6 ms·

P2P with end-to-end encryption over relays existed in 2001 (e.g. Groove, Mojo Nation) and wasn't invented by Nostr. Nostr is so simple because it handwaves awa

by wmf 11mo ago

P2P with end-to-end encryption over relays existed in 2001 (e.g. Groove, Mojo Nation) and wasn't invented by Nostr. Nostr is so simple because it handwaves away the fact that everybody seems to use the same small set of relays and there's nothing stopping them from censoring the network. I'm also not aware of any incentives for the relay operators either.

nunobrito 11mo ago
You are correct that it existed well before, the difference is that it was always complicated to use. Heck, we have been able to send PGP emails since almost 30 years ago. The innovative concept is that npub/nsec along with sending notes is trivially simple. The content does not need to encrypted, there is a huge value on publishing clear text messages that are crypto-verifiable. You also didn't had this feature on groove and others. I'd argue that NOSTR has indeed pioneered them into mainstream.
- wmf 11mo ago
  there is a huge value on... You could say that if Nostr was successful but it isn't. Nostr has <1% the DAU of Bluesky.
  - nunobrito 11mo ago
    And yet here we are talking about NOSTR, again. :-)
- attila-lendvai 11mo ago
  PGP can also sign clear text messages.
treyd 11mo ago
Email is currently more decentralized than Nostr is in practice.
- dahrkael 11mo ago
  considering most people today only use 3 or 4 big email providers i can see the exact same happening for nostr, the p2p part seems more like a gimmick than a protocol requirement
  - digitalbase 11mo ago
    It's actually advised to use 3/4 relays in your clients Using NIP-65 (https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md) you can broadcast a note to the network to mention your preferred relays. Most clients fetch that note when you first sign in and make sure you connect to your preferred relays
- telephone3 11mo ago
  "I have been self-hosting my email since I got my first broadband connection at home in 1999. I absolutely loved having a personal web+email server at home, paid extra for a static IP and a real router so people could connect from the outside. I felt like a first-class citizen of the Internet and I learned so much. Over time I realized that residential IP blocks were banned on most servers. I moved my email server to a VPS. No luck. I quickly understood that self-hosting email was a lost cause. Nevertheless, I have been fighting back out of pure spite, obstinacy, and activism. In other words, because it was the right thing to do. But my emails are just not delivered anymore. I might as well not have an email server. (After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel, Carlos Fenollosa, 2022)" From the article, quoting this other article https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-...
  - camgunz 11mo ago
    If you do all the stuff (DKIM etc) AND you're not on a banned IP, you're fine. It seems like this person couldn't find a non-banned IP. I know plenty of people who self host email and successfully send to Gmail.
eykanal 11mo ago
This exactly. Worth mentioning that "censoring" can occur in any of a number of ways; blocking select traffic, slowing select traffic, "forgetting" specific nodes, redirecting other nodes at will, performing MITM attacks (if the protocol isn't secure), etc etc. Also, beyond just no positive incentives, there are nontrivial negatives... they're hubs for an entire network, which can be a lot of traffic and bandwidth if peers are sharing anything other than text. That's a potentially significant cost for literally just being a dumb router. The idea of charging for this doesn't make sense... you don't choose a router, it's automatic based on location, so there's no incentive for quality. That ends up being a race to the bottom, which there's no room for arbitrage; prices are driven down to near-zero profit. Abuse-wise, the model is fundamentally flawed. Economically, the idea kinda works so long as hub traffic is low enough to be swallowed in background noise for whoever manages the hub. Beyond that the model breaks pretty quickly.
- shark_laser 11mo ago
  Read up on the outbox model and zaps. Also check out Bitchat for a real world example of Nostr being effectively used without even requiring Internet connectivity. You cannot censor Nostr. Also, check out how zaps work, and relay authentication. You can charge for relays if you want.
  - acdha 11mo ago
    Can you summarize how those prevent the listed problems? Tossing around absolutes like “you cannot censor Nostr” sounds like a religious assertion rather than technical analysis.
    - shark_laser 11mo ago
      I have posted very similar replies to other messages in this thread and don't want to repeat myself too much at the risk of being considered spam. But... Outbox model prevents censorship because you push your (cryptographically signed and so impossible to impersonate) messages to multiple relays. To your own preferred relays, as well as to the preferred relays of others who are involved in the conversation, as well as to a couple of global relays for easy discoverability. These global relays are useful, but are interchangeable and totally replaceable. As soon as you've connected with someone you can retrieve their updates, because you know their preferred relays, and can query them directly. In this way Nostr has the benefits of centralised networks for discoverability, federated networks for communities, and private individual web site for p2p and archival purposes. As well as making it impossible to censor. And if you take down THE ENTIRE INTERNET in order to censor Nostr? Well, Bitchat is Nostr via Bluetooth Mesh Networks. Do a quick search and find out where and when it has been used (Nepal, Indonesia, and elsewhere) And as for zaps fixing the economic problem, I'm not sure what else to say other than you can give and receive value directly using the Lightning Network. It is seamless in most Nostr clients, and built into the Nostr protocol. If you don't believe in Value For Value (v4v) then you can just charge a fee, and the economics problem is solved.
shark_laser 11mo ago
Nostr has the benefits of centralised networks for discoverability, federated networks for communities, and private individual web site for p2p and archival purposes. As I have said in other replies to this post, read up on the outbox model. Global relays are useful, but are interchangeable and totally replaceable. As soon as you've connected with someone you can retrieve their updates, because you know their preferred relays, and can query them directly. And there are incentives to running a global or community relay. Read up on Zaps. With Nostr, you can give real value via the lightning network, and it is built into the protocol. This allows you to charge for usage if you so desire. And then there's all the other reasons why people run community web sites or global services.

by wmf 11mo ago

nunobrito 11mo ago

You are correct that it existed well before, the difference is that it was always complicated to use. Heck, we have been able to send PGP emails since almost 30 years ago. The innovative concept is that npub/nsec along with sending notes is trivially simple. The content does not need to encrypted, there is a huge value on publishing clear text messages that are crypto-verifiable. You also didn't had this feature on groove and others. I'd argue that NOSTR has indeed pioneered them into mainstream.

wmf 11mo ago
there is a huge value on... You could say that if Nostr was successful but it isn't. Nostr has <1% the DAU of Bluesky.
- nunobrito 11mo ago
  And yet here we are talking about NOSTR, again. :-)
attila-lendvai 11mo ago
PGP can also sign clear text messages.

treyd 11mo ago

Email is currently more decentralized than Nostr is in practice.

dahrkael 11mo ago
considering most people today only use 3 or 4 big email providers i can see the exact same happening for nostr, the p2p part seems more like a gimmick than a protocol requirement
- digitalbase 11mo ago
  It's actually advised to use 3/4 relays in your clients Using NIP-65 (https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md) you can broadcast a note to the network to mention your preferred relays. Most clients fetch that note when you first sign in and make sure you connect to your preferred relays
telephone3 11mo ago
"I have been self-hosting my email since I got my first broadband connection at home in 1999. I absolutely loved having a personal web+email server at home, paid extra for a static IP and a real router so people could connect from the outside. I felt like a first-class citizen of the Internet and I learned so much. Over time I realized that residential IP blocks were banned on most servers. I moved my email server to a VPS. No luck. I quickly understood that self-hosting email was a lost cause. Nevertheless, I have been fighting back out of pure spite, obstinacy, and activism. In other words, because it was the right thing to do. But my emails are just not delivered anymore. I might as well not have an email server. (After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel, Carlos Fenollosa, 2022)" From the article, quoting this other article https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-...
- camgunz 11mo ago
  If you do all the stuff (DKIM etc) AND you're not on a banned IP, you're fine. It seems like this person couldn't find a non-banned IP. I know plenty of people who self host email and successfully send to Gmail.

eykanal 11mo ago

This exactly. Worth mentioning that "censoring" can occur in any of a number of ways; blocking select traffic, slowing select traffic, "forgetting" specific nodes, redirecting other nodes at will, performing MITM attacks (if the protocol isn't secure), etc etc. Also, beyond just no positive incentives, there are nontrivial negatives... they're hubs for an entire network, which can be a lot of traffic and bandwidth if peers are sharing anything other than text. That's a potentially significant cost for literally just being a dumb router. The idea of charging for this doesn't make sense... you don't choose a router, it's automatic based on location, so there's no incentive for quality. That ends up being a race to the bottom, which there's no room for arbitrage; prices are driven down to near-zero profit. Abuse-wise, the model is fundamentally flawed. Economically, the idea kinda works so long as hub traffic is low enough to be swallowed in background noise for whoever manages the hub. Beyond that the model breaks pretty quickly.

shark_laser 11mo ago
Read up on the outbox model and zaps. Also check out Bitchat for a real world example of Nostr being effectively used without even requiring Internet connectivity. You cannot censor Nostr. Also, check out how zaps work, and relay authentication. You can charge for relays if you want.
- acdha 11mo ago
  Can you summarize how those prevent the listed problems? Tossing around absolutes like “you cannot censor Nostr” sounds like a religious assertion rather than technical analysis.
  - shark_laser 11mo ago
    I have posted very similar replies to other messages in this thread and don't want to repeat myself too much at the risk of being considered spam. But... Outbox model prevents censorship because you push your (cryptographically signed and so impossible to impersonate) messages to multiple relays. To your own preferred relays, as well as to the preferred relays of others who are involved in the conversation, as well as to a couple of global relays for easy discoverability. These global relays are useful, but are interchangeable and totally replaceable. As soon as you've connected with someone you can retrieve their updates, because you know their preferred relays, and can query them directly. In this way Nostr has the benefits of centralised networks for discoverability, federated networks for communities, and private individual web site for p2p and archival purposes. As well as making it impossible to censor. And if you take down THE ENTIRE INTERNET in order to censor Nostr? Well, Bitchat is Nostr via Bluetooth Mesh Networks. Do a quick search and find out where and when it has been used (Nepal, Indonesia, and elsewhere) And as for zaps fixing the economic problem, I'm not sure what else to say other than you can give and receive value directly using the Lightning Network. It is seamless in most Nostr clients, and built into the Nostr protocol. If you don't believe in Value For Value (v4v) then you can just charge a fee, and the economics problem is solved.

shark_laser 11mo ago

Nostr has the benefits of centralised networks for discoverability, federated networks for communities, and private individual web site for p2p and archival purposes. As I have said in other replies to this post, read up on the outbox model. Global relays are useful, but are interchangeable and totally replaceable. As soon as you've connected with someone you can retrieve their updates, because you know their preferred relays, and can query them directly. And there are incentives to running a global or community relay. Read up on Zaps. With Nostr, you can give real value via the lightning network, and it is built into the protocol. This allows you to charge for usage if you so desire. And then there's all the other reasons why people run community web sites or global services.