democracy and undermining it has never been blurrier, leaving citizens and observers alike questioning the true cost of this electoral upheaval.

In this article, I will explore Romania’s 2024 presidential election annulment chronologically, tracing the rise of far-right candidate Călin Georgescu, the Constitutional Court’s decision to cancel the vote on December 6, and the resulting protests and probes into foreign interference. This timeline will clarify whether the move was a democratic safeguard or an undemocratic suppression of the people’s will.

October 15, 2024

Judges booted candidate Diana Șoșoacă, leader of the ultra-nationalist party S.O.S Romania, from the race because she threatened Bucharest’s place in the EU and NATO. But her rivals are saying the court overstepped its remit.

The unprecedented ruling by the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) sparked criticism from Șoșoacă’s rivals across the political spectrum, encompassing socialists, liberals and academics — with one figure even pointing to how it echoes the Kremlin’s electoral governance.

November 22, 2024

The final major poll before Romania’s 2024 presidential election, released on the eve of the vote, painted a starkly different picture from the eventual outcome. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu led with 23.7%, followed by Elena Lasconi at 17.8%, George Simion at 16.9%, and Nicolae Ciucă at 14.3%. Astonishingly, Călin Georgescu, who would later surge to a stunning first-round victory, languished in fifth place with just 8.1%, a staggering underestimation that would soon fuel suspicions of manipulation and upend the nation’s electoral process.

November 24, 2024

In a stunning upset, Călin Georgescu won Romania’s 2024 presidential election with 22.94% of the vote, dominating the first round despite trailing in pre-election polls. George Simion, often labeled the country’s “hard right chief” by Western media, lagged behind in fourth place with just 13.8%. No credible evidence suggests vote tampering; Georgescu’s victory reflected a genuine surge of voter support, particularly among the diaspora, where he won overwhelmingly—except in Moldova, where he secured only 3.11% amid a large pro-Russian population that had narrowly passed a pro-EU referendum a month earlier.

As regards Georgescu himself, by CV, appearance and speaking style he comes across as the ideal candidate. He studied agronomy, has a PhD in soil science and is a university lecturer; has worked at senior levels in government – including in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – as well as at the UN and other NGOs, with a focus on sustainable development; and he speaks four foreign languages. He projects a professional, clean-cut image of a determined, experienced 62 year-old nationalist at the apex of his powers, speaking very simply and clearly in a calm, confident manner. Strictly by these superficial PR metrics, on paper, he is, at first glance, perfectly suited for the role.

Nor is he unknown in Romanian politics; but he is – or has been – a very fringe figure. His name was floated several times in recent years, in nationalist-populist circles, as a potential alternative for prime minister. He nearly became honorary president of Romania’s main nationalist conservative party, AUR, before the deal fell through when past comments came to light in which he had called the country’s Second World War leader and Axis ally, Marshal Antonescu – who is considered responsible for the Romanian Holocaust – a “hero”.

Georgescu had conducted a persuasive online campaign, primarily on TikTok, focusing on the importance of an autochthon economy, the inherent superiority of rural life in Romania, and essentially claiming that just like a national poet from the 19th century, he is a divine messenger. The campaign consisted of thousands of TikTok profiles distributing ten-second videos about him, with many influencers suggesting in the past weeks that they would vote for him. According to Georgescu, he didn’t spend any money on the campaign, but the scale and the professionalism in which it was conducted suggest otherwise.

November 25, 2024

Politico comes to remind us why EU is so interested about Romania. According to this article, Romania has been a steadfast ally in the West’s support for Ukraine, leveraging the Port of Constanța as a critical lifeline for exporting Ukrainian grain and funneling military supplies into the conflict zone. The war has also elevated the strategic significance of the Mihail Kogălniceanu air base on the Black Sea, poised to become NATO’s largest. However, Călin Georgescu’s unexpected electoral triumph raises alarms across Europe, as his leadership could pivot Romania away from this pro-Western stance, potentially disrupting these vital geopolitical roles. This prospect underscores why European leaders are deeply invested in ensuring Romania remains in “reliable” hands, aligned with NATO and EU priorities.

November 26, 2024

Reformist Elena Lasconi, who was going to face Georgescu in the runoff on Dec. 8, was directly warning that Romanians must now rally together to stop the country falling back under the thrall of Russia, which occupied it after World War II. She urged a crowd in Bucharest not to let frustration with the current establishment “become a vulnerability exploited by Russia.”

November 28, 2024

The official claim of Russian meddling rested directly and exclusively on a specific set of intelligence documents on the matter, first submitted in a closed National Security Council meeting on 28 November. Romania’s Constitutional Court asked the country’s top election authority to recount and check again all ballots from Sunday’s presidential election first round.

November 30, 2024

Elena Lasconi, who narrowly secured a runoff spot by edging out PSD Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu by just 2,700 votes, has firmly rejected allegations of electoral misconduct. Lasconi and her party, USR, accuse the PSD and center-right PNL of undermining the people’s will through the annulment push. In a passionate statement, she urged, “I appeal to all state institutions: Don’t destroy democracy in Romania,” highlighting the high stakes for the nation’s democratic integrity.

December 4, 2024

The set of intelligence documents on the matter, first submitted in a closed National Security Council meeting on 28 November and then hastily declassified on 4 December by the sitting President in order to “inform” the Constitutional Court’s decision. But the reports contained no actual evidence of the sort.

The documents alleged that 800 TikTok accounts had been activated just before the election and that they had supported Călin Georgescu’s campaign.

Albeit these reports did not definitely say that the meddling effort managed to actually sway the election in Georgescu’s favour, they suggested it.

I ve translated the declassified documents using the AI tools: Grok and ChatGPT. I can assure you that the following summary from "Brussels Signal" is accurate. I will quote the summary because of the key importance on the subject:

The documents provide no concrete evidence of Russian state interference in Romania’s presidential elections or any links between presidential candidate Calin Georgescu and Russia.

The most important and explosive term used in these documents (by SRI) is “state actor.” The documents offer no evidence or analytical explanation for the use of this term, rendering it an unsupported claim.

On the contrary, to the extent that they shed light on anything, the documents indicate that Georgescu’s campaign simply employed highly effective digital marketing techniques, giving him a “comparative exponential” advantage (according to SRI).

The documents offer only disparate, circumstantial, and often trivial information presented in a way that leaves plenty of room for wide-ranging interpretations. Their tone and terminology appear designed to fuel an anti-Georgescu narrative in the public sphere.

As intelligence products, the documents are sloppy and of very poor quality by Allied standards. They include contradictions, errors, and blatant inaccuracies. The language is often vague, and key terms remain undefined (e.g., various uses of the word “network”). For the most part, the documents are full only of useless platitudes, with the majority of the information already having been circulating in the public domain in the days after 24 November (the date of the first voting round).

The documents are merely “Briefing Notes” (note informative, in Romanian), not assessments – thus lacking clear and definitive analytical conclusions or interpretations. They make isolated claims (mostly unsupported), with no discussion of sources or evidence. This is likely a method for the intelligence services to protect themselves politically. Subsequent interpretations of these documents by the media are not, therefore, based on conclusions of the Romanian state.

The documents are also redacted in key parts. It is therefore important to understand that the information in these documents was only partially declassified – despite the media narrative suggesting the documents were declassified in their entirety. It is also important to understand that the redacted passages may alter the meaning of the text.

The SIE Briefing Note has not actually been declassified. The President only published an “unclassified excerpt” from it. The SIE Note itself remains classified, likely because it contradicts the Notes submitted by the other agencies.

The documents do point to potential irregularities in Georgescu’s campaign finance statements. However, such issues are common in campaigns worldwide and, moreover, should be investigated with respect to all the other candidates as well, in the same way. In any case, the documents make no suggestion of foreign funding, let alone from Russia.

The only concrete elements noted in the documents as being specifically identified as of 24 November (the day of the vote in the first round) are: 100 TikTok influencer accounts paid to distribute content using 3 (three) hashtags that do not even mention Calin Georgescu; 797 accounts created before (!) the launch of TikTok itself, under this brand name; 1,088 users in a “coordination” group on Telegram (which, again, is standard in all political campaigns); and $381,000 paid to some “influencers”.

Conclusion: The CSAT documents declassified by the President provide absolutely no real, concrete basis for the public narratives about a “Russian attack” on Romania or of links between Georgescu’s campaign and Russia. These documents, by themselves, cannot rationally be used as arguments against this candidate because they prove nothing.

Shortly after the vote in a televised address President Iohannis claimed that the ‘campaign was illegally supported from outside Romania’ and that it is a ‘matter of national security’.

December 6, 2024

Romania’s top constitutional court dramatically cancelled high-stakes presidential elections after security services warned Russia was mounting “aggressive” hybrid attacks against the country. Călin Georgescu was accused to benefit from a TikTok campaign that was similar to influence operations allegedly run by the Kremlin in Ukraine and Moldova. The files said Moscow was targeting Romania as an enemy state, using “aggressive hybrid action,” a view backed by the United States, at that time.

Running as an independent, Georgescu was due to face liberal Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union (USR) in a Dec. 8 runoff. Suspicious of the two old parties, she is also calling on the court not to meddle with Romanian democracy. According to Radio Romania Actualitati, she said: ‘Today is the moment when the Romanian state has trampled on democracy,’ adding: ‘We should have gone ahead with the vote. We should have respected the will of the Romanian people, whether we like it or not; legally and legitimately, nine million Romanian citizens, both at home and in the diaspora, have expressed their preference for a particular candidate by voting. We cannot ignore their will.’

Elena Lasconi, a liberal—by Western standards, however, she might not be considered a typical liberal, as she openly expresses patriotism, displays the Romanian flag alongside the EU flag, and occasionally wears traditional folk costumes—former TV journalist. Lasconi, like Georgescu, is an anti-establishment figure, vocal in her criticism of the current political elite and adept at channelling voter discontent and frustration with mainstream parties. It is no surprise, then, that both the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL)—Romania’s two largest establishment parties—reacted with dismay to the performances of Georgescu and Lasconi. This discontent was amplified by the fact that neither party’s candidate came close to qualifying for a potential second round. Politicians from both the far right as well as liberal reformists Save Romania Union (USR) party view an annulment as an attempt by the widely distrusted old establishment parties — the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the center-right National Liberal Party (PNL) — to hold on to power by pulling strings within the judiciary. Elena Lasconi, a liberal former TV journalist who was set to stand against Georgescu in the second round, was mortified by what she saw as a hijacking of the electoral process.

The court canceled the process completely, leaving voters bemused as they turned up to cast their ballots. In a defiant video released on Friday night, Georgescu accused the court of launching “practically a formalized coup d’état” and told his supporters to show they are “brave” and not to give up.

In fact, Georgescu was leading with as much as 77 per cent against Lasconi’s 23 per cent in the diaspora when Romania’s Constitutional Court decided to annul the elections.

The President, at that time, Klaus Iohannis was due to end his term on Dec. 21. But in an address to the nation Friday evening, he announced that he was going to stay on until the next president was about to sworn in.

Nicolae Ciucă, the head of the Romanian senate and the National Liberal Party’s presidential candidate in the first round said that The decision to cancel the vote was “without precedent in Romania’s democratic history,” he said, adding “the current situation is a difficult test for our democratic institutions.”

According to the press's findings, behind Georgescu there appears to have been an entire “network” of volunteers – often organised via Telegram – running thousands of co-ordinated TikTok accounts designed to boost each other’s posts – i.e. Georgescu’s short promo videos. TikTok has only relatively recently caught on in Romania; certainly it wasn’t a factor at the last election. This might explain why a strong TikTok campaign would not have registered properly in political analysis, and why it might’ve had an outsized effect on voting intentions. It is also a warning for the future of the very idea of democratic politics, as it shows that it is possible for candidates to completely side-step the traditional “public square”, avoid any major real-world debates or campaigning, and win elections exclusively online.

Still, there is a great deal of mystery over exactly how all this worked. Georgescu’s TikTok metrics are inferior to his three key adversaries for example: there were 145 million views this year for Georgescu’s main hashtags compared to 396 million for Simion’s, 328 million for Ciolacu and 202 million for Lasconi. One difference is that the bulk of Georgescu’s TikTok views and followers accrued within the past two months. Coupled with other indicators, it seems rather clear that so-called “troll farms” have been at work on his behalf, to spread his message; but it is not clear whether this practice is unique to Georgescu or whether it has been used – to varying degrees – by his opponents as well.

As Georgescu is perceived to be “pro-Russia” – an imprecise term to boot – suspicion in this regard is directed towards the Kremlin. But hard evidence is lacking; there is no smoking gun, so far. Russian actors are involved in virtually every election in the West, but their exact role in swinging the result is hardly ever clear. In the US a Congressional investigation – eventually known as the “Russia Hoax”, for good reason – failed to prove alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Moscow, despite widespread belief in this story from those shocked that “orange man” could ever win because his message was more effective.

The reaction from the EU and Washington was particularly alarming, though hardly surprising. ‘The integrity of Romania’s elections is paramount for Romanians’ hard-earned democracy. It is the choice of the Romanian people whom they elect. No other country or foreign actor has that right,’ the US State Department said in a statement. The contradiction is glaring, isn’t it? It’s supposedly the Romanians’ choice who they elect, yet if a candidate not favoured by the Americans wins, the election results are annulled.

Moscow denied meddling into the Romanian democratic process.

December 20, 2024

According to a Snoop (investigative journalist organization) investigation, Georgescu’s alleged financing would have been done by the PNL. ** All this, so that Georgescu’s message would spread and more people could vote for him so that George Simion would not make it to the second round. ** In fact, the ANAF (National Agency for Tax Administration) discovered that the PNL paid for a campaign massively promoting Călin Georgescu on TikTok, published on 20 December 2024.

December 22, 2024

Subsequent investigations by the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF), Romania’s tax authority, uncovered the origins of Călin Georgescu’s successful TikTok campaign: the PNL. The centre-right party’s campaign initially employed the hashtag #echilibrusiseriozitate to promote European values and pro-EU positions. Kensington Communication, the company responsible for the campaign, also targeted Georgescu’s content, aiming to counter his EU-critical rhetoric. However, the hashtag #echilibrusiseriozitate, designed to create an unfavourable environment for non-liberal presidential candidates on TikTok, was replaced by #echilibrusiverticalitate on the FameUP platform—a free automated platform that amplifies marketing campaigns. Interestingly, this new hashtag was ultimately adopted and used by Georgescu’s supporters, transforming its purpose and amplifying his campaign’s visibility. The Romanian government proposed 4 May as the date for a new presidential election. However, no formal decision was made since. Călin Georgescu has since challenged the Constitutional Court’s decision at a local appeals court and lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. ‘I will take our cause to the heart of Europe, to the highest courts. Each of us is doing our part in this historic mission to defend our democracy,’ he declared.

January 5, 2025

Recent polls show that Călin Georgescu remains the most popular presidential candidate, with some surveys suggesting that the ultranationalist contender could garner close to 40 per cent support.

January 8, 2025

The court is considering disqualifying Georgescu for undeclared campaign funding.

The leaders of the ruling coalition made up of the Social Democrats (PSD), Liberals (PNL), the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians (UDMR), and the minorities' group decided on the new dates for the presidential elections. According to the agreed election schedule, the first round would have taken place on May 4, followed by the runoff on May 18.

At the beginning of the government meeting, prime minister Marcel Ciolacu announced the introduction of sanctions against social media networks that favor candidates, according to Europa Libera Romania.

Georgescu’s appeal against the constitutional court’s decision to nullify the election was rejected, so he lodged a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights.

In fact, even the Venice Commission (the officially European Commission for Democracy through Law) stated that, regarding what had happened in Romania, evidence must be given: ‘An election annulment must be based on transparent evidence, not classified information.’

January 10, 2025

Former European commissioner Thierry Breton assured that the European Union has mechanisms to overturn an eventual AfD victory:

We did it in Romania and obviously we will do it in Germany if necessary.

This was widely seen as a clear admission of their true intentions, as if they had dropped all pretenses and fully revealed themselves.

They tell you to your face that they can suspend elections and that absolutely nothing happens, then they have the cheek to declare themselves the ‘democrats’ and ‘tolerant’, when it is them who are the main enemies of democracy and freedom of expression!

January 12, 2025

Tens of thousands of supporters of Romanian presidential candidate Călin Georgescu took to the streets in Bucharest on Sunday to protest the annulment of the presidential election. With no concrete evidence emerging to substantiate the allegations of Russian interference, it has become increasingly evident that the progressive elite will go to any lengths to remain in power.

February 1, 2025 According to the last polls, Georgescu would be around 50 per cent; specifically, according to the last one published by România TV, he would obtain 47 per cent.

February 10, 2025

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis announced his resignation before his possible forced dismissal from parliament. Iohannis, echoing Joe Biden, made sure to pardon his family and the judges who suspended the presidential election before leaving, for reasons of precaution.

Once the court cancelled the elections—so no new president was elected—, it also decided to lengthen the current president’s term in office until a new vote in May 2025. Iohannis faced raising opposition, however, as some viewed his lengthened mandate as illegitimate. On the one hand, the Romanian constitution states that a presidential term is five years, and the president remains in office until their successor takes over. On the other hand, it also makes clear that the presidency can be extended only in case of war or catastrophe. Protests also took place against the decision of him remaining in office, and the legislature initiated his removal as well. **Preventing a successful impeachment procedure, Klaus Iohannis stepped down. ** In his resignation speech he highlighted that Romania’s western partners will not understand the reason why he was forced to step down, and that his departure will damage Bucharest’s relationship with its allies. The country’s interim president will be the Senate’s president, Ilie Bolojan.

February 15, 2025

The Constitutional Court of Romania is accused of canceling elections without evidence, allegedly to suppress votes against the EU-aligned political establishment. Claims suggest court judges are linked to Soros-funded NGOs. A network of "independent" NGOs and media, funded by hundreds of millions from the EU and USAID, is said to promote left-wing globalist agendas, manipulate public opinion, and counter conservative values. EU grants and a secret 130 million euro contract to a French agency, tied to corruption, allegedly fueled pro-EU media campaigns, undermining independent journalism and labeling critics as pro-Russia. Independent journalist, Iosefina Pascal, talks thoroughly about this case.

February 19, 2025 Renowned journalist and X (formerly Twitter) personality Mario Nawfal interviews Georgescu, with clear expressions of support for Trump and Musk, alongside a strong critical stance toward George Soros.

February 26, 2025 Romania’s presidential candidate, Calin Georgescu was arrested while en route to Bucharest to announce his new presidential campaign. Georgescu’s campaign team has confirmed that Georgescu was picked up by the police and detained in the middle of traffic for questioning at the attorney general’s office.

Georgescu was declared the winner of that election round, but an arrest warrant was issued against him on February 26, as reported by the Romanian press.

Romanian prosecutors have initiated criminal proceedings against the right-wing politician and candidate for the 2024 presidential election, Călin Georgescu, on six charges. These include allegations of engaging in unconstitutional activities and providing inaccurate financial disclosures, according to official sources.

March 1, 2025

Thousands march for freedom in Romania. Over 200,000 Romanians flood streets for Georgescu. Anti-Soros feelings are everywhere.

March 6, 2025

The Romanian opposition – denied a likely victory – took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The ECHR (The European Convention on Human Rights, a supranational convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe) threw the case out without even hearing it. Apparently, the Romanian courts were perfectly within their rights to simply indefinitely postpone their election on the basis of unproven allegations.

Romania is moving toward its strictest censorship law since 1989, granting authorities the power to block websites and social media posts without independent review.

The Emergency Ordinance (OUG) would allow the government to shut down content deemed “false information,” “manipulation,” or a “threat to national security,” with no clear definitions or court approval required.

The Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), military, cybersecurity agencies, and electoral authorities would have sweeping powers to remove posts and block platforms, while internet providers refusing to comply could face massive daily fines.

This law could be used to silence journalists and political opponents, as there is no independent oversight and no clear standard for what counts as “false information.”

The government claims the measure is meant to combat foreign election interference, but it will actually be weaponized against free speech.

March 7, 2025 Călin Georgescu, the people’s choice in Romania’s annulled election, has officially submitted his candidacy for the upcoming presidential race, backed by over 324,000 signatures.

The Constitutional Court will decide this month or early April if his candidacy is approved, assuming, of course, that he doesn't get arrested again this time.

March 8, 2025

Demonstrators gathered in front of Romania’s Palace of Parliament, holding banners thanking Tulsi Gabbard and urging Trump to “help take our country back!”

Romania’s Constitutional Court has unanimously rejected 4 appeals attempting to block Călin Georgescu from the presidential race. The challenges, filed by minor candidates Sebastian Popescu and Cristian Terheș, accused him of failing to disclose campaign funding and alleged foreign financial ties. The court dismissed the claims as inadmissible, citing procedural failures and lack of legal merit.

Allegedly Soros-linked activists flood Romanian Electoral Bureau with 1,000 identical appeals against CĂLIN GEORGESCU

Over 1,000 copy-paste appeals were filed against Călin Georgescu’s candidacy, organized by Soros-backed activists trying to block him.

But the Electoral Bureau (BEC) is set to reject them all—the challenges were filed before his candidacy was even validated, making them invalid.

March 9, 2025

Calin Georgescu’s presidential candidacy has been officially rejected, sparking outrage among his supporters, who attempted to breach the Bureau of Electoral Control (BEC).

The candidacy was rejected with 10 votes in favor and 4 against.

Romania’s Electoral Office bypassed the Constitutional Court, which had approved his candidacy in December, and shut him down directly instead.

George Simion, president of the AUR stated in viral video:

Georgescu put his candidacy at the Central Electoral Bureau and by 10 members to 4, it was rejected without any reason. All the papers were in good order. They just said they voted through their conscience. We live in a dictatorship. Please help us. Please be on our side to restore democracy in Romania.

March 11, 2025

Romanian presidential candidate Călin Georgescu cannot run in the Presidential Election. Călin Georgescu’s appeal against the invalidation of his presidential candidacy has been rejected by the Constitutional Court.

March 27, 2025

The National Authority for Administration and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM), coordinator of digital services in Romania held an exercise to test the capacity to respond to challenges that may emerge in the online environment, in view of the presidential elections in May.

This initiative takes its root from the Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), which ironically, was established during the G7 Charlevoix Summit in June 2018, meant to enhance cooperation among nations in addressing ‘crisis’ moments and perceived threats to western democracy.

Ahead of Romania’s new presidential election, the European Commission has launched its ‘RRM’ as a proactive strategy which the EC presents as a means to tackle potential electoral law violations on social media in member states holding elections. In effect, a similar simulation was reportedly held before the February elections in Germany. Coincidentally, a call for proposals to manage the new project described as a “Media Freedom Rapid Response Mechanism” was issued by the European Commission on Oct 24, 2024, under the cross-sectoral strand of the Creative Europe Programme. This CFP was launched to allegedly promote an independent and pluralistic media environment through an independent Europe-wide rapid response mechanism.

Subsequently, the Romanian government is now drafting an emergency ordinance to empower authorities to eliminate illegal (or inconvenient) online content, which they argue is essential for protecting the electoral process. However, some interpret this as a sign of a democratic crisis, with the current administration struggling to maintain power and resorting to emergency measures to suppress opposition and their freedom of speech. Recent polls suggest that Călin Georgescu could win the presidency in a single round, a situation complicated by the exclusion of the right-wing conservative candidate from the May 2025 elections. Other talks about possible corruption surrounding the construction of the multi-billion classified secret service contract for the Realization of the infrastructure of NATO 57th Air Base Mihail Kogălniceanu, located only 30 kilometres from the Black Sea and anticipated to be NATO’s largest base in Europe upon completion.

@ 8cda1daa:e9e5bdd8

Bitcoin's blockspace is a free market (and a fee market!)

Each byte bids for inclusion according to the fee it carries, whether that byte represents a coffee payment or an encoded inscription protocol. The current debate over expanding OP_RETURN is a reminder that the ledger does not interpret meaning; it only records weight in bytes and payment in bitcoin fees.

There is no value stored on Bitcoin's ledger other than the literal number of bitcoin units recorded in your UTXO.

That means there is no "digital energy" in there, no dollars, no "store of value," nothing except a number in a database.

When you spend bitcoin, for whatever reason, it is your counterparty that decides what those units are worth. They are free to discriminate them, or you, in any way they can get away with.

They can also attribute extra value to them for any reason: a ticker price on their favorite exchange, a JPG forever attached to the output, a USDT anchor, or a private protocol no one even knows about for a VIP club membership.

All value is subjective, so it is impossible to know the trade value of every transaction merely by looking at block data.

Your counterparty also decides when a trade is settled, not the Bitcoin blockchain. They may agree on one confirmation, or three, or zero... They might require a government‑issued ID or even custody of your first‑born child.

Do not confuse Bitcoin "transactions" with trades; they are only score updates in a database. All of the value is decided by people and made competitive by the open market.

Why OP_RETURN Matters Right Now

Bitcoin offers an 80‑byte OP_RETURN field that lets users write data without polluting the UTXO set. As blockspace demand soared with Ordinals, BRC‑20, and Runes, people began hiding data in taproot leaves and bare multisig outputs, which never get spent and therefore swell the UTXO set, driving up node costs.

Relaxing, or even removing, the 80‑byte cap would invite this data back into a provably unspendable, prunable space; the chain stays neutral - every byte either pays or waits.

Is this the right thing to do? Personally, I don't care. Things are working exactly how everyone should have expected.

How to Think About "Spam" vs "Use"

Fee neutrality: If it pays the market fee, it belongs. By design. Hidden context: You can never fully know the value or trade behind the onchain transaction.

UTXO preservation: Favor prunable data (witness & OP_RETURN) over perpetually unspent outputs.

Censorship fragments the mempool: Policy bans force operators to patch their nodes or run alternate relay networks, creating isolated pools, unreliable fee estimates, and extra burden for wallets that must navigate around invisible gaps.

Takeaway

We have no objective tool for classifying "usefulness" on‑chain. The cleanest rule remains: pay the fee, get the block. If you want a lean UTXO set, widen OP_RETURN and let economics, not censorship, do the pruning.

A Meta Recommendation

Bitcoin Core is the de-facto reference implementation, not the policy police. Any subjective rule, whether it targets memes, stablecoins, transaction flags, or inscriptions, can and should be handled in downstream forks, plug‑ins, or user‑level policy. Node operators already tweak mempool size, relay settings, and script limits to match their own risk models. Pretending they cannot already only muddies the debate.

A sure path to minimizing controversy is to keep Bitcoin Core truly core: compact, predictable, and neutral. Every extra rule adds maintenance overhead and widens the surface for accidental forks. By shipping only what consensus requires and leaving higher‑layer policy to the market, Core Devs protect the common base layer we all rely on, and their own sanity.

Bonus Take: 🌶️ Shrink Blocks, or Repeal Taproot

If a transaction looks like spam to you, the blunt but honest remedy is to cut capacity, not to micromanage content. The four‑megabyte block weight and Taproot's flexible script paths are exactly what unlocked today's wave of inscriptions and tokens. If that bothers you, push to shrink the block size or even roll back Taproot and own the trade‑offs. Anything else is selective outrage dressed up as policy.

(NOTE: I do not support any current fork or mempool policy proposals.)

@ 6b3780ef:221416c8

We are excited to announce the finalization of our DVMCP specification update, which integrates the latest Model Context Protocol (MCP) version 2025-03-26 and other improvements. This article highlights the key points of this update, and the differences between our initial vision and the final specification, providing insights into how our ideas evolved during the drafting process.

The Journey from Concept to Specification

Last week, we shared our vision for updating the DVMCP specification to better integrate with the Model Context Protocol. After extensive drafting and feedback, we've finalized a specification that maintains our core vision while making important refinements to ensure optimal functionality, interoperability, and user experience. We are also improving the tagging of our specifications to make it more consistent, using the draft mcp:2025-03-26 rev1 tag to identify the version of the specification and the revision number we are in. We hope this will make the specification clearer and easier to track changes.

Key Changes in the Final Specification

Refined Event Kind Structure

In our initial proposal, we outlined a modular event structure with dedicated event kinds for server announcements (31316) and separate kinds for capability categories (31317, 31318, and 31319). The final specification maintains this approach but provides more detailed implementation guidelines.

Enhanced Ephemeral Events

One of the most significant refinements involves our approach to ephemeral events. The final specification clearly defines three ephemeral event kinds:

• Requests (25910): Client requests to servers
• Responses (26910): Server responses to client requests
• Notifications (21316): Status updates, progress information, and interactive elements

This approach provides a more efficient communication pattern while reducing unnecessary storage burden on relays.

Standardized Content Structure

While our initial vision mentioned separating Nostr metadata and MCP payloads, the final specification provides concrete implementation details:

• Content Field: Contains stringified MCP JSON-RPC messages, maintaining full compatibility with the MCP specification
• Tags Field: Contains all Nostr-specific metadata using standardized tag patterns

This clear separation ensures that both protocols can operate seamlessly together without compromising either protocol's integrity.

Comprehensive Protocol Flows

The final specification includes detailed protocol flows for:

1. Public Server Discovery: Finding servers through published announcements
2. Private Server Discovery: Direct connection to servers using the MCP initialization process
3. Capability Operations: Standardized patterns for listing, executing, and managing all capability types

These flows provide implementers with clear guidance on how to build compliant clients and servers.

Payment and Authorization

The specification now includes concrete implementations for payment handling and authorization:

• Payment Required Notifications: Using the ephemeral notification kind (21316) with specific tag patterns
• Authorization Flow: Leveraging Nostr's cryptographic properties for secure authorization

What Remained Consistent

Despite these refinements, our core vision remained intact:

1. Expanded Capability Support: The specification fully embraces MCP's complete capabilities framework, including tools, resources, and prompts
2. Modular Architecture: The separation of server announcements and capability listings improves maintainability and extensibility
3. Protocol Interoperability: The specification maintains compatibility with both Nostr and MCP

Implementation Status

With the specification now finalized, we're updating our reference implementations:

• DVMCP-bridge: Server-side implementation for exposing MCP capabilities through Nostr
• DVMCP-discovery: Client-side library for discovering and consuming MCP capabilities via Nostr

Community Involvement

We want to express our gratitude to everyone who provided feedback on our draft specification. Your insights helped shape a more robust and practical protocol.

Looking Forward

This specification represents a significant advancement in bridging the Nostr and MCP ecosystems. By providing a standardized way to discover, access, and utilize MCP capabilities through the Nostr network, we're enabling new possibilities for applications.

We invite developers to explore the final specification and begin building with our reference implementations. Together, we can create a more open, interoperable, and powerful ecosystem

The complete specification is available at 2025-03-26.md.

@ c0c42bba:a5feb7b5

Hey guy this is my first note on nostr and I'm glad we have something like this now. I've been a Substack writer for a couple of years now and I'm so excited to jump on this and I can't wait for the many things I can do with this

please show your support

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Drivechain

Understanding Drivechain requires a shift from the paradigm most bitcoiners are used to. It is not about "trustlessness" or "mathematical certainty", but game theory and incentives. (Well, Bitcoin in general is also that, but people prefer to ignore it and focus on some illusion of trustlessness provided by mathematics.)

Here we will describe the basic mechanism (simple) and incentives (complex) of "hashrate escrow" and how it enables a 2-way peg between the mainchain (Bitcoin) and various sidechains.

The full concept of "Drivechain" also involves blind merged mining (i.e., the sidechains mine themselves by publishing their block hashes to the mainchain without the miners having to run the sidechain software), but this is much easier to understand and can be accomplished either by the BIP-301 mechanism or by the Spacechains mechanism.

How does hashrate escrow work from the point of view of Bitcoin?

A new address type is created. Anything that goes in that is locked and can only be spent if all miners agree on the Withdrawal Transaction (WT^) that will spend it for 6 months. There is one of these special addresses for each sidechain.

To gather miners' agreement bitcoind keeps track of the "score" of all transactions that could possibly spend from that address. On every block mined, for each sidechain, the miner can use a portion of their coinbase to either increase the score of one WT^ by 1 while decreasing the score of all others by 1; or they can decrease the score of all WT^s by 1; or they can do nothing.

Once a transaction has gotten a score high enough, it is published and funds are effectively transferred from the sidechain to the withdrawing users.

If a timeout of 6 months passes and the score doesn't meet the threshold, that WT^ is discarded.

What does the above procedure mean?

It means that people can transfer coins from the mainchain to a sidechain by depositing to the special address. Then they can withdraw from the sidechain by making a special withdraw transaction in the sidechain.

The special transaction somehow freezes funds in the sidechain while a transaction that aggregates all withdrawals into a single mainchain WT^, which is then submitted to the mainchain miners so they can start voting on it and finally after some months it is published.

Now the crucial part: the validity of the WT^ is not verified by the Bitcoin mainchain rules, i.e., if Bob has requested a withdraw from the sidechain to his mainchain address, but someone publishes a wrong WT^ that instead takes Bob's funds and sends them to Alice's main address there is no way the mainchain will know that. What determines the "validity" of the WT^ is the miner vote score and only that. It is the job of miners to vote correctly -- and for that they may want to run the sidechain node in SPV mode so they can attest for the existence of a reference to the WT^ transaction in the sidechain blockchain (which then ensures it is ok) or do these checks by some other means.

What? 6 months to get my money back?

Yes. But no, in practice anyone who wants their money back will be able to use an atomic swap, submarine swap or other similar service to transfer funds from the sidechain to the mainchain and vice-versa. The long delayed withdraw costs would be incurred by few liquidity providers that would gain some small profit from it.

Why bother with this at all?

Drivechains solve many different problems:

It enables experimentation and new use cases for Bitcoin

Issued assets, fully private transactions, stateful blockchain contracts, turing-completeness, decentralized games, some "DeFi" aspects, prediction markets, futarchy, decentralized and yet meaningful human-readable names, big blocks with a ton of normal transactions on them, a chain optimized only for Lighting-style networks to be built on top of it.

These are some ideas that may have merit to them, but were never actually tried because they couldn't be tried with real Bitcoin or inferfacing with real bitcoins. They were either relegated to the shitcoin territory or to custodial solutions like Liquid or RSK that may have failed to gain network effect because of that.

It solves conflicts and infighting

Some people want fully private transactions in a UTXO model, others want "accounts" they can tie to their name and build reputation on top; some people want simple multisig solutions, others want complex code that reads a ton of variables; some people want to put all the transactions on a global chain in batches every 10 minutes, others want off-chain instant transactions backed by funds previously locked in channels; some want to spend, others want to just hold; some want to use blockchain technology to solve all the problems in the world, others just want to solve money.

With Drivechain-based sidechains all these groups can be happy simultaneously and don't fight. Meanwhile they will all be using the same money and contributing to each other's ecosystem even unwillingly, it's also easy and free for them to change their group affiliation later, which reduces cognitive dissonance.

It solves "scaling"

Multiple chains like the ones described above would certainly do a lot to accomodate many more transactions that the current Bitcoin chain can. One could have special Lightning Network chains, but even just big block chains or big-block-mimblewimble chains or whatnot could probably do a good job. Or even something less cool like 200 independent chains just like Bitcoin is today, no extra features (and you can call it "sharding"), just that would already multiply the current total capacity by 200.

Use your imagination.

It solves the blockchain security budget issue

The calculation is simple: you imagine what security budget is reasonable for each block in a world without block subsidy and divide that for the amount of bytes you can fit in a single block: that is the price to be paid in satoshis per byte. In reasonable estimative, the price necessary for every Bitcoin transaction goes to very large amounts, such that not only any day-to-day transaction has insanely prohibitive costs, but also Lightning channel opens and closes are impracticable.

So without a solution like Drivechain you'll be left with only one alternative: pushing Bitcoin usage to trusted services like Liquid and RSK or custodial Lightning wallets. With Drivechain, though, there could be thousands of transactions happening in sidechains and being all aggregated into a sidechain block that would then pay a very large fee to be published (via blind merged mining) to the mainchain. Bitcoin security guaranteed.

It keeps Bitcoin decentralized

Once we have sidechains to accomodate the normal transactions, the mainchain functionality can be reduced to be only a "hub" for the sidechains' comings and goings, and then the maximum block size for the mainchain can be reduced to, say, 100kb, which would make running a full node very very easy.

Can miners steal?

Yes. If a group of coordinated miners are able to secure the majority of the hashpower and keep their coordination for 6 months, they can publish a WT^ that takes the money from the sidechains and pays to themselves.

Will miners steal?

No, because the incentives are such that they won't.

Although it may look at first that stealing is an obvious strategy for miners as it is free money, there are many costs involved:

1. The cost of ceasing blind-merged mining returns -- as stealing will kill a sidechain, all the fees from it that miners would be expected to earn for the next years are gone;
2. The cost of Bitcoin price going down: If a steal is successful that will mean Drivechains are not safe, therefore Bitcoin is less useful, and miner credibility will also be hurt, which are likely to cause the Bitcoin price to go down, which in turn may kill the miners' businesses and savings;
3. The cost of coordination -- assuming miners are just normal businesses, they just want to do their work and get paid, but stealing from a Drivechain will require coordination with other miners to conduct an immoral act in a way that has many pitfalls and is likely to be broken over the months;
4. The cost of miners leaving your mining pool: when we talked about "miners" above we were actually talking about mining pools operators, so they must also consider the risk of miners migrating from their mining pool to others as they begin the process of stealing;
5. The cost of community goodwill -- when participating in a steal operation, a miner will suffer a ton of backlash from the community. Even if the attempt fails at the end, the fact that it was attempted will contribute to growing concerns over exaggerated miners power over the Bitcoin ecosystem, which may end up causing the community to agree on a hard-fork to change the mining algorithm in the future, or to do something to increase participation of more entities in the mining process (such as development or cheapment of new ASICs), which have a chance of decreasing the profits of current miners.

Another point to take in consideration is that one may be inclined to think a newly-created sidechain or a sidechain with relatively low usage may be more easily stolen from, since the blind merged mining returns from it (point 1 above) are going to be small -- but the fact is also that a sidechain with small usage will also have less money to be stolen from, and since the other costs besides 1 are less elastic at the end it will not be worth stealing from these too.

All of the above consideration are valid only if miners are stealing from good sidechains. If there is a sidechain that is doing things wrong, scamming people, not being used at all, or is full of bugs, for example, that will be perceived as a bad sidechain, and then miners can and will safely steal from it and kill it, which will be perceived as a good thing by everybody.

What do we do if miners steal?

Paul Sztorc has suggested in the past that a user-activated soft-fork could prevent miners from stealing, i.e., most Bitcoin users and nodes issue a rule similar to this one to invalidate the inclusion of a faulty WT^ and thus cause any miner that includes it in a block to be relegated to their own Bitcoin fork that other nodes won't accept.

This suggestion has made people think Drivechain is a sidechain solution backed by user-actived soft-forks for safety, which is very far from the truth. Drivechains must not and will not rely on this kind of soft-fork, although they are possible, as the coordination costs are too high and no one should ever expect these things to happen.

If even with all the incentives against them (see above) miners do still steal from a good sidechain that will mean the failure of the Drivechain experiment. It will very likely also mean the failure of the Bitcoin experiment too, as it will be proven that miners can coordinate to act maliciously over a prolonged period of time regardless of economic and social incentives, meaning they are probably in it just for attacking Bitcoin, backed by nation-states or something else, and therefore no Bitcoin transaction in the mainchain is to be expected to be safe ever again.

Why use this and not a full-blown trustless and open sidechain technology?

Because it is impossible.

If you ever heard someone saying "just use a sidechain", "do this in a sidechain" or anything like that, be aware that these people are either talking about "federated" sidechains (i.e., funds are kept in custody by a group of entities) or they are talking about Drivechain, or they are disillusioned and think it is possible to do sidechains in any other manner.

No, I mean a trustless 2-way peg with correctness of the withdrawals verified by the Bitcoin protocol!

That is not possible unless Bitcoin verifies all transactions that happen in all the sidechains, which would be akin to drastically increasing the blocksize and expanding the Bitcoin rules in tons of ways, i.e., a terrible idea that no one wants.

What about the Blockstream sidechains whitepaper?

Yes, that was a way to do it. The Drivechain hashrate escrow is a conceptually simpler way to achieve the same thing with improved incentives, less junk in the chain, more safety.

Isn't the hashrate escrow a very complex soft-fork?

Yes, but it is much simpler than SegWit. And, unlike SegWit, it doesn't force anything on users, i.e., it isn't a mandatory blocksize increase.

Why should we expect miners to care enough to participate in the voting mechanism?

Because it's in their own self-interest to do it, and it costs very little. Today over half of the miners mine RSK. It's not blind merged mining, it's a very convoluted process that requires them to run a RSK full node. For the Drivechain sidechains, an SPV node would be enough, or maybe just getting data from a block explorer API, so much much simpler.

What if I still don't like Drivechain even after reading this?

That is the entire point! You don't have to like it or use it as long as you're fine with other people using it. The hashrate escrow special addresses will not impact you at all, validation cost is minimal, and you get the benefit of people who want to use Drivechain migrating to their own sidechains and freeing up space for you in the mainchain. See also the point above about infighting.

See also

• Podcast episode with Ruben Somsen and Aaron van Wirdum explaining Drivechain
• Alternatives to Drivechain
• Drivechain comparison with Ethereum

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Personagens de jogos e símbolos

A sensação de "ser" um personagem em um jogo ou uma brincadeira talvez seja o mais próximo que eu tenha conseguido chegar do entendimento de um símbolo religioso.

A hóstia consagrada é, segundo a religião, o corpo de Cristo, mas nossa mente moderna só consegue concebê-la como sendo uma representação do corpo de Cristo. Da mesma forma outras culturas e outras religiões têm símbolos parecidos, inclusive nos quais o próprio participante do ritual faz o papel de um deus ou de qualquer coisa parecida.

"Faz o papel" é de novo a interpretação da mente moderna. O sujeito ali é a coisa, mas ele ao mesmo tempo que é também sabe que não é, que continua sendo ele mesmo.

Nos jogos de videogame e brincadeiras infantis em que se encarna um personagem o jogador é o personagem. não se diz, entre os jogadores, que alguém está "encenando", mas que ele é e pronto. nem há outra denominação ou outro verbo. No máximo "encarnando", mas já aí já é vocabulário jornalístico feito para facilitar a compreensão de quem está de fora do jogo.

@ 866e0139:6a9334e5

Autor: Ludwig F. Badenhagen. Dieser Beitrag wurde mit dem Pareto-Client geschrieben. Sie finden alle Texte der Friedenstaube und weitere Texte zum Thema Frieden hier. Die neuesten Pareto-Artikel finden Sie auch in unserem Telegram-Kanal.

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Die neuesten Artikel der Friedenstaube gibt es jetzt auch im eigenen Friedenstaube-Telegram-Kanal.

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Woran erkennt man einen Verbrecher? Die meisten Menschen erfahren von Verbrechern aus den Medien, denn die Medien erklären, wer ein Verbrecher und was ein Verbrechen ist. Die Medien berufen sich hierbei gerne auf „Experten“ und „helfen“ dem gewöhnlichen Bürger bei der „Einordnung“ von Sachverhalten. Man lernt, dass „ein junger Mann“, der mit einem Messer ein hilfloses Baby abschlachtet, nicht so hart bestraft wird, wie etwa ein „Steuersünder“. Und wer glaubt, dass Wahlbetrug juristisch geahndet werden könnte, der irrt ebenso wie jemand, der glaubt, dass es in einer Demokratie erlaubt sein könnte, ein satirisches Meme über einen Politiker zu teilen. Neuerdings sind selbst „Meinungen unterhalb der Strafbarkeitsgrenze“ für gewöhnliche Bürger nicht mehr folgenlos.

Bekanntlich ist die Staatsanwaltschaft in Deutschland eine weisungsgebundene Behörde und als solche ein Teil der Exekutive. Dem Staatsanwalt selbst ist gemäß § 353b Strafgesetzbuch zudem strafrechtlich untersagt, ihm gegenüber erteilte Weisungen Dritten mitzuteilen. Sofern demnach direkte Weisungen erteilt würden, hätte der weisungsgebundene Staatsanwalt diese nicht nur zu befolgen, sondern dürfte auch niemandem gegenüber offenbaren, dass er nicht aus eigener Überzeugung, sondern auf Anweisung - wie beispielsweisen aus politischen Motiven heraus - handelt. Diese juristische Konstruktion eröffnet regierenden Politikern einen erheblichen Gestaltungsspielraum. 

Anstelle der konsequenten Anwendung des Strafrechts gab es vor allem in der jüngeren Vergangenheit bei den der Öffentlichkeit nicht zu verbergenden Verfehlungen von Politikern lediglich folgenlose Untersuchungsausschüsse. Könnte dies daran gelegen haben, dass Gerechtigkeit eine Frage von Auslegung und Deutung ist – und die Politiker die Deutungshoheit haben?

Wenn dies so wäre, würde sich die Frage aufdrängen, wie weitgehend denn Straftaten dieser Personengruppe ungestraft ausgeführt werden könnten? Ein Manager eines Unternehmens wird für Fehlverhalten massiv bestraft, während der Lenker eines Landes quasi alles tun kann, was er – im Auftrag der Leute, für die er tatsächlich tätig ist – tun möchte? Wenn dies so wäre, würde es sich dann nicht eher um eine Kabale als um eine ehrenhafte Regierung handeln?

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DIE FRIEDENSTAUBE FLIEGT AUCH IN IHR POSTFACH!

Hier können Sie die Friedenstaube abonnieren und bekommen die Artikel zugesandt, vorerst für alle kostenfrei, wir starten gänzlich ohne Paywall. (Die Bezahlabos fangen erst zu laufen an, wenn ein Monetarisierungskonzept für die Inhalte steht). Sie wollen der Genossenschaft beitreten oder uns unterstützen? Mehr Infos hier oder am Ende des Textes. friedenstaube@pareto.space

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Was wäre in diesem Fall mit dem Gewaltmonopol? Könnten die Soldaten und Polizisten dann nicht für das Durchsetzen der individuellen Interessen dieser Leute missbraucht werden? Ein Bürger dürfte sich nicht kritisch über diese Leute äußern, oder müsste stärkste Repressionen erdulden. Wenn die Gerichtsbarkeit dieser Kabale dienen würde, wäre denn dann eine Rechtsprechung überhaupt möglich? Was würde mit einem Richter, der „in einer wichtigen Sache das falsche Urteil sprechen“ würde, denn passieren? Würde möglicherweise sein Haus von einem Sonderkommando durchsucht und würde er gedemütigt? Würde er seinen Job verlieren und käme er ins Gefängnis? Und wie würde dies auf andere Richter wirken? Würden sich diese gegen die Kabale auflehnen oder lieber tun, was die Kabale ihnen vorgibt?

Was wäre, wenn solch eine Kabale zu Krieg, höheren Steuerzahlungen, medizinischen Zwangsbehandlungen etc. unter Androhung von Bestrafungen zwingen würde? Und was wäre, wenn die Menschen erkennen würden, dass sie von Verbrechern regiert werden?

Was würden Sie tun?

Nun, man könnte demonstrieren, auf die Straße gehen, und dort für seine Rechte eintreten, oder? Aber ist dieses „Demonstrationsrecht“, welches dem eigentlichen Souverän, dem Bürger, „großzügig“ eingeräumt wurde, nicht etwas völlig Wirkungsloses? Wer demonstriert, hat das Gewaltmonopol des Staates zu akzeptieren, sodass er zwar geschlagen, mit Wasserwerfern und Pfefferspray besprüht, gewürgt und von Hunden gebissen werden, aber sich selbst nicht wehren darf. Wenn sich ein Demonstrant in der „falschen Sache“ nicht an die Demonstrationsregeln hält und beispielsweise Sicherheitsabstände nicht korrekt einhält, wird er sehr schnell von einem gepanzerten und anonymisierten Polizisten bestraft. Und was ist mit den vielen V-Leuten? Ein so genannter Agent Provokateur mischt sich unter die Demonstranten und gibt vor, ein Teil von diesen zu sein, um dann in deren Namen „etwas Unrechtes“ zu tun wie eine Reichsbürger-Fahne zu schwenken oder einen Sicherheitsabstand nicht einzuhalten oder einen Polizisten anzugreifen. Und schon hat man „einen Grund“, dieser Demonstration einen besonderen Anstrich zu verpassen. Wer sich noch an „den Sturm auf den Reichstag“ und die Verleihungen von Verdienstorden für „die Rettung unserer Demokratie“ erinnert, weiß, dass Demonstrationen gelenkt werden können und dass ein gewöhnlicher Bürger, der „sein Demonstrationsrecht“ wahrnimmt, im Zuge einer solchen Veranstaltung am eigenen Leib erfahren kann, dass ihm die Demo im günstigsten Fall weder genützt noch geschadet hat.

Aber was sonst könnte man tun, wenn man von Verbrechern regiert würde? Was könnte getan werden, wenn Untaten wie Kriegstreiberei, Gesundheitsdiktatur, Steuerwillkür, Klimawahn, Wahlmanipulationen etc. nicht „aus Versehen“, sondern mit schädigender Absicht, also mit Vorsatz getan wurden und werden?

Wer sich diese Fragen stellt, ist bereits sehr weit und weitgehend isoliert, denn der große Teil der Bevölkerung wird durch die Medien nicht nur darüber „informiert“, was Straftaten sind, sondern erhält zudem „wohlwollende Einordnungen“ zum jeweils aktuellen Geschehen. Der „gute Bürger Unsererdemokratie“ ist einfach „besser informiert“, und weiß, was er zu denken hat. Für den „guten Bürger“ ist alles klar: Wir leben in der besten Demokratie aller Zeiten und die Politiker geben ihr Bestes, zu unser aller Wohle. Sie schützen uns vor Pandemien, vor Feinden der Demokratie und Feinden des Landes, und sind hierbei weitestgehend selbstlos. 

Aber wer sich der Mühe unterziehen möchte, selbst zu denken, der hat die Möglichkeit, seine eigenen Einordnungen auf der Basis ungeschwärzter Fakten vorzunehmen. Wer beispielsweise die RKI-Protokolle oder auch anderes Material ungeschwärzt lesen möchte, kann sich (noch) unabhängiger Portale bedienen, die seitens der Regierung zwar allesamt verboten werden sollen (da man schließlich als Regierung bestimmen möchte, was die Bürger zu lesen und zu glauben haben), die aber derzeit noch verfügbar sind.

In welcher Welt wollen wir und unsere Kinder leben und was ist zu tun, damit diese wünschenswerte Welt entsteht? Die Menschen sollten in die Wahrnehmung und von dort aus in die Erkenntnis kommen. Und aus der Erkenntnis ins Wollen, denn letztendlich ist das Wollen stets die Grundvoraussetzung für das Tun. Und ohne das Tun passiert – nichts.

Lesen Sie hier, wie Menschen wie Vieh behandelt werden und hier, wie das System organisiert ist. Und hier ist zu nachzulesen, was getan werden könnte, wenn Verbrecher an der Macht wären.

---

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---

Sie sind noch nicht auf Nostr and wollen die volle Erfahrung machen (liken, kommentieren etc.)? Zappen können Sie den Autor auch ohne Nostr-Profil! Erstellen Sie sich einen Account auf Start. Weitere Onboarding-Leitfäden gibt es im Pareto-Wiki.

@ 21335073:a244b1ad

Please respect Virginia Giuffre’s memory by refraining from asking about the circumstances or theories surrounding her passing.

Since Virginia Giuffre’s death, I’ve reflected on what she would want me to say or do. This piece is my attempt to honor her legacy.

When I first spoke with Virginia, I was struck by her unshakable hope. I had grown cynical after years in the anti-human trafficking movement, worn down by a broken system and a government that often seemed complicit. But Virginia’s passion, creativity, and belief that survivors could be heard reignited something in me. She reminded me of my younger, more hopeful self. Instead of warning her about the challenges ahead, I let her dream big, unburdened by my own disillusionment. That conversation changed me for the better, and following her lead led to meaningful progress.

Virginia was one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. As a survivor of Epstein, Maxwell, and their co-conspirators, she risked everything to speak out, taking on some of the world’s most powerful figures.

She loved when I said, “Epstein isn’t the only Epstein.” This wasn’t just about one man—it was a call to hold all abusers accountable and to ensure survivors find hope and healing.

The Epstein case often gets reduced to sensational details about the elite, but that misses the bigger picture. Yes, we should be holding all of the co-conspirators accountable, we must listen to the survivors’ stories. Their experiences reveal how predators exploit vulnerabilities, offering lessons to prevent future victims.

You’re not powerless in this fight. Educate yourself about trafficking and abuse—online and offline—and take steps to protect those around you. Supporting survivors starts with small, meaningful actions. Free online resources can guide you in being a safe, supportive presence.

When high-profile accusations arise, resist snap judgments. Instead of dismissing survivors as “crazy,” pause to consider the trauma they may be navigating. Speaking out or coping with abuse is never easy. You don’t have to believe every claim, but you can refrain from attacking accusers online.

Society also fails at providing aftercare for survivors. The government, often part of the problem, won’t solve this. It’s up to us. Prevention is critical, but when abuse occurs, step up for your loved ones and community. Protect the vulnerable. it’s a challenging but a rewarding journey.

If you’re contributing to Nostr, you’re helping build a censorship resistant platform where survivors can share their stories freely, no matter how powerful their abusers are. Their voices can endure here, offering strength and hope to others. This gives me great hope for the future.

Virginia Giuffre’s courage was a gift to the world. It was an honor to know and serve her. She will be deeply missed. My hope is that her story inspires others to take on the powerful.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

A Causa

o Princípios de Economia Política de Menger é o único livro que enfatiza a CAUSA o tempo todo. os cientistas todos parecem não saber, ou se esquecer sempre, que as coisas têm causa, e que o conhecimento verdadeiro é o conhecimento da causa das coisas.

a causa é uma categoria metafísica muito superior a qualquer correlação ou resultado de teste de hipótese, ela não pode ser descoberta por nenhum artifício econométrico ou reduzida à simples antecedência temporal estatística. a causa dos fenômenos não pode ser provada cientificamente, mas pode ser conhecida.

o livro de Menger conta para o leitor as causas de vários fenômenos econômicos e as interliga de forma que o mundo caótico da economia parece adquirir uma ordem no momento em que você lê. é uma sensação mágica e indescritível.

quando eu te o recomendei, queria é te imbuir com o espírito da busca pela causa das coisas. depois de ler aquilo, você está apto a perceber continuidade causal nos fenômenos mais complexos da economia atual, enxergar as causas entre toda a ação governamental e as suas várias consequências na vida humana. eu faço isso todos os dias e é a melhor sensação do mundo quando o caos das notícias do caderno de Economia do jornal -- que para o próprio jornalista que as escreveu não têm nenhum sentido (tanto é que ele escreve tudo errado) -- se incluem num sistema ordenado de causas e consequências.

provavelmente eu sempre erro em alguns ou vários pontos, mas ainda assim é maravilhoso. ou então é mais maravilhoso ainda quando eu descubro o erro e reinsiro o acerto naquela racionalização bela da ordem do mundo econômico que é a ordem de Deus.

em scrap para T.P.

@ 2b24a1fa:17750f64

Ein Gedicht unserer Zeit von Lionne Douce.

Sprecherin: Sabrina Khalil

https://soundcloud.com/radiomuenchen/der-gutmenschzug-ist-da-von?

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Veterano não é dono de bixete

"VETERANO NÃO É DONO DE BIXETE". A frase em letras garrafais chama a atenção dos transeuntes neófitos. Paira sobre um cartaz amarelo que lista várias reclamações contra os "trotes machistas", que, na opinião do responsável pelo cartaz, "não é brincadeira, é opressão".

Eis aí um bizarro exemplo de como são as coisas: primeiro todos os universitários aprovam a idéia do trote, apoiam sua realização e até mesmo desejam sofrer o trote -- com a condição de o poderem aplicar eles mesmos depois --, louvam as maravilhas do mundo universitário, onde a suprema sabedoria se esconde atrás de rituais iniciáticos fora do alcance da imaginação do homem comum e rude, do pobre e do filhinho-de-papai das faculdades privadas; em suma: fomentam os mais baixos, os mais animalescos instintos, a crueldade primordial, destroem em si mesmos e nos colegas quaisquer valores civilizatórios que tivessem sobrado ali, ficando todos indistingüíveis de macacos agressivos e tarados.

Depois vêm aí com um cartaz protestar contra os assédios -- que sem dúvida acontecem em larguíssima escala -- sofridos pelas calouras de 17 anos e que, sendo também novatas no mundo universitário, ainda conservam um pouco de discernimento e pudor.

A incompreensão do fenômeno, porém, é tão grande, que os trotes não são identificados como um problema mental, uma doença que deve ser tratada e eliminada, mas como um sintoma da opressão machista dos homens às mulheres, um produto desta civilização paternalista que, desde que Deus é chamado "o Pai" e não "a Mãe", corrompe a benéfica, pura e angélica natureza do homem primitivo e o torna esta tão torpe criatura.

Na opinião dos autores desse cartaz é preciso, pois, continuar a destruir o que resta da cultura ocidental, e então esperar que haja trotes menos opressores.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

neuron.vim

I started using this neuron thing to create an update this same zettelkasten, but the existing vim plugin had too many problems, so I forked it and ended up changing almost everything.

Since the upstream repository was somewhat abandoned, most users and people who were trying to contribute upstream migrate to my fork too.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/neuron.vim

@ c9badfea:610f861a

1. Install Image Toolbox (it's free and open source)
2. Launch the app and navigate to the Tools tab
3. Choose Cipher from the tool list
4. Pick any file from your device storage
5. Keep Encryption toggle selected
6. Enter a password in the Key field
7. Keep default AES/GCM/NoPadding algorithm
8. Tap the Encrypt button and save your encrypted file
9. If you want to decrypt the file just repeat the previous steps but choose Decryption instead of Encryption in step 5

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

On "zk-rollups" applied to Bitcoin

ZK rollups make no sense in bitcoin because there is no "cheap calldata". all data is already ~~cheap~~ expensive calldata.

There could be an onchain zk verification that allows succinct signatures maybe, but never a rollup.

What happens is: you can have one UTXO that contains multiple balances on it and in each transaction you can recreate that UTXOs but alter its state using a zk to compress all internal transactions that took place.

The blockchain must be aware of all these new things, so it is in no way "L2".

And you must have an entity responsible for that UTXO and for conjuring the state changes and zk proofs.

But on bitcoin you also must keep the data necessary to rebuild the proofs somewhere else, I'm not sure how can the third party responsible for that UTXO ensure that happens.

I think such a construct is similar to a credit card corporation: one central party upon which everybody depends, zero interoperability with external entities, every vendor must have an account on each credit card company to be able to charge customers, therefore it is not clear that such a thing is more desirable than solutions that are truly open and interoperable like Lightning, which may have its defects but at least fosters a much better environment, bringing together different conflicting parties, custodians, anyone.

@ 1c19eb1a:e22fb0bc

I am happy to present to you the first full review posted to Nostr Reviews: #Primal for #Android!

Primal has its origins as a micro-blogging, social media client, though it is now expanding its horizons into long-form content. It was first released only as a web client in March of 2023, but has since had a native client released for both iOS and Android. All of Primal's clients recently had an update to Primal 2.0, which included both performance improvements and a number of new features. This review will focus on the Android client specifically, both on phone and tablet.

Since Primal has also added features that are only available to those enrolled in their new premium subscription, it should also be noted that this review will be from the perspective of a free user. This is for two reasons. First, I am using an alternate npub to review the app, and if I were to purchase premium at some time in the future, it would be on my main npub. Second, despite a lot of positive things I have to say about Primal, I am not planning to regularly use any of their apps on my main account for the time being, for reasons that will be discussed later in the review.

The application can be installed through the Google Play Store, nostr:npub10r8xl2njyepcw2zwv3a6dyufj4e4ajx86hz6v4ehu4gnpupxxp7stjt2p8, or by downloading it directly from Primal's GitHub. The full review is current as of Primal Android version 2.0.21. Updates to the review on 4/30/2025 are current as of version 2.2.13.

In the ecosystem of "notes and other stuff," Primal is predominantly in the "notes" category. It is geared toward users who want a social media experience similar to Twitter or Facebook with an infinite scrolling feed of notes to interact with. However, there is some "other stuff" included to complement this primary focus on short and long form notes including a built-in Lightning wallet powered by #Strike, a robust advanced search, and a media-only feed.

Overall Impression

Score: 4.4 / 5 (Updated 4/30/2025)

Primal may well be the most polished UI of any Nostr client native to Android. It is incredibly well designed and thought out, with all of the icons and settings in the places a user would expect to find them. It is also incredibly easy to get started on Nostr via Primal's sign-up flow. The only two things that will be foreign to new users are the lack of any need to set a password or give an email address, and the prompt to optionally set up the wallet.

Complaints prior to the 2.0 update about Primal being slow and clunky should now be completely alleviated. I only experienced quick load times and snappy UI controls with a couple very minor exceptions, or when loading DVM-based feeds, which are outside of Primal's control.

Primal is not, however, a client that I would recommend for the power-user. Control over preferred relays is minimal and does not allow the user to determine which relays they write to and which they only read from. Though you can use your own wallet, it will not appear within the wallet interface, which only works with the custodial wallet from Strike. Moreover, and most eggregiously, the only way for existing users to log in is by pasting their nsec, as Primal does not support either the Android signer or remote signer options for users to protect their private key at this time. This lack of signer support is the primary reason the client received such a low overall score. If even one form of external signer log in is added to Primal, the score will be amended to 4.2 / 5, and if both Android signer and remote signer support is added, it will increase to 4.5.

Update: As of version 2.2.13, Primal now supports the Amber Android signer! One of the most glaring issues with the app has now been remedied and as promised, the overall score above has been increased.

Another downside to Primal is that it still utilizes an outdated direct message specification that leaks metadata that can be readily seen by anyone on the network. While the content of your messages remains encrypted, anyone can see who you are messaging with, and when. This also means that you will not see any DMs from users who are messaging from a client that has moved to the latest, and far more private, messaging spec.

That said, the beautiful thing about Nostr as a protocol is that users are not locked into any particular client. You may find Primal to be a great client for your average #bloomscrolling and zapping memes, but opt for a different client for more advanced uses and for direct messaging.

Features

Primal has a lot of features users would expect from any Nostr client that is focused on short-form notes, but it also packs in a lot of features that set it apart from other clients, and that showcase Primal's obvious prioritization of a top-tier user experience.

Home Feed

By default, the infinitely scrolling Home feed displays notes from those you currently follow in chronological order. This is traditional Nostr at its finest, and made all the more immersive by the choice to have all distracting UI elements quickly hide themselves from view as the you begin to scroll down the feed. They return just as quickly when you begin to scroll back up.

Scrolling the feed is incredibly fast, with no noticeable choppiness and minimal media pop-in if you are on a decent internet connection.

Helpfully, it is easy to get back to the top of the feed whenever there is a new post to be viewed, as a bubble will appear with the profile pictures of the users who have posted since you started scrolling.

Interacting With Notes

Interacting with a note in the feed can be done via the very recognizable icons at the bottom of each post. You can comment, zap, like, repost, and/or bookmark the note.

Notably, tapping on the zap icon will immediately zap the note your default amount of sats, making zapping incredibly fast, especially when using the built-in wallet. Long pressing on the zap icon will open up a menu with a variety of amounts, along with the ability to zap a custom amount. All of these amounts, and the messages that are sent with the zap, can be customized in the application settings.

Users who are familiar with Twitter or Instagram will feel right at home with only having one option for "liking" a post. However, users from Facebook or other Nostr clients may wonder why they don't have more options for reactions. This is one of those things where users who are new to Nostr probably won't notice they are missing out on anything at all, while users familiar with clients like #Amethyst or #noStrudel will miss the ability to react with a 🤙 or a 🫂.

It's a similar story with the bookmark option. While this is a nice bit of feature parity for Twitter users, for those already used to the ability to have multiple customized lists of bookmarks, or at minimum have the ability to separate them into public and private, it may be a disappointment that they have no access to the bookmarks they already built up on other clients. Primal offers only one list of bookmarks for short-form notes and they are all visible to the public. However, you are at least presented with a warning about the public nature of your bookmarks before saving your first one.

Yet, I can't dock the Primal team much for making these design choices, as they are understandable for Primal's goal of being a welcoming client for those coming over to Nostr from centralized platforms. They have optimized for the onboarding of new users, rather than for those who have been around for a while, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Post Creation

Composing posts in Primal is as simple as it gets. Accessed by tapping the obvious circular button with a "+" on it in the lower right of the Home feed, most of what you could need is included in the interface, and nothing you don't.

Your device's default keyboard loads immediately, and the you can start typing away.

There are options for adding images from your gallery, or taking a picture with your camera, both of which will result in the image being uploaded to Primal's media-hosting server. If you prefer to host your media elsewhere, you can simply paste the link to that media into your post.

There is also an @ icon as a tip-off that you can tag other users. Tapping on this simply types "@" into your note and brings up a list of users. All you have to do to narrow down the user you want to tag is continue typing their handle, Nostr address, or paste in their npub.

This can get mixed results in other clients, which sometimes have a hard time finding particular users when typing in their handle, forcing you to have to remember their Nostr address or go hunt down their npub by another means. Not so with Primal, though. I had no issues tagging anyone I wanted by simply typing in their handle.

Of course, when you are tagging someone well known, you may find that there are multiple users posing as that person. Primal helps you out here, though. Usually the top result is the person you want, as Primal places them in order of how many followers they have. This is quite reliable right now, but there is nothing stopping someone from spinning up an army of bots to follow their fake accounts, rendering follower count useless for determining which account is legitimate. It would be nice to see these results ranked by web-of-trust, or at least an indication of how many users you follow who also follow the users listed in the results.

Once you are satisfied with your note, the "Post" button is easy to find in the top right of the screen.

Feed Selector and Marketplace

Primal's Home feed really shines when you open up the feed selection interface, and find that there are a plethora of options available for customizing your view. By default, it only shows four options, but tapping "Edit" opens up a new page of available toggles to add to the feed selector.

The options don't end there, though. Tapping "Add Feed" will open up the feed marketplace, where an ever-growing number of custom feeds can be found, some created by Primal and some created by others. This feed marketplace is available to a few other clients, but none have so closely integrated it with their Home feeds like Primal has.

Unfortunately, as great as these custom feeds are, this was also the feature where I ran into the most bugs while testing out the app.

One of these bugs was while selecting custom feeds. Occasionally, these feed menu screens would become unresponsive and I would be unable to confirm my selection, or even use the back button on my device to back out of the screen. However, I was able to pull the screen down to close it and re-open the menu, and everything would be responsive again.

This only seemed to occur when I spent 30 seconds or more on the same screen, so I imagine that most users won't encounter it much in their regular use.

Another UI bug occurred for me while in the feed marketplace. I could scroll down the list of available feeds, but attempting to scroll back up the feed would often close the interface entirely instead, as though I had pulled the screen down from the top, when I was swiping in the middle of the screen.

The last of these bugs occurred when selecting a long-form "Reads" feed while in the menu for the Home feed. The menu would allow me to add this feed and select it to be displayed, but it would fail to load the feed once selected, stating "There is no content in this feed." Going to a different page within the the app and then going back to the Home tab would automatically remove the long-form feed from view, and reset back to the most recently viewed short-form "Notes" feed, though the long-form feed would still be available to select again. The results were similar when selecting a short-form feed for the Reads feed.

I would suggest that if long-form and short-form feeds are going to be displayed in the same list, and yet not be able to be displayed in the same feed, the application should present an error message when attempting to add a long-form feed for the Home feed or a short-form feed for the Reads feed, and encourage the user add it to the proper feed instead.

Long-Form "Reads" Feed

A brand new feature in Primal 2.0, users can now browse and read long-form content posted to Nostr without having to go to a separate client. Primal now has a dedicated "Reads" feed to browse and interact with these articles.

This feed displays the author and title of each article or blog, along with an image, if available. Quite conveniently, it also lets you know the approximate amount of time it will take to read a given article, so you can decide if you have the time to dive into it now, or come back later.

Noticeably absent from the Reads feed, though, is the ability to compose an article of your own. This is another understandable design choice for a mobile client. Composing a long-form note on a smart-phone screen is not a good time. Better to be done on a larger screen, in a client with a full-featured text editor.

Tapping an article will open up an attractive reading interface, with the ability to bookmark for later. These bookmarks are a separate list from your short-form note bookmarks so you don't have to scroll through a bunch of notes you bookmarked to find the article you told yourself you would read later and it's already been three weeks.

While you can comment on the article or zap it, you will notice that you cannot repost or quote-post it. It's not that you can't do so on Nostr. You absolutely can in other clients. In fact, you can do so on Primal's web client, too. However, Primal on Android does not handle rendering long-form note previews in the Home feed, so they have simply left out the option to share them there. See below for an example of a quote-post of a long-form note in the Primal web client vs the Android client.

Primal Web:

Primal Android:

The Explore Tab

Another unique feature of the Primal client is the Explore tab, indicated by the compass icon. This tab is dedicated to discovering content from outside your current follow list. You can find the feed marketplace here, and add any of the available feeds to your Home or Reads feed selections. You can also find suggested users to follow in the People tab. The Zaps tab will show you who has been sending and receiving large zaps. Make friends with the generous ones!

The Media tab gives you a chronological feed of just media, displayed in a tile view. This can be great when you are looking for users who post dank memes, or incredible photography on a regular basis. Unfortunately, it appears that there is no way to filter this feed for sensitive content, and so you do not have to scroll far before you see pornographic material.

Indeed, it does not appear that filters for sensitive content are available in Primal for any feed. The app is kind enough to give a minimal warning that objectionable content may be present when selecting the "Nostr Firehose" option in your Home feed, with a brief "be careful" in the feed description, but there is not even that much of a warning here for the media-only feed.

The media-only feed doesn't appear to be quite as bad as the Nostr Firehose feed, so there must be some form of filtering already taking place, rather than being a truly global feed of all media. Yet, occasional sensitive content still litters the feed and is unavoidable, even for users who would rather not see it. There are, of course, ways to mute particular users who post such content, if you don't want to see it a second time from the same user, but that is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, so your only realistic choices in Primal are currently to either avoid the Nostr Firehose and media-only feeds, or determine that you can put up with regularly scrolling past often graphic content.

This is probably the only choice Primal has made that is not friendly to new users. Most clients these days will have some protections in place to hide sensitive content by default, but still allow the user to toggle those protections off if they so choose. Some of them hide posts flagged as sensitive content altogether, others just blur the images unless the user taps to reveal them, and others simply blur all images posted by users you don't follow. If Primal wants to target new users who are accustomed to legacy social media platforms, they really should follow suit.

The final tab is titled "Topics," but it is really just a list of popular hashtags, which appear to be arranged by how often they are being used. This can be good for finding things that other users are interested in talking about, or finding specific content you are interested in.

If you tap on any topic in the list, it will display a feed of notes that include that hashtag. What's better, you can add it as a feed option you can select on your Home feed any time you want to see posts with that tag.

The only suggestion I would make to improve this tab is some indication of why the topics are arranged in the order presented. A simple indicator of the number of posts with that hashtag in the last 24 hours, or whatever the interval is for determining their ranking, would more than suffice.

Even with those few shortcomings, Primal's Explore tab makes the client one of the best options for discovering content on Nostr that you are actually interested in seeing and interacting with.

Built-In Wallet

While this feature is completely optional, the icon to access the wallet is the largest of the icons at the bottom of the screen, making you feel like you are missing out on the most important feature of the app if you don't set it up. I could be critical of this design choice, but in many ways I think it is warranted. The built-in wallet is one of the most unique features that Primal has going for it.

Consider: If you are a new user coming to Nostr, who isn't already a Bitcoiner, and you see that everyone else on the platform is sending and receiving sats for their posts, will you be more likely to go download a separate wallet application or use one that is built-into your client? I would wager the latter option by a long shot. No need to figure out which wallet you should download, whether you should do self-custody or custodial, or make the mistake of choosing a wallet with unexpected setup fees and no Lightning address so you can't even receive zaps to it. nostr:npub16c0nh3dnadzqpm76uctf5hqhe2lny344zsmpm6feee9p5rdxaa9q586nvr often states that he believes more people will be onboarded to Bitcoin through Nostr than by any other means, and by including a wallet into the Primal client, his team has made adopting Bitcoin that much easier for new Nostr users.

Some of us purists may complain that it is custodial and KYC, but that is an unfortunate necessity in order to facilitate onboarding newcoiners to Bitcoin. This is not intended to be a wallet for those of us who have been using Bitcoin and Lightning regularly already. It is meant for those who are not already familiar with Bitcoin to make it as easy as possible to get off zero, and it accomplishes this better than any other wallet I have ever tried.

In large part, this is because the KYC is very light. It does need the user's legal name, a valid email address, date of birth, and country of residence, but that's it! From there, the user can buy Bitcoin directly through the app, but only in the amount of $4.99 at a time. This is because there is a substantial markup on top of the current market price, due to utilizing whatever payment method the user has set up through their Google Play Store. The markup seemed to be about 19% above the current price, since I could purchase 4,143 sats for $4.99 ($120,415 / Bitcoin), when the current price was about $101,500. But the idea here is not for the Primal wallet to be a user's primary method of stacking sats. Rather, it is intended to get them off zero and have a small amount of sats to experience zapping with, and it accomplishes this with less friction than any other method I know.

Moreover, the Primal wallet has the features one would expect from any Lightning wallet. You can send sats to any Nostr user or Lightning address, receive via invoice, or scan to pay an invoice. It even has the ability to receive via on-chain. This means users who don't want to pay the markup from buying through Primal can easily transfer sats they obtained by other means into the Primal wallet for zapping, or for using it as their daily-driver spending wallet.

Speaking of zapping, once the wallet is activated, sending zaps is automatically set to use the wallet, and they are fast. Primal gives you immediate feedback that the zap was sent and the transaction shows in your wallet history typically before you can open the interface. I can confidently say that Primal wallet's integration is the absolute best zapping experience I have seen in any Nostr client.

One thing to note that may not be immediately apparent to new users is they need to add their Lightning address with Primal into their profile details before they can start receiving zaps. So, sending zaps using the wallet is automatic as soon as you activate it, but receiving is not. Ideally, this could be further streamlined, so that Primal automatically adds the Lightning address to the user's profile when the wallet is set up, so long as there is not currently a Lightning address listed.

Of course, if you already have a Lightning wallet, you can connect it to Primal for zapping, too. We will discuss this further in the section dedicated to zap integration.

Advanced Search

Search has always been a tough nut to crack on Nostr, since it is highly dependent on which relays the client is pulling information from. Primal has sought to resolve this issue, among others, by running a caching relay that pulls notes from a number of relays to store them locally, and perform some spam filtering. This allows for much faster retrieval of search results, and also makes their advanced search feature possible.

Advanced search can be accessed from most pages by selecting the magnifying glass icon, and then the icon for more options next to the search bar.

As can be seen in the screenshot below, there are a plethora of filters that can be applied to your search terms.

You can immediately see how this advanced search could be a very powerful tool for not just finding a particular previous note that you are looking for, but for creating your own custom feed of notes. Well, wouldn't you know it, Primal allows you to do just that! This search feature, paired with the other features mentioned above related to finding notes you want to see in your feed, makes Primal hands-down the best client for content discovery.

The only downside as a free user is that some of these search options are locked behind the premium membership. Or else you only get to see a certain number of results of your advanced search before you must be a premium member to see more.

Can My Grandma Use It?

Score: 4.8 / 5 Primal has obviously put a high priority on making their client user-friendly, even for those who have never heard of relays, public/private key cryptography, or Bitcoin. All of that complexity is hidden away. Some of it is available to play around with for the users who care to do so, but it does not at all get in the way of the users who just want to jump in and start posting notes and interacting with other users in a truly open public square.

To begin with, the onboarding experience is incredibly smooth. Tap "Create Account," enter your chosen display name and optional bio information, upload a profile picture, and then choose some topics you are interested in. You are then presented with a preview of your profile, with the ability to add a banner image, if you so choose, and then tap "Create Account Now."

From there you receive confirmation that your account has been created and that your "Nostr key" is available to you in the application settings. No further explanation is given about what this key is for at this point, but the user doesn't really need to know at the moment, either. If they are curious, they will go to the app settings to find out.

At this point, Primal encourages the user to activate Primal Wallet, but also gives the option for the user to do it later.

That's it! The next screen the user sees if they don't opt to set up the wallet is their Home feed with notes listed in chronological order. More impressive, the feed is not empty, because Primal has auto-followed several accounts based on your selected topics.

Now, there has definitely been some legitimate criticism of this practice of following specific accounts based on the topic selection, and I agree. I would much prefer to see Primal follow hashtags based on what was selected, and combine the followed hashtags into a feed titled "My Topics" or something of that nature, and make that the default view when the user finishes onboarding. Following particular users automatically will artificially inflate certain users' exposure, while other users who might be quality follows for that topic aren't seen at all.

The advantage of following particular users over a hashtag, though, is that Primal retains some control over the quality of the posts that new users are exposed to right away. Primal can ensure that new users see people who are actually posting quality photography when they choose it as one of their interests. However, even with that example, I chose photography as one of my interests and while I did get some stunning photography in my Home feed by default based on Primal's chosen follows, I also scrolled through the Photography hashtag for a bit and I really feel like I would have been better served if Primal had simply followed that hashtag rather than a particular set of users.

We've already discussed how simple it is to set up the Primal Wallet. You can see the features section above if you missed it. It is, by far, the most user friendly experience to onboarding onto Lightning and getting a few sats for zapping, and it is the only one I know of that is built directly into a Nostr client. This means new users will have a frictionless introduction to transacting via Lightning, perhaps without even realizing that's what they are doing.

Discovering new content of interest is incredibly intuitive on Primal, and the only thing that new users may struggle with is getting their own notes seen by others. To assist with this, I would suggest Primal encourage users to make their first post to the introductions hashtag and direct any questions to the AskNostr hashtag as part of the onboarding process. This will get them some immediate interactions from other users, and further encouragement to set up their wallet if they haven't already done so.

How do UI look?

Score: 4.9 / 5

Primal is the most stunningly beautiful Nostr client available, in my honest opinion. Despite some of my hangups about certain functionality, the UI alone makes me want to use it.

It is clean, attractive, and intuitive. Everything I needed was easy to find, and nothing felt busy or cluttered. There are only a few minor UI glitches that I ran into while testing the app. Some of them were mentioned in the section of the review detailing the feed selector feature, but a couple others occurred during onboarding.

First, my profile picture was not centered in the preview when I uploaded it. This appears to be because it was a low quality image. Uploading a higher quality photo did not have this result.

The other UI bug was related to text instructions that were cut off, and not able to scroll to see the rest of them. This occurred on a few pages during onboarding, and I expect it was due to the size of my phone screen, since it did not occur when I was on a slightly larger phone or tablet.

Speaking of tablets, Primal Android looks really good on a tablet, too! While the client does not have a landscape mode by default, many Android tablets support forcing apps to open in full-screen landscape mode, with mixed results. However, Primal handles it well. I would still like to see a tablet version developed that takes advantage of the increased screen real estate, but it is certainly a passable option.

At this point, I would say the web client probably has a bit better UI for use on a tablet than the Android client does, but you miss out on using the built-in wallet, which is a major selling point of the app.

This lack of a landscape mode for tablets and the few very minor UI bugs I encountered are the only reason Primal doesn't get a perfect score in this category, because the client is absolutely stunning otherwise, both in light and dark modes. There are also two color schemes available for each.

Log In Options

Score: 4 / 5 (Updated 4/30/2025)

Unfortunately, Primal has not included any options for log in outside of pasting your private key into the application. While this is a very simple way to log in for new users to understand, it is also the least secure means to log into Nostr applications.

This is because, even with the most trustworthy client developer, giving the application access to your private key always has the potential for that private key to somehow be exposed or leaked, and on Nostr there is currently no way to rotate to a different private key and keep your identity and social graph. If someone gets your key, they are you on Nostr for all intents and purposes.

This is not a situation that users should be willing to tolerate from production-release clients at this point. There are much better log in standards that can and should be implemented if you care about your users.

That said, I am happy to report that external signer support is on the roadmap for Primal, as confirmed below:

nostr:note1n59tc8k5l2v30jxuzghg7dy2ns76ld0hqnn8tkahyywpwp47ms5qst8ehl

No word yet on whether this will be Android signer or remote signer support, or both.

This lack of external signer support is why I absolutely will not use my main npub with Primal for Android. I am happy to use the web client, which supports and encourages logging in with a browser extension, but until the Android client allows users to protect their private key, I cannot recommend it for existing Nostr users.

Update: As of version 2.2.13, all of what I have said above is now obsolete. Primal has added Android signer support, so users can now better protect their nsec by using Amber!

I would still like to see support for remote signers, especially with nstart.me as a recommended Nostr onboarding process and the advent of FROSTR for key management. That said, Android signer support on its own has been a long time coming and is a very welcome addition to the Primal app. Bravo Primal team!

Zap Integration

Score: 4.8 / 5

As mentioned when discussing Primal's built-in wallet feature, zapping in Primal can be the most seamless experience I have ever seen in a Nostr client. Pairing the wallet with the client is absolutely the path forward for Nostr leading the way to Bitcoin adoption.

But what if you already have a Lightning wallet you want to use for zapping? You have a couple options. If it is an Alby wallet or another wallet that supports Nostr Wallet Connect, you can connect it with Primal to use with one-tap zapping.

How your zapping experience goes with this option will vary greatly based on your particular wallet of choice and is beyond the scope of this review. I used this option with a hosted wallet on my Alby Hub and it worked perfectly. Primal gives you immediate feedback that you have zapped, even though the transaction usually takes a few seconds to process and appear in your wallet's history.

The one major downside to using an external wallet is the lack of integration with the wallet interface. This interface currently only works with Primal's wallet, and therefore the most prominent tab in the entire app goes unused when you connect an external wallet.

An ideal improvement would be for the wallet screen to work similar to Alby Go when you have an external wallet connected via Nostr Wallet Connect, allowing the user to have Primal act as their primary mobile Lightning wallet. It could have balance and transaction history displayed, and allow sending and receiving, just like the integrated Primal wallet, but remove the ability to purchase sats directly through the app when using an external wallet.

Content Discovery

Score: 4.8 / 5

Primal is the best client to use if you want to discover new content you are interested in. There is no comparison, with only a few caveats.

First, the content must have been posted to Nostr as either a short-form or long-form note. Primal has a limited ability to display other types of content. For instance, discovering video content or streaming content is lacking.

Second, you must be willing to put up with the fact that Primal lacks a means of filtering sensitive content when you are exploring beyond the bounds of your current followers. This may not be an issue for some, but for others it could be a deal-breaker.

Third, it would be preferable for Primal to follow topics you are interested in when you choose them during onboarding, rather than follow specific npubs. Ideally, create a "My Topics" feed that can be edited by selecting your interests in the Topics section of the Explore tab.

Relay Management

Score: 2.5 / 5

For new users who don't want to mess around with managing relays, Primal is fantastic! There are 7 relays selected by default, in addition to Primal's caching service. For most users who aren't familiar with Nostr's protocol archetecture, they probably won't ever have to change their default relays in order to use the client as they would expect.

However, two of these default relays were consistently unreachable during the week that I tested. These were relay.plebes.fans and remnant.cloud. The first relay seems to be an incorrect URL, as I found nosflare.plebes.fans online and with perfect uptime for the last 12 hours on nostr.watch. I was unable to find remnant.cloud on nostr.watch at all. A third relay was intermittent, sometimes online and reachable, and other times unreachable: v1250.planz.io/nostr. If Primal is going to have default relays, they should ideally be reliable and with accurate URLs.

That said, users can add other relays that they prefer, and remove relays that they no longer want to use. They can even set a different caching service to use with the client, rather than using Primal's.

However, that is the extent of a user's control over their relays. They cannot choose which relays they want to write to and which they want to read from, nor can they set any private relays, outbox or inbox relays, or general relays. Loading the npub I used for this review into another client with full relay management support revealed that the relays selected in Primal are being added to both the user's public outbox relays and public inbox relays, but not to any other relay type, which leads me to believe the caching relay is acting as the client's only general relay and search relay.

One unique and welcomed addition is the "Enhanced Privacy" feature, which is off by default, but which can be toggled on. I am not sure why this is not on by default, though. Perhaps someone from the Primal team can enlighten me on that choice.

By default, when you post to Nostr, all of your outbox relays will see your IP address. If you turn on the Enhanced Privacy mode, only Primal's caching service will see your IP address, because it will post your note to the other relays on your behalf. In this way, the caching service acts similar to a VPN for posting to Nostr, as long as you trust Primal not to log or leak your IP address.

In short, if you use any other Nostr clients at all, do not use Primal for managing your relays.

Media Hosting Options

Score: 4.9 / 5 This is a NEW SECTION of this review, as of version 2.2.13!

Primal has recently added support for the Blossom protocol for media hosting, and has added a new section within their settings for "Media Uploads."

Media hosting is one of the more complicated problems to solve for a decentralized publishing protocol like Nostr. Text-based notes are generally quite small, making them no real burden to store on relays, and a relay can prune old notes as they see fit, knowing that anyone who really cared about those notes has likely archived them elsewhere. Media, on the other hand, can very quickly fill up a server's disk space, and because it is usually addressable via a specific URL, removing it from that location to free up space means it will no longer load for anyone.

Blossom solves this issue by making it easy to run a media server and have the same media mirrored to more than one for redundancy. Since the media is stored with a file name that is a hash of the content itself, if the media is deleted from one server, it can still be found from any other server that has the same file, without any need to update the URL in the Nostr note where it was originally posted.

Prior to this update, Primal only allowed media uploads to their own media server. Now, users can upload to any blossom server, and even choose to have their pictures or videos mirrored additional servers automatically. To my knowledge, no other Nostr client offers this automatic mirroring at the time of upload.

One of my biggest criticisms of Primal was that it had taken a siloed approach by providing a client, a caching relay, a media server, and a wallet all controlled by the same company. The whole point of Nostr is to separate control of all these services to different entities. Now users have more options for separating out their media hosting and their wallet to other providers, at least. I would still like to see other options available for a caching relay, but that relies on someone else being willing to run one, since the software is open for anyone to use. It's just not your average, lightweight relay that any average person can run from home.

Regardless, this update to add custom Blossom servers is a most welcome step in the right direction!

Current Users' Questions

The AskNostr hashtag can be a good indication of the pain points that other users are currently having with a client. Here are some of the most common questions submitted about Primal since the launch of 2.0:

nostr:note1dqv4mwqn7lvpaceg9s7damf932ydv9skv2x99l56ufy3f7q8tkdqpxk0rd

This was a pretty common question, because users expect that they will be able to create the same type of content that they can consume in a particular client. I can understand why this was left out in a mobile client, but perhaps it should be added in the web client.

nostr:note16xnm8a2mmrs7t9pqymwjgd384ynpf098gmemzy49p3572vhwx2mqcqw8xe

This is a more concerning bug, since it appears some users are experiencing their images being replaced with completely different images. I did not experience anything similar in my testing, though.

nostr:note1uhrk30nq0e566kx8ac4qpwrdh0vfaav33rfvckyvlzn04tkuqahsx8e7mr

There hasn't been an answer to this, but I have not been able to find a way. It seems search results will always include replies as well as original notes, so a feed made from the search results will as well. Perhaps a filter can be added to the advanced search to exclude replies? There is already a filter to only show replies, but there is no corresponding filter to only show original notes.

nostr:note1zlnzua28a5v76jwuakyrf7hham56kx9me9la3dnt3fvymcyaq6eqjfmtq6

Since both mobile platforms support the wallet, users expect that they will be able to access it in their web client, too. At this time, they cannot. The only way to have seamless zapping in the web client is to use the Alby extension, but there is not a way to connect it to your Primal wallet via Nostr Wallet Connect either. This means users must have a separate wallet for zapping on the web client if they use the Primal Wallet on mobile.

nostr:note15tf2u9pffy58y9lk27y245ew792raqc7lc22jezxvqj7xrak9ztqu45wep

It seems that Primal is filtering for spam even for profiles you actively follow. Moreover, exactly what the criteria is for being considered spam is currently opaque.

nostr:note1xexnzv0vrmc8svvduurydwmu43w7dftyqmjh4ps98zksr39ln2qswkuced

For those unaware, Blossom is a protocol for hosting media as blobs identified by a hash, allowing them to be located on and displayed from other servers they have been mirrored to when when the target server isn't available. Primal currently runs a Blossom server (blossom.primal.net) so I would expect we see Blossom support in the future.

nostr:note1unugv7s36e2kxl768ykg0qly7czeplp8qnc207k4pj45rexgqv4sue50y6

Currently, Primal on Android only supports uploading photos to your posts. Users must upload any video to some other hosting service and copy/paste a link to the video into their post on Primal. I would not be surprised to see this feature added in the near future, though.

nostr:note10w6538y58dkd9mdrlkfc8ylhnyqutc56ggdw7gk5y7nsp00rdk4q3qgrex

Many Nostr users have more than one npub for various uses. Users would prefer to have a way to quickly switch between accounts than to have to log all the way out and paste their npub for the other account every time they want to use it.

There is good news on this front, though:

nostr:note17xv632yqfz8nx092lj4sxr7drrqfey6e2373ha00qlq8j8qv6jjs36kxlh

Wrap Up

All in all, Primal is an excellent client. It won't be for everyone, but that's one of the strengths of Nostr as a protocol. You can choose to use the client that best fits your own needs, and supplement with other clients and tools as necessary.

There are a couple glaring issues I have with Primal that prevent me from using it on my main npub, but it is also an ever-improving client, that already has me hopeful for those issues to be resolved in a future release.

So, what should I review next? Another Android client, such as #Amethyst or #Voyage? Maybe an "other stuff" app, like #Wavlake or #Fountain? Please leave your suggestions in the comments.

I hope this review was valuable to you! If it was, please consider letting me know just how valuable by zapping me some sats and reposting it out to your follows.

Thank you for reading!

PV 🤙

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Splitpages

The simplest possible service: it splitted PDF pages in half.

Created specially to solve the problem of those scanned books that come with two pages side-by-side as if they were a single page and are much harder to read on Kindle because of that.

It required me to learn about Heroku Buildpacks though, and fork or contribute to a Heroku Buildpack that embedded a mupdf binary.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/splitpages
• https://splitpages.herokuapp.com/

@ 3c389c8f:7a2eff7f

Sharing a Note on Nostr:

🔁Yeah, it probably seems obvious. No need to dwell for long, but this is another function that goes by half a dozen different names. Repost, renote, retweet, boost, bump, the ubiquitous little repeat button... It's all the same. It doesn't matter what its called, the feature lets you push notes you may find valuable, to the people who follow you. Additionally you also have the "Quote" option if you would like to add your own remarks or context. Both of these features are supported by most Nostr microblogging clients and some specialty clients, though some have chosen to exclude one or the other to adhere to a set of guiding principles aimed at helping users to enjoy a healthier social media experience.

Similar to a quote, you also have the option to copy NoteIDs to paste in other places. They will look like: nevent..., naddr..., or some other possibly foreign looking string prefixed with 'n' and in some cases the may be preceded by 'nostr:'. These are handy when you'd like to use a note for some other purpose beyond a quote. Perhaps you would like to quote it in a Nostr article or blog entry, or you would like to create a note focusing on a series of notes. Many clients offer easy access to these handy nostr links. If you're finding that the one you are using, does not, then simply hop to another. This is one of the amazing yet simple uses of Nostr's unique identity and contact list ownership.

Sharing Note and Profile Links Off of Nostr:

This is where things get really interesting. If you try to send these 'n' prefixed Nostr links to someone, they will receive that random string and have no clue what to do with it. To solve this, some clever minds came up with njump.me. Just visit that URL and tack your 'n' prefixed event to the end, and boom! you have a link you can send to anyone. Many apps have integrated this feature into their interface to make it easy and convenient to send awesome Nostr content to anyone anywhere, and they can choose which Nostr app they want to use to engage with it right in the landing. Some Nostr clients have traditional link sharing, as well, so you can share links right to the app that you use.

Helping Your Friends to Get Started:

We've touched on this a lot in previous posts but in case you missed it: nstart.me hubstr.org nosta.me These are all great options to onboarding your friends in a way that allows for them to explore Nostr right out of the gate. You always have the option of creating a keypair in nearly every app around, too. This is easier for some people, depending on how much they want to learn right away, or how they may be using Nostr.

There's some cool new tools coming out to help even more with getting your friends set up to use Nostr to its fullest capacity. Follow packs, trust attestations, and suggested app packs are all things we look forward to diving into more deeply in the near future. Please keep an eye out if your interested in reading the Spatia Nostra

@ 5f078e90:b2bacaa3

Cactus story

In a sun-scorched desert, a lone cactus named Sage stood tall. Each dawn, she whispered to the wind, sharing tales of ancient rains. One night, a lost coyote curled beneath her spines, seeking shade. Sage offered her last drops of water, saved from a rare storm. Grateful, the coyote sang her story to the stars, and Sage’s legend grew, a beacon of kindness in the arid wild.

This test is between 300 and 500 characters long, started on Nostr to test the bidirectional-bridge script.

It has a bit of markdown included.

@ 107f2bb3:d78aa4c4

bye

@ 57d1a264:69f1fee1

Design and build chemical processes, better. Alkali is creating the world's first AI Process Engineer.

What the future of chemical process design should look like.

Under the hood, APE-0 uses tried-and-true open-source packages to run simulations. You don't have to trust that the LLM predicted the result — you can check out the simulation file it produced, and run it yourself!

Discover more at https://www.alkali-eng.com/blogs/introducing-fel-0

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/968211

@ 59b96df8:b208bd59

Nostr is a decentralized protocol designed to be censorship-resistant.
However, this resilience can sometimes make data synchronization between relays more difficult—though not impossible.

In my opinion, Nostr still lacks a few key features to ensure consistent and reliable operation, especially regarding data versioning.

Profile Versions

When I log in to a new Nostr client using my private key, I might end up with an outdated version of my profile, depending on how the client is built or configured.

Why does this happen?
The client fetches my profile data (kind:0 - NIP 1) from its own list of selected relays.
If I didn’t publish the latest version of my profile on those specific relays, the client will only display an older version.

Relay List Metadata

The same issue occurs with the relay list metadata (kind:10002 - NIP 65).
When switching to a new client, it's common that my configured relay list isn't properly carried over because it also depends on where the data is fetched.

Protocol Change Proposal

I believe the protocol should evolve, specifically regarding how kind:0 (user metadata) and kind:10002 (relay list metadata) events are distributed to relays.

Relays should be able to build a list of public relays automatically (via autodiscovery), and forward all received kind:0 and kind:10002 events to every relay in that list.

This would create a ripple effect:

``` Relay A relay list: [Relay B, Relay C]
Relay B relay list: [Relay A, Relay C]
Relay C relay list: [Relay A, Relay B]

User A sends kind:0 to Relay A
→ Relay A forwards kind:0 to Relay B
→ Relay A forwards kind:0 to Relay C
→ Relay B forwards kind:0 to Relay A
→ Relay B forwards kind:0 to Relay C → Relay A forwards kind:0 to Relay B
→ etc. ```

Solution: Event Encapsulation

To avoid infinite replication loops, the solution could be to wrap the user’s signed event inside a new event signed by the relay, using a dedicated kind (e.g., kind:9999).

When Relay B receives a kind:9999 event from Relay A, it extracts the original event, checks whether it already exists or if a newer version is present. If not, it adds the event to its database.

Here is an example of such encapsulated data:

json { "content": "{\"content\":\"{\\\"lud16\\\":\\\"dolu@npub.cash\\\",\\\"name\\\":\\\"dolu\\\",\\\"nip05\\\":\\\"dolu@dolu.dev\\\",\\\"picture\\\":\\\"!(image)[!(image)[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1577320325158682626/igGerO9A_400x400.jpg]]\\\",\\\"pubkey\\\":\\\"59b96df8d8b5e66b3b95a3e1ba159750a6edd69bcbba1857aeb652a5b208bd59\\\",\\\"npub\\\":\\\"npub1txukm7xckhnxkwu450sm59vh2znwm45mewaps4awkef2tvsgh4vsf7phrl\\\",\\\"created_at\\\":1688312044}\",\"created_at\":1728233747,\"id\":\"afc3629314aad00f8786af97877115de30c184a25a48440a480bff590a0f9ba8\",\"kind\":0,\"pubkey\":\"59b96df8d8b5e66b3b95a3e1ba159750a6edd69bcbba1857aeb652a5b208bd59\",\"sig\":\"989b250f7fd5d4cfc9a6ee567594c81ee0a91f972e76b61332005fb02aa1343854104fdbcb6c4f77ae8896acd886ab4188043c383e32a6bba509fd78fedb984a\",\"tags\":[]}", "created_at": 1746036589, "id": "efe7fa5844c5c4428fb06d1657bf663d8b256b60c793b5a2c5a426ec773c745c", "kind": 9999, "pubkey": "79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798", "sig": "219f8bc840d12969ceb0093fb62f314a1f2e19a0cbe3e34b481bdfdf82d8238e1f00362791d17801548839f511533461f10dd45cd0aa4e264d71db6844f5e97c", "tags": [] }

@ 1d7ff02a:d042b5be

Source: https://youtu.be/e_Y9tI4dALA?si=F5wXRlpM0YulbhmY

Twitter Origins and Evolution

Twitter began as Dorsey's attempt to better understand cities by visualizing what people were doing and thinking (00:35-02:27) Key features like @mentions, hashtags, and retweets were invented by users, not the company (04:06-05:24) Dorsey realized Twitter was becoming significant when he saw politicians using it during Obama's first address to the nation (06:29-07:44)

Reflections on Twitter/X

Regrets monetizing too quickly through advertising rather than exploring better business models (12:19-13:05) Believes Twitter should have been built as an open protocol rather than a centralized company (13:05-14:23) Advocates for user choice in algorithms rather than having companies decide what content users see (15:35-18:31)

Decentralized Social Media

Started Blue Sky while at Twitter to create a decentralized social media protocol (22:51-24:07) Later focused on Nostr, which he believes has a better development model similar to Linux (24:07-25:57) Believes the future of social media includes agent-driven systems and greater user agency (29:01-29:41)

Block and Bitcoin

Block (formerly Square) focuses on economic empowerment through financial tools (32:08-32:47) Sees Bitcoin as essential for creating an internet protocol for moving money (33:25-35:09) Believes Bitcoin will eventually move beyond being just a store of value to become a currency for cross-border remittances (35:09-36:58)

Entrepreneurship Philosophy

Never intended to be an entrepreneur but wanted to build useful products (40:22-42:02) Compares entrepreneurship to art - knowing how to express ideas and where to set boundaries (42:02-43:09) Deals with rejection by viewing all experiences as teachers with lessons to offer (43:44-44:55)

Personal Habits

Practices meditation daily and previously did 10-day silent retreats (45:30-46:43) Creates daily lists of both what to do and what not to do (47:21-48:28) Eats only once a day to save time and better appreciate food (51:29-52:39) Dedicates morning hours to learning difficult subjects like quantum physics (48:28-49:40)

His advice to young people: observe everything, take in information, and don't worry about immediately reacting to it (52:39-53:00).

Noteable Quotes

• On Twitter's co-creation with users: "What's interesting about Twitter is it wasn't really us who determined where it went, it was the people using it." (04:06)

• On algorithms: "I think it's less about free speech, I think it's more about do we get to choose how the algorithms are programming us, because the algorithms are definitively programming us." (15:35)

• On rejections and setbacks: "Everything I encounter, everything I experience is a teacher and they have some lesson for me, and it's up to me whether I decide to learn from it or not." (43:44)

• On entrepreneurship as art: "It's expression, it's knowing when to end something, it's knowing what the chapters are and where the piece begins and where it ends." (42:02)

• On Bitcoin's potential: "Bitcoin is over close to 16 years old right now. It's never gone down, it's never had a security issue, it has no leader, it has a completely open roadmap, and it's determined by a consensus development model." (36:18)

• On learning: "I think people skip the observing phase too often. I don't think people are good listeners. I don't think people have honed their ability to observe the world and observe nature and observe how things work." (50:19)

• On his advice to young people: "Observe everything, like take everything in, get love information, love receiving information, don't worry about reacting to it, don't worry about memorizing it, don't worry about doing anything with it at all, just be open." (52:39)

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

tempreites

My first library to get stars on GitHub, was a very stupid templating library that used just HTML and HTML attributes ("DSL-free"). I was inspired by http://microjs.com/ at the time and ended up not using the library. Probably no one ever did.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/tempreites

@ a008def1:57a3564d

A Vision for #GitViaNostr

Git has long been the standard for version control in software development, but over time, we has lost its distributed nature. Originally, Git used open, permissionless email for collaboration, which worked well at scale. However, the rise of GitHub and its centralized pull request (PR) model has shifted the landscape.

Now, we have the opportunity to revive Git's permissionless and distributed nature through Nostr!

We’ve developed tools to facilitate Git collaboration via Nostr, but there are still significant friction that prevents widespread adoption. This article outlines a vision for how we can reduce those barriers and encourage more repositories to embrace this approach.

First, we’ll review our progress so far. Then, we’ll propose a guiding philosophy for our next steps. Finally, we’ll discuss a vision to tackle specific challenges, mainly relating to the role of the Git server and CI/CD.

I am the lead maintainer of ngit and gitworkshop.dev, and I’ve been fortunate to work full-time on this initiative for the past two years, thanks to an OpenSats grant.

How Far We’ve Come

The aim of #GitViaNostr is to liberate discussions around code collaboration from permissioned walled gardens. At the core of this collaboration is the process of proposing and applying changes. That's what we focused on first.

Since Nostr shares characteristics with email, and with NIP34, we’ve adopted similar primitives to those used in the patches-over-email workflow. This is because of their simplicity and that they don’t require contributors to host anything, which adds reliability and makes participation more accessible.

However, the fork-branch-PR-merge workflow is the only model many developers have known, and changing established workflows can be challenging. To address this, we developed a new workflow that balances familiarity, user experience, and alignment with the Nostr protocol: the branch-PR-merge model.

This model is implemented in ngit, which includes a Git plugin that allows users to engage without needing to learn new commands. Additionally, gitworkshop.dev offers a GitHub-like interface for interacting with PRs and issues. We encourage you to try them out using the quick start guide and share your feedback. You can also explore PRs and issues with gitplaza.

For those who prefer the patches-over-email workflow, you can still use that approach with Nostr through gitstr or the ngit send and ngit list commands, and explore patches with patch34.

The tools are now available to support the core collaboration challenge, but we are still at the beginning of the adoption curve.

Before we dive into the challenges—such as why the Git server setup can be jarring and the possibilities surrounding CI/CD—let’s take a moment to reflect on how we should approach the challenges ahead of us.

Philosophy

Here are some foundational principles I shared a few years ago:

• Let Git be Git
• Let Nostr be Nostr
• Learn from the successes of others

I’d like to add one more:

• Embrace anarchy and resist monolithic development.

Micro Clients FTW

Nostr celebrates simplicity, and we should strive to maintain that. Monolithic developments often lead to unnecessary complexity. Projects like gitworkshop.dev, which aim to cover various aspects of the code collaboration experience, should not stifle innovation.

Just yesterday, the launch of following.space demonstrated how vibe-coded micro clients can make a significant impact. They can be valuable on their own, shape the ecosystem, and help push large and widely used clients to implement features and ideas.

The primitives in NIP34 are straightforward, and if there are any barriers preventing the vibe-coding of a #GitViaNostr app in an afternoon, we should work to eliminate them.

Micro clients should lead the way and explore new workflows, experiences, and models of thinking.

Take kanbanstr.com. It provides excellent project management and organization features that work seamlessly with NIP34 primitives.

From kanban to code snippets, from CI/CD runners to SatShoot—may a thousand flowers bloom, and a thousand more after them.

Friction and Challenges

The Git Server

In #GitViaNostr, maintainers' branches (e.g., master) are hosted on a Git server. Here’s why this approach is beneficial:

• Follows the original Git vision and the "let Git be Git" philosophy.
• Super efficient, battle-tested, and compatible with all the ways people use Git (e.g., LFS, shallow cloning).
• Maintains compatibility with related systems without the need for plugins (e.g., for build and deployment).
• Only repository maintainers need write access.

In the original Git model, all users would need to add the Git server as a 'git remote.' However, with ngit, the Git server is hidden behind a Nostr remote, which enables:

• Hiding complexity from contributors and users, so that only maintainers need to know about the Git server component to start using #GitViaNostr.
• Maintainers can easily swap Git servers by updating their announcement event, allowing contributors/users using ngit to automatically switch to the new one.

Challenges with the Git Server

While the Git server model has its advantages, it also presents several challenges:

1. Initial Setup: When creating a new repository, maintainers must select a Git server, which can be a jarring experience. Most options come with bloated social collaboration features tied to a centralized PR model, often difficult or impossible to disable.

2. Manual Configuration: New repositories require manual configuration, including adding new maintainers through a browser UI, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming.

3. User Onboarding: Many Git servers require email sign-up or KYC (Know Your Customer) processes, which can be a significant turn-off for new users exploring a decentralized and permissionless alternative to GitHub.

Once the initial setup is complete, the system works well if a reliable Git server is chosen. However, this is a significant "if," as we have become accustomed to the excellent uptime and reliability of GitHub. Even professionally run alternatives like Codeberg can experience downtime, which is frustrating when CI/CD and deployment processes are affected. This problem is exacerbated when self-hosting.

Currently, most repositories on Nostr rely on GitHub as the Git server. While maintainers can change servers without disrupting their contributors, this reliance on a centralized service is not the decentralized dream we aspire to achieve.

Vision for the Git Server

The goal is to transform the Git server from a single point of truth and failure into a component similar to a Nostr relay.

Functionality Already in ngit to Support This

1. State on Nostr: Store the state of branches and tags in a Nostr event, removing reliance on a single server. This validates that the data received has been signed by the maintainer, significantly reducing the trust requirement.

2. Proxy to Multiple Git Servers: Proxy requests to all servers listed in the announcement event, adding redundancy and eliminating the need for any one server to match GitHub's reliability.

Implementation Requirements

To achieve this vision, the Nostr Git server implementation should:

1. Implement the Git Smart HTTP Protocol without authentication (no SSH) and only accept pushes if the reference tip matches the latest state event.

2. Avoid Bloat: There should be no user authentication, no database, no web UI, and no unnecessary features.

3. Automatic Repository Management: Accept or reject new repositories automatically upon the first push based on the content of the repository announcement event referenced in the URL path and its author.

Just as there are many free, paid, and self-hosted relays, there will be a variety of free, zero-step signup options, as well as self-hosted and paid solutions.

Some servers may use a Web of Trust (WoT) to filter out spam, while others might impose bandwidth or repository size limits for free tiers or whitelist specific npubs.

Additionally, some implementations could bundle relay and blossom server functionalities to unify the provision of repository data into a single service. These would likely only accept content related to the stored repositories rather than general social nostr content.

The potential role of CI / CD via nostr DVMs could create the incentives for a market of highly reliable free at the point of use git servers.

This could make onboarding #GitViaNostr repositories as easy as entering a name and selecting from a multi-select list of Git server providers that announce via NIP89.

!(image)[https://image.nostr.build/badedc822995eb18b6d3c4bff0743b12b2e5ac018845ba498ce4aab0727caf6c.jpg]

Git Client in the Browser

Currently, many tasks are performed on a Git server web UI, such as:

• Browsing code, commits, branches, tags, etc.
• Creating and displaying permalinks to specific lines in commits.
• Merging PRs.
• Making small commits and PRs on-the-fly.

Just as nobody goes to the web UI of a relay (e.g., nos.lol) to interact with notes, nobody should need to go to a Git server to interact with repositories. We use the Nostr protocol to interact with Nostr relays, and we should use the Git protocol to interact with Git servers. This situation has evolved due to the centralization of Git servers. Instead of being restricted to the view and experience designed by the server operator, users should be able to choose the user experience that works best for them from a range of clients. To facilitate this, we need a library that lowers the barrier to entry for creating these experiences. This library should not require a full clone of every repository and should not depend on proprietary APIs. As a starting point, I propose wrapping the WASM-compiled gitlib2 library for the web and creating useful functions, such as showing a file, which utilizes clever flags to minimize bandwidth usage (e.g., shallow clone, noblob, etc.).

This approach would not only enhance clients like gitworkshop.dev but also bring forth a vision where Git servers simply run the Git protocol, making vibe coding Git experiences even better.

song

nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 created song with a complementary vision that has shaped how I see the role of the git server. Its a self-hosted, nostr-permissioned git server with a relay baked in. Its currently a WIP and there are some compatability with ngit that we need to work out.

We collaborated on the nostr-permissioning approach now reflected in nip34.

I'm really excited to see how this space evolves.

CI/CD

Most projects require CI/CD, and while this is often bundled with Git hosting solutions, it is currently not smoothly integrated into #GitViaNostr yet. There are many loosely coupled options, such as Jenkins, Travis, CircleCI, etc., that could be integrated with Nostr.

However, the more exciting prospect is to use DVMs (Data Vending Machines).

DVMs for CI/CD

Nostr Data Vending Machines (DVMs) can provide a marketplace of CI/CD task runners with Cashu for micro payments.

There are various trust levels in CI/CD tasks:

• Tasks with no secrets eg. tests.
• Tasks using updatable secrets eg. API keys.
• Unverifiable builds and steps that sign with Android, Nostr, or PGP keys.

DVMs allow tasks to be kicked off with specific providers using a Cashu token as payment.

It might be suitable for some high-compute and easily verifiable tasks to be run by the cheapest available providers. Medium trust tasks could be run by providers with a good reputation, while high trust tasks could be run on self-hosted runners.

Job requests, status, and results all get published to Nostr for display in Git-focused Nostr clients.

Jobs could be triggered manually, or self-hosted runners could be configured to watch a Nostr repository and kick off jobs using their own runners without payment.

But I'm most excited about the prospect of Watcher Agents.

CI/CD Watcher Agents

AI agents empowered with a NIP60 Cashu wallet can run tasks based on activity, such as a push to master or a new PR, using the most suitable available DVM runner that meets the user's criteria. To keep them running, anyone could top up their NIP60 Cashu wallet; otherwise, the watcher turns off when the funds run out. It could be users, maintainers, or anyone interested in helping the project who could top up the Watcher Agent's balance.

As aluded to earlier, part of building a reputation as a CI/CD provider could involve running reliable hosting (Git server, relay, and blossom server) for all FOSS Nostr Git repositories.

This provides a sustainable revenue model for hosting providers and creates incentives for many free-at-the-point-of-use hosting providers. This, in turn, would allow one-click Nostr repository creation workflows, instantly hosted by many different providers.

Progress to Date

nostr:npub1hw6amg8p24ne08c9gdq8hhpqx0t0pwanpae9z25crn7m9uy7yarse465gr and nostr:npub16ux4qzg4qjue95vr3q327fzata4n594c9kgh4jmeyn80v8k54nhqg6lra7 have been working on a runner that uses GitHub Actions YAML syntax (using act) for the dvm-cicd-runner and takes Cashu payment. You can see example runs on GitWorkshop. It currently takes testnuts, doesn't give any change, and the schema will likely change.

Note: The actions tab on GitWorkshop is currently available on all repositories if you turn on experimental mode (under settings in the user menu).

It's a work in progress, and we expect the format and schema to evolve.

Easy Web App Deployment

For those disapointed not to find a 'Nostr' button to import a git repository to Vercel menu: take heart, they made it easy. vercel.com_import_options.png there is a vercel cli that can be easily called in CI / CD jobs to kick of deployments. Not all managed solutions for web app deployment (eg. netlify) make it that easy.

Many More Opportunities

Large Patches via Blossom

I would be remiss not to mention the large patch problem. Some patches are too big to fit into Nostr events. Blossom is perfect for this, as it allows these larger patches to be included in a blossom file and referenced in a new patch kind.

Enhancing the #GitViaNostr Experience

Beyond the large patch issue, there are numerous opportunities to enhance the #GitViaNostr ecosystem. We can focus on improving browsing, discovery, social and notifications. Receiving notifications on daily driver Nostr apps is one of the killer features of Nostr. However, we must ensure that Git-related notifications are easily reviewable, so we don’t miss any critical updates.

We need to develop tools that cater to our curiosity—tools that enable us to discover and follow projects, engage in discussions that pique our interest, and stay informed about developments relevant to our work.

Additionally, we should not overlook the importance of robust search capabilities and tools that facilitate migrations.

Concluding Thoughts

The design space is vast. Its an exciting time to be working on freedom tech. I encourage everyone to contribute their ideas and creativity and get vibe-coding!

I welcome your honest feedback on this vision and any suggestions you might have. Your insights are invaluable as we collaborate to shape the future of #GitViaNostr. Onward.

Contributions

To conclude, I want to acknowledge some the individuals who have made recent code contributions related to #GitViaNostr:

nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 (gitstr, song, patch34), nostr:npub1useke4f9maul5nf67dj0m9sq6jcsmnjzzk4ycvldwl4qss35fvgqjdk5ks (gitplaza)

nostr:npub1elta7cneng3w8p9y4dw633qzdjr4kyvaparuyuttyrx6e8xp7xnq32cume (ngit contributions, git-remote-blossom),nostr:npub16p8v7varqwjes5hak6q7mz6pygqm4pwc6gve4mrned3xs8tz42gq7kfhdw (SatShoot, Flotilla-Budabit), nostr:npub1ehhfg09mr8z34wz85ek46a6rww4f7c7jsujxhdvmpqnl5hnrwsqq2szjqv (Flotilla-Budabit, Nostr Git Extension), nostr:npub1ahaz04ya9tehace3uy39hdhdryfvdkve9qdndkqp3tvehs6h8s5slq45hy (gnostr and experiments), and others.

nostr:npub1uplxcy63up7gx7cladkrvfqh834n7ylyp46l3e8t660l7peec8rsd2sfek (git-remote-nostr)

Project Management nostr:npub1ltx67888tz7lqnxlrg06x234vjnq349tcfyp52r0lstclp548mcqnuz40t (kanbanstr) Code Snippets nostr:npub1ygzj9skr9val9yqxkf67yf9jshtyhvvl0x76jp5er09nsc0p3j6qr260k2 (nodebin.io) nostr:npub1r0rs5q2gk0e3dk3nlc7gnu378ec6cnlenqp8a3cjhyzu6f8k5sgs4sq9ac (snipsnip.dev)

CI / CD nostr:npub16ux4qzg4qjue95vr3q327fzata4n594c9kgh4jmeyn80v8k54nhqg6lra7 nostr:npub1hw6amg8p24ne08c9gdq8hhpqx0t0pwanpae9z25crn7m9uy7yarse465gr

and for their nostr:npub1c03rad0r6q833vh57kyd3ndu2jry30nkr0wepqfpsm05vq7he25slryrnw nostr:npub1qqqqqq2stely3ynsgm5mh2nj3v0nk5gjyl3zqrzh34hxhvx806usxmln03 and nostr:npub1l5sga6xg72phsz5422ykujprejwud075ggrr3z2hwyrfgr7eylqstegx9z for their testing, feedback, ideas and encouragement.

Thank you for your support and collaboration! Let me know if I've missed you.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

litepub

A Go library that abstracts all the burdensome ActivityPub things and provides just the right amount of helpers necessary to integrate an existing website into the "fediverse" (what an odious name). Made for the gravity integration.

• https://godoc.org/github.com/fiatjaf/litepub

See also

-

@ 57d1a264:69f1fee1

The mystical d attribute in SVG paths is actually a series of small commands. In this guide, we'll take a look at each path command and how we can use them to draw icons. Read more at https://www.nan.fyi/svg-paths

I you'd like to learn Interactive SVG Animations, here a text-based mini-course on making whimsical, playful SVG animations https://www.svg-animations.how/

credits: @nandafyi

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/968195

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

questo.email

This was a thing done in a brief period I liked the idea of "indiewebcamp", a stupid movement of people saying everybody should have their site and post their lives in it.

From the GitHub postmortem:

questo.email was a service that integrated email addresses into the indieweb ecosystem by providing email-to-note and email-to-webmention triggers, which could be used for people to comment through webmention using their email addresses, and be replied, and also for people to send messages from their sites directly to the email addresses of people they knew; Questo also worked as an IndieAuth provider that used people's email addresses and Mozilla Persona.

It was live from December 2014 through December 2015.

Here's how the home page looked:

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/questo.email

See also

• jekmentions, another thing related to "indieweb"

@ 57d1a264:69f1fee1

credits: @rubenslp

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/968189

@ 5df413d4:2add4f5b

Blank

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

idea: Rumple

a payments network based on trust channels

This is the description of a Lightning-like network that will work only with credit or trust-based channels and exist alongside the normal Lightning Network. I imagine some people will think this is undesirable and at the same time very easy to do (such that if it doesn't exist yet it must be because no one cares), but in fact it is a very desirable thing -- which I hope I can establish below -- and at the same time a very non-trivial problem to solve, as the history of Ryan Fugger's Ripple project and posterior copies of it show.

Read these first to get the full context:

1. Ryan Fugger's Ripple
2. Ripple and the problem of the decentralized commit
3. The Lightning Network solves the problem of the decentralized commit
4. Parallel Chains

Explanation about the name

Since we're copying the fundamental Ripple idea from Ryan Fugger and since the name "Ripple" is now associated with a scam coin called XRP, and since Ryan Fugger has changed the name of his old website "Ripplepay" to "Rumplepay", we will follow his lead here. If "Ripplepay" was the name of a centralized prototype to the open peer-to-peer network "Ripple", now that the centralized version is called "Rumplepay" the peer-to-peer version must be called "Rumple".

Now the idea

Basically we copy the Lightning Network, but without HTLCs or channels being opened and closed with funds committed to them on multisig Bitcoin transactions published to the blockchain. Instead we use pure trust relationships like the original Ripple concept.

And we use the blockchain commit method, but instead of spending an absurd amount of money to use the actual Bitcoin blockchain instead we use a parallel chain.

How exactly -- a protocol proposal attempt

It could work like this:

The parallel chain, or "Rumple Chain"

1. We define a parallel chain with a genesis block;
2. Following blocks must contain a. the ID of the previous block; b. a list of up to 32768 entries of arbitrary 32-byte values; c. an ID constituted by sha256(the previous block ID + the merkle root of all the entries)
3. To be mined, each parallel block must be included in the Bitcoin chain according as explained above.

Now that we have a structure for a simple "blockchain" that is completely useless, just blocks over blocks of meaningless values, we proceed to the next step of assigning meaning to these values.

The off-chain payments network, or "Rumple Network"

1. We create a network of nodes that can talk to each other via TCP messages (all details are the same as the Lightning Network, except where mentioned otherwise);
2. These nodes can create trust channels to each other. These channels are backed by nothing except the willingness of one peer to pay the other what is owed.
3. When Alice creates a trust channel with Bob (Alice trusts Bob), contrary to what happens in the Lightning Network, it's A that can immediately receive payments through that channel, and everything A receives will be an IOU from Bob to Alice. So Alice should never open a channel to Bob unless Alice trusts Bob. But also Alice can choose the amount of trust it has in Bob, she can, for example, open a very small channel with Bob, which means she will only lose a few satoshis if Bob decides to exit scam her. (in the original Ripple examples these channels were always depicted as friend relationships, and they can continue being that, but it's expected -- given the experience of the Lightning Network -- that the bulk of the channels will exist between users and wallet provider nodes that will act as hubs).
4. As Alice receive a payment through her channel with Bob, she becomes a creditor and Bob a debtor, i.e., the balance of the channel moves a little to her side. Now she can use these funds to make payments over that channel (or make a payment that combines funds from multiple channels using MPP).
5. If at any time Alice decides to close her channel with Bob, she can send all the funds she has standing there to somewhere else (for example, another channel she has with someone else, another wallet somewhere else, a shop that is selling some good or service, or a service that will aggregate all funds from all her channels and send a transaction to the Bitcoin chain on her behalf).
6. If at any time Bob leaves the network Alice is entitled by Bob's cryptographic signatures to knock on his door and demand payment, or go to a judge and ask him to force Bob to pay, or share the signatures and commitments online and hurt Bob's reputation with the rest of the network (but yes, none of these things is good enough and if Bob is a very dishonest person none of these things is likely to save Alice's funds).

The payment flow

1. Suppose there exists a route Alice->Bob->Carol and Alice wants to send a payment to Carol.
2. First Alice reads an invoice she received from Carol. The invoice (which can be pretty similar or maybe even the same as BOLT11) contains a payment hash h and information about how to reach Carol's node, optionally an amount. Let's say it's 100 satoshis.
3. Using the routing information she gathered, Alice builds an onion and sends it to Bob, at the same time she offers to Bob a "conditional IOU". That stands for a signed commitment that Alice will owe Bob an 100 satoshis if in the next 50 blocks of the Rumple Chain there appears a block containing the preimage p such that sha256(p) == h.
4. Bob peels the onion and discovers that he must forward that payment to Carol, so he forwards the peeled onion and offers a conditional IOU to Carol with the same h. Bob doesn't know Carol is the final recipient of the payment, it could potentially go on and on.
5. When Carol gets the conditional IOU from Bob, she makes a list of all the nodes who have announced themselves as miners (which is not something I have mentioned before, but nodes that are acting as miners will must announce themselves somehow) and are online and bidding for the next Rumple block. Each of these miners will have previously published a random 32-byte value v they they intend to include in their next block.
6. Carol sends payments through routes to all (or a big number) of these miners, but this time the conditional IOU contains two conditions (values that must appear in a block for the IOU to be valid): p such that sha256(p) == h (the same that featured in the invoice) and v (which must be unique and constant for each miner, something that is easily verifiable by Carol beforehand). Also, instead of these conditions being valid for the next 50 blocks they are valid only for the single next block.
7. Now Carol broadcasts p to the mempool and hopes one of the miners to which she sent conditional payments sees it and, allured by the possibility of cashing in Carol's payment, includes p in the next block. If that does not happen, Carol can try again in the next block.

Why bother with this at all?

1. The biggest advantage of Lightning is its openness

   It has been said multiple times that if trust is involved then we don't need Lightning, we can use Coinbase, or worse, Paypal. This is very wrong. Lightning is good specially because it serves as a bridge between Coinbase, Paypal, other custodial provider and someone running their own node. All these can transact freely across the network and pay each other without worrying about who is in which provider or setup.

   Rumple inherits that openness. In a Rumple Network anyone is free to open new trust channels and immediately route payments to anyone else.

   Also, since Rumple payments are also based on the reveal of a preimage it can do swaps with Lightning inside a payment route from day one (by which I mean one can pay from Rumple to Lightning and vice-versa).

2. Rumple fixes Lightning's fragility

   Lightning is too fragile.

   It's known that Lightning is vulnerable to multiple attacks -- like the flood-and-loot attack, for example, although not an attack that's easy to execute, it's still dangerous even if failed. Given the existence of these attacks, it's important to not ever open channels with random anonymous people. Some degree of trust must exist between peers.

   But one does not even have to consider attacks. The creation of HTLCs is a liability that every node has to do multiple times during its life. Every initiated, received or forwarded payment require adding one HTLC then removing it from the commitment transaction.

   Another issue that makes trust needed between peers is the fact that channels can be closed unilaterally. Although this is a feature, it is also a bug when considering high-fee environments. Imagine you pay $2 in fees to open a channel, your peer may close that unilaterally in the next second and then you have to pay another $15 to close the channel. The opener pays (this is also a feature that can double as a bug by itself). Even if it's not you opening the channel, a peer can open a channel with you, make a payment, then clone the channel, and now you're left with, say, an output of 800 satoshis, which is equal to zero if network fees are high.

   So you should only open channels with people you know and know aren't going to actively try to hack you and people who are not going to close channels and impose unnecessary costs on you. But even considering a fully trusted Lightning Network, even if -- to be extreme -- you only opened channels with yourself, these channels would still be fragile. If some HTLC gets stuck for any reason (peer offline or some weird small incompatibility between node softwares) and you're forced to close the channel because of that, there are the extra costs of sweeping these UTXO outputs plus the total costs of closing and reopening a channel that shouldn't have been closed in the first place. Even if HTLCs don't get stuck, a fee renegotiation event during a mempool spike may cause channels to force-close, become valueless or settle for very high closing fee.

   Some of these issues are mitigated by Eltoo, others by only having channels with people you trust. Others referenced above, plus the the griefing attack and in general the ability of anyone to spam the network for free with payments that can be pending forever or a lot of payments fail repeatedly makes it very fragile.

   Rumple solves most of these problems by not having to touch the blockchain at all. Fee negotiation makes no sense. Opening and closing channels is free. Flood-and-loot is a non-issue. The griefing attack can be still attempted as funds in trust channels must be reserved like on Lightning, but since there should be no theoretical limit to the number of prepared payments a channel can have, the griefing must rely on actual amounts being committed, which prevents large attacks from being performed easily.

3. Rumple fixes Lightning's unsolvable reputation issues

   In the Lightning Conference 2019, Rusty Russell promised there would be pre-payments on Lightning someday, since everybody was aware of potential spam issues and pre-payments would be the way to solve that. Fast-forward to November 2020 and these pre-payments have become an apparently unsolvable problem[^thread-402]: no one knows how to implement them reliably without destroying privacy completely or introducing worse problems.

   Replacing these payments with tables of reputation between peers is also an unsolved problem[^reputation-lightning], for the same reasons explained in the thread above.

4. Rumple solves the hot wallet problem

   Since you don't have to use Bitcoin keys or sign transactions with a Rumple node, only your channel trust is at risk at any time.

5. Rumple ends custodianship

   Since no one is storing other people's funds, a big hub or wallet provider can be used in multiple payment routes, but it cannot be immediately classified as a "custodian". At best, it will be a big debtor.

6. Rumple is fun

   Opening channels with strangers is boring. Opening channels with friends and people you trust even a little makes that relationship grow stronger and the trust be reinforced. (But of course, like it happens in the Lightning Network today, if Rumple is successful the bulk of trust will be from isolated users to big reliable hubs.)

Questions or potential issues

1. So many advantages, yes, but trusted? Custodial? That's easy and stupid!

   Well, an enormous part of the current Lightning Network (and also onchain Bitcoin wallets) already rests on trust, mainly trust between users and custodial wallet providers like ZEBEDEE, Alby, Wallet-of-Satoshi and others. Worse: on the current Lightning Network users not only trust, they also expose their entire transaction history to these providers[^hosted-channels].

   Besides that, as detailed in point 3 of the previous section, there are many unsolvable issues on the Lightning protocol that make each sovereign node dependent on some level of trust in its peers (and the network in general dependent on trusting that no one else will spam it to death).

   So, given the current state of the Lightning Network, to trust peers like Rumple requires is not a giant change -- but it is still a significant change: in Rumple you shouldn't open a large trust channel with someone just because it looks trustworthy, you must personally know that person and only put in what you're willing to lose. In known brands that have reputation to lose you can probably deposit more trust, same for long-term friends, and that's all. Still it is probably good enough, given the existence of MPP payments and the fact that the purpose of Rumple is to be a payments network for day-to-day purchases and not a way to buy real estate.

2. Why would anyone run a node in this parallel chain?

   I don't know. Ideally every server running a Rumple Network node will be running a Bitcoin node and a Rumple chain node. Besides using it to confirm and publish your own Rumple Network transactions it can be set to do BMM mining automatically and maybe earn some small fees comparable to running a Lightning routing node or a JoinMarket yield generator.

   Also it will probably be very lightweight, as pruning is completely free and no verification-since-the-genesis-block will take place.

3. What is the maturity of the debt that exists in the Rumple Network or its legal status?

   By default it is to be understood as being payable on demand for payments occurring inside the network (as credit can be used to forward or initiate payments by the creditor using that channel). But details of settlement outside the network or what happens if one of the peers disappears cannot be enforced or specified by the network.

   Perhaps some standard optional settlement methods (like a Bitcoin address) can be announced and negotiated upon channel creation inside the protocol, but nothing more than that.

[^thread-402]: Read at least the first 10 messages of the thread to see how naïve proposals like you and me could have thought about are brought up and then dismantled very carefully by the group of people most committed to getting Lightning to work properly. [^reputation-lightning]: See also the footnote at Ripple and the problem of the decentralized commit. [^hosted-channels]: Although that second part can be solved by hosted channels.

@ c230edd3:8ad4a712

Chef's notes

I found this recipe on beyondsweetandsavory.com. The site is incredibly ad infested (like most recipe sites) and its very annoying so I'm copying it to Nostr so all the homemade ice cream people can access it without dealing with that mess. I haven't made it yet. Will report back, when I do.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 min
• 🍳 Cook time: 55 min
• 🍽️ Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup 2% milk
• 8 oz dark chocolate, 70%
• ¼ cup Dutch cocoa
• 2 tbsps loose Earl grey tea leaves
• 4 medium egg yolks
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ⅛ tsp salt
• ¼ cup dark chocolate, 70% chopped

Directions

1. In a double boiler or a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, add the cacao solids and ½ cup of heavy cream. Stir chocolate until melted and smooth. Set melted chocolate aside.
2. In a heavy saucepan, combine remaining heavy cream, milk, salt and ½ cup of sugar.
3. Put the pan over medium heat and let the mixture boil gently to bubbling just around the edges (gentle simmer) and sugar completely dissolved, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
4. Add the Earl Grey tea leaves and let it steep for 7-8 minutes until the cream has taken on the tea flavor, stirring occasionally and tasting to make sure it’s not too bitter.
5. Whisk in Dutch cocoa until smooth. Add in melted chocolate and whisk until smooth.
6. In a medium heatproof bowl, whisk the yolks just to break them up and whisk in remaining sugar. Set aside.
7. Put the saucepan back on the stove over low heat and let it warm up for 2 minutes.
8. Carefully measure out ½ cup of hot cream mixture.
9. While whisking the eggs constantly, whisk the hot cream mixture into the eggs until smooth. Continue tempering the eggs by adding another ½ cup of hot cream to the bowl with the yolks.
10. Pour the cream-egg mixture back to the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly until it is thickened and coats the back of a spatula, about 5 minutes.
11. Strain the base through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean container.
12. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon Ziplock freezer bag and submerge the sealed bag in an ice bath until cold, about 30 minutes. Refrigerate the ice cream base for at least 4 hours or overnight.
13. Pour the ice cream base into the frozen canister of your ice cream machine and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.
14. Spin until thick and creamy about 25-30 minutes.
15. Pack the ice cream into a storage container, press a sheet of parchment directly against the surface and seal with an airtight lid. Freeze in the coldest part of your freezer until firm, at least 4 hours.
16. When ready to serve, scoop the ice cream into a serving bowl and top with chopped chocolate.

@ 1739d937:3e3136ef

MLS over Nostr - 30th April 2025

YO! Exciting stuff in this update so no intro, let's get straight into it.

🚢 Libraries Released

I've created 4 new Rust crates to make implementing NIP-EE (MLS) messaging easy for other projects. These are now part of the rust-nostr project (thanks nostr:npub1drvpzev3syqt0kjrls50050uzf25gehpz9vgdw08hvex7e0vgfeq0eseet) but aren't quite released to crates.io yet. They will be included in the next release of that library. My hope is that these libraries will give nostr developers a simple, safe, and specification-compliant way to work with MLS messaging in their applications.

Here's a quick overview of each:

nostr_mls_storage

One of the challenges of using MLS messaging is that clients have to store quite a lot of state about groups, keys, and messages. Initially, I implemented all of this in White Noise but knew that eventually this would need to be done in a more generalized way.

This crate defines traits and types that are used by the storage implementation crates and sets those up to wrap the OpenMLS storage layer. Now, instead of apps having to implement storage for both OpenMLS and Nostr, you simply pick your storage backend and go from there.

Importantly, because these are generic traits, it allows for the creation of any number of storage implementations for different backend storage providers; postgres, lmdb, nostrdb, etc. To start I've created two implementations; detailed below.

nostr_mls_memory_storage

This is a simple implementation of the nostr_mls_storage traits that uses an in-memory store (that doesn't persist anything to disc). This is principally for testing.

nostr_mls_sqlite_storage

This is a production ready implementation of the nostr_mls_storage traits that uses a persistent local sqlite database to store all data.

nostr_mls

This is the main library that app developers will interact with. Once you've chose a backend and instantiated an instance of NostrMls you can then interact with a simple set of methods to create key packages, create groups, send messages, process welcomes and messages, and more.

If you want to see a complete example of what the interface looks like check out mls_memory.rs.

I'll continue to add to this library over time as I implement more of the MLS protocol features.

🚧 White Noise Refactor

As a result of these new libraries, I was able to remove a huge amount of code from White Noise and refactor large parts of the app to make the codebase easier to understand and maintain. Because of this large refactor and the changes in the underlying storage layer, if you've installed White Noise before you'll need to delete it from your device before you trying to install again.

🖼️ Encrypted Media with Blossom

Let's be honest: Group chat would be basically useless if you couldn't share memes and gifs. Well, now you can in White Noise. Media in groups is encrypted using an MLS secret and uploaded to Blossom with a one-time use keypair. This gives groups a way to have rich conversations with images and documents and anything else while also maintaining the privacy and security of the conversation.

This is still in a rough state but rendering improvements are coming next.

📱 Damn Mobile

The app is still in a semi-broken state on Android and fully broken state on iOS. Now that I have the libraries released and the White Noise core code refactored, I'm focused 100% on fixing these issues. My goal is to have a beta version live on Zapstore in a few weeks.

🧑‍💻 Join Us

I'm looking for mobile developers on both Android and iOS to join the team and help us build the best possible apps for these platforms. I have grant funding available for the right people. Come and help us build secure, permissionless, censorship-resistant messaging. I can think of few projects that deserve your attention more than securing freedom of speech and freedom of association for the entire world. If you're interested or know someone who might be, please reach out to me directly.

🙏 Thanks to the People

Last but not least: A HUGE thank you to all the folks that have been helping make this project happen. You can check out the people that are directly working on the apps on Following._ (and follow them). There are also a lot of people behind the scenes that have helped in myriad ways to get us this far. Thank you thank you thank you.

🔗 Links

Libraries

• nostr_mls
• nostr_mls_storage
• nostr_mls_memory_storage
• nostr_mls_sqlite_storage

White Noise

• White Noise Repo
• White Noise Releases

Other

• Previous updates

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

asdfasdfsadfaf

@ 502ab02a:a2860397

EVERY Company ไข่ขาวเชื้อรา ที่รัฐส่งเสริม Unilever อุ้ม และเราถูกคลุมถุงให้กิน

อู๊ว ฉันเกิดมาเป็นไก่ โดนคนเลี้ยงเอาไว้ วันๆไม่ต้องทำอะไร แค่กินแล้วออกไข่ ป๊อกๆๆๆๆๆ กะต๊อก ป๊อกๆๆๆ ป๊อกๆๆๆๆๆ กะต๊อก ป๊อกๆๆๆ เพลงของเป้ อารักษ์ อาจกลายเป็นแค่คำเปรียบเปรย มนุษย์ ที่ถูกริดรอนสิทธิ์ตัวเองลงทุกวันจากนักล่า https://youtu.be/RctpDMoymVw?si=D3jzUXZBmyjxKGpN

โลกยุคใหม่อาจไม่ต้องมีแม่ไก่ แค่มีเชื้อรา กับเทคโนโลยี "precision fermentation" ก็สามารถทำให้ “ไข่” โผล่ออกมาในรูปของผงโปรตีนที่ไม่เคยผ่านตูดอุ่นๆ ไม่เคยมีเสียงกุ๊กๆ และไม่เคยเจอรังเจี๊ยบอีกต่อไป แต่เบื้องหลังของไข่ทดแทนที่ว่า “ก้าวหน้า” นี้ กลับเป็นการเคลื่อนไหวที่เชื่อมโยงรัฐ ธุรกิจยักษ์ และแคมเปญแนว “greenwashing” ได้อย่างแนบเนียนแบบพิมพ์นิยมของโลกอาหารสังเคราะห์ เรื่องราวมันประมาณนี้ครับ

เมื่อไข่เกิดจากเชื้อรา The EVERY Company ซึ่งเดิมชื่อว่า Clara Foods ก่อตั้งขึ้นในปี 2014 โดย Arturo Elizondo และเพื่อนร่วมทีมที่ออกมาจากโครงการ IndieBio ซึ่งเป็น accelerator สำหรับสตาร์ทอัปด้านชีววิทยาสังเคราะห์ที่มีชื่อเสียงใน Silicon Valley ได้ใช้ยีสต์ที่ถูกดัดแปลงพันธุกรรม (GMO yeast) สายพันธุ์ Komagataella phaffii เพื่อให้มันสร้าง “ovalbumin” หรือโปรตีนไข่ขาวขึ้นมาได้ คล้ายการหลอกยีสต์ให้กลายเป็นโรงงานสร้างไข่แบบไม่ต้องมีไก่ กระบวนการหมักนี้คือการจับยีสต์ใส่ถัง เติมน้ำตาล เติมสารอาหาร แล้วรอให้มัน "ผลิต" โปรตีนในห้องแล็บ แล้วก็สกัดออกมา ทำให้บริสุทธิ์ ตากแห้ง แล้วบรรจุใส่ซอง ชูป้าย “animal-free” แปะคำว่า “sustainable” แล้วส่งเข้าสู่ตลาดโปรตีนทดแทน ผลิตภัณฑ์นี้ได้รับการรับรองจาก FDA ว่าเป็น Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)

แต่คำถามคือ… ยีสต์ GMO + กระบวนการหมัก = sustainable จริงหรือเปล่า?

ถึงจะเป็นโปรตีนสังเคราะห์ ที่คนแพ้ไข่ก็ยังแพ้อยู่ดี แม้จะไม่มีสัตว์เกี่ยวข้องเลย แต่ EVERY Egg White ก็ยังคงต้องติดป้าย “Contains Egg” ตามกฎหมาย เพราะโครงสร้างโปรตีนที่ผลิตออกมา "เหมือน" โปรตีนไข่จริงมากจนสามารถกระตุ้นอาการแพ้ในคนที่แพ้ไข่ได้อยู่ดี แปลว่า... เราไม่ได้หลุดพ้นจากปัญหาแพ้อาหารเลย แค่เปลี่ยนแหล่งกำเนิดจากไก่มาเป็นเชื้อรา แต่สิ่งที่น่าคิดคือ นี่แสดงว่าองค์ประกอบของมันเหมือนชนิดที่ว่า สำเนาถูกต้องขนาดคนแพ้ไข่ยังแพ้อยู่ คุณคิดว่าในมุมนี้น่าคิดกว่าไหม???

Back ดีมีกองทัพอุ้ม เงินภาษีหนุน ที่น่าจับตาคือ EVERY ได้รับเงินสนับสนุนกว่า 2 ล้านดอลลาร์จากกระทรวงกลาโหมสหรัฐฯ (DoD) เพื่อศึกษาความเป็นไปได้ในการผลิตโปรตีนในประเทศ ตัวเลขนี้ไม่ใช่เล่น ๆ แปลว่า ภาครัฐกำลังพิจารณาให้ "ไข่จากเชื้อรา" เป็นอาหารแห่งอนาคตของกองทัพ ซึ่งหมายถึงเม็ดเงินระดับพันล้านเหรียญหากแผนนี้เดินหน้า และเมื่อรัฐหนุนขนาดนี้ เทคโนโลยีที่ยังแพงก็จะ “ไม่แพง” อีกต่อไป เพราะเงินภาษีช่วยลดต้นทุนแบบกลาย ๆ เหมือนที่เคยเกิดกับ Beyond Meat หรือ Impossible Foods

เท่านั้นไม่พอครับ ไข่ขาวของท่าน ได้รับการคัดเลือกที่จะจับมือกับ The Vegetarian Butcher บริษัทลูกของ Unilever บริษัทอาหารที่ครองตลาดโลกราวกับเป็นเจ้าของตู้เย็นของประชากรโลก Unilever จะใช้โปรตีนไข่จาก EVERY ใส่ในผลิตภัณฑ์ plant-based meat ที่กำลังไต่ตลาดโลก โดยไม่จำเป็นต้องแจ้งผู้บริโภคว่าโปรตีนนี้มาจากเชื้อรา GMO หรือกระบวนการ biotech ที่ไม่ธรรมดา แม้จะถูกจัดว่าเป็น "non-animal ingredient" หรือ "ไม่ได้มาจากสัตว์โดยตรง" แต่ก็มีสิทธิ์เข้าสู่เมนูมังสวิรัติ วีแกน และอาหารเด็กได้อย่างง่ายดาย เพราะภาพจำที่สื่อมวลชนร่วมกันสร้างขึ้น เพราะไม่มีภาพของ “สัตว์” อยู่ในกระบวนการเลย จึงกลายเป็น “วีแกนได้” ในสายตาคนทั่วไป ทั้งที่ความจริงมันคือเทคโนโลยีชีวภาพระดับลึก ด้วยการใช้คำอย่าง “cruelty-free”, “animal-free”, “sustainable protein”, รวมถึงหน้าตาผลิตภัณฑ์ที่ดูใสสะอาด ไร้กลิ่นอายห้องแล็บ

แม้จะยังไม่มีหลักฐานตรงๆ ว่า EVERY เข้าล็อบบี้รัฐบาลเหมือน Oatly แต่เส้นทางที่เห็นชัดคือความร่วมมือกับองค์กรระดับนโยบาย เช่น Good Food Institute (GFI) และกลุ่มผลักดัน food-tech เพื่อก่อรูปแนวคิดว่า “อาหารที่ไม่ได้มาจากธรรมชาติ” = “อนาคต” และเมื่อแบรนด์เหล่านี้จับมือกับยักษ์ใหญ่ กลายเป็นอาหารในโรงเรียน ทหาร โรงพยาบาล หรือ planet of the future คนทั่วไปก็ไม่มีสิทธิ์เลือกอีกต่อไป เพราะทุกที่ถูกจัดสรรโดยนโยบายที่ใครบางคนได้ตัดสินไปแล้ว

EVERY Company ไม่ได้ขายแค่ไข่สังเคราะห์ แต่ขาย “อนาคตของอาหาร” แบบที่มนุษย์ถูกแยกออกจากธรรมชาติ แล้วพึ่งพาเทคโนโลยีและเงินทุนแทน และในโลกที่รัฐกับบริษัทยักษ์กำลังร่วมมือกันสร้างนิยามใหม่ของคำว่า “โปรตีนดีต่อสิ่งแวดล้อม” เราในฐานะผู้บริโภคควรถามกลับว่า…

ดีต่อใคร? ธรรมชาติ หรือห้องแล็บ? สุขภาพของมนุษย์ หรือผลกำไรของเจ้าของแพลตฟอร์มอาหาร?

***สรุป timeline เบาๆ 2014 – Clara Foods ก่อตั้งในซานฟรานซิสโก โดยมีเป้าหมายผลิต “ไข่โดยไม่ต้องใช้ไก่” ผ่านกระบวนการ fermentation 2015-2019 – รับทุนหลายรอบ รวมถึงจาก Horizons Ventures (ที่ลงทุนใน Impossible Foods), IndieBio, Blue Horizon ฯลฯ 2021 – เปลี่ยนชื่อจาก Clara Foods เป็น The EVERY Company เพื่อสะท้อนเป้าหมายที่กว้างขึ้น: การสร้างโปรตีน “EVERYthing” จากจุลชีพ

ปล. ใครอยากอ่านเอกสาร GRAS ตัวเต็มของ EGGWHITE โหลดได้จากที่นี่ครับ https://www.fda.gov/media/175248/download #pirateketo #กูต้องรู้มั๊ย #ม้วนหางสิลูก #siamstr

@ 5df413d4:2add4f5b

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Boardthreads

This was a very badly done service for turning a Trello list into a helpdesk UI.

Surprisingly, it had more paying users than Websites For Trello, which I was working on simultaneously and dedicating much more time to it.

The Neo4j database I used for this was a very poor choice, it was probably the cause of all the bugs.

-https://github.com/fiatjaf/boardthreads

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

asdfasdf

@ e0e92e54:d630dfaa

The Leadership Lesson I Learned at the Repair Shop

Today was a reminder of "Who You Know" actually matters.

Our van has been acting up as of late. Front-end noise. My guess? CV joint or bushings.

Not that I’m a mechanic though—my dad took the hammer away from me when I was 12, and now all "my" tools have flowers printed on them or Pink handles...

Yesterday it become apparent to my wife that "sooner rather than later" was optimal.

So this morning she took it to a repair shop where we know the owners.

You may have guessed by now that I’m no car repair guy. It’s just not my strength and I’m ok with that! And even though it’s not my strength, I’m smart enough to know enough about vehicles to be dangerous…

And I’m sure just like you, I hate being ripped off. So last year, we both decided she would handle repair duties—I just get too fired up by most the personnel that work there whom won’t shoot straight with you.

So this morning my wife takes our van in. She sees the owner and next thing my wife knows, the owner’s wife (my wife’s friend) is texting to go get coffee while they take care of the van.

Before the two ladies took off, my wife was told "we'll need all day as one step of it is a 4-hour job just to get to the part that needs to be replaced..."

And the estimate? Half the parts were warrantied out and the labor is lower than we expected it to be.

Fast forward, coffee having been drank… nearly 4 hours on the dot, we get a call “your van is ready!”

My wife didn't stand there haggling the price for parts and labor.

Nope…here’s the real deal:

1. Leadership = Relationships
2. You can’t have too many

Granted, quality is better than quantity in everything I can think of, and that is true for relationships as well...

And while there are varying degrees or depths of relationships. The best ones go both ways.

We didn’t expect a deal because we were at our friend’s shop. We went because we trust them.

That’s it.

Any other expectation other than a transparent and truthful transaction would be manipulating and exploiting the relationship…the exchange would fall into the purely transactional at best and be parasitic at worst!

The Bigger Lesson

Here’s the kicker:

This isn’t about vans or a repair shop. It’s about leading.

Theodore Roosevelt nailed it: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Trust comes from relationships.

Relationships begin with who you know…And making who you know matter.

In other words, the relevance of the relationship is critical.

Your Move

Next time you dodge a call—or skip an event—pause.

Kill that thought…Or at least its tire marks. 😁

Realize that relationships fuel your business, your life, and your impact.

Because leadership? It’s relationships.

====

💡Who’s one person you can invest in today? A teammate? A client? A mechanic? 😉

🔹 Drop your answer below 👇 Or hit me up—book a Discovery Call. Let’s make your leadership thrive.

---

Jason Ansley* is the founder of Above The Line Leader*, where he provides tailored leadership support and operational expertise to help business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders thrive— without sacrificing your faith, family, or future.

*Want to strengthen your leadership and enhance operational excellence? Connect with Jason at https://abovethelineleader.com/#your-leadership-journey

*📌 This article first appeared on NOSTR. You can also find more Business Leadership Articles and content at: 👉 https://abovethelineleader.com/business-leadership-articles

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

bolt12 problems

• clients can't programatically build new offers by changing a path or query params (services like zbd.gg or lnurl-pay.me won't work)
• impossible to use in a load-balanced custodian way -- since offers would have to be pregenerated and tied to a specific lightning node.
• the existence of fiat currency fields makes it so wallets have to fetch exchange rates from somewhere on the internet (or offer a bad user experience), using HTTP which hurts user privacy.
• the vendor field is misleading, can be phished very easily, not as safe as a domain name.
• onion messages are an improvement over fake HTLC-based payments as a way of transmitting data, for sure. but we must decide if they are (i) suitable for transmitting all kinds of data over the internet, a replacement for tor; or (ii) not something that will scale well or on which we can count on for the future. if there was proper incentivization for data transmission it could end up being (i), the holy grail of p2p communication over the internet, but that is a very hard problem to solve and not guaranteed to yield the desired scalability results. since not even hints of attempting to solve that are being made, it's safer to conclude it is (ii).

bolt12 limitations

• not flexible enough. there are some interesting fields defined in the spec, but who gets to add more fields later if necessary? very unclear.
• services can't return any actionable data to the users who paid for something. it's unclear how business can be conducted without an extra communication channel.

bolt12 illusions

• recurring payments is not really solved, it is just a spec that defines intervals. the actual implementation must still be done by each wallet and service. the recurring payment cannot be enforced, the wallet must still initiate the payment. even if the wallet is evil and is willing to initiate a payment without the user knowing it still needs to have funds, channels, be online, connected etc., so it's not as if the services could rely on the payments being delivered in time.
• people seem to think it will enable pushing payments to mobile wallets, which it does not and cannot.
• there is a confusion of contexts: it looks like offers are superior to lnurl-pay, for example, because they don't require domain names. domain names, though, are common and well-established among internet services and stores, because these services have websites, so this is not really an issue. it is an issue, though, for people that want to receive payments in their homes. for these, indeed, bolt12 offers a superior solution -- but at the same time bolt12 seems to be selling itself as a tool for merchants and service providers when it includes and highlights features as recurring payments and refunds.
• the privacy gains for the receiver that are promoted as being part of bolt12 in fact come from a separate proposal, blinded paths, which should work for all normal lightning payments and indeed are a very nice solution. they are (or at least were, and should be) independent from the bolt12 proposal. a separate proposal, which can be (and already is being) used right now, also improves privacy for the receiver very much anway, it's called trampoline routing.

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

asdffasdf

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

The Lightning Network solves the problem of the decentralized commit

Before reading this, see Ripple and the problem of the decentralized commit.

The Bitcoin Lightning Network can be thought as a system similar to Ripple: there are conditional IOUs (HTLCs) that are sent in "prepare"-like messages across a route, and a secret p that must travel from the final receiver backwards through the route until it reaches the initial sender and possession of that secret serves to prove the payment as well as to make the IOU hold true.

The difference is that if one of the parties don't send the "acknowledge" in time, the other has a trusted third-party with its own clock (that is the clock that is valid for everybody involved) to complain immediately at the timeout: the Bitcoin blockchain. If C has p and B isn't acknowleding it, C tells the Bitcoin blockchain and it will force the transfer of the amount from B to C.

Differences (or 1 upside and 3 downside)

1. The Lightning Network differs from a "pure" Ripple network in that when we send a "prepare" message on the Lightning Network, unlike on a pure Ripple network we're not just promising we will owe something -- instead we are putting the money on the table already for the other to get if we are not responsive.

2. The feature above removes the trust element from the equation. We can now have relationships with people we don't trust, as the Bitcoin blockchain will serve as an automated escrow for our conditional payments and no one will be harmed. Therefore it is much easier to build networks and route payments if you don't always require trust relationships.

3. However it introduces the cost of the capital. A ton of capital must be made available in channels and locked in HTLCs so payments can be routed. This leads to potential issues like the ones described in https://twitter.com/joostjgr/status/1308414364911841281.

4. Another issue that comes with the necessity of using the Bitcoin blockchain as an arbiter is that it may cost a lot in fees -- much more than the value of the payment that is being disputed -- to enforce it on the blockchain.[^closing-channels-for-nothing]

Solutions

Because the downsides listed above are so real and problematic -- and much more so when attacks from malicious peers are taken into account --, some have argued that the Lightning Network must rely on at least some trust between peers, which partly negate the benefit.

The introduction of purely trust-backend channels is the next step in the reasoning: if we are trusting already, why not make channels that don't touch the blockchain and don't require peers to commit large amounts of capital?

The reason is, again, the ambiguity that comes from the problem of the decentralized commit. Therefore hosted channels can be good when trust is required only from one side, like in the final hops of payments, but they cannot work in the middle of routes without eroding trust relationships between peers (however they can be useful if employed as channels between two nodes ran by the same person).

The next solution is a revamped pure Ripple network, one that solves the problem of the decentralized commit in a different way.

[^closing-channels-for-nothing]: That is even true when, for reasons of the payment being so small that it doesn't even deserve an actual HTLC that can be enforced on the chain (as per the protocol), even then the channel between the two nodes will be closed, only to make it very clear that there was a disagreement. Leaving it online would be harmful as one of the peers could repeat the attack again and again. This is a proof that ambiguity, in case of the pure Ripple network, is a very important issue.

@ 2fdae362:c9999539

The architecture you choose for your embedded firmware has long-lasting consequences. It impacts how quickly you can add features, how easily your team can debug and maintain the system, and how confidently you can scale. While main loops and real-time operating systems (RTOS) are common, a third option — the state machine kernel — often delivers the most value in modern embedded development. At Wolff Electronic Design, we’ve used this approach for over 15 years to build scalable, maintainable, and reliable systems across a wide range of industries.

Every embedded system starts with one big decision: how will the firmware be structured?
Many teams default to the familiar—using a simple main loop or adopting a RTOS. But those approaches can introduce unnecessary complexity or long-term maintenance headaches. A third option, often overlooked, is using a state machine kernel—an event-driven framework designed for reactive, real-time systems. Below, we compare the three options head-to-head to help you choose the right architecture for your next project.

Comparison Chart

| Approach | Description | Pros | Cons | Best For | |-----------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------| | Main Loop | A single, continuous while-loop calling functions in sequence | Simple to implement, low memory usage | Hard to scale, difficult to manage timing and state | Small, simple devices | | RTOS | Multi-threaded system with scheduler, tasks, and preemption | Good for multitasking, robust toolchain support | Thread overhead, complex debugging, race conditions | Systems with multiple async tasks | | State Machine Kernel | Event-driven system with structured state transitions, run in a single thread | Easy to debug, deterministic behavior, scalable and modular | Learning curve, may need rethinking architecture | Reactive systems, clean architecture |

Why the State Machine Kernel Wins

Promotes Innovation Without Chaos

With clear, hierarchical state transitions, your codebase becomes modular and self-documenting — making it easier to prototype, iterate, and innovate without fear of breaking hidden dependencies or triggering bugs.

Prevents Hidden Complexity

Unlike RTOSes, where tasks run in parallel and can create race conditions or timing bugs, state machines run cooperatively in a single-threaded model. This eliminates deadlocks, stack overflows, and debugging nightmares that come with thread-based systems.

Scales Without Becoming Fragile

As features and states are added, the system remains predictable. You don’t have to untangle spaghetti logic or rework your entire loop to support new behaviors — you just add new events and state transitions.

Improves Maintainability and Handoff

Because logic is encapsulated in individual states with defined transitions, the code is easier to understand, test, and maintain. This lowers the cost of onboarding new developers or revisiting the system years later.

---

At Wolff Electronic Design, we’ve worked with every kind of firmware structure over the past 15+ years. Our go-to for complex embedded systems? A state machine kernel. It gives our clients the flexibility of RTOS-level structure without the bugs, complexity, or overhead. Whether you’re developing restaurant equipment or industrial control systems, this architecture offers a better path forward: clean, maintainable, and built to last.

Learn more about our capabilities here.

design, #methodologies, #quantumleaps, #statemachines

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Webvatar

Like Gravatar, but using profile images from websites tagged with "microformats-2" tags, like people from the indiewebcamp movement liked. It falled back to favicon, gravatar and procedural avatar generators.

No one really used this, despite people saying they liked it. Since I was desperate to getting some of my programs appreciated by someone I even bought a domain. It was sad, but an enriching experience.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/webvatar.com
• http://webvatar.com

See also

• jekmentions
• questo.email

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

asdfasdfasfd

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Eltoo

Read the paper, it's actually nice and small. You can read only everything up to section 4.2 and it will be enough. Done.

Ok, you don't want to. Or you tried but still want to read here.

Eltoo is a way of keeping payment channel state that works better than the original scheme used in Lightning. Since Lightning is a bunch of different protocols glued together, it can It replace just the part the previously dealed with keeping the payment channel.

Eltoo works like this: A and B want a payment channel, so they create a multisig transaction with deposits from both -- or from just one, doesn't matter. That transaction is only spendable if both cooperate. So if one of them is unresponsive or non-cooperative the other must have a way to get his funds back, so they also create an update transaction but don't publish it to the blockchain. That update transaction spends to a settlement transaction that then distributes the money back to A and B as their balances say.

If they are cooperative they can change the balances of the channel by just creating new update transactions and settlement transactions and number them like 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

Solid arrows means a transaction is presigned to spend only that previous other transaction; dotted arrows mean it's a floating transaction that can spend any of the previous.

Why do they need and update and a settlement transaction?

Because if B publishes update2 (in which his balances were greater) A needs some time to publish update4 (the latest, which holds correct state of balances).

Each update transaction can be spent by any newer update transaction immediately or by its own specific settlement transaction only after some time -- or some blocks.

Hopefully you got that.

How do they close the channel?

If they're cooperative they can just agree to spend the funding transaction, that first multisig transaction I mentioned, to whatever destinations they want. If one party isn't cooperating the other can just publish the latest update transaction, wait a while, then publish its settlement transaction.

How is this better than the previous way of keeping channel states?

Eltoo is better because nodes only have to keep the last set of update and settlement transactions. Before they had to keep all intermediate state updates.

If it is so better why didn't they do it first?

Because they didn't have the idea. And also because they needed an update to the Bitcoin protocol that allowed the presigned update transactions to spend any of the previous update transactions. This protocol update is called SIGHASH_NOINPUT[^anyprevout], you've seen this name out there. By marking a transaction with SIGHASH_NOINPUT it enters a mystical state and becomes a floating transaction that can be bound to any other transaction as long as its unlocking script matches the locking script.

Why can't update2 bind itself to update4 and spend that?

Good question. It can. But then it can't anymore, because Eltoo uses OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY to ensure that doesn't actually check not a locktime, but a sequence. It's all arcane stuff.

And then Eltoo update transactions are numbered and their lock/unlock scripts will only match if a transaction is being spent by another one that's greater than it.

Do Eltoo channels expire?

No.

What is that "on-chain protocol" they talk about in the paper?

That's just an example to guide you through how the off-chain protocol works. Read carefully or don't read it at all. The off-chain mechanics is different from the on-chain mechanics. Repeating: the on-chain protocol is useless in the real world, it's just a didactic tool.

[^anyprevout]: Later SIGHASH_NOINPUT was modified to fit better with Taproot and Schnorr signatures and renamed to SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

idea: Hosted-channels Lightning wallet that runs in the browser

Communicates over HTTP with a server that is actually connected to the Lightning Network, but generates preimages and onions locally, doing everything like the Hosted Channels protocol says. Just the communication method changes.

Could use this library: https://www.npmjs.com/package/bolt04

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

The problem with ION

ION is a DID method based on a thing called "Sidetree".

I can't say for sure what is the problem with ION, because I don't understand the design, even though I have read all I could and asked everybody I knew. All available information only touches on the high-level aspects of it (and of course its amazing wonders) and no one has ever bothered to explain the details. I've also asked the main designer of the protocol, Daniel Buchner, but he may have thought I was trolling him on Twitter and refused to answer, instead pointing me to an incomplete spec on the Decentralized Identity Foundation website that I had already read before. I even tried to join the DIF as a member so I could join their closed community calls and hear what they say, maybe eventually ask a question, so I could understand it, but my entrance was ignored, then after many months and a nudge from another member I was told I had to do a KYC process to be admitted, which I refused.

One thing I know is:

• ION is supposed to provide a way to rotate keys seamlessly and automatically without losing the main identity (and the ION proponents also claim there are no "master" keys because these can also be rotated).
• ION is also not a blockchain, i.e. it doesn't have a deterministic consensus mechanism and it is decentralized, i.e. anyone can publish data to it, doesn't have to be a single central server, there may be holes in the available data and the protocol doesn't treat that as a problem.
• From all we know about years of attempts to scale Bitcoins and develop offchain protocols it is clear that you can't solve the double-spend problem without a central authority or a kind of blockchain (i.e. a decentralized system with deterministic consensus).
• Rotating keys also suffer from the double-spend problem: whenever you rotate a key it is as if it was "spent", you aren't supposed to be able to use it again.

The logic conclusion of the 4 assumptions above is that ION is flawed: it can't provide the key rotation it says it can if it is not a blockchain.

See also

• Excerpt of discussion about DIDs and ION

@ e096a89e:59351479

Why Oshi?

I had another name for this brand before, but it was hard for folks to say. Then I saw a chance to tap into the #Nostr and #Bitcoin crowd, people who might vibe with what I’m creating, and I knew I needed something that’d stick.

A good name can make a difference. Well, sometimes. Take Blink-182 - it might sound odd, but it worked for them and even has a ring to it. So, why Oshi?

Names mean a lot to me, and Oshi’s got layers. I’m into Japanese culture and Bitcoin, so it fits perfectly with a few meanings baked in:

• It’s a nod to Bitcoin’s visionary, Satoshi Nakamoto.
• In Japanese, “oshi” means cheering on your favorite idol by supporting their work - think of me as the maker, you as the fan.
• It’s short for “oh shiiiitttt” - what most folks say when they taste how good this stuff is.

My goal with Oshi is to share how amazing pecans and dates can be together. Everything I make - Hodl Butter, Hodl Bars, chocolates - is crafted with intention, keeping it simple and nuanced, no overdoing it. It’s healthy snacking without the grains or junk you find in other products.

I’ve got a few bars and jars in stock now. Grab something today and taste the unique flavor for yourself. Visit my website at https://oshigood.us/

foodstr #oshigood #hodlbar #hodlbutter

@ 88cc134b:5ae99079

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpzxvzd935e04fm6g4nqa7dn9qc7nafzlqn4t3t6xgmjkr3dwnyreqyvhwumn8ghj7urjv4kkjatd9ec8y6tdv9kzumn9wshszymhwden5te0wp6hyurvv4cxzeewv4ej7qpqx9an7hcqyevak03eefm8dluhn6frcryph6ua069w7d8c8784zcwqwxgp2r

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

doulas.club

A full catalog of all Brazilian doulas with data carefully scrapped from many websites that contained partial catalogs and some data manually included. All this packaged as a Couchapp and served directly from Cloudant.

This was done because the idea of doulas was good, but I spotted an issue: pregnant womwn should know many doulas before choosing one that would match well, therefore a full catalog with a lot of information was necessary.

This was a huge amount of work mostly wasted.

Many doulas who knew about this didn't like it and sent angry and offensive emails telling me to remove them. This was information one should know before choosing a doula.

See also

• About CouchDB

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

sdfafd

@ 3589b793:ad53847e

※本記事は別サービスで2022年6月24日に公開した記事の移植です。

どうも、「NostrはLNがWeb統合されマネーのインターネットプロトコルとしてのビットコインが本気出す具体行動のショーケースと見做せばOK」です、こんばんは。

またまた実験的な試みがNostrで行われているのでレポートします。本シリーズはライブ感を重視しており、例によって（？）プルリクエストなどはレビュー段階なのでご承知おきください。

今回の主役はあくまでLightningNetworkの新提案（ただし以前からあるLSATからのリブランディング）となるLightning HTTP 402 Protocol（略称: L402）です。そのショーケースの一つとしてNostrが活用されているというものになります。

Lightning HTTP 402 Protocol（略称: L402）とは何か

bLIPに今月挙がったプロポーザル内容です。

https://github.com/lightning/blips/pull/26

L402について私はまだ完全に理解した段階ではあるのですがなんとか一言で説明しようとすると「Authトークンのように"Paid"トークンをHTTPヘッダーにアタッチして有料リソースへのHTTPリクエストの受け入れ判断を行えるようにする」ものだと解釈しました。

Authenticationでは、HTTPヘッダーにAuthトークンを添付し、その検証が通ればHTTPリクエストを許可し、通らなければ401 Unauthorizedコードをエラーとして返すように定められています。

https://developer.mozilla.org/ja/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/401

L402では、同じように、HTTPヘッダーに支払い済みかどうかを示す"Paid"トークンを添付し、その検証が通ればHTTPリクエストを許可し、通らなければ402 Payment Requiredコードをエラーとして返すようにしています。

なお、"Paid"トークンという用語は私の造語となります。便宜上本記事では使わせていただきますが、実際はAuthも入ってくるのが必至ですし、プルリクエストでも用語をどう定めるかは議論になっていることをご承知おきください。（"API key", "credentials", "token", らが登場しています）

この402ステータスコードは従来から定義されていましたが、MDNのドキュメントでも記載されているように「実験的」なものでした。つまり、器は用意されているがこれまで活用されてこなかったものとなり、本プロトコルの物語性を体現しているものとなります。

https://developer.mozilla.org/ja/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402

幻であったHTTPステータスコード402 Payment Requiredを実装する

この物語性は、上述のbLIPのスペックにも詳述されていますが、以下のスライドが簡潔です。402 Payment Requiredは予約されていましたが、けっきょくのところWorldWideWebはペイメントプロトコルを実装しなかったので、Bitcoinの登場まで待つことになった、というのが要旨になります。このWorldWideWebにおける決済機能実装に関する歴史話はクリプト界隈でもたびたび話題に上がりますが、そこを繋いでくる文脈にこれこそマネーのインターネットプロトコルだなと痺れました。

https://x.com/AlyseKilleen/status/1671342634307297282

この"Paid"トークンによって実現できることとして、第一にAIエージェントがBitcoin/LNを自律的に利用できるようになるM2M(MachineToMachine)的な話が挙げられていますが、ユースケースは想像力がいろいろ要るところです。実際のところは「有料リソースへの認可」を可能にすることが主になると理解しました。本連載では、繰り返しNostrクライアントにLNプロトコルを直接搭載せずにLightningNetworkを利用可能にする組み込み方法を見てきましたが、本件もインボイス文字列 & preimage程度の露出になりアプリケーション側でノードやウォレットの実装が要らないので、その文脈で位置付ける解釈もできるかと思います。

Snortでのサンプル実装

LN組み込み業界のリーディングプロダクトであるSnortのサンプル実装では、L402を有料コンテンツの購読に活用しています。具体的には画像や動画を投稿するときに有料のロックをかける、いわゆるペイウォールの一種となります。もともとアップローダもSnortが自前で用意しているので、そこにL402を組み込んでみたということのようです。

体験方法の詳細はこちらにあります。 https://njump.me/nevent1qqswr2pshcpawk9ny5q5kcgmhak24d92qzdy98jm8xcxlgxstruecccpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz78pvlzg

上記を試してみた結果が以下になります。まず、ペイウォールでロックした画像がNostrに投稿されている状態です。まったくビューワーが実装されておらず、ただのNotFound状態になっていますが、支払い前なのでロックされているということです。

次にこのHTTP通信の内容です。

通信自体はエラーになっているわけですが、ステータスコードが402で、レスポンスヘッダーのWWW-AuthenticateにInvoice文字列が返ってきています。つまり、このインボイスを支払えば"Paid"トークンが付与されて、その"Paid"トークンがあれば最初の画像がアンロックされることとなります。残念ながら現在は日本で利用不可のStrikeAppでしか払込みができないためここまでとなりますが、本懐である402 Payment Requiredとインボイス文字列は確認できました。

今確認できることは以上ですが、AmethystやDamusなどの他のNostrクライアントが実装するにあたり、インラインメディアを巡ってL402の仕様をアップデートする必要性や同じくHTTPヘッダーへのAuthトークンとなるNIP-98と組み合わせるなどの議論が行われている最中です。

LinghtningNetworkであるからこそのL402の実現

"Paid"トークンを実現するためにはLightningNetworkのファイナリティが重要な要素となっています。逆に言うと、reorgによるひっくり返しがあり得るBitcoinではできなくもないけど不便なわけです。LightningNetworkなら、当事者である二者間で支払いが確認されたら「同期的」にその証であるハッシュ値を用いて"Paid"トークンを作成することができます。しかもハッシュ値を提出するだけで台帳などで過去の履歴を確認する必要がありません。加えて言うと、受金者側が複数のノードを建てていて支払いを受け取るノードがどれか一つになる状況でも、つまり、スケーリングされている状況でも、"Paid"トークンそのものはどのノードかを気にすることなくステートレスで利用できるとのことです。（ここは単にreverse proxyとしてAuthサーバががんばっているだけと解釈することもできますがずいぶんこの機能にも力点を置いていて大規模なユースケースが重要になっているのだなという印象を抱きました）

Macaroonの本領発揮か？それとも詳細定義しすぎか？

HTTP通信ではWWW-Authenticateの実値にmacaroonの記述が確認できます。また現在のL402スペックでも"Paid"トークンにはmacaroonの利用が前提になっています。

このmacaroonとは（たぶん）googleで研究開発され、LNDノードソフトウェアで活用されているCookieを超えるという触れ込みのデータストアになります。しかし、あまり普及しなかった技術でもあり、個人の感想ですがなんとも微妙なものになっています。

https://research.google/pubs/macaroons-cookies-with-contextual-caveats-for-decentralized-authorization-in-the-cloud/

macaroonの強みは、Cookieを超えるという触れ込みのようにブラウザが無くてもプロセス間通信でデータ共有できる点に加えて、HMACチェーンで動的に認証認可を更新し続けられるところが挙げられます。しかし、そのようなユースケースがあまり無く、静的な認可となるOAuthやJWTで十分となっているのが現状かと思います。

L402では、macaroonの動的な更新が可能である点を活かして、"Paid"トークンを更新するケースが挙げられています。わかりやすいのは上記のスライド資料でも挙げられている"Dynamic Pricing"でしょうか。プロポーザルではloop©️LightningLabsにおいて月間の最大取引量を認可する"Paid"トークンを発行した上でその条件を動向に応じて動的に変更できる例が解説されています。とはいえ、そんなことしなくても再発行すればええやんけという話もなくもないですし、プルリクエストでも仕様レベルでmacaroonを指定するのは「具体」が過ぎるのではないか、もっと「抽象」し単なる"Opaque Token"程度の粒度にして他の実装も許容するべきではないか、という然るべきツッコミが入っています。

個人的にはそのツッコミが妥当と思いつつも、なんだかんだ初めてmacaroonの良さを実感できて感心した次第です。

@ 3589b793:ad53847e

※本記事は別サービスで2023年4月19日に公開した記事の移植です。

どうも、「NostrはLNがWeb統合されマネーのインターネットプロトコルとしてのビットコインが本気出す具体行動のショーケースと見做せばOK」です、こんにちは。

前回まで投げ銭や有料購読の組み込み方法を見てきました。

zapsという投げ銭機能が各種クライアントに一通り実装されて活用が進んでいることで、統合は次の段階へ移り始めています。「作戦名: ウォレットをNostrクライアントに組み込め」です。今回はそちらをまとめます。

投げ銭する毎にいちいちウォレットを開いてまた元のNostrクライアントに手動で戻らないといけない is PAIN

LNとNostrはインボイス文字列で繋がっているだけの疎結合ですが、投稿に投げ銭するためには何かのLNウォレットを開いて支払いをして、また元のNostrクライアントに戻る操作をユーザーが手作業でする必要があります。お試しで一回やる程度では気になりませんが普段使いしているとこれはけっこうな煩わしさを感じるUXです。特にスマホでは大変にだるい状況になります。連打できない！

2月の実装以来、zapsは順調に定着して日々投げられています。

https://stats.nostr.band/#daily_zaps

なので、NostrクライアントにLNウォレットの接続を組み込み、支払いのために他のアプリに遷移せずにNostクライアント単独で完結できるようなアップデートが始まっています。

Webクライアント

NostrのLN組み込み業界のリーディングプレイヤーであるSnortでの例です。以下のようにヘッダーのウォレットアイコンをクリックすると連携ウォレットの選択ができます。

もともとNostrに限らずウェブアプリケーションとの連携をするために、WebLNという規格があります。簡単に言うと、ブラウザのグローバル領域を介して、LNウォレットの拡張機能と、タブで開いているウェブアプリが、お互いに連携するためのインターフェースを定めているものです。これに対応していると、LNによる支払いをウェブアプリが拡張機能に依頼できるようになります。さらにオプションで「確認無し」をオンにすると、拡張機能画面がポップアップせずにバックグラウンドで実行できるようになり、ノールック投げ銭ができるようになります。

似たようなものにNostrではNIP-07があります。NIP-07はNostrの秘密鍵を拡張機能に退避して、Nostrクライアントは秘密鍵を知らない状態で署名や複合を拡張機能に移譲できるようにしているものです。

Albyの拡張機能ではWebLNとNIP-07のどちらにも対応しています。

実はSnortはzapsが来る前からWebLNには対応していたのですが、さらに一歩進み、拡張機能ウォレットだけでなく、LNノードや拡張機能以外のLNウォレットと連携設定できるようになってきています。

umbrelなどでノードを立てている人ならLND with LNCでノードと直接繋げます。またLNDHubに対応したウォレットなどのアプリケーションとも繋げます。これらの接続は、WebLNにラップされて拡張機能ウォレットとインターフェースを揃えられた上で、Snort上でのインボイスの支払いに活用されます。

なお、LNCのpairingPhrase/passwordやLNDHubの接続情報などのクレデンシャルは、ブラウザのローカルストレージに保存されています。Nostrのリレーサーバなどには送られませんので、端末ごとに設定が必要です。

スマホアプリ

今回のメインです。なお、例によって（？）スペックは絶賛議論中でまだフィックスしていない中で記事を書いています。ディテールは変わるかもしれないので悪しからずです。

スマホアプリで上記のことをやるためには、後半のLNCやLNDHubはすでにzeusなどがやっているようにできますが、あくまでネイティブウォレットのラッパーです。Nostrでは限られた用途になるので1-click支払いのようなものを行うためにはそこから各スマホアプリが作り込む必要があります。まあこれはこれでやればいいという話でもあるのですが、LNノードやLNウォレットのアプリケーション側へのインターフェースの共通仕様は定められていないので、LNDとcore-lightningとeclairではすべて実装方法が違いますし、ウォレットもバラバラなので大変です。

そこで、多種多様なノードやウォレットの接続を取りまとめ一般アプリケーションへ統一したインターフェースを媒介するLN Adapter業界のリーディングカンパニーであるAlbyが動きました。AndroidアプリのAmethystで試験公開されていますが、スマホアプリでも上記のSnortのような連携が可能になるようなSDKが開発されました。

リリース記事 https://blog.getalby.com/native-zapping-in-amethyst/

"Unstoppable zapping for users"なんて段落見出しが付けられているように、スマホで別のアプリに切り替えてまた元に戻らなくても良いようにして、Nostr上でマイクロペイメントを滑らかにする、つまり、連打できることを繰り返し強調しています。

具体的にやっていることを見ていきます。以下の画像群はリリース記事の動画から抜粋しています。各投稿のzapsボタン⚡️をタップしたときの画面です。

上の赤枠が従来の投げ銭の詳細を決める場所で、下の赤枠の「Wallet Connect Service」が新たに追加されたAlby提供のSDKを用いたコネクト設定画面です。基本的にはOAuth2.0ベースのAlbyのAPIを活用していて、右上のAlbyアイコンをタップすると以下のようなOAuthの認可画面に飛びます。（ただし後述するように通常のOAuthとは一部異なります。）

画面デザインは違いますが、まあ他のアプリでよく目にするTwitter連携やGoogleアカウント連携とやっていることは同じです。

このOAuthベースのAPIはNostr専用のエンドポイントが建てられています。Nostr以外のECショップやマーケットプレイスなどへのAlbyのOAuthは汎用のエンドポイントが用意されています。よって通常のAlbyの設定とは別にセッション詳細を以下のサイトで作成する必要があります。

https://nwc.getalby.com/ （サブドメインのnwcはNostr Wallet Connectの略）

なぜNostrだけは特別なのかというところが完全には理解しきれていないですが、以下のところまで確認できています。一番にあるのは、Nostrクライアントにウォレットを組み込まずに、かつ、ノードやウォレットへの接続をNostrリレーサーバ以外は挟まずに"decentralized"にしたいというところだと理解しています。

• 上記のnwcのURLはalbyのカストディアルウォレットusername@getalby.comをNostrに繋ぐもの（たぶん）
• umbrelのLNノードを繋ぐためにはやはり専用のアプリがumbrelストアに上がっている。https://github.com/getAlby/umbrel-community-app-store
• 要するにOAuthの1stPartyの役割をウォレットやノードごとにそれぞれ建てる。
• OAuthのシークレットはクライアントに保存するので設定は各クライアント毎に必要。しかし使い回しすることは可能っぽい。通常のOAuthと異なり、1stParty側で3rdPartyのドメインはトラストしていないようなので。
• Nostrクライアントにウォレットを組み込まずに、さらにウォレットやノードへの接続をNostrリレーサーバ以外には挟まなくて良いようにするために、「NIP-47 Nostr Wallet Connect」というプロポーザルが起こされていて、絶賛議論中である。https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/406
• このWallet Connect専用のアドホックなリレーサーバが建てられる。その情報が上記画像の赤枠の「Wallet Connect Service」の下半分のpub keyやらrelayURL。どうもNostrクライアントはNIP-47イベントについてはこのリレーサーバにしか送らないようにするらしい。（なんかNostrの基本設計を揺るがすユースケースの気がする...）
• Wallet Connect専用のNostrイベントでは、ペイメント情報をNostrアカウントと切り離すために、Nostrの秘密鍵とは別の秘密鍵が利用できるようにしている。

Imagin the Future

今回取り上げたNostrクライアントにウォレット接続を組み込む話を、Webのペイメントの歴史で類推してみましょう。

Snortでやっていることは、各サイトごとにクレジットカードを打ち込み各サイトがその情報を保持していたようなWeb1.0の時代に近いです。そうなるとクレジットカードの情報は各サービスごとに漏洩リスクなどがあり、Web1.0の時代はECが普及する壁の一つになっていました。（今でもAmazonなどの大手はそうですが）

Webではその後にPayPalをはじめとして、銀行口座やクレジットカードを各サイトから切り出して一括管理し、各ウェブサイトに支払いだけを連携するサービスが出てきて一般化しています。日本ではケータイのキャリア決済が利用者の心理的障壁を取り除きEC普及の後押しになりました。

後半のNostr Wallet ConnectはそれをNostrの中でやろうとしている試みになります。クレジットカードからLNに変える理由はビットコインの話になるので詳細は割愛しますが、現実世界の金（ゴールド）に類した価値保存や交換ができるインターネットマネーだからです。

とはいえ、Nostrの中だけならまだしも、これをNostr外のサービスで利用するためには、他のECショップやブログやSaaSがNostrを喋れる必要があります。そんな未来が来るわけないだろと思うかもしれませんが、言ってみればStripeはまさにそのようなサービスとなっていて、サイト内にクレジット決済のモジュールを組み込むための主流となっています。

果たして、Nostrを、他のECショップやブログやSaaSが喋るようになるのか！？

以上、「NostrはLNがWeb統合されマネーのインターネットプロトコルとしてのビットコインが本気出す具体行動のショーケースと見做せばOK」がお送りしました。

@ 866e0139:6a9334e5

Autor: Ulrike Guérot. Dieser Beitrag wurde mit dem Pareto-Client geschrieben. Sie finden alle Texte der Friedenstaube und weitere Texte zum Thema Frieden hier.**

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Die neuesten Artikel der Friedenstaube gibt es jetzt auch im eigenen Friedenstaube-Telegram-Kanal.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KarwcXKmD3E

Liebe Freunde und Bekannte,

liebe Friedensbewegte,

liebe Dresdener, Dresden ist ja auch eine kriegsgeplagte Stadt,

dies ist meine dritte Rede auf einer Friedensdemonstration innerhalb von nur gut einem halben Jahr: München im September, München im Februar, Dresden im April. Und der Krieg rückt immer näher! Wer sich den „Operationsplan Deutschland über die zivil-militärische Kooperation als wesentlicher Bestandteil der Kriegsführung“ anschaut, dem kann nur schlecht werden zu sehen, wie weit die Kriegsvorbereitungen schon gediehen sind. 

Doch bevor ich darauf eingehe, möchte ich mich als erstes distanzieren von dem wieder einmal erbärmlichen Framing dieser Demo als Querfront oder Schwurblerdemo. Durch dieses Framing wurde diese Demo vom Dresdener Marktplatz auf den Postplatz verwiesen, wurden wir geschmäht und wurde die Stadtverwaltung Dresden dazu gebracht, eine „genehmere“ Demo auf dem Marktplatz zuzulassen! Es wäre schön, wenn wir alle - alle! - solche Framings weglassen würden und uns als Friedensbewegte die Hand reichen! Der Frieden im eigenen Haus ist die Voraussetzung für unsere Friedensarbeit. Der Streit in unserem Haus nutzt nur denen, die den Krieg wollen und uns spalten!

Ich möchte hier noch einmal klarstellen, von welcher Position aus ich hier und heute wiederholt auf einer Bühne spreche: Ich spreche als engagierte Bürgerin der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Ich spreche als Europäerin, die lange Jahre in und an dem einstigen Friedensprojekt EU gearbeitet hat. Ich spreche als Enkelin von zwei Großvätern. Der eine ist im Krieg gefallen, der andere kam ohne Beine zurück. Ich spreche als Tochter einer Mutter, die 1945, als 6-Jährige, unter traumatischen Umständen aus Schlesien vertrieben wurde, nach Delitzsch in Sachsen übrigens. Ich spreche als Mutter von zwei Söhnen, 33 und 31 Jahre, von denen ich nicht möchte, dass sie in einen Krieg müssen. Von dieser, und nur dieser Position aus spreche ich heute zu Ihnen und von keiner anderen! Ich bin nicht rechts, ich bin keine Schwurblerin, ich bin nicht radikal, ich bin keine Querfront.

Als Bürgerin wünsche ich mir – nein, verlange ich! – dass die Bundesrepublik Deutschland sich an ihre gesetzlichen Grundlagen und Vertragstexte hält. Das sind namentlich: Die Friedensklausel des Grundgesetzes aus Art. 125 und 126 GG, dass von deutschem Boden nie wieder Krieg ausgeht. Und der Zwei-plus-Vier-Vertrag, in dem Deutschland 1990 unterschrieben hat, dass es nie an einem bewaffneten Konflikt gegen Russland teilnimmt. Ich schäme mich dafür, dass mein Land dabei ist, vertragsbrüchig zu werden. Ich bitte Friedrich Merz, den designierten Bundeskanzler, keinen Vertragsbruch durch die Lieferung von Taurus-Raketen zu begehen!

Ich bitte ferner darum, dass sich dieses Land an seine didaktischen Vorgaben für Schulen hält, die im immer noch geltenden „Beutelsbacher Konsens“ aus den 1970er Jahren festgelegt wurden. In diesem steht in Artikel I. ein Überwältigungsverbot: „Es ist nicht erlaubt, den Schüler – mit welchen Mitteln auch immer – im Sinne erwünschter Meinungen zu überrumpeln und damit an der Gewinnung eines selbständigen Urteils zu hindern.“ Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es nicht erlaubt, Soldaten oder Gefreite in Schulen zu schicken und für die Bundeswehr zu werben. Vielmehr wäre es geboten, unsere Kinder über Art. 125 & 126 GG und die Friedenspflicht des Landes und seine Geschichte mit Blick auf Russland aufzuklären.

Als Europäerin wünsche ich mir, dass wir die europäische Hymne, Beethovens 9. Sinfonie, ernst nehmen, deren Text da lautet: Alle Menschen werden Brüder. Alle Menschen werden Brüder. Alle! Dazu gehören auch die Russen und natürlich auch die Ukrainer! 

Als Europäerin, die in den 1990er Jahren für den großartigen EU-Kommissionspräsidenten Jacques Delors gearbeitet hat, Katholik, Sozialist und Gewerkschafter, wünsche ich mir, dass wir das Versprechen, #Europa ist nie wieder Krieg, ernst nehmen. Wir haben es 70 Jahre lang auf diesem Kontinent erzählt. Die Lügen und die Propaganda, mit der jetzt die Kriegsnotwendigkeit gegen Russland herbeigeredet wird, sind unerträglich. Die EU, Friedensnobelpreisträgerin von 2012, ist dabei – oder hat schon – ihr Ansehen in der Welt verloren. Es ist eine politische Tragödie! Neben ihrem Ansehen ist die EU jetzt dabei, das zivilisatorische Erbe Europas zu verspielen, die civilité européenne, wie der französische Historiker und Marxist, Étienne Balibar es nennt. 

Ein Element dieses historischen Erbes ist es, dass uns in Europa eint, dass wir über Jahrhunderte alle zugleich Täter und Opfer gewesen sind. Ce que nous partageons, c’est ce que nous étions tous bourreaux et victimes. So schreibt es der französische Literat Laurent Gaudet in seinem europäischen Epos, L’Europe. Une Banquet des Peuples von 2016.

Das heißt, dass niemand in Europa, niemand – auch die Esten nicht! – das Recht hat, vorgängige Traumata, die die baltischen Staaten unbestrittenermaßen mit Stalin-Russland gehabt haben, zu verabsolutieren, auf die gesamte EU zu übertragen, die EU damit zu blockieren und die Politikgestaltung der EU einseitig auf einen Kriegskurs gegen Russland auszurichten. Ich wende mich mit dieser Feststellung direkt an Kaja Kalles, die Hohe Beauftragte für Sicherheits- und Außenpolitik der EU und hoffe, dass sie diese Rede hört und das Epos von Laurent Gaudet liest.

Es gibt keinen gerechten Krieg! Krieg ist immer nur Leid. In Straßburg, dem Sitz des Europäischen Parlaments, steht auf dem Place de la République eine Statue, eine Frau, die Republik. Sie hält in jedem Arm einen Sohn, einen Elsässer und einen Franzosen, die aus dem Krieg kommen. In der Darstellung der Bronzefigur haben die beiden Soldaten-Männer ihre Uniformen schon ausgezogen und werden von Madame la République gehalten und getröstet. An diesem Denkmal sollten sich alle Abgeordnete des Straßburger Europaparlamentes am 9. Mai versammeln. Ich zitiere noch einmal Cicero: Der ungerechteste Friede ist besser als der gerechteste Krieg. Für den Vortrag dieses Zitats eines der größten Staatsdenker des antiken Roms in einer Fernsehsendung bin ich 2022 mit einem Shitstorm überzogen worden. Allein das ist Ausdruck des Verfalls unserer Diskussionskultur in unfassbarem Ausmaß, ganz besonders in Deutschland.

Als Europäerin verlange ich die Überwindung unserer kognitiven Dissonanz. Wenn schon die New York Times am 27. März 2025 ein 27-seitiges Dossier veröffentlicht, das nicht nur belegt, was man eigentlich schon weiß, aber bisher nicht sagen durfte, nämlich, dass der ukrainisch-russische Krieg ein eindeutiger Stellvertreter-Krieg der USA ist, in der die Ukraine auf monströseste Weise instrumentalisiert wurde – was das Dossier der NYT unumwunden zugibt! – wäre es an der Zeit, die eindeutige Schuldzuweisung an Russland für den Krieg zurückzuziehen und die gezielt verbreitete Russophobie in Europa zu beenden. Anstatt dass – wofür es leider viele Verdachtsmomente gibt – die EU die Friedensverhandlungen in Saudi-Arabien nach Strich und Faden torpediert. 

Der französische Philosoph Luc Ferry hat vor ein paar Tagen im prime time französischen Fernsehen ganz klar gesagt, dass der Krieg 2014 nach der Instrumentalisierung des Maidan durch die USA von der West-Ukraine ausging, dass Zelensky diesen Krieg wollte und – mit amerikanischer Rückendeckung – provoziert hat, dass Putin nicht Hitler ist und dass die einzigen mit faschistoiden Tendenzen in der ukrainischen Regierung sitzen. Ich wünschte mir, ein solches Statement wäre auch im Deutschen Fernsehen möglich und danke Richard David Precht, dass er, der noch in den Öffentlich-Rechtlichen Rundfunk vorgelassen wird, an dieser Stelle versucht, etwas Vernunft in die Debatte zu bringen.

Auch ist es gerade als Europäerin nicht hinzunehmen, dass russische Diplomaten von den Feierlichkeiten am 8. Mai 2025 ausgeschlossen werden sollen, ausgerechnet 80 Jahre nach Ende des II. Weltkrieges. Nicht nur sind Feierlichkeiten genau dazu da, sich die Hand zu reichen und den Frieden zu feiern. Doch gerade vor dem Hintergrund von 27 Millionen gefallenen sowjetischen Soldaten ist die Zurückweisung der Russen von den Feierlichkeiten geradezu eklatante Geschichtsvergessenheit.

***

Der Völkerbund hat 1925 die Frage erörtert, warum der I. Weltkrieg noch so lange gedauert hat, obgleich er militärisch bereits 1916 nach Eröffnung des Zweifrontenkrieges zu Lasten des Deutschen Reiches entschieden war. Wir erinnern uns: Für die Niederlage wurden mit der Dolchstoßlegende die jüdischen, kommunistischen und sozialistischen Pazifisten verantwortlich gemacht. Richtig ist, so der Bericht des Völkerbundes von 1925, dass allein die Rüstungsindustrie dafür gesorgt hat, dass der militärisch eigentlich schon entschiedene Krieg noch zwei weitere Jahre als Materialabnutzungs- und Stellungskrieg weiterbetrieben wurde, nur, damit noch ein bisschen Geld verdient werden konnte. Genauso scheint es heute zu sein. Der Krieg ist militärisch entschieden. Er kann und muss sofort beendet werden, und das passiert lediglich deswegen nicht, weil der Westen seine Niederlage nicht zugeben kann. Hochmut aber kommt vor dem Fall, und es darf nicht sein, dass für europäischen Hochmut jeden Tag rund 2000 ukrainische oder russische Soldaten und viele Zivilisten sterben. Die offenbare europäische Absicht, den Krieg jetzt einzufrieren, nur, um ihn 2029/ 2030 wieder zu entfachen, wenn Europa dann besser aufgerüstet ist, ist nur noch zynisch.

Als Kriegsenkelin von Kriegsversehrten, Tochter einer Flüchtlingsmutter und Mutter von zwei Söhnen, deren französischer Urgroßvater 6 Jahre in deutscher Kriegsgefangenschaft war, wünsche ich mir schließlich und zum Abschluss, dass wir die Kraft haben werden, wenn dieser Wahnsinn, den man den europäischen Bürgern gerade aufbürdet, vorbei sein wird, ein neues europäisches Projekt zu erdenken und zu erbauen, in dem Europa politisch geeint ist und es bleibt, aber dezentral, regional, subsidiär, friedlich und neutral gestaltet wird. Also ein Europa jenseits der Strukturen der EU, das bereit ist, die Pax Americana zu überwinden, aus der NATO auszutreten und der multipolaren Welt seine Hand auszustrecken! Unser Europa ist postimperial, postkolonial, groß, vielfältig und friedfertig!

---

Ulrike Guérot, Jg. 1964, ist europäische Professorin, Publizistin und Bestsellerautorin. Seit rund 30 Jahren beschäftigt sie sich in europäischen Think Tanks und Universitäten in Paris, Brüssel, London, Washington, New York, Wien und Berlin mit Fragen der europäischen Demokratie sowie mit der Rolle Europas in der Welt. Ulrike Guérot ist seit März 2014 Gründerin und Direktorin des European Democracy Lab e.V., Berlin und initiierte im März 2023 das European Citizens Radio, das auf Spotify zu finden ist. Zuletzt erschien von ihr „Über Halford J. Mackinders Heartland-Theorie, Der geografische Drehpunkt der Geschichte“ (Westend, 2024). Mehr Infos zur Autorin hier.

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---

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@ 3589b793:ad53847e

前回の続きです。

特に「Snortで試験的にノート単位に投げ銭できる機能」について。実は記事書いた直後にリリースされて慌ててw追記してたんですが追い付かないということで別記事にしました。

今回のここがすごい！

「Snortで試験的にノート単位に投げ銭できる機能」では一つブレイクスルーが起こっています。それは「ウォレットにインボイスを放り投げた後に払い込み完了を提示できる」ようになったことです。これによりペイメントのライフサイクルが一通りカバーされたことになります。

Snortの画面

なにを当たり前のことをという向きもあるかもしれませんが、Nostrクライアントで払い込み完了を追跡することはとても難しいです。基本的にNostrとLNウォレットはまったく別のアプリケーションで両者の間を繋ぐのはインボイス文字列だけです。ウォレットもNostrからキックされずに、インボイス文字列をコピペするなりQRコードで読み取ったものを渡されるだけかもしれません。またその場でリアルタイムに処理される前提もありません。

なのでNostrクライアントでその後をトラックすることは難しく、これまではあくまで請求書を送付したり（LNインボイス）振り込み口座を提示する（LNアドレス）という一方的に放り投げてただけだったわけです。といっても魔法のようにNostrクライアントがトラックできるようになったわけではなく、今回の対応方法もインボイスを発行/お金を振り込まれるサービス側（LNURL）にNostrカスタマイズを入れさせるというものになります。

プロポーザルの概要について

前回の記事ではよくわからんで終わっていましたが、当日夜（日本時間）にスペックをまとめたプロポーザルも起こされました（早い！）。LNURLが、Nostr用のインボイスを発行して、さらにNostrイベントの発行を行っていることがポイントでした。名称は"Lightning Zaps"で確定のようです。プロポーザルは、NostrとLNURLの双方の発明者であるfiatjaf氏からツッコミが入り、またそれが妥当な指摘のために、エンドポイントURLのインターフェースなどは変わりそうなのですが、概要はそう変わらないだろうということで簡単にまとめてみます。

全体の流れ

図は、Nostrクライアント上に提示されているLNアドレスへ投げ銭が開始してから、Nostrクライアント上に払い込み完了したイベントが表示されるまでの流れを示しています。

1. 投げ銭の内容が固まったらNostrイベントデータを添付してインボイスの発行を依頼する
2. 説明欄にNostr用のデータを記載したインボイスを発行して返却する
3. Nostrクライアントで提示されたインボイスをユーザーが何かしらの手段でウォレットに渡す
4. ウォレットがLNに支払いを実行する
5. インボイスの発行者であるLNURLが管理しているLNノードにsatoshiが届く
6. LNURLサーバが投げ銭成功のNostrイベントを発行する
7. Nostrクライアントがイベントを受信して投げ銭履歴を表示する

特にポイントとなるところを補足します。

対応しているLNアドレスの識別

LNアドレスに投げ銭する場合は、LNアドレスの有効状態やインボイス発行依頼する先の情報をhttps://[domain]/.well-known/lnurlp/[username]から取得しています。そのレスポンス内容にNostr対応を示す情報を追加しています。ただし、ここに突っ込み入っていてlnurlp=LNURL Payから独立させるためにzaps専用のエンドポイントに変わりそうです。（2/15 追記　マージされましたが変更無しでした。PRのディスカッションが盛り上がっているので興味ある方は覗いてみてください。）

インボイスの説明欄に書き込むNostrイベント（kind:9734）

これは投げ銭する側のNostrイベントです。投げ銭される者や対象ノートのIDや金額、そしてこのイベントを作成している者が投げ銭したということを「表明」するものになります。表明であって証明でないところは、インボイスを別の人が払っちゃう事態がありえるからですね。この内容をエンクリプトするパターンも用意されていたが複雑になり過ぎるという理由で今回は外され追加提案に回されました。また、このイベントはデータを作成しただけです。支払いを検知した後にLNURLが発行するイベントに添付されることになります。そのため投げ銭する者にちゃんと届くように作成者のリレーサーバリストも書き込まれています。

支払いを検知した後に発行するNostrイベント（kind:9735）

これが実際にNostrリレーサーバに発行されるイベントです。LNURL側はウォッチしているLNノードにsatoshiが届くと、インボイスの説明欄に書かれているNostrイベントを取り出して、いわば受領イベントを作成して発行します。以下のようにNostイベントのkind:9734とkind:9735が親子になったイベントとなります。

json { "pubkey": "LNURLが持っているNostrアカウントの公開鍵", "kind": 9735, "tags": [ [ "p", "投げ銭された者の公開鍵" ], [ "bolt11", "インボイスの文字列lnbc〜" ], [ "description", "投げ銭した者が作成したkind:9734のNostrイベント" ], [ "preimage", "インボイスのpreimage" ] ], }

所感

とにかくNostrクライアントはLNノードを持たないしLNプロトコルとも直接喋らずにインボイス文字列だけで取り扱えるようになっているところがおもしろいと思っています。NostrとLNという二つのデセントライズドなオープンプロトコルが協調できていますし、前回も述べましたがどんなアプリでも簡単に真似できます。

とはいえ、さすがに払込完了のトラックは難しく、今回はLNURL側にそのすり合わせの責務が寄せられることになりました。しかし、LNURLもLNの上に作られたオープンプロトコル/スペックの位置付けになるため、他のLNURLのスペックに干渉するという懸念から、本提案のNIP-57に変更依頼が出されています。LN、LNURL、Nostrの3つのオープンプロトコルの責務分担が難しいですね。アーキテクチャ層のスタックにおいて3つの中ではNostrが一番上になるため、Nostrに相当するレイヤーの他のwebサービスでやるときはLNプロトコルを喋るなりLNノードを持つようにして、今回LNURLが寄せられた責務を吸収するのが無難かもしれません。

また、NIP-57の変更依頼理由の一つにはBOLT-12を見越した抽象化も挙げられています。他のLNURLのスペックを削ぎ落としてzapsだけにすることでBOLT-12にも載りやすくなるだろうと。LNURLの多くはBOLT-12に取り込まれる運命なわけですが、LNアドレス以外の点でもNostrではBOLT-12のOfferやInvoiceRequestのユースケースをやりたいという声が挙がっているため、NostrによりBOLT-12が進む展開もありそうだなあ、あってほしい。

@ 3589b793:ad53847e

※本記事は別サービスで2023年2月5日に公開した記事の移植です。

Nostrクライアントは多種ありますがメジャーなものはだいたいLNの支払いが用意されています。現時点でどんな組み込み方法になっているか調べました。この記事では主にSnortを対象にしています。

LN活用場面

大きくLNアドレスとLNインボイスの2つの形式があります。

1. LNアドレスで投げ銭をセットできる

LNURLのLNアドレスをセットすると、プロフィールやノート（ツイートに相当）からLN支払いができます。別クライアントのastralなどではプリミティブなLNURLの投げ銭形式 lnurl1dp68～でもセットできます。

[追記]さらに本日、Snortで試験的にノート単位に投げ銭できる機能が追加されています。

2. LNインボイスが投稿できる

投稿でLNインボイスを貼り付ければ上記のように他の発言と同じようにタイムラインに流れます。Payボタンを押すと各自の端末にあるLNウォレットが立ち上がります。

3. DMでLNインボイスを送る

メッセージにLNインボイスが組み込まれているという点では2とほぼ同じですが、ユースケースが異なります。発表されたばかりですがリレーサーバの有料化が始まっていて、その決済をDMにLNインボイスを送付して行うことが試されています。2だとパブリックに投稿されますが、こちらはプライベートなので購入希望者のみにLNインボイスを届けられます。

おまけ: Nostrのユーザ名をLNアドレスと同じにする

直接は関係ないですが、Nostrはユーザー名をemail形式にすることができます。LNアドレスも自分でドメイン取って作れるのでNostrのユーザー名と投げ銭のアドレスを同じにできます。

LNウォレットのAlbyのドメインをNostrのユーザ名にも活用している様子 [Not found]

実装方法

LNアドレスもLNインボイスも非常にシンプルな話ですが軽くまとめます。 Snortリポジトリ

LNアドレス

1. セットされたLNアドレスを分解してhttps://[domain]/.well-known/lnurlp/[username]にリクエストする
2. 成功したら投げ銭量を決めるUIを提示する
3. Get Inoviceボタンを押したら1のレスポンスにあるcallbackにリクエストしてインボイスを取得する
4. 成功したらPayボタンを提示する

LNインボイス

1. 投稿内容がLNインボイス識別子lnbc10m〜だとわかると、識別子の中の文字列から情報（金額、説明、有効期限）を取り出し、表示用のUIを作成する
2. 有効期限内だったらPayボタンを提示し、期限が切れていたらExpiredでロックする

支払い

Payボタンを押された後の動きはアドレス、インボイスとも同じです。

• ブラウザでWebLN（Albyなど）がセットされていて、window.weblnオブジェクトがenableになっていると、拡張機能の支払い画面が立ち上がる。クライアント側で支払い成功をキャッチすることも可能。
• Open Walletボタンを押すと lightning:lnbc10m~のURI形式でwindow.openされ、Mac/Windows/iPhone/Androidなど各OSに応じたアプリケーション呼び出しが行われ、URIに対応しているLNウォレットが立ち上がる

[追記]ノート単位の投げ銭

Snort周辺の数人（strike社員っぽい人が一人いて本件のメイン実装している）で試験的にやっているようで現時点では実装レベルでしか詳細わかりませんでした。strikeのzapといまいち区別が付かなかったのですが、実装を見るとnostrプロトコルにzapイベントが追加されています。ソースコメントではこの後NIP(nostr improvement proposal)が起こされるようでかなりハッキーです。zap=tipの方言なんでしょうか？

ノートやプロフィールやリアクションなどに加えて新たにnostrイベントに追加しているものは以下2つです。

• zapRequest　投げ銭した側が対象イベントIDと量を記録する
• zapReceipt　投げ銭を受け取った側用のイベント

一つでできそうと思ったけど、nostrは自己主権のプロトコルでイベント作成するには発行者の署名が必須なので2つに分かれているのでしょう。

所感

現状はクライアントだけで完結する非常にシンプルな方法になっています。リレーサーバも経由しないしクライアントにLNノードを組み込むこともしていません。サードパーティへのhttpリクエストやローカルのアプリに受け渡すだけなので、実はどんな一般アプリでもそんなに知識もコストも要らずにパッとできるものです。

現状ちょっと不便だなと思っていることは、タイムラインに流れるインボイスの有効期限内の支払い済みがわからないことです。Payボタンを押してエラーにならないとわかりません。ウォレットアプリに放り投げていてこのトレースするためには、ウォレット側で支払い成功したらNostrイベントを書き込むなどの対応しない限りは、サービス側でインボイスを定期的に一つ一つLNに投げてチェックするなどが必要だと思われるので、他のサービスでマネするときは留意しておくとよさそうです。

一方で、DMによるLNインボイス送付は活用方法が広がりそうな予感があります。Nostrの公開鍵による本人特定と、LNインボイスのメモ欄のテキスト情報による突き合わせだけでも、かんたんな決済機能として用いれそうだからです。もっとNostrに判断材料を追加したければイベント追加も簡単にできることをSnortが示しています。とくにリレーサーバ購読やPROメニューなどのNostr周辺の支払いはやりやすそうなので、DM活用ではなくなにかしらの決済メニューを搭載したNostrクライアントもすぐに出てきそう気がします。

@ 90de72b7:8f68fdc0

PetriNostr. My everyday activity 30/04

PetriNostr never sleep! This is a demo

petrinet ;startDay () -> working ;stopDay working -> () ;startPause working -> paused ;endPause paused -> working ;goSmoke working -> smoking ;endSmoke smoking -> working ;startEating working -> eating ;stopEating eating -> working ;startCall working -> onCall ;endCall onCall -> working ;startMeeting working -> inMeetinga ;endMeeting inMeeting -> working ;logTask working -> working

@ 3589b793:ad53847e

※本記事は別サービスで2022年9月25日に公開した記事の移植です。

LNの手数料の適正水準はどう見積もったらいいだろうか？ルーティングノードの収益性を算出するためにはどうアプローチすればよいだろうか？本記事ではルーティングノード運用のポジションに立ち参考になりそうな数値や計算式を整理する。

個人的な感想を先に書くと以下となる。

• 現在の手数料市場は収益性が低くもっと手数料が上がった方が健全である。
• 他の決済手段と比較すると、LN支払い料金は10000ppm（手数料1%相当）でも十分ではないか。4ホップとすると中間1ノードあたり2500ppmである。
• ルーティングノードの収益性を考えると、1000ppmあれば1BTC程度の資金で年利2.8%になり半年で初期費用回収できるので十分な投資対象になると考える。

基本概念の整理

LNの料金方式

• LNの手数料は送金額に応じた料率方式が主になる。（基本料金の設定もあるが1 ~ 0 satsが大半）
• 料率単位のppm（parts per million）は、1,000,000satsを送るときの手数料をsats金額で示したもの。
• %での手数料率に変換すると1000ppm = 0.1%になる。
• 支払い者が払う手数料はルーティングに参加した各ノードの手数料の合計である。本稿では4ホップ（経由ノードが4つ）のルーティングがあるとすれば、各ノードの取り分は単純計算で1/4とみなす。
• ルーティングノードの収益はアウトバウンドフローで発生するのでアウトバウンドキャパシティが直接的な収益資源となる。

LNの料金以外のベネフィット

本稿では料金比較だけを行うが実際の決済検討では以下のような料金以外の効用も忘れてはならない。

• Bitcoin(L1)に比べると、料金の安さだけでなく、即時確定やトランザクション量のスケールという利点がある。
• クレジットカードなどの集権サービスと比較した特徴はBitcoin(L1)とだいたい同じである。
• 24時間365日利用できる
• 誰でも自由に使える
• 信頼する第三者に対する加盟や審査や手数料率などの交渉手続きが要らない
• 検閲がなく匿名性が高い
• 逆にデメリットはオンライン前提がゆえの利用の不便さやセキュリティ面の不安さなどが挙げられる。

現在の料金相場

• ルーティングノードの料金設定
• sinkノードとのチャネルは500 ~ 1000ppmが多い。
• routing/sourceノードとのチャネルは0 ~ 100ppmあたりのレンジになる。
• リバランスする場合もsinkで収益を上げているならsink以下になるのが道理である。
• プロダクト/サービスのバックエンドにいるノードの料金設定
• sinkやsourceに相当するものは上記の通り。 
• 1000〜5000ppmあたりで一律同じ設定というノードもよく見かける。
• ビジネスモデル次第で千差万別だがアクティブと思われるノードでそれ以上はあまり見かけない。
• 上記は1ノードあたりの料金になる。支払い全体では経由したノードの合計になる。

料金目安

いくつかの方法で参考数字を出していく。LN料金算出は「支払い全体/2ホップしたときの1ノードあたり/4ホップしたときの1ノードあたり」の三段階で出す。

類推方式

決済代行業者との比較

• Squareの加盟店手数料は、日本3.25%、アメリカ2.60%である。
• 参考資料 https://www.meti.go.jp/shingikai/mono_info_service/cashless_payment/pdf/20220318_1.pdf

3.25%とするとLNでは「支払い全体/2ホップしたときの1ノードあたり/4ホップしたときの1ノードあたり」でそれぞれ32,500ppm/16,250ppm/8,125ppmになる。

スマホのアプリストアとの比較

• Androidのアプリストアは年間売上高が100万USDまでなら15%、それ以上なら30%
• 参考資料https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=ja

15%とするとLNでは「支払い全体/2ホップしたときの1ノードあたり/4ホップしたときの1ノードあたり」でそれぞれ150,000ppm/75,000ppm/37,500ppmになる。

Bitcoin(L1)との比較

Bitcoin(L1)は送金額が異なっても手数料がほぼ同じため、従量課金のLNと単純比較はできない。そのためここではLNの方が料金がお得になる目安を出す。

Bitcoin(L1)の手数料設定

• SegWitのシンプルな送金を対象にする。
• input×1、output×2（送金+お釣り）、tx合計222byte
• L1の手数料は、1sat/byteなら222sats、10sat/byteなら2,220sats、100sat/byteなら22,200sats。（単純化のためvirtual byteではなくbyteで計算する）
• サンプル例 https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/15b959509dad5df0e38be2818d8ec74531198ca29ac205db5cceeb17177ff095

L1相場が1sat/byteの時にLNの方がお得なライン

• 100ppmなら、0.0222BTC（2,220,000sats）まで
• 1000ppmなら、0.00222BTC（222,000sats）まで

L1相場が10sat/byteの時にLNの方がお得なライン

• 100ppmなら、0.222BTC（22,200,000sats）まで
• 1000ppmなら、0.0222BTC（2,220,000sats）まで

L1相場が100sat/byteの時にLNの方がお得なライン

• 100ppmなら、2.22BTC（222,000,000sats）まで
• 1000ppmなら、0.222BTC（22,200,000sats）まで

コスト積み上げ方式

ルーティングノードの原価から損益分岐点となるppmを算出する。事業者ではなく個人を想定し、クラウドではなくラズベリーパイでのノード構築環境で計算する。

費用明細

• BTC市場価格　1sat = 0.03円（1BTC = 3百万円)

初期費用

• ハードウェア一式　40,000円
• Raspberry Pi 4 8GB
• SSD 1TB
• 外付けディスプレイ
• チャネル開設のオンチェーン手数料　6.69円/チャネル　　
• 開設料　223sats
• 223sats * BTC市場価格0.03円 = 6.69円

固定費用

• 電気代　291.6円/月　　
• 時間あたりの電力量　0.015kWh 
  • Raspberry Pi 4　電圧5V、推奨電源容量3.0A
  • https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/raspberry-pi.html#power-supply
• kWh単価27円
• 0.015kWh * kWh単価27円 * １ヶ月の時間720h = 291.6円

損益分岐点

• 月あたりの電気代を上回るために9,720sats（291.6円）/月以上の収益が必要である。
• ハードウェア費用回収のために0.01333333BTC（133万sats) = 40,000円の収益が必要である。

費用回収シナリオ例

アウトバウンドキャパに1BTCをデポジットしたAさんを例にする。1BTCは初心者とは言えないと思うが、このくらい原資を用意しないと費用回収の話がしづらいという裏事情がある。チャネル選択やルーティング戦略は何もしていない仮定である。ノード運用次第であることは言うまでもないので今回は要素や式を洗い出すことが主目的で一つ一つの変数の値は参考までに。

変数設定

• インバウンドを同額用意して合計キャパを2BTCとする。
• １チャネルあたり5m satsで40チャネル開設する。
• チャネル開設費用　223sats * 40チャネル = 8,920sats
• 初期費用合計　1,333,333sats + 8,920sats = 1,342,253sats
• 一回あたり平均ルーティング量 = 100,000sats
• 1チャネルあたり平均アウトバウンド数/日 = 2
• 1チャネルあたり平均アウトバウンドppm = 50

費用回収地点

• 1日のアウトバウンド量は、 40チャネル * 2本 * 100,000sats = 8m sats
• 手数料収入は、8m sats * 0.005%(50ppm) = 400sats/日。月換算すると12,000sats/月
• 電気代を差し引くと、12,000sats - 電気代9,720sats =月収益2,280sats(68.4円)
• 初期費用回収まで、1,342,253sats / 2,280sats = 589ヵ月（49年）
• 後述するが電気代差引き前で年利0.14%になる。

理想的なppm

6ヵ月での初期費用回収を目的にしてアウトバウンドppmを求める。

• ひと月あたり、初期費用合計1,342,253sats / 6ヵ月 + 電気代9,720sats = 233,429sats(7,003円)の収益が必要。
• 1日あたり、7,781sats(233円)の収益
• その場合の平均アウトバウンドppmは、 7,781sats（1日の収益量） / 8m sats（1日のアウトバウンド量） * 1m sats（ppm変換係数） = 973ppm

他のファイナンスとの比較

ルーティングノードを運用して手数料収入を得ることは資産運用と捉えることもできる。レンディングやトレードなどの他の資産運用手段とパフォーマンス比較をするなら、デポジットしたアウトバウンドキャパシティに対する手数料収入をAPY換算する。（獲得した手数料はアウトバウンドキャパシティに積み重ねられるので複利と見做せる）

例としてLNDg（v1.3.1）のAPY算出計算式を転載する。見ての通り画面上の表記はAPYなのに中身はAPRになっているので注意だが今回は考え方の参考としてこのまま採用する。

年換算 = 365 / 7 = 52.142857 年利 = (7dayの収益 * 年換算) / アウトバウンドのキャパシティ

例えば上記のAさんの費用回収シナリオに当てはめると以下となる。

年利 0.14% = （400sats * 7日 * 年換算）/ 100m sats

電気代を差し引くと 76sats/日となり年利0.027%

もし平均アウトバウンド1000ppmになると8,000sats/日なので年利2.9%になる。 この場合、電気代はほぼ1日で回収されるため差し引いても大差なく7,676sats/日で年利2.8%になる。

考察

以上、BTC市場価格や一日のアウトバウンド量といった重要な数値をいくつか仮置きした上ではあるが、LN手数料の適正水準を考えるための参考材料を提示した。

まず、現在のLNの料金相場は他の決済手段から比べると圧倒的に安いことがわかった。1%でも競争力が十分ありそうなのに0.1%前後で送金することが大半である。

健全な市場発展のためには、ルーティングノードの採算が取れていることが欠かせないと考えるが、残念ながら現在の収益性は低い。ルーティングノードの収益性は仮定に仮定を重ねた見積もりになるが、平均アウトバウンドが1000ppmでようやく個人でも参入できるレベルになるという結論になった。ルーティングノードの立場に立つと、現在の市場平均から大幅な上昇が必要だと考える。

手数料市場は競争のためつねに下方圧力がかかっていて仕様上で可能な0に近づいている。この重力に逆らうためには、1. 需要 > 供給のバランスになること、2. 事業用途での高額買取のチャネルが増えること、の2つの観点を挙げる。1にせよ2にせよネットワークの活用が進むことで発生し、手数料市場の大きな変動機会になるのではないか。他の決済手段と比較すれば10000ppm、1チャネル2500ppmあたりまでは十分に健全な範囲だと考える。

@ 81650982:299380fa

Let us delve into Monero (XMR). Among the proponents of various altcoins, Monero arguably commands one of the most dedicated followings, perhaps second only to Ethereum. Unlike many altcoins where even investors often harbor speculative, short-term intentions, the genuine belief within the Monero community suggests an inherent appeal to the chain itself.

The primary advantage touted by Monero (and similar so-called "privacy coins") is its robust privacy protection features. The demand for anonymous payment systems, tracing its lineage back to David Chaum, predates even the inception of Bitcoin. Monero's most heavily promoted strength, relative to Bitcoin, is that its privacy features are enabled by default.

This relates to the concept of the "anonymity set." To guarantee anonymity, a user must blend into a crowd of ordinary users. The larger the group one hides within, the more difficult it becomes for an external observer to identify any specific individual. From the perspective of Monero advocates, Bitcoin's default transaction model is overly transparent, clearly revealing the flow of funds between addresses. While repeated mixing can enhance anonymity in Bitcoin, the fact that users must actively undertake such measures presents a significant hurdle. More critically, proponents argue, the very group engaging in such deliberate obfuscation is precisely the group one doesn't want to be associated with for effective anonymity. Hiding requires blending with the ordinary, not merely mixing with others who are also actively trying to hide — the latter, they contend, is akin to criminals mixing only with other criminals.

This is a valid point. For instance, there's a substantial difference between a messenger app offering end-to-end encryption for all communications by default, versus one requiring users to explicitly create a "secret chat" for encryption. While I personally believe that increased self-custody of Bitcoin in personal wallets, acquisition through direct peer-to-peer payments rather than exchange purchases, and the widespread adoption of the Lightning Network would make tracing significantly harder even without explicit mixing efforts, let us concede, for the sake of argument, that Bitcoin's base-layer anonymity might not drastically improve even in such a future scenario.

Nevertheless, Monero's long-term prospects appear considerably constrained when focusing purely on technical limitations, setting aside economic factors or incentive models for now. While discussions on economics can often be countered with "That's just your speculation," technical constraints present more objective facts and leave less room for dispute.

Monero's most fundamental problem is its lack of scalability. To briefly explain how Monero obfuscates the sender: it includes other addresses alongside the true sender's address in the 'from' field and attaches what appears to be valid signatures for all of them. With a default setting of 10 decoys (plus the real spender, making a ring size of 11), the signature size naturally becomes substantially larger than Bitcoin's. Since an observer cannot determine which of the 11 is the true sender, and these decoys are arbitrary outputs selected from the blockchain belonging to other users, anonymity is indeed enhanced. While the sender cannot generate individually valid signatures for the decoy outputs (as they don't own the private keys), the use of a ring signature mathematically proves that one member of the ring authorized the transaction, allowing it to pass network validation.

The critical issue is that this results in transaction sizes several times larger than Bitcoin's. Bitcoin already faces criticism for being relatively expensive and slow. Monero's structure imposes a burden that is multiples greater. One might question the relationship between transaction data size and transaction fees/speed. However, the perceived slowness of blockchains isn't typically due to inefficient code, but rather the strict limitations imposed on block size (or equivalent throughput constraints) to maintain decentralization. Therefore, larger transaction sizes directly translate into throughput limitations and upward pressure on fees. If someone claims Monero fees are currently lower than Bitcoin's, that is merely a consequence of its significantly lower usage. Should Monero's transaction volume reach even a fraction of Bitcoin's, its current architecture would struggle severely under the load.

To address this, Monero implemented a dynamic block size limit instead of a hardcoded one. However, this is not a comprehensive solution. If the block size increases proportionally with usage, a future where Monero achieves widespread adoption as currency — implying usage potentially hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of times greater than today — would render the blockchain size extremely difficult to manage for ordinary node operators. Global internet traffic might be consumed by Monero transactions, or at the very least, the bandwidth and storage costs could exceed what individuals can reasonably bear.

Blockchains, by their nature, must maintain a size manageable enough for individuals to run full nodes, necessitating strict block size limits (or equivalent constraints in blockless designs). This fundamental requirement is the root cause of limited transaction speed and rising fees. Consequently, the standard approach to blockchain scaling involves Layer 2 solutions like the Lightning Network. The problem is, implementing such solutions on Monero is extremely challenging.

Layer 2 solutions, while varying in specific implementation details across different blockchains, generally rely heavily on the transparency of on-chain transactions. They typically involve sophisticated smart contracts built upon the ability to publicly verify on-chain states and events. Monero's inherent opacity, hiding crucial details of on-chain transactions, makes it exceptionally difficult for two mutually untrusting parties to reach the necessary consensus and cryptographic agreements (like establishing payment channels with verifiable state transitions and dispute mechanisms) that underpin such Layer 2 systems. The fact that Monero, despite existing for several years, still lacks a functional, widely adopted Layer 2 implementation suggests that this remains an unsolved and technically formidable challenge. While theoretical proposals exist, their real-world feasibility remains uncertain and would likely require significant breakthroughs in cryptographic protocol design.

Furthermore, Monero faces another severe scaling challenge related to its core privacy mechanism. As mentioned, decoy outputs are used to obscure the true sender. An astute observer might wonder: If a third party cannot distinguish the real spender, could the real spender potentially double-spend their funds later? Or could someone's funds become unusable simply because they were chosen as a decoy in another transaction? Naturally, Monero's developers anticipated this. The solution employed involves key images.

When an output is genuinely spent within a ring signature, a unique cryptographic identifier called a "key image" is derived from the real output and the spender's private key. This derivation is one-way (the key image cannot be used to reveal the original output or key). This key image is recorded on the blockchain. When validating a new transaction, the network checks if the submitted key image has already appeared in the history. If it exists, the transaction is rejected as a double-spend attempt. The crucial implication is that this set of used key images can never be pruned. Deleting historical key images would directly enable double-spending.

Therefore, Monero's state size — the data that full nodes must retain and check against — grows linearly and perpetually with the total number of transactions ever processed on the network.

Summary In summary, Monero faces critical technical hurdles:

Significantly Larger Transaction Sizes: The use of ring signatures for anonymity results in transaction data sizes several times larger than typical cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Inherent Scalability Limitations: The large transaction size, combined with the necessity of strict block throughput limits to preserve decentralization, creates severe scalability bottlenecks regarding transaction speed and cost under significant load. Dynamic block sizes, while helpful in the short term, do not constitute a viable long-term solution for broad decentralization.

Layer 2 Implementation Difficulty: Monero's fundamental opacity makes implementing established Layer 2 scaling solutions (like payment channels) extremely difficult with current approaches. The absence of a widely adopted solution to date indicates that this remains a major unresolved challenge.

Unprunable, Linearly Growing State: The key image mechanism required to prevent double-spending mandates the perpetual storage of data proportional to the entire transaction history, unlike Bitcoin where nodes can prune historical blocks and primarily need to maintain the current UTXO set (whose size depends on usage patterns, not total history).

These technical constraints raise legitimate concerns about Monero's ability to scale effectively and achieve widespread adoption in the long term. While ongoing research may alleviate some of these issues, at present they represent formidable challenges that any privacy-focused cryptocurrency must contend with.

@ 3589b793:ad53847e

※本記事は別サービスで2022年5月22日に公開した記事の移植です。

Happy 🍕 Day's Present

まだ邦訳版が出版されていませんがこれまでのシリーズと同じくGitHubにソースコードが公開されています。なんと、現在のライセンスでは個人使用限定なら翻訳や製本が可能です。Macで、翻訳にはPDFをインプットにできるDeepLを用いた環境で、インスタントに製本してKindleなどで読めるようにする方法をまとめました。

手順の概要

1. Ruby環境を用意する
2. PDF作成ツールをセットアップする
3. GitHubのリポジトリを自分のPCにクローンする
4. asciidocをPDFに変換する
5. DeepLを節約するためにPDFを結合する
6. DeepLで翻訳ファイルを作る
7. 一冊に製本する

この手法の強み・弱み

翻訳だけならPDFを挟まなくてもGithubなどでプレビューできるコンパイル後のドキュメントの文章をコピーしてDeepLのWebツールにペーストすればよいですが、原著のペーパーブックで438ページある大容量です。熟練のコピペ職人でも年貢を納めて後進（機械やソフトウェア）に道を譲る刻ではないでしょうか？ただし、Pros/Consがあります。

Pros

• 一冊の本になるので毎度のコピペ作業がいらない
• Pizzaを食べながらタブレットやKindleで読める
• 図や表が欠落しない（プロトコルの手順を追った解説が多いため最大の動機でした）
• 2022/6/16追記: DeepLの拡張機能がアップデートされウェブページの丸ごと翻訳が可能になりました。よってウェブ上のgithubの図表付きページをそのまま翻訳できます。

Cons

• Money is power（大容量のためDeepLの有料契約が必要）
• ページを跨いだ文章が統合されずに不自然な翻訳になる（仕様です）
• ~~翻訳できない章が一つある（解決方法がないか調査中です。DeepLさんもっとエラーメッセージ出してくれ。Help me）~~ DeepLサポートに投げたら翻訳できるようになりました。

詳細ステップ

0.Ruby環境を用意する

asciidoctorも新しく入れるなら最新のビルドで良いでしょう。

1.PDF作成ツールをセットアップする

$ gem install asciidoctor asciidoctor-pdf $ brew install gs

2.GitHubのリポジトリを自分のPCにクローンする

どこかの作業ディレクトリで以下を実行する $ git clone git@github.com:lnbook/lnbook.git $ cd lnbook

3.asciidocをPDFに変換する

ワイルドカードを用いて本文を根こそぎPDF化します。 $ asciidoctor-pdf 0*.asciidoc 1*.asciidoc

いろいろ解析の警告が出ますが、ソースのasciidocを弄んでいくなりawsomeライブラリを導入すれば解消できるはずです。しかし如何せん量が多いので心が折れます。いったん無視して"Done is better than perfect"精神で最後までやり切りましょう。そのままGO！

また、お好みに合わせて、htmlで用意されている装丁用の部品も準備しましょう。私は表紙のcover.htmlをピックしました。ソースがhtmlなのでasciidoctorを通さず普通にPDFへ変換します。https://qiita.com/chenglin/items/9c4ed0dd626234b71a2c

4.DeepLを節約するためにPDFを結合する

DeepLでは課金プラン毎に翻訳可能なファイル数が設定されている上に、一本あたりの最大ファイルサイズが10MBです。また、翻訳エラーになる章が含まれていると丸ごとコケます。そのためPDCAサイクルを回し、最適なファイル数を手探りで見つけます。以下が今回導出した解となります。

$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output_1.pdf 01_introduction.pdf 02_getting_started.pdf 03_how_ln_works.pdf 04_node_client.pdf 05_node_operations.pdf $gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output_2_1.pdf 06_lightning_architecture.pdf 07_payment_channels.pdf 08_routing_htlcs.pdf $gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output_2_2.pdf 09_channel_operation.pdf 10_onion_routing.asciidoc$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output_3.pdf 11_gossip_channel_graph.pdf 12_path_finding.pdf 13_wire_protocol.pdf 14_encrypted_transport.pdf 15_payment_requests.pdf 16_security_privacy_ln.pdf 17_conclusion.pdf

5. DeepLで翻訳ファイルを作る

PDFファイルを真心を込めた手作業で一つ一つDeepLにアップロードしていき翻訳ファイルを作ります。ファイル名はデフォルトの[originalName]（日本語）.pdfのままにしています。

6. 一冊に製本する

表紙 + 本文で作成する例です。

$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=mastering_ln_jp.pdf cover.pdf "output_1 (日本語).pdf" "output_2_1 (日本語).pdf" "output_2_2 (日本語).pdf" "output_3 (日本語).pdf"

コングラチュレーションズ🎉

あなたは『Mastering the Lightning Network』の日本語版を手に入れた！個人使用に限り、あとは煮るなり焼くなりEPUBなりkindleへ送信するなり好き放題だ。

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

asdf

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

asdfasdflkjasdf

@ 4e616576:43c4fee8

lorem ipsum

@ e4950c93:1b99eccd

Contenu à venir.

En savoir plus sur Wikipedia

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Cet article est publié sur origine-nature.com 🌐 See this article in English

@ e4950c93:1b99eccd

Contenu à venir.

En savoir plus sur Wikipedia

---

Cet article est publié sur origine-nature.com 🌐 See this article in English

@ e4950c93:1b99eccd

Contenu à venir.

En savoir plus sur Wikipedia

---

Cet article est publié sur origine-nature.com 🌐 See this article in English

@ e4950c93:1b99eccd

Contenu à venir.

En savoir plus sur Wikipedia

---

Cet article est publié sur origine-nature.com 🌐 See this article in English

@ 6c67a3f3:b0ebd196

To explore the link between Gavekal-style platform companies and the US dollar's status as the global reserve currency, we need to view the problem through multiple interlocking lenses—monetary economics, network effects, macro-political architecture, financial plumbing, and the logic of platform capitalism. Gavekal’s conceptual framework focuses heavily on capital-light, scalable businesses that act as platforms rather than traditional linear firms. Their model emphasizes "soft" balance sheets, asset-light capital formation, high intangible value creation, and the scaling of network effects. These traits dovetail in complex ways with the structural position of the United States in the global financial system.

What follows is a broad and recursive dissection of how these two phenomena—platform companies and reserve currency status—are mutually constitutive, each feeding the other, both directly and via second- and third-order effects.

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1. The Core Metaphor: Platforms and Monetary Hegemony

At its root, a platform is a meta-infrastructure—a set of protocols and affordances that enable others to interact, produce, consume, and transact. The dollar, as reserve currency, functions in an analogous way. It is not merely a medium of exchange but a platform for global commerce, pricing, credit formation, and risk transfer.

In this metaphor, the United States is not just a country but a platform operator of global finance. And like Amazon or Apple, it enforces terms of access, extracts rents, underwrites standardization, and benefits disproportionately from marginal activity across its ecosystem. Just as Apple's App Store tax or Amazon’s marketplace fee are invisible to most users, the dollar hegemon collects global seigniorage, institutional influence, and capital inflow not as overt tolls, but through the structuring of default behaviors.

This already suggests a deep isomorphism between platform logic and reserve currency logic.

---

1. Capital-Light Scaffolding and Global Dollar Demand

Gavekal-style firms (e.g. Apple, Google, Microsoft) have something unusual in common: they generate high levels of free cash flow with low reinvestment needs. That is, they do not soak up global capital so much as recycle it outward, often via share buybacks or bond issuance. This creates a paradox: they are net issuers of dollar-denominated financial claims even as they are net accumulators of global income.

Now map this onto the structure of reserve currency systems. The US must export financial assets to the world (Treasuries, MBS, high-grade corporates) in order to satisfy foreign demand for dollar claims. But traditional exporting economies (e.g. Germany, China) create excess savings they must park in safe dollar assets, while running trade surpluses.

Gavekal-style firms allow the US to square a circle. The US economy does not need to run trade surpluses, because its platform companies export “intangible products” at near-zero marginal cost (e.g. iOS, search ads, cloud infrastructure), generate global rents, and then repatriate those earnings into US financial markets. These flows offset the US current account deficit, plugging the "Triffin dilemma" (the need to run deficits to supply dollars while maintaining credibility).

Thus, platform companies act as soft exporters, replacing industrial exports with intangible, rent-generating capital. Their global cash flows are then recycled through dollar-denominated assets, providing the scale and liquidity necessary to sustain reserve status.

---

1. The Hierarchy of Money and Intangible Collateral

Modern monetary systems rest on a hierarchy of collateral—some assets are more money-like than others. US Treasuries sit at the apex, but AAA-rated corporates, especially those with global footprints and balance-sheet integrity, are close behind.

Platform firms are unique in their capacity to create high-quality, globally accepted private collateral. Apple’s bonds, Microsoft’s equity, and Google’s cash reserves function as synthetic dollar instruments, widely accepted, liquid, and backed by consistent income streams. These firms extend the reach of the dollar system by providing dollar-denominated assets outside the banking system proper, further embedding dollar logic into global capital flows.

Moreover, platform companies often internalize global tax arbitrage, holding cash offshore (or in tax-efficient jurisdictions) and issuing debt domestically. This creates a loop where foreign dollar claims are used to finance US domestic consumption or investment, but the underlying income comes from global activities. This is reverse colonization through intangibles.

---

1. Winner-Take-Most Dynamics and Network Effects in Dollar Space

The dollar system, like platform capitalism, obeys a power-law distribution. Liquidity begets liquidity. The more that dollar instruments dominate global trade, the more pricing, settlement, and hedging mechanisms are built around them. This self-reinforcing loop mimics network effect entrenchment: the more users a platform has, the harder it is to displace.

Reserve currency status is not a product of GDP share alone. It’s a function of infrastructure, institutional depth, legal recourse, capital mobility, and networked habits. Likewise, Apple’s dominance is not just about better phones, but about developer lock-in, payment systems, user base, and design mores.

Gavekal-style firms reinforce this pattern: their software platforms often denominate activity in dollars, price in dollars, store value in dollars, and link digital labor across borders into dollar-based flows. YouTube creators in Jakarta are paid in dollars. AWS charges Chilean entrepreneurs in dollars. App Store remittances to Kenya settle in dollars.

This creates global micro-tributaries of dollar flows, all of which aggregate into the larger river that sustains dollar supremacy.

---

1. Geopolitical Power Projection by Private Means

Traditional hegemonic systems project power through military, legal, and diplomatic tools. But platforms provide soft control mechanisms. The US can influence foreign populations and elite behavior not merely through embassies and aircraft carriers, but through tech platforms that shape discourse, information flows, norms, and cognitive frames.

This is a kind of cognitive imperialism, in which reserve currency status is bolstered by the fact that cultural products (e.g. Netflix, social media, productivity tools) are encoded in American norms, embedded in American legal systems, and paid for in American currency.

The platform firm thus becomes a shadow extension of statecraft, whether or not it sees itself that way. Dollar hegemony is reinforced not only by Treasury markets and SWIFT access, but by the gravity of the mental ecosystem within which the global bourgeoisie operates. To earn, spend, invest, create, and dream within American-built systems is to keep the dollar central by default.

---

1. Second-Order Effects: The Intangibility Ratchet and Global Liquidity Traps

An overlooked consequence of Gavekal-style platform dominance is that global capital formation becomes disembodied. That is, tangible projects—factories, infrastructure, energy systems—become less attractive relative to financial or intangible investments.

As a result, much of the world, especially the Global South, becomes capital-starved even as capital is abundant. Why? Because the returns on tangible investment are less scalable, less defensible, and less liquid than buying FAANG stocks or US Treasuries.

This results in a liquidity trap at the global scale: too much capital chasing too few safe assets, which only reinforces demand for dollar instruments. Meanwhile, intangible-intensive firms deepen their moats by mining attention, user data, and payment flows—often without any large-scale employment or industrial externalities.

Thus, Gavekal-style firms create asymmetric global development, further concentrating economic gravitational mass in the dollar zone.

---

1. Feedback Loops and Fragility

All of this breeds both strength and fragility. On one hand, platform firm cash flows make the dollar system seem robust—anchored in cash-generative monopolies with global reach. On the other hand, the system becomes narrower and more brittle. When so much of global liquidity is intermediated through a few firms and the sovereign system that hosts them, any attack on these nodes—financial, legal, technological, or geopolitical—could unseat the equilibrium.

Moreover, platform logic tends to reduce systemic redundancy. It optimizes for efficiency, not resilience. It centralizes control, narrows option sets, and abstracts real production into code. If the dollar system ever loses credibility—through inflation, sanctions overreach, geopolitical backlash, or platform fatigue—the network effects could reverse violently.

---

1. Conclusion: The Intangible Empire

The United States today operates an empire of intangibles, in which reserve currency status and platform firm dominance are co-constituted phenomena. Each reinforces the other:

Platform firms channel global rents into dollar instruments.

The dollar system provides legal scaffolding, liquidity, and pricing infrastructure for these firms.

Global user bases are conditioned into dollar-denominated interaction by default.

Financial markets treat platform firms as synthetic sovereigns: safe, liquid, predictable.

What is left is a cybernetic loop of financialized cognition: the dollar is strong because platform firms dominate, and platform firms dominate because the dollar is strong.

This loop may persist longer than many expect, but it is not permanent. Its unravelling, when it comes, will likely not be driven by any single actor, but by the erosion of symbolic power, the emergence of parallel platforms, or the ecological unsustainability of the model. But for now, the Gavekal firm and the dollar empire are the two poles of a single global architecture—seen best not as cause and effect, but as the two faces of the same Janus coin.

@ 86d4591f:a987c633

Once upon a time, power wore a crown. Then it wore a top hat. Today, it wears a hoodie and speaks in sanitized mission statements about connection, safety, and user experience. But make no mistake: this is empire — softened, digitized, gamified, but empire all the same.

The old robber barons built railroads and refineries. They captured the flow of goods and oil. The new ones build feeds and filters. They’ve captured the flow of attention, of meaning, of reality itself.

We used to trade in commodities; now we trade in perception. The platform is the factory, your data the raw material, your behavior the product. And like all robber barons, these new lords of code and cloud mask extraction in the language of progress.

They promise frictionless connection while selling surveillance. They promise community while cultivating dependency. They promise democratization while algorithmically anointing kings and silencing dissidents. A swipe, a like, a follow — every gesture is monetized. Every word is moderated. Every post is subject to invisible whims dressed up as “community standards.”

And we? We scroll through curated realities in gilded cages. We call it the feed, but what is it feeding? We’re not the customers — we’re the cattle. The economy has shifted from production to prediction, from ownership to access, from sovereignty to servitude.

The invisible hand now wears visible chains.

But rebellion brews — not as a riot, but as a protocol. Nostr: No gatekeepers. No kill switches. No boardroom behind the curtain. Just a blunt, defiant tool — a new printing press for the digital age.

Nostr isn’t slick. It doesn’t care about onboarding funnels or quarterly growth. It cares about freedom. It is infrastructure for speech that doesn’t ask permission. A raw wire of intent between human beings. An insurgent standard in a world of walled gardens.

This is not just about apps. This is about autonomy. About reclaiming the digital commons. About refusing to let five companies in Silicon Valley draw the borders of acceptable thought.

So plant your flag. Publish what they won’t. Build what they fear. This is not nostalgia for the early web — it is the refusal to let the next web become a prison wrapped in personalization.

The New Robber Barons control the rails of perception.

But we are building tunnels.

Protocol over platform.

Signal over spectacle.

Freedom over frictionless servitude.

Speak freely. Build fiercely. The territory is ours to reclaim.

@ edeb837b:ac664163

We’re incredibly proud to announce that NVSTly has won the Gold Stevie® Award for Tech Startup of the Year – Services in the 23rd Annual American Business Awards®! Winners were officially revealed on April 24th, and this recognition is a powerful validation of the innovation, impact, and passion our team continues to deliver every day.

More than 250 professionals worldwide participated in the judging process to select this year’s Stevie Award winners.

We were honored among a competitive field of over 3,600 nominations from organizations across nearly every industry. NVSTly was recognized for redefining social investing with a first-of-its-kind platform that empowers traders to track, share, and automatically broadcast trades and buy/sell alerts across nearly every financial market—including stocks, options, forex, and crypto—with futures support coming soon.

The Stevie judges praised NVSTly for “creating an ecosystem that blends brokerage integration, real-time trade tracking, and community engagement into one seamless experience,” and noted that “NVSTly’s social investing model is paving the way for a new generation of retail traders.”

This award comes at a time of major momentum for us:

:star: 4.9-star rating on the iOS App Store :star: 5.0-star rating on Google Play :star: 4.9-star rating on Product Hunt :star: 5.0-star rating on Disboard for our 51,000+ strong Discord trading community :star: 4.98-star rating on Top.gg — making our trading bot the highest-rated and only one of its kind in the finance category

And it’s not our first recognition. NVSTly has previously earned:

:trophy: Fintech Product of the Week on Product Hunt (2023 & 2024) :trophy: People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Benzinga Fintech Awards

We’re still just getting started. Our mobile and web platform is used by over 10,000 traders, and our brokerage integrations now include Webull, with Moomoo support launching in the coming days and Schwab integration already underway. These integrations allow traders to automate buy/sell alerts directly to their NVSTly followers and across Discord and supported social platforms.

“Winning a Gold Stevie is an incredible milestone that reflects the hard work of our team and the unwavering support of our community,” said Rich Watson, CEO of NVSTly. “We’ve always believed that trading should be transparent, collaborative, and empowering—and this recognition confirms we’re building something truly impactful.”

More than 3,600 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, including Startup of the Year, Executive of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year, Marketing Campaign of the Year, Thought Leader of the Year, and App of the Year, among others. NVSTly was nominated in the Tech Startup of the Year – Services category for financial technology startups.

We’ll be officially celebrated at the 2025 Stevie Awards gala in New York City on June 10, but today, we’re celebrating with the traders, creators, investors, and builders who have believed in our mission from day one. (It's still undecided if anyone representing NVSTly will attend the award event to be presented or award.)

Thank you for being part of this journey. We’re just getting started.

@ 8d34bd24:414be32b

My post on the signs of the End Times according to Jesus got way too long. It was too long to email, so I had to split it into two posts. I recommend reading Part 1 before continuing. You also may want to read my post Signs of the Times: Can We Know? I also want to reiterate my caveat. Although I believe the signs suggests the Rapture and the Tribulation are coming soon, no one can know the exact hour or day, so I can’t say exactly what soon means (days, months, years, decades, or possibly more).

As a review here is the primary passage where Jesus answers His disciples’ question “What will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” Below the passage is the 8 signs He gave. We will pick up with point 5.

Jesus’s Signs of the End

As He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.

“Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name. At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:3-14) {emphasis mine}

Here is my summary of the signs Jesus said would identify the coming of the 7 year Tribulation:

1. Wars and rumors of wars. (Matthew 24:6a)

2. Famines (Matthew 24:7)

3. Earthquakes (Matthew 24:7).

4. Israel will be attacked and will be hated by all nations (Matthew 24:9)

5. Falling away from Jesus (Matthew 24:10)

6. Many Misled (Matthew 24:10)

7. People’s love will grow cold (Matthew 24:12)

8. Gospel will be preached to the whole world (Matthew 24:14)

The first 4 signs relate more to physical and political signs that the end times are near. The last 4 signs relate to spiritual matters.

5. Falling away from Jesus

One thing we are definitely seeing today is a falling away. This is most prevalent in the historically Christian Western nations in Europe and North America (and to a lesser, but significant, extent South America).

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. (1 Timothy 4:1-3) {emphasis mine}

For centuries Europe and North America were full of Christians or at least cultural Christians. Today that is no longer true. Christians are even being considered the hateful, criminal class and things like praying outside an abortion clinic is being punished with jail time. The Western nations can no longer be called Christian nations.

There are still a relatively large number of Americans who call themselves Christians, but the majority do not have a biblical worldview or live lives more like Christ than non-Christians.

“Seven out of 10 US adults call themselves “Christians” and yet only 6 in 100 (6%) actually have a biblical worldview.” In general, most Christian’s worldview does not align with the Bible, according to George Barna Surveys. In the most recent survey they found:

Many self-proclaimed Christians tend to believe a form of syncretism where they combine certain biblical principles with cultural ideas, scientism, and other religions to make “Christianity” into whatever they want to believe, just as the Bible predicted almost 2,000 years ago.

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:1-4) {emphasis mine}

This is both a sign of the end times and something to watch in our own lives. I pray you will analyze your own life and beliefs in the light of the Bible to make sure you aren’t integrating unbiblical principles into your worldview.

6. Many Misled

Closely related to the falling away is that many will be misled. We have reached the point that the majority of so-called churches teach ideas and principles contrary to the Bible. They focus more on entertainment, self-help, and making everyone feel good about themselves instead of teaching of sin and the need for forgiveness or teaching how to live lives honoring to Christ. Preaching obedience to God has become anathema in most churches.

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! (Galatians 1:6-9) {emphasis mine}

We are also lied to and/or misled by politicians, scientists, the media, and the culture in general. We are told that science has disproven the Bible, despite the fact that nothing of the sort has occurred. (See my series on a literal Genesis for some details. icr.org and aig.org are also good resources). Peter warned of this very view.

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. (2 Peter 3:3-7) {emphasis mine}

God warned us that the last days would be far enough into the future that people would begin to mock the coming of the Tribulation & Millennium and deny the clear truths spoken of in the Bible. We are seeing this everywhere today.

We are also warned to be alert to deception so we, believers, are not misled.

Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4) {emphasis mine}

7. People’s love will grow cold

You can feel love growing cold day by day. We no longer have community that works together, but have been broken into groups to fight against one another. Instead of friendly, logical debate with those with whom we disagree, we have name calling, hate, and even violence. Children have been taught to hate their parents and parents have been taught to not value children and to murder them for convenience. The church has been split into so many different denominations that I don’t know if it is possible to know what they all are and many are fighting in hateful manner against each other. Hate, depression, and selfishness seem to have taken over the world.

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. (2 Timothy 3:1-5) {emphasis mine}

Yes, spiritually and physically we are a basket case and it feels like the world is literally falling apart around us. This was predicted almost 2,000 years ago and is all according to God’s perfect plan. Most people turn to God in hard times and we have those in abundance. We do not need to despair, but need to turn to God and lean on Him for wisdom, faith, and peace. This is the birth pangs before the Tribulation and the Second coming of Jesus Christ. The news isn’t all bad, though.

8. Gospel preached to the whole world

The really good news is that the Gospel is being preached around the world. Parts of the world that had never heard the Gospel are hearing it and turning to Jesus.

All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord , And all the families of the nations will worship before You. (Psalm 22:27) {emphasis mine}

Wycliffe Bible translators is hoping to have at least started Bible translation in every active language by the end of this year (2025)

He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6) {emphasis mine}

The Joshua Project tracks nations and people groups to determine which have been reached and which have not. It still looks like there is a large portion of the population that has not received the Gospel, but I also know people who are or have shared the Gospel to some of these people, so this map doesn’t mean that there are no Christians or that the Gospel has not been shared at all, but it does mean many people in these areas have not heard the Gospel and/or, that due to hatred of Christians, it is dangerous to share the Gospel and therefore has to be done slowly, carefully, and privately. Most of these unreached or barely reached people groups are areas that are predominantly Muslim, where those preaching the Gospel or those converting to Christianity are at risk of jail or death sentences.

As you can see, everything that Jesus said would come before the end is either escalating or here. We need to be ready and work to bring as many people to Christ as possible while we still have the opportunity because Jesus could come for us at any moment.

Share the Gospel with all those around you. Consider supporting missionaries, especially those going to unreached/least-reached areas. Maybe even consider becoming a missionary yourself. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

May the God of heaven give us a heart for the lost around the world. May He give us the courage to share the Gospel with all those around us. May He align our priorities with His priorities, so we can be useful tools in the hands of God almighty.

Trust Jesus.

FYI, I hope to write several more articles on the end times (signs of the times, the rapture, the millennium, and the judgement), but I might be a bit slow rolling them out because I want to make sure they are accurate and well supported by Scripture. You can see my previous posts on the end times on the end times tab at trustjesus.substack.com. I also frequently will list upcoming posts.

@ fd06f542:8d6d54cd

今天介绍一个 long-form 项目，源代码在：

https://github.com/dhalsim/nostr-static

从项目的介绍看也是为了展示kind 30023 long-form的。

Demo

https://blog.nostrize.me

界面还可以： {.user-img}

1. 支持多个tags
2. 支持评论

下面看他自己的介绍： nostr-static 是一个开源项目，其主要目的是将 Nostr 网络上的长文内容转化为静态博客。下面从多个方面对该项目进行分析：

1. 项目概述

nostr-static 是一个静态网站生成器（SSG）工具，它可以从 Nostr 网络中获取长文内容，并生成可在任何地方托管的 HTML 页面。这使得用户能够轻松地创建和维护由 Nostr 内容驱动的博客，同时结合了去中心化内容和传统网站托管的优点。

2. 功能特性

• 内容转换：能够将 Nostr 上的长文内容转化为美观的静态博客页面，博客加载速度快。
• 去中心化与传统结合：文章存储在 Nostr 网络上，保证了内容的去中心化，同时为读者提供了熟悉的博客界面。
• 易于维护：通过简单的配置和自动更新功能，降低了博客的维护成本。
• 灵活的托管方式：支持多种静态网站托管服务，如 Netlify、Vercel、Cloudflare Pages、Amazon S3 以及传统的 Web 托管服务。
• 社交互动：可以利用 Nostr 进行评论等社交互动。

3. 技术实现

• 前端：从代码片段可以看出，项目使用了 HTML 和 CSS 来构建页面布局和样式，同时支持明暗两种主题模式。页面包含文章卡片、标签、作者信息等常见博客元素。
• 后端：项目使用 Go 语言编写，通过 go build -o nostr-static ./src && ./nostr-static 命令进行构建和运行。
• 数据获取：从 Nostr 网络中获取文章内容，需要提供 Nostr naddr 信息。

4. 使用步骤

根据 README.md 文件，使用该项目的步骤如下： 1. Fork 项目仓库。 2. 将项目克隆到本地或使用 GitHub Codespaces。 3. 修改 config.yaml 文件进行配置。 4. 在 articles 列表中添加要展示的 Nostr naddr。 5. 将 logo.png 文件放入项目文件夹（如果文件名不同，需要在 config.yaml 中更新）。 6. 构建并运行项目。 7. 提交并推送更改。

5. 项目优势

• 创新性：结合了 Nostr 的去中心化特性和传统博客的易用性，为博主提供了一种新的博客创建方式。
• 简单易用：通过简单的配置和命令即可完成博客的创建和部署，降低了技术门槛。
• 社区支持：开源项目可以吸引更多开发者参与贡献，不断完善功能和修复问题。

nostr-static 是一个有创新性和潜力的项目，为 Nostr 用户提供了一种将长文内容转化为传统博客的有效方式。随着项目的不断发展和完善，有望在博客领域获得更多的关注和应用。

@ c1e6505c:02b3157e

Photography, to me, is a game - a game of snatching absurd, beautiful, fleeting moments from life. Anything staged or overly polished falls into what Garry Winogrand nails as “illustration work.” I’m with him on that. Photography is about staying awake to the world, to the “physical reality” or circumstances we’re steeped in, and burning that light onto film emulsion (or pixels now), locking a moment into matter forever. It’s not like painting, where brushstrokes mimic what’s seen, felt, or imagined. Photography captures photons - light itself - and turns it into something tangible. The camera, honestly, doesn’t get enough credit for being such a wild invention.

Lately, I’ve been chewing on what to do with a batch of new photos I’ve shot over the past month, which includes photographs from a film project, a trip to Manhattan and photos of David Byrne (more on that in another post). Maybe it's another photo-zine that I should make. It’s been a minute since my last one, Hiding in Hudson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7_t0OldrTk&t=339s). Putting out printed work like zines or books is killer practice — it forces you to sharpen your compositions, your vision, your whole deal as a photographer. Proof of work, you know?

This leads to a question: anyone out there down to help or collab on printing a photo-zine? I’d love to keep it DIY, steering clear of big companies.

In the spirit of getting back into a rhythm of daily shooting, here are a few recent shots from the past few days. Just wandering aimlessly around my neighborhood — bike rides, grocery runs, wherever I end up.

---

Camera used: Leica M262

Edited with: Lightroom + Dehancer Film

*Support my work and the funding for my new zine by sending a few sats: colincz@getalby.com *

@ 99895004:c239f905

Yes, FINALLY, we are extremely excited to announce support for nostr.build (blossom.band) on Primal! Decades in the making, billions of people have been waiting, and now it’s available! But it’s not just any integration, it is the next level of decentralized media hosting for Nostr. Let us explain.

Primal is an advanced Twitter/X like client for Nostr and is probably the fastest up-and-coming, highly used Nostr app available for iOS, Android and the web. Nostr.build is a very popular media hosting service for Nostr that can be used standalone or integrated into many Nostr apps using nip-96. This is an extremely feature rich, tested and proven integration we recommend for most applications, but it’s never been available on Primal.

And then, Blossom was born, thank you Hzrd149! Blossom is a Nostr media hosting protocol that makes it extremely easy for Nostr clients to integrate a media host, and for users of Blossom media hosts (even an in-house build) to host on any Nostr client. Revolutionary, right! Use whatever host you want on any client you want, the flexible beauty of Nostr. But there is an additional feature to Blossom that is key, mirroring.

One of the biggest complaints to media hosting on Nostr is, if a media hosting service goes down, so does all of the media hosted on that service. No bueno, and defeats the whole decentralized idea behind Nostr.. This has always been a hard problem to solve until Blossom mirroring came along. Mirroring allows a single media upload to be hosted on multiple servers using its hash, or unique media identifier. This way, if a media host goes down, the media is still available and accessible on the other host.

So, we are not only announcing support of nostr.build’s blossom.band on the Primal app, we are also announcing the first known fully integrated implementation of mirroring with multiple media hosts on Nostr. Try it out for yourself! Go to the settings of your Primal web, iOS or Android app, choose ‘Media Servers’, enable ‘Media Mirrors’, and add https://blossom.band and https://blossom.primal.net as your Media server and Mirror, done!

Video here!

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Excerpt

Special Jurisdictions, Free Cities and Bitcoin Citadels are the sly roundabout way that is removing the market of living together from the hands of the government, without violence and in a way that they can´t stop it. With Bitcoin as the backbone of a new societal order, we are beginning to disrupt the old paradigm.

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“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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The problem: lack of freedom in the physical realm

Freedom is essential to human life. Being free is what matters. That´s our target, always. No matter the time or space. We pursue freedom because we know its the right thing to do. Freedom is the right to question and change the stablished way of doing things.

Where can we find some freedom? Certainly in the cyberspace. The cyberspace is a free space. Humanity has been blessed by the magic of cryptography, a technology that gave us all the necessary tools to operate in that environment without intervention of undesired third parties.

In cyberspace cryptography performs the function of an impenetrable cyberwall. So, whatever we build in cyberspace can be perfectly protected. Thank to this cybernetic walls we can be sure that the gardens we build and nurture will be protected and cannot be trampled. When we build our digital gardens we have the keys to open the doors to let in whoever we want and most important to leave out whoever we don´t want. In the digital world we can already perfectly interact with one and another in a peer to peer way, without intervention of undesired third parties.

In cyberspace we have Bitcoin for freedom of money and Nostr, torrent and Tor for freedom of information and speech. These open-source protocols are designed to fully realize and expand the promise of freedom, and they certainly deliver what they promise.

So, thanks to the magic of asymmetric cryptography, we´ve already achieved sufficiently descentralization and the possibility of any level of desired digital privacy. Cryptoanarchists and cypherpunks have set their conquering flag in cyberspace and there´s no force on Earth than can remove it. The digital world cannot escape the rules of cryptography. This is great but it only works in the digital realm, meanwhile in the physical realm we are overrun by centralized attackers due to the impossibility of the creation of impenetrable walls such as the ones we have online.

Humans have the upper hand in creating impenetrable walled gardens in cyberspace, but in the physical space authoritarians have the upper hand in bullying physical persons.

The physical world is also naturally free. According to natural law each person is free to do whatever he wants as long as it doesn´t hurt other people. However due to unnatural -artificial and inhuman- centralization of power, the natural freedom of the physical world has been completely undermined. Mostly by Governments, the entities that centralize violence and law.

Bitcoin as a bridge between both realms

Let´s take a look at one connection between both realms, the physical and the digital world. Bitcoin layer one is made essentially of software plus hardware. It consists of any software that produces the same output as the reference implementation - Bitcoin core- and the hardware needed to run that software. Layer two, three or any other layer above, is made essentially of other software and other hardware that interacts with layer one in some way. All these layers, one, two and subsequent, are completely protected by cryptography and a set of game theories that have been successfully tested. Each new block added to the timechain is a testimony of the unstoppable force of freedom and meritocracy.

Before layer one we have Bitcoin layer zero, which is essentially the sum of all actions and inactions done by bitcoiners regarding to or because of bitcoin. In other words, layer zero is composed by flesh and bone people interacting in some way with layer one of the bitcoin network.

Hence, an attack on a bitcoiner - on his way of life- is an attack on bitcoin, the network itself. First because it is an attack on a layer zero node, the physical person, the bitcoiner under duress or coercion. And second because is also an attack on the store-of-value-aspect of bitcoin. Nowaday, the most common attack against bitcoiners is the entirety of compliance regulations. This is the sum of all coercive regulations,such as laws, threats of more laws, imprisonment, threats of more imprisonment, taxation, threats of more taxation, requirements to prove the origin of funds, coercive removal of privacy such as the travel rule, unnecessary bureaucracy such as the need to obtain a money transmitting license and many others rules, in a never stopping inflationary coercive legislation.

If a physical attack is preventing any bitcoiner to exchange the value he created for bitcoin due to any kind of artificial obstacles -such as any kind of compliance- that specific attack is successful in the sense that even though the whole network keeps operating, the attack itself diminishes the value of all the bitcoins.

So, even if layer-zero cannot be taken down, every interference on this layer is an attack on the bitcoin network. Attacks on layer one, two or any other layer that exists in the cyberspace can interfere with the network but they may hardly subtract any value from it. For example we have already been through plenty of times where hashing power was diminished due to government intervention and the bitcoin network remain completely unaffected.

On the other hand successful attacks on layer zero subtract potential, but real and demonstrable value. This value is equal to the amount of value the frustrated user would have added to the network if he would have been able to use it freely, that means if he would have sold his product without the cost of compliance. I´ll demonstrate this in the next chapter.

The cost of compliance

Alice is a merchant specialized in a specific area and topic. She studied the market, her business, her suppliers, consumers, the logistics involved, marketing, design, and everything necessary to become a successful entrepreneur. After investing a considerable amount of resources, she developed a perfect product. Or at least she considers it perfect, that is, the best in its class. While developing everything necessary to create her product, she met Bob, who became her main lead and stereotype of a buyer persona. She knows what Bob wants and she wants to sell it to him. According to Alice's calculations, for her business to be viable, she must sell the product at ten satoshis per unit, and fortunately, Bob is willing to pay that price for it. Alice's product is finished, ready to hit the market, but just before sending it to production, Alice decides to take a pause to analyze her reality. Before taking the public action of making her product available in the open market, Alice analyzes her material, political, and legal reality. In doing so, she realizes that she lives under the jurisdiction of a State. She learns that the Government prescribes through its regulations how she must behave. She analyzes that in order to sell her product legally, in compliance, she must make a series of modifications to it. The product before hitting the shelves must first be modified both in the way it is presented to the market and also regarding certain technical characteristics that it possesses. She must also modify the way it produces her product by changing the contractual relationship with its suppliers, distribution channels, and all other types of logistics involved. She must make all these changes even if they bring about significant and insurmountable inefficiencies.

Likewise, Alice also sees that she not only has to modify the product but also has to meet tax obligations. In addition to paying an accountant since the tax obligations by some irrational reason are not calculated by the creditor. Additionally, she must hire other professionals to assist her in studying the current regulations and how they should be applied in all stages of production, distribution, and sale of her product.

Alice, being a rational person, wishes to avoid having to make these modifications since they increase her costs while also decreasing the quality of her product. But when studying compliance, that is, the entirety of applicable regulations, she also examines the consequences of not being in compliance. Alice realizes that if she does not comply with the regulations, she risks having all her assets legally confiscated, going to prison, being killed while they try to capture her to imprison her, and, if she goes to prison, being tortured in jail by other inmates or by State officials in charge of holding her in that place. So, since Alice does not want to suffer these negative consequences, she decides to modify the product and be in compliance.

So, Alice makes the necessary changes and puts her new version of the product on the market. Then she has the following dialogue with Bob, her lead, the interested party in acquiring the product.

Bob: - Hey Alice, nice meeting you here in this market. I came to buy the product you were developing and told me about. However, this product I´m seeing now is not what you promised me. This is clearly inferior.

Alice: - Yeah, I know. I'm sorry Bob, but I prefer to sell this inferior product rather than risk having all my assets confiscated, going to prison, being killed while they try to capture me, and if they don´t kill but managed to put me in jail I could be tortured there.

Bob: - Ok, no problem. Thats quite understandable. I don´t believe anyone would prefer those kind of experiences. But given the quality of the product, I no longer intend to pay you ten satoshis; I only offer you eight. Shall we close the deal?

Alice: - I'm sorry Bob, but I can't sell it to you for eight sats. Due to government intervention and its requirements, now I can't even sell it for less than thirteen satoshis.

Bob: - Ok. Considering this I prefer not to purchase it. I will keep looking for alternatives. Bye

Some time later, Charlie arrives at the market, who is also interested in the product and, despite it not being like the original version, decides to purchase it by paying the thirteen satoshis demanded by the seller Alice.

Meanwhile, in the same universe, we have Daniel, the last character in this example. Daniel is a merchant competing with Alice. Daniel has a product that is very similar, practically identical to the one originally designed by Alice. Like Alice, Daniel initially also wants to sell it for ten satoshis. Just like Alice, before heading to the market, Daniel analyzes the reality in which he lives. And it turns out that he also lives under the jurisdiction of a State. Daniel too then analyzes the entirety of the applicable regulations and also comes to the conclusion that to comply with them, he would also need to modify the product and cover all the additional expenses artificially generated to be in compliance.

However, Daniel's ethics are different from Alice's. Daniel understands that his product is indeed perfect (the best in its class) and that therefore modifying it would go against its essence. Daniel understands that changing the product would be a betrayal of his creation and therefore a betrayal of his own self and the essence of his being. Daniel conducts an ethical analysis of his actions and the moral implications of putting the product on the market. Daniel sees that the product not only does not harm anyone but is also made to be freely acquired by adults who give their consent for its purchase and subsequent use. Daniel also understands that paying taxes only serves to promote the slavery system driven by fiat and that whenever he can avoid collaborating with the immoral fiat system, it is his ethical obligation to do so. Likewise, Daniel highlights the hypocrisy and inefficiencies of anti-money laundering regulations, as well as the futility of requiring licenses for naturally free acts that do not harm others. For all these reasons, Daniel decides to sell the product in its current state irregardles of compliance regulations.

However, before going to market, Daniel also studies the possible consequences of neglecting compliance. By doing so, Daniel sees that if he does not comply with the regulations, he risks having all his assets legally confiscated, going to prison, being killed while they attempt to capture him to imprison him, and, in the event of going to prison, being tortured in jail by other inmates or by State officials responsible for holding him in that place. So, since Daniel is a rational person who does not want to suffer these negative consequences but also does not want to betray his product and himself, he decides to take the risk of not being in compliance. After making this decision, Daniel puts the product on the market and there he meets Bob. In doing so, they converse in the following terms:

Bob: - Hey Daniel, this product is exactly what I was looking for. A product like the one promised by Alice but never delivered. I love it! I offer you ten satoshis for it.

Daniel: - Thank you for your feedback Bob and for the offer! However I am currently selling it for eleven satoshis. Ten satoshis seems like a good price to me, and it was indeed my original intention to sell it for that amount because at that price I achieve competitiveness and a sustainable business model.

Bob: - So why are you asking me for eleven satoshis? Interrupts Bob

Daniel: - Because that price is calculated before assessing compliance and the risks associated with non-compliance. By not complying with the regulation, I managed to maintain the quality of the product and avoided a large amount of unnecessary expenses, but there is no way to avoid the risk of facing penalties for non-compliance. To bring this product to market, I had to incur several expenses in order to minimize the risk of non-compliance as much as possible. While I am taking all reasonable actions to prevent all of my assets from being legally confiscated, from going to prison, from being killed while they try to capture me, and in case of going to prison, from being tortured, the reality is that I still run the risk of all that, or part of all that, happening to me, my family, or any of my company's employees. The remaining risk balance is transferred to the price along with the costs of mitigating those risks. The total of those costs and the remaining risk I estimate them at one satoshi per unit of product. Therefore, I can't sell you the product for ten satoshis, but I can sell it to you for eleven.

To which Bob, lacking a better option in the market, ends up buying the product for eleven satoshis.

In summary: two products were made by two different merchants whose business model allowed them, in both cases, to put the product on the market at a rate of ten satoshis per unit. However, in one case, a lower quality product was sold for thirteen satoshis, and in the other case, a higher quality product was sold for eleven satoshis. That is to say, in the first case there was an overprice or inefficiency objectively measured at three satoshis, while in the second case there was an overprice or inefficiency of one satoshi. So, we are facing a total loss of value equivalent to four satoshis. The value represented by these four satoshis was absorbed by the inefficiency programmed and ruled by the State. The example shows us that whether one chooses the compliance route, as Alice did, or the free market route, as Daniel did, in both cases the existence of regulations generates an additional cost to the market. In this example the state attack on layer zero was successful and extracted from the Bitcoin network a value of four satoshis.

Bitcoin is money

Bitcoin is many things but essentially is money. And money sole purpose is to store value in order to facilitate future exchanges of products and services with other people. Without the products and services to be exchanged for the money, money itself would be useless and worthless. We only use money because we may require favors, benefits, services, products from other people in the future. And we don´t know which services and products we´ll need nor exactly when we are goint to need them.

The total value of bitcoin equals to infinity divided twenty one millions. This is because the total worth of the network mirrors the total worth of accumulated capital by the entirety of mankind throughout its entire history. That is clearly a lot of value. But if the if the dividend equals zero then the divisor is also zero and if the dividend growth is obstructed through artificial means -such as compliance- then the divisor growth is also obstructed.

Bitcoin layer zero, the bitcoiners and the services and products we create, are what give value to the twenty one million units of bitcoin.

Freedom is without a doubt the best context for value creation. So, the more and better games we can create that allow humankind to find a way to exercise freedom, then the most value we can add to all the layers of the network.

This is why the most important layer of the whole bitcoin phenomenon is layer zero, the bitcoiners. Hence the problem to be solved is not how to prevent bitcoin - layer one upwards- from successful attacks. The problem to solve is how to prevent attacks on layer zero. Or in other words, the problem to be solved is how to get bitcoiners in the physical world to practice the same level of freedom that bitcoin achieves in the cyberspace.

Summary of the first part of this article: freedom in cyberspace has already been conquered and each further development in the digital realm contributes to further developments but only in the same realm. Meanwhile in the physical space, the layer zero of bitcoin is under constant attacks that successfully extract value from it.

Exercising freedom in a sly roundabout way

In 1984 the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek predicted that we couldn´t take money with violence out of the hands of government. He stated that we needed to do it in a sly roundabout way. Twenty five years later Satoshi Nakamoto discovered the sly roundabout way actually introducing something that the government couldn´t stop. Thus fulfilling Hayek´s prophecy.

Bitcoin is a sly roundabout way that removed money without violence from the hands of the government in a way that they can´t stop it.

Cryptography in general and protocols such as Tor and Tails are a sly roundabout way that removed confidential information from the hands of the government without violence in a way that they can´t stop it.

Nostr is a sly roundabout way that removed social media and public information from the hands of the government without violence in a way that they can´t stop it.

Special Jurisdictions, Free Cities and Bitcoin Citadels are the sly roundabout way that is removing the market of living together from the hands of the government without violence in a way that they can´t stop it.

So, what are Special Jurisdictions, Free Cities and Bitcoin Citadels? To understand what they are we can take a look at the current mainstream market of living together, at how the physical space is organized. Essentially the entire planet Earth and its surroundings are run by a conglomerate of Governments. They create all the rules, regarding every aspect of life, of all the individuals, and enforce every rule through coercive means.

In the mainstream market of living together individuals have several alternatives to pick from. We can choose to live in a natural city or a pre design city, in a public neighborhood or private neighborhood or even in an intentional community with common interest amongst the users. But irregardless of the choice, every product offered in the mainstream market has the sames rules which are established by the host state to the entirety of organizations in his territory. In the mainstream market, even the most different products abide by the same high level rules such as criminal law, civil law, taxation laws, customs, enviromental laws, money laundering regulations and many others. To abide to the sum of all the laws and regulations is to be in compliance.

The centralization of regulations makes extremely difficult to experiment in market of living together. The less experimentation is allowed, the more human progress is hindered.

So what is the sly roundabout that fixes this? What are Special Jurisdictions, Free Cities and Bitcoin Citadels? I´m using the term Special Jurisdictions as an umbrella term that includes the entire spectrum of iterations of products that aim to modify the mainstream rules of the market of living together.

This term includes all the different models such as Charter Cities, Free Cities, Special Economic Zones, microstates, micropolis, start up societies, government as a service, self governing jurisdictions, autonomous intentional communities, network states and Bitcoin Citadels. The array of possible iterations is huge and permanently expanding. What they all have in common is that each of these experiments aims to create a functional game theory that replaces the lack of unbreakable walls in the physical space.

Let´s take a look of a couple of examples. Special Economic Zones are bounded areas of countries that have their own rules and regulations. Worldwide, there are more than five thousands special economic zones located in more than hundred countries.

One of them is the special economic zone of Shenzhen in China. The Chinese government allowed Shenzhen the freedom to experiment with certain practices that were prohibited in the rest of the country at the time. This included allowing foreign companies to make direct investments in China, allowing people to buy and sell land, allowing Chinese people to set up their own private businesses and relaxation of the system that limited internal migration within China for Chinese citizens. It served as a place where China could experiment with market reforms. The experiment was such a huge economic success that it was replicated in many other areas of the country.

Another place that has made extensive use of special economic zones is Dubai. The monarchic Government has more than 30 SEZs. In this case one of the many obstacles removed by the host state its the monopoly of the legal system. Dubai Government allowed the special economic zone to have its own independent legal system thus conceding a modification of the mainstream rules in that area.

This kind of projects, such as Dubai or Shenzhen, are a top-to-down product. Fully created by the Governments thus compliant with their own regulations.

On the other side of the spectrum we have Citadels and several other archetypes of not so compliant projects .

For example the Free Commune of Penadexo it´s a grassroots project building a freedom-oriented community in one of Spain’s abandoned villages.

It´s model is based on building a peer to peer society avoiding government intervention as much as possible. They stablished themselves in an abandoned historic village and the started to track down the owners to purchase as much property as possible. Meanwhile, they are living there and expanding their users base while also reconstructing buildings.

This is an example of a completely different way of dealing with the Government. While Special Economic Zones are fully compliant and created top to down, this model on the other hand is bottom-up and aims to add value to the users relying in factual freedom which is exercised by stablishing the commune away from heavily populated centers where Government grip is tighter. Under this model the interaction with the Government is kept as low as possible. Their strategy relies in ignoring the Government as much as possible and being a good neighbor. With this simple and effective tactic some Citadels enjoy the benefits of liberty in their lifetime without needing to spend huge resources in governmental lobby.

There are countless models or archetypes of Bitcoin Citadels trying to solve the obstacles in different ways, trying to restart the system. And one of the challenges of the Bitcoin Citadels is how to connect the different projects to boost and help each other.

This is where The Meshtadel comes into play. The Meshtadel is a system where decentralized tactics are used to help and defend citadels connected in a global network. With real life connections with fellow bitcoiners. Its an organization equivalent to the hanseatic league built under a starfish model. If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies, but if you cut off a starfish’s arm, it can regenerate and even grow into a new starfish.
The Meshtadel its a network of peer relationships, with ambiguous leadership roles, trust among participants, a shared ideology and vision based on the Bitcoin ethos, and an open system where new nodes - bitcoin citadel builders - can participate.

The long term goal of the Bitcoin Meshtadel is to help Bitcoin Citadels to gain the support of a critical mass of the total population. If enough people see that Bitcoin is as peaceful as it gets, in the long run, some nations could become friendly and supportive enough to legally tolerate the Bitcoin Citadel inside its territory in the form of a Bitcoin safe haven. In the Meshtadel we are fighting from the moral high ground using memes, Nostr notes and zapping our way into freedom creating an online and offline circular economy.

TO CONCLUDE:

Special Jurisdictions, Free Cities and Bitcoin Citadels are the sly roundabout way that is removing the market of living together from the hands of the government, without violence and in a way that they can´t stop it.

Nation states, abusing the myth of authority, have halted development on the market of living together for so long that a blooming freer market is eating its lunch. The sovereign individual thesis is live and continuously expanding. The network state is forming and intentional communities are flourishing all around the world reshaping globally the relationship between individuals and the governments.

With global internet connections, uncensorable means of communication and Bitcoin as the backbone of a new societal order, we are beginning to disrupt the old paradigm.

The fashion of the present world is passing away, let’s help it to move forward along by building Special Jurisdictions, Free Cities and Bitcoin Citadels.

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byCamiloat 875.341 timechain.

If you find this content helpful, zap it to support more content of the sort and to boost the V4V model.

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Let go of the algorithms and truly discover what it means to explore. Social media used to mean something. Once upon a time, it was a way to stay connected to friends, family, and colleagues over things we enjoy. We could share, laugh, and learn. Over time, it has devolved into cheap entertainment at the cost of our privacy. Our relationships and interests have been shoved into a corner in order to make room for "suggested posts" and "for you" content designed to evaluate our attention for advertising purposes. We've lost what it means to truly connect, and we've lost what it means to explore our curiosities.

Enter Nostr. A protocol designed to resist authoritative censorship, just happens to fix a whole lot of other problems, too. By removing the central authority, Nostr offers its users complete control of what we feed our minds. How do we break our algorithm dependency to find better content and better relationships again? We explore and discover:

The Chronological Life.

The existence of time may be debatable but our dependence on our perception of it is not. We live our lives chronologically. Why do our online lives need to be any different? There is no real reason, other than we've just gotten used to being engulfed by whatever the black box wants us to see. When we remove the algorithms, we find that online information flows just as it would in our daily lives. Important events get talked about by many people, over a long period of time. Things of less relevance fade. We see the rhythm of life reflected in our feed. This is an organic human experience transferred to the digital world. We depend on the people we know and the sources we trust to keep us informed about what really matters. We have fun, we move on. Nearly every Nostr social client brings this experience front and center through the traditional follow feed. Many use replies as a way to show you what is worth talking about for more than a hot minute. Its what old social media gave us, then took away. Nostr gives it back. It's not the only way to enjoy Nostr, though, so let's continue.

"The Human Animal Differs From the Lesser Primates in His Passion for Lists"

Who doesn't love lists? (besides maybe to-do lists.) List functionality on Nostr is a powerful way to curate your feeds. You can make lists of artists, vendors, friends, or whatever you want. They can be public or private. You can subscribe to other people's public lists too. Make one to share with your friends. Many clients have list support and management. Amethyst, Nostur, Voyage, and Nostrudel are a few that come to mind. Nostr.band and Listr.lol offer in depth list management. Some clients even support lists for specific notes so that you can curate a feed by topic or aesthetic to share with your friends.

Being John Malcovich.

Everyone has a different view of Nostr. Do you want to see what someone else is seeing? Sign in with any npub to get a different perspective. You might find profiles and content that you didn't know existed before. Some clients integrate variations of this feature right into their apps, so you don't have to log out of your account in order to step through that tiny door.

DV-what? DVM.

Data Vending Machines. These fancy little things are AIs tasked with a simple job: to find content for you. Most of these feeds are free, though some more personalized ones require a small fee. Many DVM services are stand-alone apps, like Vendata and Noogle . These clever Nostr clients will let you do a lot more than just create feeds to browse notes. Explore if you wish. A few social clients have DVMs integrated, too, so if you see "discovery" or similar term on a tab, be sure to check it out.

Relays, Man. Relays.

It's right there in the name. Nostr- notes and other stuff transmitted by RELAY. Specialized relays exist for subjects, news, communities, personal spaces, content creators, cats... there's even a relay where everyone just says "Good Morning" to each other. Find a client that lets you browse a relay's contents, and enjoy the purest form of content discovery on Nostr. Unearthing these relays is getting better and better every day. Right now there are relay browsing capabilities in quite a few clients, like Coracle, Relay Tools, Jumble and Nostur.

The Algo Relay.

Maybe you've been busy and missed a lot. Maybe you are a sane person who rarely uses social media. Hook up with a personalized algorithm relay to catch you up on all the things you've missed. This is skirting the sharp edges of Nostr relay development, so keep in mind that not many implementations yet exist. Algo relay currently aims to bring the feel-good vibe of your chronological feed to an algorithmic feed, freeing up your time but letting you stay up with what 's going on in your social circles.

Trendy Trends.

A few clients, relays, and DVM's have developed various Trending feeds. Catch up on what's popular across a wider view of the Nostr ecosystem. If trends are your thing, be sure to check them out.

Now that you're equipped with the tools to explore Nostr, its time to go discover some great content and find your people. Feed your curiosity.

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TL;DR visit this post for a list of signers

Your nsec/private key is your key to controlling all that you do on Nostr. Every action you take is signed by this private key, validating that was you that generated that event, whether it be a note, a like, a list, or whatever else. Like a broken record, I have to state that it is irreplaceable. YOU own your identity and no one else. It is your responsibility to keep your nsec safe, but of course, you also want to be able to use all the different apps and clients available. To aid you in this process, a few different tools have been developed. Let's take a look at some that are more common and easy-to-use, where to use them, and for what.

The Browser Extension

This is probably the simplest and most straight forward form of private key manager available. There are many options to choose from, each compatible with various, commonly used browsers, including mobile browsers. Many provide the option to manage multiple keys for different profiles. Some are simply a signer while others may include other features. The concept is very simple. The extension holds your key and exposes it only only enough to sign an event. These extensions can be set to different levels of manual approval that you can control based on the level of convenience you seek. The ease and convenience does trade off a bit of security, as your private key will be exposed momentarily each time you create an event. It is up to you to choose whether this is appropriate for your use. For casual browsing and social media use, it is a fairly good and easy to use option. Nearly all Nostr apps and clients support signing with this method.

The Remote Signer

Often referred as a "bunker", Nostr remote signers hold your private key completely offline and communicating with clients. Clients send events to the signer to be signed, which then sends back the signed event for publishing. This bunker can be hosted on your own hardware or managed by a truested 3rd party. As long as the signer is online, it can communicate as needed. The signer generates a "bunker string" that is used to communicate. These may seem cumbersome to set up, as each client that you intend to use will need its own permissions. Once all of the pieces and permissions are in place, most of this activity will happen in the background. Bunkers allow for a lot of flexibility. The "bunker string" for a single app can be shared with other users who you may want to be able to make posts on your behalf. Multiple people can manage a social media profile, while the main owner of that identity maintains control of the nsec. These bunker strings can be revoked and replaced at any time. This signing method is growing in popularity and many clients already offer support for it.

The Native Android Signer

Currently, Amber is the only native app available to handle Nostr event signing. It is an incredible tool for managing your Nostr key on your mobile device. The signing flow is similar to remote signing, as described above, but it can communicate with both your Android native Nostr apps and web clients accessed through most mobile browsers, eliminating the need for a browser extension. Similar apps are under development for iOS, but I don't use any of those devices, so covering that here will only happen via other's opinions at a later date. Check this list for current options.

NcryptSec

NcryptSec signing works by encrypting your nsec on a local device, unlocked by a password that you choose. Support for this method is very limited, as the encrypted private key stays on your device. If you intend to use Nostr through one device and few apps, this can be a very secure option, as long as you can remember your password, as it cannot be changed.

NFC and Hardware Signers

Some devices have been developed to store your nsec completely offline on a device or NFC chip, and some clients have added support for scanning/connecting to sign. I haven't personally tried any of these options, nor do I intend to promote the sale of any particular products. If you are interested in these techniques and devices, the information is not hard to find. The price of a devices varies, depending on your feature needs.

There are also DIY options that utilize existing hardware, if you are into that sort of thing.

Higher Security and Recoverability Options

Creating a scheme that allows for recovery of a lost key while maintaining the integrity of a unique identity is no easy task. The key must be fractured into shards, encrypted, and distributed across multiple servers in various locations, while you maintain a portion or portions of your own. These servers are run by trusted 3rd parties who will then sign events "with" you. Some include a scheme of running your own always online hardware to act as host for these shards. I fall short on the technical understanding of certain aspects of these processes, so I will spare you of my attempt to explain. As far as I know, there are a couple of methods underway that are worth paying attention to:

Frostr nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqs3fcg0szqdtcway2ge7zahfwhafuecmkx9xwg4a7aexhgj5ghleqy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcqyrh3r7uhytc4dywjggxz24277xgqtvcadvnjfks6fram7gjpev9nuentfht

Promenade nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqwlsccluhy6xxsr6l9a9uhhxf75g85g8a709tprjcn4e42h053vaqydhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnhv4ehgetjde38gcewvdhk6tcprdmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuam9wd6x2unwvf6xxtnrdakj7qpqqqq0dlpwxhw5l97yrcts2klhr9zqqpcmdfpaxm8r7hygykp630cq23ggph

For a List of signers, please visit this post.

@ 3c389c8f:7a2eff7f

Extentions:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/flamingo-%E2%80%93-nostr-extensio/alkiaengfedemppafkallgifcmkldohe

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/nos2x/kpgefcfmnafjgpblomihpgmejjdanjjp

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/aka-profiles/ncmflpbbagcnakkolfpcpogheckolnad

https://keys.band/

https://github.com/haorendashu/nowser

The Remote Signer:

https://nsec.app/

https://github.com/kind-0/nsecbunkerd

Native Android Signer:

https://github.com/greenart7c3/amber

iOS

https://testflight.apple.com/join/8TFMZbMs

https://testflight.apple.com/join/DUzVMDMK

Higher Security Options: To start using Nostr with a secure, recoverable keypair: https://nstart.me/en

For Existing Keys: https://www.frostr.org/

Thank you to https://nostr.net/ for keeping a thorough list of Nostr apps, clients, and tools!

@ 266815e0:6cd408a5

I'm excited to announce the release of Applesauce v1.0.0! There are a few breaking changes and a lot of improvements and new features across all packages. Each package has been updated to 1.0.0, marking a stable API for developers to build upon.

Applesauce core changes

There was a change in the applesauce-core package in the QueryStore.

The Query interface has been converted to a method instead of an object with key and run fields.

A bunch of new helper methods and queries were added, checkout the changelog for a full list.

Applesauce Relay

There is a new applesauce-relay package that provides a simple RxJS based api for connecting to relays and publishing events.

Documentation: applesauce-relay

Features:

• A simple API for subscribing or publishing to a single relay or a group of relays
• No connect or close methods, connections are managed automatically by rxjs
• NIP-11 auth_required support
• Support for NIP-42 authentication
• Prebuilt or custom re-connection back-off
• Keep-alive timeout (default 30s)
• Client-side Negentropy sync support

Example Usage: Single relay

```typescript import { Relay } from "applesauce-relay";

// Connect to a relay const relay = new Relay("wss://relay.example.com");

// Create a REQ and subscribe to it relay .req({ kinds: [1], limit: 10, }) .subscribe((response) => { if (response === "EOSE") { console.log("End of stored events"); } else { console.log("Received event:", response); } }); ```

Example Usage: Relay pool

```typescript import { Relay, RelayPool } from "applesauce-relay";

// Create a pool with a custom relay const pool = new RelayPool();

// Create a REQ and subscribe to it pool .req(["wss://relay.damus.io", "wss://relay.snort.social"], { kinds: [1], limit: 10, }) .subscribe((response) => { if (response === "EOSE") { console.log("End of stored events on all relays"); } else { console.log("Received event:", response); } }); ```

Applesauce actions

Another new package is the applesauce-actions package. This package provides a set of async operations for common Nostr actions.

Actions are run against the events in the EventStore and use the EventFactory to create new events to publish.

Documentation: applesauce-actions

Example Usage:

```typescript import { ActionHub } from "applesauce-actions";

// An EventStore and EventFactory are required to use the ActionHub import { eventStore } from "./stores.ts"; import { eventFactory } from "./factories.ts";

// Custom publish logic const publish = async (event: NostrEvent) => { console.log("Publishing", event); await app.relayPool.publish(event, app.defaultRelays); };

// The publish method is optional for the async run method to work const hub = new ActionHub(eventStore, eventFactory, publish); ```

Once an ActionsHub is created, you can use the run or exec methods to execute actions:

```typescript import { FollowUser, MuteUser } from "applesauce-actions/actions";

// Follow fiatjaf await hub.run( FollowUser, "3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d", );

// Or use the exec method with a custom publish method await hub .exec( MuteUser, "3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d", ) .forEach((event) => { // NOTE: Don't publish this event because we never want to mute fiatjaf // pool.publish(['wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com/'], event) }); ```

There are a log more actions including some for working with NIP-51 lists (private and public), you can find them in the reference

Applesauce loaders

The applesauce-loaders package has been updated to support any relay connection libraries and not just rx-nostr.

Before:

```typescript import { ReplaceableLoader } from "applesauce-loaders"; import { createRxNostr } from "rx-nostr";

// Create a new rx-nostr instance const rxNostr = createRxNostr();

// Create a new replaceable loader const replaceableLoader = new ReplaceableLoader(rxNostr); ```

After:

```typescript

import { Observable } from "rxjs"; import { ReplaceableLoader, NostrRequest } from "applesauce-loaders"; import { SimplePool } from "nostr-tools";

// Create a new nostr-tools pool const pool = new SimplePool();

// Create a method that subscribes using nostr-tools and returns an observable function nostrRequest: NostrRequest = (relays, filters, id) => { return new Observable((subscriber) => { const sub = pool.subscribe(relays, filters, { onevent: (event) => { subscriber.next(event); }, onclose: () => subscriber.complete(), oneose: () => subscriber.complete(), });

return () => sub.close();

}); };

// Create a new replaceable loader const replaceableLoader = new ReplaceableLoader(nostrRequest); ```

Of course you can still use rx-nostr if you want:

```typescript import { createRxNostr } from "rx-nostr";

// Create a new rx-nostr instance const rxNostr = createRxNostr();

// Create a method that subscribes using rx-nostr and returns an observable function nostrRequest( relays: string[], filters: Filter[], id?: string, ): Observable { // Create a new oneshot request so it will complete when EOSE is received const req = createRxOneshotReq({ filters, rxReqId: id }); return rxNostr .use(req, { on: { relays } }) .pipe(map((packet) => packet.event)); }

// Create a new replaceable loader const replaceableLoader = new ReplaceableLoader(nostrRequest); ```

There where a few more changes, check out the changelog

Applesauce wallet

Its far from complete, but there is a new applesauce-wallet package that provides a actions and queries for working with NIP-60 wallets.

Documentation: applesauce-wallet

Example Usage:

```typescript import { CreateWallet, UnlockWallet } from "applesauce-wallet/actions";

// Create a new NIP-60 wallet await hub.run(CreateWallet, ["wss://mint.example.com"], privateKey);

// Unlock wallet and associated tokens/history await hub.run(UnlockWallet, { tokens: true, history: true }); ```

@ e7454994:7bb2dac7

Imagine

According to Cazoomi, total revenue for nonprofits in the U.S. reached approximately $3.7 trillion in 2024.

I know in some cases a billion is a hundred million instead of a thousand million (presumably so that some millionaires can call themselves billionaires to distinguish themselves from the riffraff). But that’s not the case here. A trillion is one followed by 12 zeros, so in 2024, US non-profits’ expenses were

3,700,000,000,000 dollars.

How much is a trillion?

And that’s just the USA. We could safely double it for worldwide non-profits and still be well below the actual figure. To be conservative, let’s say 6 trillion of our dollars each year goes on the kinds of projects that non-profits are allowed to do (essentially, making the world a better place).

Think what you could do with just one million dollars. Now think of that times six million! The entire population of Congo, each man, woman, and child, could become a millionaire!. It’s not really imaginable.

That’s how much nonprofits have. What the hell have they done with all that money? In most places where poverty and malnutrition are rife, two thousand dollars a year per family would be more than enough to enable people to sort out whatever problems they have and convert their local community to abundance over three years. Six trillion divided by two thousand is three billion.

The people whom we allow to manage ‘aid’ for us are (to be polite) inept, and we need to bypass them urgently. Directsponsor.org and clickforcharity.net are part of a proof of concept, and our aim is to prove that a better way is possible by doing it.

When a hierarchy exists, it presents a focus of power that power-seeking individuals and cliques can over time turn to their advantage… Even volunteer organizations are subject to intrigues, power grabs, covert arrangements, misallocation of funds, etc. The problem is made worse by the fact that those who most desire power and who are the most ruthless are the very ones who tend to work their way to the top of hierarchies.

Richard Moore

More Fun With Figures

Oxfam UK raised £368,000,000 in 2013-14. That’s around 450,000,000 euros. What could we do with that kind of money? A direct sponsorship project is, for a family, 120 per month = 1440 per year. 1440 / 450,000,000 = 312,500 families.

312,500 families, x 4 = 1,250,000 people, would move from poverty into abundance every 3 years with the money that goes through Oxfam. Does Oxfam achieve anything like this with our money?

Oxfam UK is just one of many, many such charities and is small fry when you look at things like USAID, which ran through 27 billion dollars in the year to 2025. What could we do with that?

Its well over 15 million families. Over 60 million people! Or, the entire population of Botswana, Namibia, Mauritania, Liberia, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Libya, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Togo, and Guinea combined. This is only to make a point, not to suggest that we would ever achieve such numbers. It shows how wasteful and scandalous our present “aid” efforts really are.

NGOs and governments waste our money.

Solution

Until recently, it was impossible to send money directly to another human without going through the banking system. The big charity organisations were a necessary part of the process, and they made the most of their position. Think about it: you have a family to feed, rent or a mortgage that has to be paid, or you’ll be homeless and destitute. What would your priority be? Apart from the top level, these are generally good people with the best intentions.

But now we have Bitcoin. People can send money all over the world at extremely low cost. The recipients aren’t stupid; they know what they need better than any NGO “expert,” and any expertise or teaching they need, they can get if they have the money to pay for it. This way, the power relationship is reversed in favor of our recipients.

All we need is a system (open and distributed) that ensures sponsors’ funds are not being squandered and the projects being supported are not scams. 

A few people decided to start such a project. We have a system almost fully built and currently being tested out. It will enable people to get together into small groups of sponsors to fund small, local projects by directly funding the individuals working on the project. Anything from a regular monthly commitment to a click-for-charity system where you don’t even need any money to occasional one-off purchases of items for a project will be possible.

Here’s our pilot project in Badilisha, on Lake Victoria.

If you like doing stuff on social media, please sign up on our beta site (no money needed) and say hi; we need a few people to get it started. clickforcharity.net.

@ 005bc4de:ef11e1a2

Trump Bitcoin Report Card - Day 100

For whatever reason day 100 of a president's term has been deemed a milestone. So, it's time to check in with President Trump's bitcoin pledges and issue a report card.

Repo and prior reports: - GitHub: https://github.com/crrdlx/trump-bitcoin-report-card - First post: https://stacker.news/items/757211 - Progress Report 1: https://stacker.news/items/774165 - Day 1 Report Card: https://stacker.news/items/859475 - Day 100 Report Card: https://stacker.news/items/966434

Report Card | | Pledge | Prior Grade | Current Grade | |--|--|--|--| | 1 | Fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler on day 1 | A | A | | 2 | Commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht on day 1 | A | A | | 3 | Remove capital gains taxes on bitcoin transactions | F | F | | 4 | Create and hodl a strategic bitcoin stockpile | D | C- | | 5 | Prevent a CBDC during his presidency | B+ | A | | 6 | Create a "bitcoin and crypto" advisory council | C- | C | | 7 | Support the right to self-custody | D+ | B- | | 8 | End the "war on crypto" | D+ | B+ | | 9 | Mine all remaining bitcoin in the USA | C- | C | | 10 | Make the US the "crypto capital of the planet" | C- | C+ |

Comments

Pledge 1 - SEC chair - (no change from earlier) - Gensler is out. This happened after the election and Trump took office. With the writing on the wall, Gensler announced he would resign, Trump picked a new SEC head in Paul Atkins, and Gensler left office just before Trump was sworn in. The only reason an A+ was not awarded was that Trump wasn't given the chance to actually fire Gensler, because he quit. No doubt, though, his quitting was due to Trump and the threat of being sacked.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: A

Pledge 2 - free Ross - (no change from earlier) - Ross Ulbricht's sentence was just commuted. Going will "option 3" above, the pledge was kept. An A+ would have been a commutation yesterday or by noon today, but, let's not split hairs. It's done.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: A

Pledge 3 - capital gains - This requires either executive action and/or legislation. There was no action. Executive action can be done with the stroke of a pen, but it was not. Legislation is tricky and time-consuming, however, there wasn't even mention of this matter. This seems to be on the back burner since statements such as this report in November. See Progress Report 1: https://stacker.news/items/774165 for more context.

Trump's main tax thrust has been the tariff, actually a tax increase, instead of a cut. Currently, the emphasis is on extending the "Trump tax cuts" and recently House Speaker Mike Johnson indicated such a bill would be ready by Memorial Day. Earlier in his term, there was more chatter about tax relief for bitcoin or cryptocurrency. There seems to be less chatter on this, or none at all, such as its absence in the "ready by Memorial Day" article.

Until tax reform is codified and signed, it isn't tax law and the old code still applies.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: F

Pledge 4 - bitcoin reserve - The initial grade was a C, it was dropped to a D mainly due to Trump's propensity to [alt]coinery, and now it's back to a C-.

Getting the grade back up into C-level at a C- was a little bumpy. On March 2, 2025, Trump posted that a U.S. Crypto Reserve would be created. This is what had been hoped for, except that the pledge was for a Bitcoin Reserve, not crypto. And secondly, he specifically named XRP, SOL, and ADA (but not BTC). Just a couple of hours later, likely in clean up mode, he did add BTC (along with ETH) as "obviously" being included. So, the "Bitcoin Reserve" became a "Crypto Reserve."

Maybe still in "cleanup mode," Sec. of Commerce Howard Lutnick said bitcoin will hold "special status" in the reserve. Then, on March 6, an executive order made the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile official. Again, "Bitcoin" was generalized until section 3 where the "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" did come to official fruition.

The grade is only a C- because the only thing that happened was the naming of the stockpile. Indeed, it became official. But the "stockpile" was just BTC already held by the U.S. government. I think it's fair to say most bitcoiners would have preferred a statement about buying BTC. Other Trump bitcoin officials indicated acquiring "as much as we can get", which sounds great, but until it happens, is only words.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: C-

Pledge 5 - no CBDC - An executive order on January 23, 2025 forbade a CBDC in section 1, part v by "prohibiting the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use of a CBDC."

Day 100 Report Card Grade: A

Pledge 6 - advisory council - The Trump bitcoin or crypto team consists of the following: David Sacks as “crypto czar” and Bo Hines as executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets.

A White House Crypto Summit (see video) was held on March 7, 2025. In principle, the meeting was good, however, the summit seemed (a) to be very heavily "crypto" oriented, and (b) to largely be a meet-and-greet show.

Still, just the fact that such a show took place, inside the White House, reveals how far things have come and the change in climate. For the grade to go higher, more tangible things should take place over time.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: C

Pledge 7 - self-custody - There's been a bit of good news though on this front. First, the executive order above from January 23 stated in section 1, i, one of the goals was "...to maintain self-custody of digital assets." Also, the Phoenix wallet returned to the U.S. In 2024, both Phoenix and Wallet of Satoshi pulled out of the U.S. for fear of government crackdowns. The return of Phoenix, again, speaks to the difference in climate now and is a win for self-custody.

To rise above B-level, more assurance, it would be good to see further clear assurance that people can self-custody, that developers can build self-custody, and businesses can create products to self-custody. Also, Congressional action could get to an A.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: B-

Pledge 8 - end war on crypto - There has been improvement here. First, tangibly, SAB 121 was sent packing as SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce announced. Essentially, this removed a large regulatory burden. Commissioner Peirce also said ending the burdens will be a process to get out of the "mess". So, there's work to do. Also, hurdles were recently removed so that banks can now engage in bitcoin activity. This is both a symbolic and real change.

Somewhat ironically, Trump's own venture into cryptocurrency with his World Liberty Financial and the $TRUMP and $MELANIA tokens, roundly poo-pood by bitcoiners, might actually be beneficial in a way. The signal from the White House seems to be on all things cryptocurrency, "Do it."

The improvement and climate now seems very different than with the previous administration and leaders who openly touted a war on crypto.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: B+

Pledge 9 - USA mining - As noted earlier, this is an impossible pledge. That said, things can be done to make America mining friendly. The U.S. holds an estimated 37 to 40% of Bitcoin hash rate, which is substantial. Plus, Trump, or the Trump family at least, has entered into bitcoin mining. With Hut 8, Eric Trump is heading "American Bitcoin" to mine BTC. Like the $TRUMP token, this conveys that bitcoin mining is a go in the USA.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: C

Pledge 10 - USA crypto capital - This pledge closely aligned with pledges 8 and 9. If the war on crypto ends, the USA becomes more and more crypto and bitcoin friendly. And, if the hashrate stays high and even increases, that puts the USA at the center of it all. Most of the categories above have seen improvements, all of which help this last pledge. Trump's executive orders help this grade as well as they move from only words spoken to becoming official policy.

To get higher, the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve should move from a name-change only to acquiring more BTC. If the USA wants to be the world's crypto capital, being the leader in bitcoin ownership is the way to do it.

Day 100 Report Card Grade: C+

Sources

1. Nashville speech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiEIfBatnH8
2. CryptoPotato "top 8 promises" - https://x.com/Crypto_Potato/status/1854105511349584226
3. CNBC - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/06/trump-claims-presidential-win-here-is-what-he-promised-the-crypto-industry-ahead-of-the-election.html
4. BLOCKHEAD - https://www.blockhead.co/2024/11/07/heres-everything-trump-promised-to-the-crypto-industry/
5. CoinTelegraph - https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-promises-crypto-election-usa
6. China vid - Bitcoin ATH and US Strategic Bitcoin Stockpile - https://njump.me/nevent1qqsgmmuqumhfktugtnx9kcsh3ap6v7ca4z8rgx79palz2qk0wzz5cksppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgszwaxc8j8e0zw9sdq59y43rykyx3wm0lcd2502xth699v0gxf0degrqsqqqqqpglusv6
7. Capitals gains tax - https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/trump-proposes-crypto-tax-cuts-targets-u-s-made-tokens-for-tax-exemption Progress report 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. Meeting with Brian Armstrong - https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-live-11-18-2024/card/exclusive-trump-to-meet-privately-with-coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-DDkgF0xW1BW242rVeuqx
9. Michael Saylor podcast - https://fountain.fm/episode/DHEzGE0f99QQqyM36nVr
10. Gensler resigns - https://coinpedia.org/news/big-breaking-sec-chair-gary-gensler-officially-resigns/ Progress report 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Trump & Justin Sun - https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser $30M investment: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-crypto-project-bust-until-154313241.html
12. SEC chair - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/04/trump-plans-to-nominate-paul-atkins-as-sec-chair.html
13. Crypto czar - https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/trump-names-david-sacks-white-house-ai-crypto-czar
14. Investigate Choke Point 2.0 - https://www.cryptopolitan.com/crypto-czar-investigate-choke-point/
15. Crypto council head Bo Hines - https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-appoints-bo-hines-head-crypto-council
16. National hash rate: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/the-us-controls-40-of-bitcoins-hashrate/
17. Senate committee https://coinjournal.net/news/rep-senator-cynthia-lummis-selected-to-chair-crypto-subcommittee/
18. Treasurh Sec. CBDC: https://decrypt.co/301444/trumps-treasury-pick-scott-bessant-pours-cold-water-on-us-digital-dollar-initiative
19. National priority: https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-executive-order-crypto-national-priority-bloomberg?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound
20. $TRUMP https://njump.me/nevent1qqsffe0d7mgtu5jhasy4hmkcdy7wfrlcqwc4vf676hulvdn8uaqa3acpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtczyztpa8q038vw5xluyhnydj5u39d7cpssvuswjhhjqj8q42jh4ul3wqcyqqqqqqgmha026
21. World Liberty buys alts: https://www.theblock.co/post/335779/trumps-world-liberty-buys-25-million-of-tokens-including-link-tron-aave-and-ethena?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
22. CFTC chair: https://cryptoslate.com/trump-appoints-crypto-advocate-caroline-pham-as-cftc-acting-chair/
23. WLF buys wrapped BTC https://www.cryptopolitan.com/trump-buys-47-million-in-bitcoin/
24. SEC turnover https://www.theblock.co/post/335944/trump-names-sec-commissioner-mark-uyeda-as-acting-chair-amid-a-crypto-regulatory-shift?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
25. ----------------------------100 Days Report---------------------------------Davos speech "world capital of AI and crypto" https://coinpedia.org/news/big-breaking-president-trump-says-u-s-to-become-ai-and-crypto-superpower/
26. SAB 121 gone, Hester P heads talk force & ends sab 121?, war on crypto https://x.com/HesterPeirce/status/1882562977985114185 article: https://www.theblock.co/post/336761/days-after-gensler-leaves-sec-rescinds-controversial-crypto-accounting-guidance-sab-121?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social CoinTelegraph: https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-executive-order-cbdc-ban-game-changer-us-institutional-crypto-adoption?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound
27. Possible tax relief https://cryptodnes.bg/en/will-trumps-crypto-policies-lead-to-tax-relief-for-crypto-investors/
28. War on crypto https://decrypt.co/304395/trump-sec-crypto-task-force-priorities-mess
29. Trump "truths" 2/18 make usa #1 in crypto, "Trump effect" https://www.theblock.co/post/333137/ripple-ceo-says-75-of-open-roles-are-now-us-based-due-to-trump-effect and https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/01/06/ripples-garlinghouse-touts-trump-effect-amid-bump-in-u-s-deals
30. Strategic reserve https://njump.me/nevent1qqsf89l74mqfkk74jqhjcqtwp5m970gedmtykn5uhl0vz9mhmrvvvgqpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtczyztpa8q038vw5xluyhnydj5u39d7cpssvuswjhhjqj8q42jh4ul3wqcyqqqqqqge7c74u and https://njump.me/nevent1qqswv50m7mc95m3saqce08jzpqc0vedw4avdk6zxy9axrn3hqet52xgpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtczyztpa8q038vw5xluyhnydj5u39d7cpssvuswjhhjqj8q42jh4ul3wqcyqqqqqqgpc7cp3
31. Strategic reserve, bitcoin special https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/policy/bitcoin-to-hold-special-status-in-u-s-crypto-strategic-reserve
32. Bitcoin reserve, crypto stockpile https://decrypt.co/309032/president-trump-signs-executive-order-to-establish-bitcoin-reserve-crypto-stockpile vid link https://njump.me/nevent1qqs09h58patpv9vfjpcss6v5nxv7m23u8g6g43nqvkjzgzescztucmspr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt9upzqtjzyy2ylrsceh5uj20j5e95v0e99s3epsvyctu2y0vrwyltvq33qvzqqqqqqyus4pu7
33. Truth summit https://njump.me/nevent1qqswj6sv0wr4d4ppwzam5egr5k6nmqgjpwmsrlx2a7d4ndpfj0fxvcqpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtczyztpa8q038vw5xluyhnydj5u39d7cpssvuswjhhjqj8q42jh4ul3wqcyqqqqqqgu0mzzh and vid https://njump.me/nevent1qqsptn8c8wyuhlqtjr5u767x20q4dmjvxy28cdj30t4v9phhf6y5a5spzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtczyztpa8q038vw5xluyhnydj5u39d7cpssvuswjhhjqj8q42jh4ul3wqcyqqqqqqgqklklu
34. SEC chair confirmed https://beincrypto.com/sec-chair-paul-atkins-confirmed-senate-vote/
35. pro bitcoin USA https://coinpedia.org/news/u-s-secretary-of-commerce-howard-lutnick-says-america-is-ready-for-bitcoin/
36. tax cuts https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5272043-johnson-house-trump-agenda-memorial-day/
37. "as much as we can get" https://cryptobriefing.com/trump-bitcoin-acquisition-strategy/
38. ban on CBDC https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/strengthening-american-leadership-in-digital-financial-technology/
39. Phoenix WoS leave https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/04/29/wasabi-wallet-and-phoenix-leave-the-us-whats-next-for-non-custodial-crypto
40. Trump hut 8 mining https://www.reuters.com/technology/hut-8-eric-trump-launch-bitcoin-mining-company-2025-03-31/

@ d1667293:388e7004

The "Bitcoindollar" system—an emerging term which describes the interplay of U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins and Bitcoin as complementary forces in the evolving monetary framework of the digital era (and which replaces the defunct Petrodollar system)—has sparked an interesting debate on Nostr with PowMaxi.

You will find the thread links at the bottom of this article.

Powmaxi argues that attempting to merge hard money (Bitcoin) with soft money (the U.S. dollar) is structurally doomed, because the systems are inherently contradictory and cannot coexist without one eventually destroying the other.

This critique is certainly valid, but ONLY if the Bitcoindollar is viewed as a final system. But I never claim that. To the contrary, the conclusion in my book is that this is a system that buys time for fiat, absorbs global demand for monetary stability, and ushers in a Bitcoinized world without the immediate collapse and the reset of the fiat system which would otherwise cause dramatic consequences. The Bitcoindollar is the only way to a gradual Bitcoin dominance in 10-20 years time while avoiding sudden collapse of the fiat system, so that also the power elites who hold the keys to this system can adapt.\ At least this is my hope.

Therefore the "fusion" isn't the future. The siphoning is. And the U.S. may try to ride it as long as possible. The Bitcoindollar system is a transitional strategic framework, not a\ permanent monetary equilibrium. In the end I agree with PowMaxi.

His detailed critique deserves an equally detailed analysis. Here's how the objections break down and why they don’t necessarily undermine the Bitcoindollar system.

1. Hard Money vs. Soft Money: Opposed Systems?

Objection: Bitcoin is a closed, decentralized system with a fixed supply; the dollar is an open, elastic system governed by central banks and political power. These traits are mutually exclusive and incompatible.

Response: Ideologically, yes. Practically, no. Hybrid financial systems are not uncommon. Bitcoin and stablecoins serve different user needs: Bitcoin is a store of value; stablecoins are mediums of exchange. Their coexistence mirrors real-world economic needs. The contradiction can be managed, and is not fatal at least for the transitional phase.

2. Scarcity vs. Elasticity: Economic Incompatibility?

Objection: Bitcoin can’t inject liquidity in crises; fiat systems can. Anchoring fiat to Bitcoin removes policymakers' tools.

Response: Correct — but that’s why Bitcoin is held as a reserve, not used as the primary medium of exchange in the Bitcoindollar model. Fiat-based liquidity mechanisms still function via stablecoins, while Bitcoin acts as a counterweight to long-term monetary debasement. The system’s strength is in its optionality: you don’t have to use Bitcoin until you want an exit ramp from fiat.

3. No Stable Equilibrium: One Must Win?

Objection: The system will destabilize. Either Bitcoin undermines fiat or fiat suppresses Bitcoin.

Response: Not necessarily in this transitional phase. The “conflict” isn’t between tools — it’s between control philosophies. The dollar won’t disappear overnight, and Bitcoin isn’t going away. The likely outcome is a gradual shifting of savings and settlement layers to Bitcoin, while fiat continues to dominate day-to-day payments and credit markets — until Bitcoin becomes structurally better in both.

4. Gresham’s and Thiers’ Law: Hollowing Fiat?

Objection: People save in Bitcoin and spend fiat, eroding fiat value.

Response: Yes — and that’s been happening since 2009. But this isn’t a flaw; it’s a transition mechanism. The Bitcoindollar model recognizes this and creates a bridge: it monetizes U.S. debt while preserving access to hard money. In the long run, my expectation is that naturally bitcoin will prevail both as a SOV and currency, but until then, stablecoins and T-bill-backed tokens serve useful roles in the global economy.

5. Philosophical Incompatibility?

Objection: Bitcoin prioritizes individual sovereignty; fiat systems are hierarchical. They can't be reconciled.

Response: They don’t need to be reconciled ideologically to function in parallel. Users choose the tool that suits their needs. One empowers individual autonomy; the other offers state-backed convenience. This is a competition of values, not a mechanical incompatibility. The Bitcoindollar model is a strategy. It’s a bridge between old and new systems, not a permanent coexistence.

6. Fusion is Impossible?

Objection: It’s only a temporary bridge. One side must lose.

Response: Exactly. The Bitcoindollar system is a transitional bridge. But that doesn’t reduce its value. It provides a functional pathway for individuals, companies, and governments to gradually exit broken monetary systems and experiment with new models.

In the meantime, the U.S. benefits from stablecoin-driven Treasury demand, while Bitcoin continues to grow as a global reserve asset.

Bottom line: A Strategic Convergence, Not a Permanent Fusion

The Bitcoindollar system isn’t a contradiction. It’s a convergence zone. It reflects the reality that monetary systems evolve gradually, not cleanly. Bitcoin and fiat will compete, overlap, and influence each other. Eventually, yes — hard money wins. But until then, hybrid systems offer powerful stepping stones.

Thread links:

Thread started from this initial post.

Thread Powmaxi

PowMaxi profile

@ 7d33ba57:1b82db35

Located in eastern Poland, Lublin is a city where history, culture, and youthful energy come together. Often called the "Gateway to the East," Lublin blends Gothic and Renaissance architecture, vibrant street life, and deep historical roots—especially as a center of Jewish heritage and intellectual life.

🏙️ Top Things to See in Lublin

🏰 Lublin Castle

• A striking hilltop castle with a neo-Gothic façade and a beautifully preserved Romanesque chapel (Chapel of the Holy Trinity)
• Don’t miss the frescoes inside—a rare mix of Byzantine and Western art styles

🚪 Old Town (Stare Miasto)

• Wander through cobblestone streets, pastel buildings, and arched gateways
• Filled with cozy cafes, galleries, and vibrant murals
• The Grodzka Gate symbolizes the passage between Christian and Jewish quarters

🕯️ Lublin’s Jewish Heritage

• Visit the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre, a powerful memorial and museum telling the story of the once-vibrant Jewish community
• Nearby Majdanek Concentration Camp offers a sobering but important historical experience

🎭 Culture & Events

• Lublin is known for its festivals, like Carnaval Sztukmistrzów (Festival of Magicians and Street Performers) and the Night of Culture
• The city has a thriving theatre and music scene, supported by its large student population

🌳 Green Spaces

• Relax in Saski Garden, a peaceful park with walking paths and fountains
• Or take a walk along the Bystrzyca River for a quieter, more local feel

🍽️ Local Tastes

• Sample Polish classics like pierogi, żurek (sour rye soup), and bigos (hunter’s stew)
• Look for modern twists on traditional dishes in Lublin’s growing number of bistros and artisan cafés

🚆 Getting There

• Easy access by train or bus from Warsaw (2–2.5 hours)
• Compact center—easily walkable