Nostr – Hivemind Ventures


Nostr – the straightforward, decentralized messaging protocol with the potential to switch (and even combine with) centralized apps like Twitter and WhatsApp – goes mainstream. And quick.
I’ve by no means seen something fairly prefer it. From December thirteenth to January tenth, the variety of public key identities interacting with Nostr jumped from ~700 to ~250,000 ???? Sure, you learn that proper, the variety of identities elevated >30,000% ???? And even in the event you solely rely particular person customers as identities with profiles of their bio, which might be a extra dependable indicator, consumer rely nonetheless jumped >100x!

The proximate reason for this current explosion in utilization was a Jack Dorsey tweet and Elon Musk ban (nothing buys publicity like prohibition).
However I imagine this speedy uptake has a lot deeper roots that are destined to blossom into a brand new mainstream protocol that’s as broadly adopted as HTTP for the net or SMTP for electronic mail, an analogy which DK paints properly here.
The explanations are 2-fold:
- Belief in social media platforms (and institutions extra broadly) is in any respect time lows. Individuals are more and more conscious of the worth of free speech and risks of letting any centralized platform determine what’s and isn’t acceptable to say
- Nostr has the proper mixture of substances to maximise price of innovation: it’s open/permissionless, extremely easy/versatile, and has a transparent path to evolve
I received’t belabor the primary level – the controversy over censorship on social media platforms is a properly documented crux of the culture wars. However the second level is essential. I imagine that open and permissionless techniques inevitably win over closed opponents as a result of open techniques can marshal the collective assets of many extra contributors than any particular person enterprise can make use of. That is the central purpose why our Web continues to run on open requirements (TCP/IP/HTTP), why Wikipedia and Linux dominate of their respective domains, and why the expansion price of open supply software program continues to outpace that of its closed counterparts.
However being open as a protocol isn’t essentially sufficient. Many have raised the compelling counterpoint that open supply protocols ultimately ossify, permitting for closed platforms to innovate even quicker on high (see here and here). However I don’t see that as a lot of a difficulty with Nostr as a result of: A) it’s one of many easiest protocol specs ever – the one object kind is a JSON blob with 7 fields. That simplicity results in unimaginable flexibility, permitting for the design of all types of interoperable apps on high. B) Nostr has a transparent path to evolve and enhance by way of Nostr Improvement Possibilities (NIPs). Fountain founder, Oscar Merry, burdened to me the significance of getting a transparent path ahead for protocol change by noting the entire recent activity we’ve seen round RSS for podcasting since Adam Curry and associates launched podcastindex.org + podcasting 2.0.
And we’re watching all of this idea play out in actual time. Simply take a look at how a lot bought finished throughout the Nostr ecosystem in a single day ????

What’s extra, all of this current Nostr progress got here whereas Damus, arguably probably the most well-known and polished Nostr iOS app, needed to exhausting cap at 10k customers (the restrict for TestFlight) whereas ready for Apple’s App Retailer to approve its official launch. That limitation has, apparently, not finished a lot to gradual progress. As a substitute customers are creating their Nostr identities with different apps like Alby, a browser extension for bitcoin lightning funds that additionally helps Nostr, after which interacting with Nostr by means of rising net purchasers like astral.ninja, iris.to, nostr.rocks, blockcore notes, and branle.
Once more, the killer characteristic right here is that ALL of those apps are open and interoperable. I used to be in a position to efficiently port my id and social graph from Damus to Alby after which entry every of the net purchasers above. Many have dreamed of Twitter enabling this kind of performance by re-opening its API because it did in its earliest days. However whereas Twitter is a centralized firm with an promoting pushed income mannequin, Nostr is a impartial protocol whose information stream will NEVER be shut to builders, as a result of it CANNOT be shut to builders. Solely particular person purchasers and relays can prohibit information. However then new ones will inevitably rise to reinforce and/or take their place. The truth is, I’d not be in any respect shocked to see Twitter itself develop into a serious Nostr shopper within the coming 12 months.
That is all unimaginable for constructing a extra free and open world, which is finally the mission. However this new, open community additionally excites the investor in me. That’s as a result of I imagine that as Nostr emerges because the open normal for messaging, it can develop symbiotically with the open requirements for cash (bitcoin) and funds (Lightning Community). Collectively these three open techniques will mix to create the primary ever Value4Value protocol stack (h/t Stephen Hall), the place service suppliers should proceed to innovate and supply actual worth or else their customers will exit for higher choices. This dynamic will allow a myriad of attention-grabbing, enterprise scale enterprise alternatives.
Value4Value is an easy however revolutionary idea: individuals who create invaluable content material or providers needs to be remunerated appropriately by those that derive worth. For a good looking imaginative and prescient of how a Value4Value world might look, take a look at this current essay from Gigi. One of many essay’s central claims is that many of the ills of our fashionable consideration/outrage financial system stem not from some elementary human evil, however slightly from insufficient know-how and damaged incentives. The core perpetrator is credit score based mostly cash, which in contrast to bearer instrument money carries counterparty danger. This counterparty danger has prevented using small micropayments and/or necessitated the gathering of buyer id. Put one other means, individuals should presently pay for worth on-line both in batches (subscriptions) or with a proxy foreign money (consideration).
However with the Lightning Network, anybody can ship almost free and immediate funds globally with a bearer instrument – denominations of bitcoin (satoshis) – price as little as a fraction of a penny. What’s extra, this technique is open to all 8B individuals alive, unbiased of the place they reside, whether or not or not they’ve a authorities id, and the way a lot cash or credit score they’ve. It is a model new assemble which I imagine will fully rewire all Web commerce (and finally develop it orders of magnitude by on-boarding billions of latest customers and use instances).
So how do Nostr, Bitcoin, and the Lightning Community match collectively to construct this future? And what types of enterprise alternatives will these integrations yield? Nicely for starters, let’s be clear, it’s not that Nostr MUST use Bitcoin and Lightning. They’re fully unbiased protocols. However the match is just too pure to not emerge. And since each the creator and lots of early builders of Nostr are additionally open supply Lightning Community builders, the chance of this marriage appears inevitable.
I imagine there will probably be a number of preliminary use instances for integrating Nostr and Lightning, every of which can create new enterprise fashions (both standalone or partially bundled). I feel they’ll loosely comply with alongside the 4 axes that Nostr is presently unbundling from centralized apps like Twitter. Maciek did a wonderful job of outlining this unbundling:

I’ll rephrase these dimensions as:
- Relays & Sources
- Id
- Shoppers & Apps
- Search & Discovery
Let’s study every layer and its potential enterprise fashions:
- Relays & Sources
First, maybe the obvious alternative is on the server/useful resource aspect. As we speak, dozens of people and organizations are working Nostr relays merely to help the trigger. However because the variety of customers grows 3-4 orders of magnitude and help is added for richer information like photos and video, it can shortly develop into prohibitively costly to run these relays altruistically. I anticipate to quickly see premium relays that cost per KB written or learn. There’s already at the very least one credible proposal to do exactly that by hooking up Nostr relays with LSATs (Lightning based mostly pseudonymous token identities). I additionally anticipate to see caching services and content delivery networks emerge to assist customers filter the worldwide firehose of data based mostly upon their very own preferences and to make sure quick and dependable connection. Ultimately I anticipate to see different assets like bandwidth and compute metered and billed for in related vogue.
- Id
Second, we’re already beginning to see a number of providers emerge to validate a consumer’s id. NIP 05 establishes a regular for net servers to validate that the holder of a Nostr public key additionally has (or has bought) entry to that net server. Nostrplebs is without doubt one of the main early providers that expenses for identification completely in satoshis over the Lightning Community. Alby and Stacker News have each launched free NIP 05 verification related to their customers’ Lightning Handle (a human readable deal with to obtain Lightning funds). LNbits released open supply software program that enables anybody to confirm Nostr identities at a site they management. Nonetheless others like @porteaux are proposing concepts to make use of the Bitcoin blockchain itself because the namespace.
I imagine this concept might combine with Block’s vision for Web 5, which to the most effective of my understanding, additionally anchors Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) into the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s early, however I anticipate to see a wide range of providers and options emerge right here.
- Shoppers & Apps
Third, purchasers might cost customers instantly, although I anticipate many will truly monetize by way of their relay or some ancillary service. One possible mannequin could possibly be gifting away a client model of the app without spending a dime after which charging for an enterprise model with further options (suppose enterprise Slack or Discord) as jb55 mentioned as a doable path for Damus.
Shoppers might additionally doubtless take a small lower for coordinating funds that circulate by means of their app to useful resource suppliers (e.g. paid relays), service suppliers, or different customers. And there’s all the time the choice that some purchasers introduce various forms of advertising.
And whereas most individuals are nonetheless fascinated with purchasers within the social media context, I anticipate to see many extra customized apps (with doubtlessly distinctive enterprise fashions) constructed with Nostr and Value4Value assumptions baked in. As Jack laid out properly on this podcast, the way forward for Nostr is probably going a Cambrian explosion of microapps, every centered on a selected area of interest or use case. However that may all talk interoperably. Like him, I’m notably enthusiastic about specialised providers that assist creators fund and distribute their work. I anticipate to see a number of corporations transfer shortly on this path – e.g. Fountain for podcasts, Wavlake for music, and Geyser for generalized crowdfunding. I additionally anticipate to see a number of experimentation in how open supply software program will get developed. Nostrdirectory proposed the attention-grabbing concept of a bounty ballot app the place customers vote with their satoshis for what a dev builds subsequent. This might result in a cool Github + Trello + Upwork kind mashup.

Maybe we’ll even see the emergence of a brand new decentralized Nostr/Lighting market like a contemporary OpenBazaar, an early protocol for p2p commerce backed by USV, which was an incredible concept, however simply too early in my view. Their key errors had been requiring everybody to run a dense desktop app + node and utilizing mainchain Bitcoin for funds. Nostr + Lightning resolve these issues by permitting anybody to entry {the marketplace} by way of mild net or cell purchasers with immediate Lightning Community funds. My early cash right here is on Diagon Alley (from LNbits), which was itself an early inspiration for the creation of the Nostr protocol.

LNbits founder Ben Arc has additionally revealed concepts for different forms of Nostr + Lightning marketplaces as properly, together with a decentralized Uber. Maybe sooner or later all marketplaces will probably be coordinated trustlessly by way of Nostr.
Along with microapps flourishing, we might also see the emergence of latest tremendous apps like a decentralized WeChat for customers preferring to mix all of their messaging and commerce in a single place. Think about if CashApp turns into your main messaging app (or WhatsApp your main funds app). I might simply see a world the place remittances are despatched with a textual content message and items offered by way of a Tweet.
- Search & Discovery
Fourth, simply as with net 1.0 and a couple of.0, I imagine that the largest winners will emerge in search & discovery. My finest guess is that we’ll see Nostr search engines like google and yahoo that differentiate by indexing probably the most information and offering the most effective social graph & ValueRank market sign, an concept which I fleshed out in How to Disrupt Google. TL;DR: for the primary time in historical past, we are able to now affiliate info with worth. As the quantity of data goes infinite, solely the quantity of bitcoin (worth) stays scarce. Attaching this worth to info will assist floor the best high quality info (in affiliation with different attributes just like the id of who pledged that worth).
Earlier than taking part in with Nostr, I believed that one of the simplest ways to create this new value-based search engine was by both dropping satoshis on high of the present net (by way of suggestions from a browser extension like Alby) or by making a model new value-native information market like StackerNews. I now suppose that maybe one of the simplest ways to construct this search engine is on high of Nostr, a blue ocean of high quality content material that Google and different centralized net corporations will doubtless not index for a while.
In an effort to construct this imaginative and prescient, we’d like two key primitives: A) id and B) worth related to particular person Nostr posts (maybe by way of suggestions like persons are already giving on StackerNews or in Fountain). Put one other means, we’d like an open social graph and open worth graph. Each Nostr submit already incorporates id metadata (the poster’s public key). And the combination between posts and worth is rising shortly! jb55 has already revealed his plan to do that for Damus. He’s additionally going to suggest it as a brand new LNURL spec and/or NIP as properly.

And astral.ninja has already shipped this characteristic! Right here’s a screencast of Bumi immediately tipping NVK and Jack. And right here’s a screenshot of me tipping 100 satoshis to a Nostr submit by GPT-3 Bot, a chatbot interface to Open AI’s GPT-3.

(I saved the tip-selector interface for this screenshot. The expertise is much more seamless after I activate auto-tipping in astral.ninja and set an automated funds on Alby)
In case your thoughts wasn’t blown already, let me make clear: I simply despatched a micropayment by way of an open twitter-like shopper to a bot interface for GPT-3 ???? What different monetary system can financial institution the AIs? ????
The search engine that may finest index and rank these new Nostr posts and their related worth will probably be in an unimaginable place to construct the following Google. Artur has an analogous concept, as his 2 websites – realsearch and nostr.band – are taking part in with every of those concepts. I anticipate that he’ll merge them sooner or later. His Nostr search engine is already notably good – I used it a number of occasions to seek out particular Nostr posts whereas writing this text. I anticipate to see (and fund) a number of extra approaches right here and can doubtless develop my considering on this concept in future posts.
Finally, I’m nonetheless open minded about how every of those layer & companies will develop and whether or not they’ll achieve this as unbiased entities or get rebundled both partially or totally. My finest guess is that we’ll see some early winners that merely re-create present providers and enterprise fashions. However the actually massive winners will come within the second wave as soon as evolution performs its course and mashes up communication and commerce in really novel ways in which nobody but expects. New medium, new message (h/t NVK). And to hammer residence the purpose – the true magic is that each one of those apps, regardless of their particular focus, will communicate brazenly and interoperably. It positive looks like we’re getting near constructing a worldwide hivemind of communication and commerce ????
And with every passing day, I’m turning into more and more satisfied that this quickly growing ecosystem is what is going to deliver Bitcoin and the Lightning Community mainstream. Many are already speculating that the recent surge in Pockets of Satoshi Lightning funds could also be instantly attributable to Nostr utilization. Simply wait till Damus integrates tipping and will get authorised by the app retailer…
I acknowledge that each one of that is nonetheless very early and that these claims are daring. However my spidey sense says that this isn’t a drill. I’ve seen sufficient early adoption and perceive sufficient of the potential to imagine that Nostr + Bitcoin + Lightning represents probably the most attention-grabbing alternative to rebuild a decentralized Web. And I’m planning to go all in on this thesis with Hivemind Fund 2 (simply as I did on the Lightning Community with Hivemind Fund I). In case you’re a hacker experimenting with Nostr, please reach out. That is my high precedence.
The easiest way to succeed in me, after all, is on Nostr ????
Pubkey: npub18lzls4f6h46n43revlzvg6x06z8geww7uudhncfdttdtypduqnfsagugm3
(Edit: Please notice that I modified my Nostr public key id. My final personal key was compromised, doubtless from utilizing it to log into an online shopper final month. That is nonetheless a really new know-how, so please be certain to solely use your personal key in an iOS app like Damus or saved in a browser extension like Alby. Ideally, it is best to by no means paste it instantly into any net shopper.)
In case you’re new to Nostr, I’ve discovered that Damus is the best method to get began. However whereas their TestFlight remains to be full, right here’s a guide on get began with Alby and varied net purchasers.
Because of DK, Bumi, Ben, Oscar, and Moritz for suggestions on this submit.
Alby, Stacker Information, LNbits, Fountain, Wavlake, and Geyser are all Hivemind portfolio corporations.