In the Web2 world, centralized platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. have become an indispensable part of people's daily lives. However, they also face problems such as data leakage, information abuse and censorship, and users' data and privacy are also threatened.

In order to solve these problems, more and more decentralized social media platforms have begun to emerge. The Nostr protocol is a recent representative that has attracted much attention. As soon as it appeared, it was called the "Twitter killer" and provided a new entry point for rebuilding the Internet.

This article will take Nostr as an example to explore the opportunities and challenges of decentralized social media. At the end of the article, some experience tutorials and reference articles are attached, which are recommended for everyone to read.

Understanding the Nostr Protocol

Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Rrelays) is an open protocol. The protocol itself is very simple and only solves the problem of sending messages outward using a public key as an identity.

Understand the protocol and the client.

Unlike traditional centralized social media, Nostr is not a standalone application, but an open standard based on the Bitcoin protocol that anyone can use to build their own decentralized social media applications.

For ordinary users, they need to use a client to interact with Ntosr. For example, snort (web application), damus (iOS application) and Amethyst (Android application) are all social media platforms based on the Nostr protocol. I believe some of you have experienced them. The interfaces of these software are very similar to some Web2 social software, which helps to get started quickly.

Understand basic concepts.

图片Nostr registration and account system is similar to Bitcoin. Users only need to generate a pair of public and private keys. The public key will be used as the username (corresponding to the account number, and the public key can be used to follow the user); the private key (corresponding to the password) is used to control the account, and then communicate with others through the relay (information channel).

Events are the main function of Nostr, which is used to store various types of content, such as published messages, shared pictures or videos, etc. Each event has a unique ID, the creator's public key, a timestamp, an event type, a tag, and content, and is accompanied by the creator's digital signature, proving that the event was published by the private key holder of the public key. This makes it tamper-proof and verifiable. Not only that, Nostr allows users to store important information related to their Bitcoin transactions in an encrypted manner without being tied to any specific blockchain or other cryptocurrency.

Understand how it works.

The Nostr protocol has two roles: client and relay. The client sends a message to the relay by signing with a public key, and the relay forwards it to other clients that follow the public key. Each client also pulls messages from other public keys of the relay. Relays do not communicate with each other, and clients do not communicate directly. This design makes it unnecessary for each relay to store the full amount of data, similar to the way database sharding is used, which reduces storage pressure. At the same time, through the propagation of clients, data synchronization is achieved in the entire network.

Nostr's Advantages

No own token economic model: Unlike many other decentralized social projects, Nostr does not adopt the traditional token economic model. Its business model is mainly to achieve sustainable development by charging application developers and other service providers, which makes Nostr more focused on providing a secure, transparent, autonomous and verifiable social protocol.

Using Bitcoin-based distributed ledger technology: Nostr is a distributed protocol that is not controlled by any central authority or single entity. This decentralization is not only censorship-resistant, but also prevents data tampering.

The account is completely in the hands of the user: Nostr does not collect user data like traditional social platforms. As we mentioned before, creating an account does not use any mobile phone number or email address, which is completely different from traditional Twitter, WeChat and other applications. Your data and account can be taken away by yourself, and it cannot be banned.

Open source, scalability and compatibility: Nostr is an open protocol that allows anyone to use it to build their own applications or services. The community can work together to improve the protocol. This flexible design makes Nostr highly scalable and compatible, and it can continue to evolve to meet user needs. All of this makes Nostr a secure, transparent, autonomous and verifiable social media platform.

The Challenges of Decentralizing Social Media

Decentralized social media platforms are a promising development direction, but they also face some challenges.

User experience: Decentralized social media platforms require the use of relatively complex technologies, so there are challenges in terms of user experience. For example, Nostr may still be unfriendly or difficult to use for some users.

Private key leakage: The security of Nostr depends on the user keeping their private key safe. If the private key is lost or leaked, the user's account and data may be lost or attacked.

Content storage: Social networking will inevitably generate content. If the content storage is centralized, the user’s data security and anti-censorship will be threatened.

Regulation and supervision: There may be a lot of crackdown information or false information on the platform, but the decentralized nature may make it difficult to intercept. Currently, Nostr nip-13 defines a PoW mechanism to increase the cost of sending spam messages, but this is far from enough.

Of course, one of the biggest challenges facing decentralized social media platforms is to attract users from Web2 giants. For example, they need to find ways to provide some unique features, provide incentive mechanisms, or give users better functions and experiences. At the same time, in order to attract developers, the platform needs to provide flexible development tools and rich developer documentation.

Currently, Nostr has only about 100,000 daily active users, but it still puts pressure on repeaters. This means that the long road to mainstream is full of challenges. But Nostr is still making progress every day. When it first registered, it didn't even support forwarding, liking, and lightning rewards.

In short, don’t bury your head in the sand. If you are also excited about Nostr and similar protocols, feel free to participate, such as modifying the code on Github or creating content for the community. This is probably the power of Build.

References and Recommended Reading

Nostr Documentation:

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr

Let’s talk about Nostr: social protocols, token economy, regulation and breaking the circle:

https://8btcnews.substack.com/p/nostr?r=14dl19&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

After Nostr became popular, decentralized social networking has just begun: https://twitter.com/EvieEvieXia/status/1621824477339455489

With Damus out, can Nostr "kill" Twitter? ：https://mirror.xyz/jeanchen.eth/nkOORLT96GxuuSBJ6pH0HQVovaiuY9kf7Pdi0ADMMO0In-depth interpretation of the Lightning Network: Exploring the past and present of Bitcoin payment channels:

http://www.odaily.site/post/5185000

Nostr Protocol + Lightning Network Introduction and Experience

https://www.jianshu.com/p/e7b09d32b559