Since my Twitter account was blocked for no reason, although it did not have any substantial impact on my life, I began to realize that I needed to expand more content channels to deal with this potential uncontrollable risk.
The changes I made afterwards were 👇🏻
(1) Binance Square’s higher update frequency
(2) Use Substack
(3) Experiment with video content styles
(4) Resume updates to the official account
However, in the expansion of multiple platforms, the almost zero feedback brought by the cold start will undoubtedly make it difficult for people to continue to maintain their creative enthusiasm.
But if there was a social protocol that allowed me to migrate my IP presence, content, and followers from one social ecosystem (like Twitter) to another, that would be very powerful.
Imagine that I could use a universal IP identity to publish content and send messages in any ecosystem, without having to create a separate account?
(Before this, I have already started to unify the name of Binance Square with my avatar and Twitter, which may be more friendly to my personal IP)
As a distributed social protocol, Nostr can "transmit content through relay nodes." In short, as an open source protocol, it can realize decentralized social networks.
And as a simple set of building blocks, if widely used, it can gradually reshape the "network" as we know it. We can move to a more interoperable social network rather than an isolated social ecosystem, decentralizing more power to content creators and readers rather than the entities that operate a platform.
At the very least, even if adoption is low, it’s now an available alternative, and a powerful one, for those who want it.
1. How to access Nostr❓
You can go directly to Primal.net, a popular open source client for Nostr that can be used on Windows, iOS, or Android (there are countless ways to use Nostr, and this is just one of them).
Using Primal, you can also quickly generate a Lightning Network wallet with minimal personal information so that you can send and receive tips on Nostr (more on Zap later).
In addition to sending ZAP to people who have that wallet, you can also use it to send or receive Bitcoin payments to people outside of Nostr via the Lightning Network.
Alternatively, you can look at other Nostr clients. For example, a client for iOS is Damus. Snort is also available on Windows.
In most cases, different wallets can be plugged into whatever client you are using. You can try different wallets with your favorite client, or try a different client and a different wallet setup entirely.
This is the power of Nostr: customization and interoperability (more on this below)
2. How does Nostr achieve decentralization of social networks?
Before I dive into social media, I think it’s important to first understand how email works from a more primitive perspective.
When you use email, you typically use a client that's built on top of the SMTP communications protocol. As a user, you don't need to interact directly with the technical details of SMTP; you just need to know how to use your chosen web mail client application (such as Gmail) and let it handle the technical details.
SMTP is a public communication protocol that belongs to no one person. It is like a shared language that clients can choose to use to communicate with each other. Communication protocols are like spoken and written languages, and once they become dominant, they have very large and lasting network effects. SMTP was created in 1981 and is still going strong.
A key factor in the success of communications protocols is that they tend to be very simple, pushing most of the complexity and personalization to higher layers or the edges of the network, so there is little that can be iterated on in their core components.
If necessary, the communication protocol can be updated in a backward-compatible way over time. This is just like a language. People who use the same language can communicate very fluently, and emails using the same communication protocol can also be sent and received by each other. The principle is so simple.
(Of course, the transmission principle of email also involves other protocols, but SMTP is the main one)
SMTP itself is decentralized because it is a public utility. Essentially, no one can be “banned” from using SMTP. It’s like being “banned” from using the English language; because no one owns or controls it.
However, today’s mainstream social media does not operate like email and SMTP, which are usually controlled by the subject. As I said at the beginning: my Twitter account was once blocked for no reason, and I have not yet appealed.
And in terms of communication, TikTok users can't message Twitter users and vice versa, and if someone decides to leave Twitter and join TikTok, they can't take their followers with them.
Web2 is developed as a small number of large, centralized, isolated enterprise ecosystems
And they usually use their own internal communication methods and cannot interoperate, like large isolated islands, they control the user's identity instead of the user controlling it.
They use some basic internet protocols to ensure they interoperate with the user’s device, but beyond that most try to keep everything internal to the system (I no longer have access to any of my past tweets);
📍Nostr works differently: it's a very simple public communication protocol, like SMTP for email, but it's designed more for social media, where users are in control of their own identity.
Each Nostr user creates a unique public/private key pair. The public key is a permanent identifier for that account, and the private key is what they use to sign various events to publish them and prove that they came from them.
-Principle of use🔻
(1) Nostr’s ecosystem consists of many relayers and application clients, built by various companies and individuals, all of which use the Nostr communication protocol;
(2) Each user can use their private key and the client application of their choice to create “events” that can contain written content, updated profile information, or a host of other things, and publish these events publicly to multiple relayers around the world;
(3) The user's client application periodically contacts and retrieves events from multiple relay servers so that they can see what others have posted. The user can choose which relay servers to connect to.
In fact, using Nostr feels much the same as using any other social media. You open the client application on your computer or phone, post content, read content, watch content, comment on content, and so on.
What’s unique about it is that if you don’t like using one client, you can enter your private key into another client (securely on your local device) and take that IP presence, followers, and posting history with you to that other client.
Alternatively, you can use several different clients simultaneously for different purposes or on different devices, but still have the same digital identity, followers list, following list, and posting history on all of them.
Each Nostr client (e.g. Primal, Damus, Amethyst, Snort, etc.) can be customized in terms of what the user experience will be like, what features will be implemented, how spam will be managed, etc. Users can change clients, use multiple clients, or even create their own.
Nostr's relayers come in many flavors, and any individual can decide to run a relay, though most users won't; they'll just use the client. But companies and large individuals can run relayers like light nodes or full nodes to suit their needs and/or the needs of their clients.
In general, the functions of the client are diverse. Some clients may be more user-friendly in terms of usage experience, but the underlying protocol used is Nostr.
And because a single protocol is used, data and other things are universal, and the same is true for the interactive experience. This is different from traditional social networks such as Twitter and YouTube.
3. Technical highlights🔻
Centralized social media like Facebook, Twitter or Tiktok, the entities behind them all run one or more servers or server clusters. It is efficient, but it is centralized and closed.
Only the companies that run it get to decide what content classification algorithms to run. They decide who can create accounts and who gets banned. They can decide what types of content to allow or ban, and even read your private messages.
(I think that mainland friends who read this must be deeply touched by the part about social media regulation)
However, if the purpose is just to achieve decentralization, it is obviously impractical to let every social media user run his own server. In fact, such thoughts have appeared in the earliest days of the Internet, but that would be very redundant and expensive, which is why it has not been promoted.
(In fact, the current mainstream ideology of Web3 has also fallen into this misunderstanding, confusing the operation of nodes with the community and users)
So, in terms of decentralization and utility, Nostr strikes a balance here. The protocol is decentralized and distributed, but it has many application clients and many relay servers that regular users can switch between, while advanced users or companies can make their own.
But it's also efficient, because in reality, most users will only use the client and benefit from the fact that there are many relays. By controlling your own key and automatically using it to sign the content you publish, it prevents anyone else (including relays in the ecosystem) from making any kind of changes or forgeries to your content.
Having your content stored and accessible on dozens of relay servers rather than one central server is more conducive to decentralization. If a relay server decides not to accept your post, that’s OK because you’ll be sending your content to multiple relay servers for accessibility. This is much better than other decentralized social media like Mastodon.
In other words, the operation of the relayer is delegated to multiple large individuals or entities willing to run it online to achieve a distributed or even decentralized structure. This is the underlying layer of the protocol.
Nostr is simple, so it can be developed quickly and at low cost, and has high practical value and interoperability. Many other digital identity schemes have been around for a while and are more complex, but they mostly exist in theoretical form, while Nostr is already in use and early network effects of users and developers are building around it.
Nostr’s development does have some significant challenges to address, especially in terms of user interface fluency and private key management technology. However, compared to centralized social media, its openness also enables it to make great progress in some areas, such as ownership and verification of personal identity and content, and the development of zaps.
- Tip on social media with "Zaps" 🔻
Nostr is not a blockchain itself, but it does leverage the Bitcoin network and its various layers for micropayments.
In addition to "liking" someone's post, retweeting or commenting on a post, most Nostr clients also allow you to "tip" someone's post.
It’s a tip, paid in “SATS,” that goes instantly from your wallet to theirs. Just like the number of likes and retweets displayed on social media posts, on Nostr, the number of tips is also displayed on the post.
From a content creator's perspective, this allows you to earn money directly from your content creation. From a reader's perspective, it enables you to engage with that content while financially supporting the people who create the content you enjoy.
(Note 1: As a creator, I have always been very resistant to low-quality commercial advertisements, but I still need to get some positive feedback in the long-term creation process so that I can create for a longer period of time, whether it is actual financial support or data feedback)
In the past, the creations on Binance Square could not bring me any income, but the positive feedback from the data would still motivate my creations. However, there was a period when the data was very bad, which also hit my personal creative enthusiasm.
Later (now), I found that the creation of the square could also bring some positive benefits, and the data was acceptable. This was one of the main reasons why I started to increase the frequency of creation.
Unlike centralized benefits, Nostr’s ecosystem provides a publishing layer with built-in transactions related to published content.
Even if the creators themselves don’t need money, it’s a voting mechanism with proof of work built in. Likes are free, but Zaps cost money, even if it’s just a little.
This is a variable that client creators and algorithm creators can incorporate to help people discover relevant content and combat spam.
(In fact, I think smooth enough rewards are also a step that centralized social media can take)
Some other social media platforms also have rewards, but they are not smooth enough, and the power of Nostr Zaps lies in the fact that they are open source and interoperable.
You can plug different wallets into your various Nostr clients. Someone could send a zap from their Lightning wallet to someone else, which would allow for sufficiently long-range international payments, including micropayments (you wouldn't need to go get a card).
Some wallets can store value in other units if the user wishes, such as dollar-denominated stablecoins or dollar-denominated electronic cash tokens.
-Content push selection 🔻
Social media companies can restrict who can use their platforms and how, and in many cases governments can force them to remove certain types of content.
Even social media algorithms can serve individuals highly emotional or even hateful content, and then use that information to bring out the worst in readers toward each other.
This involves the debate about [free will being manipulated by humans], so I won’t go into it too much here.
But for traditional social media, Norst can take some of that power away from the subject through a public communication protocol (at least for those businesses that decide to use it).
With Nostr, content can be stored on multiple relayers around the world so that no central entity can delete it. Nostr gives users the choice of which client to use and which content push algorithm to use, and lets users customize the user interface, while their identity and followers go with them as they move from one part of the ecosystem to another.
It consolidates payments through different interoperable wallets, challenges closed silos and proposes to connect them back together in an interoperable way.
4. Payment system built on social networks 🔻
Looking at this subtitle, we can actually think of WeChat Pay, which is the mainstream payment system in mainland China. It is actually a payment system built on social networks. I think it is also a feasible path for Web3 payments to be used on a large scale.
This is also the true way to make the term "cryptocurrency" return to the application of "currency" with actual value.
Why do I continue to be optimistic about Socialfi in this cycle? The core reason is that it is foreseeable that we can build a social traffic pool online and then build a richer global financial system for Web3 based on this traffic pool.
Based on Nostr, a prototype has emerged, which is based on rewards and has entered a payment system based on content or social communication, if some clients do "account abstraction and chain abstraction" well enough.
Then we are at least halfway to large-scale application.
Imagine an open source public payment system that is globally available, controlled by no one person, redundant across jurisdictions to prevent takedown, interoperable across wallets and payment types, and has a ton of privacy options.
If we had this, we could easily make payments to anyone unilaterally.
But in reality, we can immediately understand why something like this doesn't exist yet, for example, what is the motivation for putting your payment information in this agreement?
What is more serious is the impact on the current financial system. Norst will not be widely accepted because of its distributed and subjectless characteristics in a practical sense. The credit power brought by technology is not enough to impress people.
Regardless, Nostr's growth makes this possibility very foreseeable.
Money and social are inherently inseparable. They complement each other. Transferring money is a social activity. Nostr’s open source nature enables clients to integrate interoperable cross-border payment methods better than any centralized social media ecosystem, which gives it a unique value proposition over the existing ecosystem. By building a decentralized social graph, it makes these payment methods better.
Thank you for reading. This article is not completely original. About 40% of the content is borrowed from the original English text of Lyn Alden, a client consultant of Primal who uses Nostr.
English original link: https://www.lynalden.com/the-power-of-nostr/
