Notes and other stuff transmitted by relays
“Notes and other stuff transmitted by relays” or nostr is a new way of communicating.
Unlike Twitter, Whatsapp, iMessage and most other messaging platforms, nostr is not owned by any central person or entity. It’s decentralized, i.e. owned by its users and relay operators.
This has three critical implications:
Censorship resistance: Where Twitter has been implicated in serious censorship, government interference with content on nostr is very difficult to impossible.
Protocol: nostr is not a platform but an open protocol which any company or user can tap into. There are already many platforms built on top of this open protocol, which are all ingesting the same information but are competing with each other for users.
Identity Ownership: You own and “self-custody” your account on nostr. If you don’t like what one platform is doing, you can simply port your account to another platforms, with all your history restored.
Granted, nostr is currently primarily inhabited by nerds, led by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
But there is truly no limit to the imagination of what can be built and is being built on top of this open protocol.
If you’re interested, the best place to start at the moment may be Primal, one of the many platforms/apps built on top of nostr.
February 11, 2024