Nostr - The Revolution Will Not be Centralized
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We love Bitcoin because it’s censorship-resistant, permissionless, borderless, and finite. But there’s one feature in particular we love most, because without it, the others wouldn’t be possible.
That feature is decentralization.
Without decentralization, Bitcoin wouldn’t be permissionless or censorship-resistant, because intermediaries would be able to gatekeep and censor transactions. Without decentralization, Bitcoin wouldn’t be borderless, because intermediaries could enforce jurisdictional restrictions on your money. And without decentralization, Bitcoin wouldn’t be finite, because intermediaries could unilaterally change its supply schedule as they see fit.
The point is, Bitcoin is only freedom money because nobody controls it. If we want to separate money and state, the revolution cannot, and will not, be centralized.
Bitcoin’s elegant design demonstrates that decentralized systems are extremely effective at preventing centralized control, coercion, and misaligned incentives that end up benefiting the few at the expense of the many.
So what would it look like if we started to apply this thinking beyond just monetary networks? What if we could decentralize other systems of control that have been used to subdue and coerce us?
What might the world look like if we could decentralize our social networks?
Well, we’re already in the process of finding out!
In 2019, an anonymous developer from Brazil called FiatJaf launched a new protocol called Nostr, which is designed to free you from centralized social networks and allow you to reclaim sovereignty over your social identity.
Instead of centralized platforms owning your data and curating what you see, Nostr flips things on its head and puts you in control.
So, this week, let’s take a look at what makes the Nostr protocol so interesting and why Bitcoiners everywhere are starting to adopt it.
Centralized Social Networks Suck
Most people’s social interactions online are facilitated by big tech companies like X, Facebook and Google. We get our news and shout at politicians on X, we capture our memories on Instagram, we stay connected with friends and family on Facebook, and we listen to our favorite podcasts on YouTube.
The problem is, these platforms have evolved from being useful tools designed to allow us to connect and collaborate into oppressive gatekeepers, sucking the life out of genuine online interaction.
These big tech companies don’t design their opaque algorithms for your benefit. They prioritize rage-bait, paid ads, and addictive content to boost engagement metrics, fry your attention span, and keep you hooked. They are optimized to do one thing; farm your attention and sell your data to the highest bidder.
Social media platforms are engineered to maximize profits for shareholders. Your well-being isn’t part of the equation.
And being farmed for your attention isn’t the only form of abuse you have to endure. Social media platforms also use their algorithms and moderation tools to censor free speech and silence dissenting voices. If you’re found to be harboring ‘unacceptable views’ then you run the risk of getting shadow banned or canceled altogether for daring to question mainstream narratives.
At one point, Jack Dorsey’s Twitter even forced a U.S. president into digital exile. That sets a very dangerous precedent!
Making you angry, farming your attention, and policing you for ‘wrong think’ should be reason enough to be rethinking your relationship with social media platforms, but there’s one more important reason we should be growing tired of this increasingly one-sided relationship.
These platforms own your entire online identity. Your profile, your content, and your connections don’t belong to you, they’re the property of the platform you’re using. Every time you post, you’re working to produce content for these platforms for free, and if you ever leave or get canceled, your audience, content and history all disappear.
You’re not the customer, you’re an unpaid employee, and the data you produce is the product.
Much like centralized money, centralized social media is used to commodify us, censor us, and control us. A change is well overdue.
Thankfully, Nostr is looking like an increasingly viable alternative that could grant us true ownership over our digital identities and set us free from the industrialized attention farms.
What is Nostr?
Nostr, short for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays," is a decentralized protocol that creates a global and open social network that's resistant to censorship and control by any single entity.
Unlike traditional platforms like X or Facebook, where a central company owns your data and identity, Nostr puts ownership back into the hands of users by making use of public key cryptography.
Instead of having logins and passwords to individual centralized platforms, every Nostr user has a universal public-private key pair. Your public key acts as your identity, a bit like a username, which you share with others so they can find you on the network.
Your private key acts more like your password. It secures your identity and allows you to sign and share ‘events’ (like posts, likes, or profiles) and broadcast them to the rest of the network.
On Nostr, centralized platforms don’t own your account or your content. By controlling your public and private keys, you alone control your social identity and your data.
The way data is handled by Nostr is also very different from traditional platforms. Instead of your content being stored and distributed via centralized servers controlled by one large company, posts and messages on Nostr are broadcast via decentralized relays.
Relays act like servers that store ‘notes’ in the network. They don’t own or alter any user content; they just store and distribute it. Your data isn’t controlled by one centralized entity, it is stored and shared by a distributed network of relays across the entire Nostr network.
Anyone can run a relay, and you can even run one yourself. This means that if one relay goes offline, your data doesn’t disappear with it. By connecting to multiple relays you can ensure redundancy and avoid downtime or censorship. If one relay decides to ban or censor your events, you can simply switch to another.
To interact with Nostr and view content being transmitted by these relays, users rely on software known as clients.
Clients behave a lot like the social media platforms we’re used to using today. They allow you to create user profiles, provide feeds to view content, and let you broadcast your own content via connected relays.
The key difference between Nostr clients and platforms like X or Facebook is that they don’t own any of your data. They simply act as an interface to publish your notes to connected relays and download notes from other users. At no point do they store or control any of the data they display.
This means you’re not tied to them. If one client starts censoring you or behaving in a way you don’t like, you can just connect your public-private key to another client and take all of your content and connections with you.
You are no longer trapped within a walled garden at the mercy of one platform.
Nostr is also a perfect bedfellow for Bitcoin. The Nostr protocol already supports Bitcoin lightning payments and users frequently tip each other for posts and content they enjoy by sending them small amounts of sats known as ‘zaps’.
This means that content creators via Nostr can now monetize their content in a direct value for value exchange with their audience without being extorted by middlemen like YouTube who take as much as 55 percent of the ad revenue generated on long form content.
In stark contrast to our current social media environment Nostr offers an apolitical and scalable framework for decentralized social ecosystems that protect user sovereignty and resist centralized control and coercion.
Adopting Nostr means you take back control of your digital identity, your data, and your dignity. No more walled gardens, no more cancel culture, and no more opaque algorithms designed to program what you think.
Bitcoin grants you sovereignty over your money. Nostr grants you sovereignty over your digital identity.
Nostr – What is the ‘Other Stuff’?
This article has focused primarily on Nostr’s potential for decentralizing social media platforms, but the protocol holds much more potential than that. Developers are already using its decentralized architecture to build all sorts of innovative freedom tech.
Some exciting projects include:
- Secure peer-to-peer messaging systems where users control their data without relying on centralized servers vulnerable to hacks or shutdowns.
- Decentralized marketplaces where users can bypass e-commerce giants to buy and sell goods and services directly.
- Event and ticketing platforms with RSVPs and decentralized calendars free from Big Tech’s oversight.
- Journalism platforms where readers know that stories remain unaltered and can’t be tampered with by the ‘Ministry of Truth’.
- Music streaming services where creators keep most of the fees instead of platforms like Spotify that pay them peanuts.
The innovation taking place over on Nostr is happening at an exponential rate, and the rabbit hole grows deeper every day. If you want to keep up to speed with all the developments the best places to start are https://nostr.com/ and https://nostrapps.com/
Ultimately, Nostr promises us a web where freedom, privacy and interoperability reign supreme, an open and resilient online environment controlled and owned by users instead of corporations.
(If you want to follow us on Nostr our npub is: npub1lrj3lsskez59qu68v5fpnur7ythe7s5e4qcelclha6t6r9q5pqgsl2mzx2)
The revolution will not be centralized.
Reclaim Your Sovereignty – The Bitcoin Way
Freedom will never be given to you. It’s something you must take for yourself. If you’re passionate about your freedom, your privacy and your sovereignty, then you need to take matters into your own hands.
The best way to do that is to master the freedom tech that makes self-sovereignty possible. With Bitcoin you can reclaim your financial freedom and protect your wealth, and now with Nostr you can reclaim your digital identity and protect your freedom of expression.
The only thing standing between you and unadulterated freedom is understanding how to use them.
With guided mentorship from our experts, we can help you master the tools you need to protect your wealth, protect your privacy, and reclaim your dignity. To start your training simply book a free 30-minute call. Your future self will thank you.