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@ The Nostr Report
2023-09-17 17:13:39Happy Sunday #Nostr!
Here’s your #NostrTechWeekly newsletter brought to you by nostr:npub19mduaf5569jx9xz555jcx3v06mvktvtpu0zgk47n4lcpjsz43zzqhj6vzk , written by nostr:npub1r3fwhjpx2njy87f9qxmapjn9neutwh7aeww95e03drkfg45cey4qgl7ex2 .
NostrTechWeekly is a weekly newsletter focused on the more technical happenings in the nostr-verse.
A little light on NIP activity this week, but a fair bit of activity with work done around search and discoverability. Let’s dive in!
Recent Upgrades to Nostr (AKA NIPs)
1) (Proposed) NIP 133: Game Scores 🃏
This NIP proposes a new nostr event for publishing game scores. Users can publish their own “scores” (like with daily step counts) or game providers can publish the scores of users (imagine a public leaderboard).
This NIP is in early stages, but could be the foundation of some unique game experiences that could only be possible on Nostr.
Author: nostr:npub1melv683fw6n2mvhl5h6dhqd8mqfv3wmxnz4qph83ua4dk4006ezsrt5c24
Notable projects
RSSLay
This makes any RSS feed into a Nostr profile that can be followed via a pubkey. You can follow blogs, twitter accounts, subreddits, whatever. You’ll just need to tell RSSLay to create a profile for an RSS feed, follow the generated pubkey, and start using the RSSLay relay and you’re good to go.
This could help Nostr be the best place to consume all your content, instead of just another source of it.
Author: nostr:npub1ftpy6thgy2354xypal6jd0m37wtsgsvcxljvzje5vskc9cg3a5usexrrtq
Ditto
nostr:npub108pv4cg5ag52nq082kd5leu9ffrn2gdg6g4xdwatn73y36uzplmq9uyev6 has been making bridging Nostr with Mastadon (and other ActivityPub based tech) as easy as possible. Ditto is the latest foray with that goal.
Ditto is a Nostr client that uses relays to store data, but it acts like a Mastadon server so that you can interact with Mastadon and get many of the benefits of Nostr. Hopefully it’ll continue to make the Nostr-verse and Fediverse more interoperable. Then we may steal all the Mastadon users because Nostr is better 😈.
Author: nostr:npub108pv4cg5ag52nq082kd5leu9ffrn2gdg6g4xdwatn73y36uzplmq9uyev6
Latest conversations: Search and Discoverability
Discoverability
In my estimation, Nostr is the best censorship-resistant social media with any meaningful ongoing usage. Nostr currently isn’t great at one core aspect of great social media experiences: discoverability.
If you know exactly who to follow, Nostr is great. Find those folks and you’re able to interact in a censorship resistant way where you control your data. 👍
If you want to discover people to follow and interact with, it’s currently very difficult.
One of the best things about social media for me is the ability to learn, and what the bird app has historically done very well was surface people I wouldn’t have otherwise heard from. Lots of noise but at least I was exposed to more than the people I already knew.
Without solving this problem it’s unlikely Nostr will attract and onboard a significant fraction of humanity and reach its full potential for good.
Historically solving this problem has meant submitting to the whims of algorithms.
Algorithms as a solution for discoverability
Algorithms are great ways for social media companies to inject ads into users’ feeds; it’s also great for controlling users’ feeds so that content that is “offensive” to advertisers aren’t shown with their ads.
Before all that, algorithms are usually created to help increase the signal to noise ratio of users’ feeds. At their most basic they’re intended to surface content users may like from accounts they’re not following, or to hide content they’ve seen before but someone recently reposted or liked.
We don’t have many true feed algos on Nostr yet, I’ve only seen Nostur and Coracle start experimenting with widening what shows up in users’ feeds. But it goes beyond compiling a full feed for users, the “trending” lists on various clients (Primal and nostr.band being the most cited examples I’ve seen) are introducing more centralized logic around what is recommended to users.
Many came to Nostr because they were tired of the algorithms manipulating their feed and manipulating the reach of content that they published. Many are wary of algos entirely.
Algorithmic feeds are a tempting place to go to solve discoverability, but as the heavier-handed solution it comes with risks that Nostr users are less tolerant of.
Search as a bridge
Before search engines people had the same challenges around discoverability as Nostr users have now.
People actually printed and shipped zines which were themed publications that would publish new or noteworthy websites so that people could discover content on the internet that might interest them. (Sounds a bit like a certain publication you may or may not be reading right now 😉)
Search engines were able to solve the problem of discoverability in a way that was accessible to far more users than previous solutions. It wasn’t that discoverability was impossible before, it was just too much work to unlock usage by the masses.
There are several projects in the Nostr-verse that are attempting to solve this problem, coming from different perspectives.
Nostr.band (built by: nostr:npub1xdtducdnjerex88gkg2qk2atsdlqsyxqaag4h05jmcpyspqt30wscmntxy) is the incumbent if Nostr is old enough to have incumbents. They’re indexing as much of Nostr as they can and putting together trending feeds, and APIs for devs to consume so clients can make Nostr easier to navigate.
relay.noswhere.com (built by nostr:npub12262qa4uhw7u8gdwlgmntqtv7aye8vdcmvszkqwgs0zchel6mz7s6cgrkj) is an attempt to make a relay available that follows the exact Nostr specifications as possible but still make tasks like putting together a trending feed easier for clients.
There are even solutions like the project by nostr:npub1vp8fdcyejd4pqjyrjk9sgz68vuhq7pyvnzk8j0ehlljvwgp8n6eqsrnpsw https://advancednostrsearch.vercel.app/ to give searchability a user interface or https://relay.guide/inspector (built by nostr:npub1r3fwhjpx2njy87f9qxmapjn9neutwh7aeww95e03drkfg45cey4qgl7ex2) to just help people inspect what events are on a relay.
Effective, accessible, dev-friendly search could be the happy middle that allows us to avoid heavy algorithmic feeds, but still allow clients to help users discover content.
The challenge is some solutions (like nostr.band) tend towards creating more of a walled garden around their solution, because they’re creating APIs that are a layer on top of Nostr instead of utilizing Nostr’s unique and specific architecture. While noswhere is more exactly tied to Nostr’s design specifications (what’s outlined in NIPs) it’s not yet as widely adopted or utilized.
The risk of consolidation
Just like what we saw with Google monopolizing web search, solutions to discoverability of any network have strong incentives towards a winner-take-all situation. Nostr is not uniquely immune to that.
Discoverability is a fundamental challenge of decentralization, but it must be solved for Nostr to live up to its potential. I’m glad that Nostr devs are trying things and figuring out what works so we can build that future as fast as possible.
Events
Here are some upcoming events that we are looking forward to! We keep a comprehensive list and details of Nostr-related events that we hear about (in person or virtual) that you can bookmark here NostrConf Report
- Nostrasia Nov 1-3 in Tokyo & Hong Kong
- Nostrville Nov 9-10 in Nashville, TN, USA
- NostrCon Jan 12, 2024 (online only)
Until next time 🫡
If you want to see something highlighted, if we missed anything, or if you’re building something we didn’t post about, let us know, DMs welcome.
nostr:npub19mduaf5569jx9xz555jcx3v06mvktvtpu0zgk47n4lcpjsz43zzqhj6vzk
Stay Classy, Nostr.