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I am surprised that the comments on that blog don’t menstion Nostr as a solution to the given pain points. Unlike traditional federated systems, Nostr is built

I am surprised that the comments on that blog don’t menstion Nostr as a solution to the given pain points. Unlike traditional federated systems, Nostr is built around a protocol where users have a single cryptographic identity not tied to any particular server. This means that when a user shares a post, anyone with a Nostr client can interact with it—like, comment, or repost—regardless of which relay (server) they are connected to, solving the “can’t interact across instances” problem. Moreover, Nostr posts are identified by content hashes and public keys, not by server-dependent URLs. This makes posts portable and resilient: if a relay goes offline or a user migrates, their content and identity remain intact and accessible via other relays, addressing the “post portability pain” and “migration pain” described in the article. And because Nostr clients can register themselves as handlers for Nostr-specific links (e.g., nostr: URIs), clicking a Nostr link can automatically open the post in the user’s preferred client, improving the user experience across different devices and apps.

quantadev 2y ago
I read your post after posting my own. Yeah the lack of any mention of Nostr shows a genuine ignorance about the Social Media Protocol landscape or else an intentional dislike of Nostr, and thus not wanting to do any shout-outs.
- immibis 2y ago
  Nostr isn't something special. It's just currently in the phase where we dream about the possibilities and don't have enough practical experience to see the problems yet, and ignore the theoretical problems because we haven't encountered them in reality yet. Fediverse also went through that phase. So did centralized social media.
  - quantadev 2y ago
    Nostr has 1) Identity as a PublicKey, 2) Posts represented as hashes. That's all we need. The mechanism for pushing those chunks of data around the web is almost irrelevant. Nostr uses relays. IPFS uses a DHT. The possibilities are endless, but Nostr is special because it has [mostly] exactly what we need at it's core, and makes every other feature optional. I invented something identical to Nostr several months before Fiatjaf did, and I think he may have actually gotten many ideas from me, just like I contributed very heavily towards the Blue Sky effort, and got them to accept most of my ideas. The "Personal Repository" concept was mine for example. I invented that.
    - immibis 2y ago
      Neither of which is anything new, and neither of which helps you actually get the content. You have to have the whole system or you don't have a system. IPFS's DHT is extremely slow by the way - on the order of 1-10 minutes to look up a new item. That's one of those things about it that the people who insist it's the solution to all problems won't tell you. I assume there's some such problem with nostr too (probably not the same one). Every system has them. Has nostr experienced a takedown, crash, corporate takeover, or overload of one or several major relays yet, and if so, how did that go? Did enough users find out about the problem through out-of-band channels, then manually enter new relay URLs, to keep the network mostly connected? Has anyone important had their private key stolen?
      - quantadev 2y ago
        The version of Nostr that I happened to invent about a year before Fiatjaf invented his was about the same as Nostr, except for the fact that I chose a true IPFS CID as the identifier, which Nostr cannot do, making it completely incompatible with IPFS, unless you have TWO hashes (both a CID and a Nostr ID), which I found silly. You're right about the fact that IPFS never could scale to the level of Social Media with everyone posting even 10 messages per day, but decentralized systems NEVER DO scale in that way. That's why Blockchain has Lightning as you know. However inventing a NEW CID format in the IPFS era is a foot shoot, that can be avoided, and should be. Can the other problem (of how to push data efficiently) ever be solved perfectly? Maybe or maybe not, but Nostr does work, and it is censorship resistant better than anything else. I'm just saying what a shame that it's wholly separate from IPFS. That was a huge lost opportunity. And I generally disagree with your gripe that everything is worthless until everything is perfect, because by that logic even Public Key encryption is a baby to be thrown right out with the bath water too. No, the overall system will be made of parts. The CID part is a necessary part, and the PublicKey identity is also a necessary part.
        immibis 2y ago
        From the fact that you completely ignored the question on whether Nostr has suffered a reality-injecting major problem yet, I assume that it hasn't yet. BTW IPFS CID isn't even the best, oldest or most stable identifier. We had SHA256 hashes before IPFS.

quantadev 2y ago

I read your post after posting my own. Yeah the lack of any mention of Nostr shows a genuine ignorance about the Social Media Protocol landscape or else an intentional dislike of Nostr, and thus not wanting to do any shout-outs.

immibis 2y ago
Nostr isn't something special. It's just currently in the phase where we dream about the possibilities and don't have enough practical experience to see the problems yet, and ignore the theoretical problems because we haven't encountered them in reality yet. Fediverse also went through that phase. So did centralized social media.
- quantadev 2y ago
  Nostr has 1) Identity as a PublicKey, 2) Posts represented as hashes. That's all we need. The mechanism for pushing those chunks of data around the web is almost irrelevant. Nostr uses relays. IPFS uses a DHT. The possibilities are endless, but Nostr is special because it has [mostly] exactly what we need at it's core, and makes every other feature optional. I invented something identical to Nostr several months before Fiatjaf did, and I think he may have actually gotten many ideas from me, just like I contributed very heavily towards the Blue Sky effort, and got them to accept most of my ideas. The "Personal Repository" concept was mine for example. I invented that.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Neither of which is anything new, and neither of which helps you actually get the content. You have to have the whole system or you don't have a system. IPFS's DHT is extremely slow by the way - on the order of 1-10 minutes to look up a new item. That's one of those things about it that the people who insist it's the solution to all problems won't tell you. I assume there's some such problem with nostr too (probably not the same one). Every system has them. Has nostr experienced a takedown, crash, corporate takeover, or overload of one or several major relays yet, and if so, how did that go? Did enough users find out about the problem through out-of-band channels, then manually enter new relay URLs, to keep the network mostly connected? Has anyone important had their private key stolen?
    - quantadev 2y ago
      The version of Nostr that I happened to invent about a year before Fiatjaf invented his was about the same as Nostr, except for the fact that I chose a true IPFS CID as the identifier, which Nostr cannot do, making it completely incompatible with IPFS, unless you have TWO hashes (both a CID and a Nostr ID), which I found silly. You're right about the fact that IPFS never could scale to the level of Social Media with everyone posting even 10 messages per day, but decentralized systems NEVER DO scale in that way. That's why Blockchain has Lightning as you know. However inventing a NEW CID format in the IPFS era is a foot shoot, that can be avoided, and should be. Can the other problem (of how to push data efficiently) ever be solved perfectly? Maybe or maybe not, but Nostr does work, and it is censorship resistant better than anything else. I'm just saying what a shame that it's wholly separate from IPFS. That was a huge lost opportunity. And I generally disagree with your gripe that everything is worthless until everything is perfect, because by that logic even Public Key encryption is a baby to be thrown right out with the bath water too. No, the overall system will be made of parts. The CID part is a necessary part, and the PublicKey identity is also a necessary part.
      - immibis 2y ago
        From the fact that you completely ignored the question on whether Nostr has suffered a reality-injecting major problem yet, I assume that it hasn't yet. BTW IPFS CID isn't even the best, oldest or most stable identifier. We had SHA256 hashes before IPFS.