Social media plays a very centric and important role in the world today. Whether its business, news, entertainment, education, politics, or simply just everyday life, social media can enhance the world’s ability to connect.
It is the perfect way to communicate.
According to a report by Kepios, 59.4% of the world population uses social media today.
That’s 4.76 billion people.
However, almost the entirety of social media platforms are overly centralized and have questionable agendas.
These platforms harvest your sensitive data and use it against you through algorithms, ads, and other methods to keep you addicted and active on their app.
Censorship. A governing body decides what is allowed to be published on their platform, reserving the right to stop selected users’ reach or outright ban them.
Spam and scams are often rampant.
These underlying problems with centralized platforms plague social media today.
Enter Nostr. Here are the 4 crucial things to know about it:
[1] Nostr was created by Bitcoiner William Casarin. The platform he created can be described as “A simple, open protocol that enables global, decentralized, and censorship-resistant social media.”
[2] It’s primary aim is to tackle the issue of censorship.
[3] Servers on Nostr are called Relays.
[4] Nostr is an acronym – Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.
The protocol gained significant traction in December 2022 after it was praised by the former CEO and Co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. On December 13 Jack tweeted that he’d just ‘deployed’ 14 Bitcoin to @fiatjaf (William’s twitter handle) as a gesture of approval for creating Nostr.
Nostr + Bitcoin
Another reason why Nostr was trending is that the network is highly compatible with the Lightning Network. Bitcoin micropayments are easily integratable on the network which speaks to the future vision of many Bitcoiners believing tips, paid services, and content subscriptions with BTC could become popular.
The key features of Nostr
Its network is made up of a series of data servers, with each data server having a different host maintaining it. This keeps the network decentralized and prevents any widespread manipulation.
Nostr is pseudonymous, as it requires no user identification. Information is validated through public keys and cryptographic Signatures.
Nostr’s code is completely open source, which means anyone can contribute to the network. Not only does this greatly improve network flexibility and usability, but it creates a collaborative environment and personal investment in the network. All the more reason for users to develop and expand the network.
Defining exactly WHAT Nostr is
To clarify, Nostr is not a blockchain or consensus protocol. Neither is it a peer-to-peer network, a cryptocurrency, or even a social network.
Nostr is an easy-to-use protocol that simplifies building social media networks off the back of Nostr’s framework. Using the network is simply subscribing to a series of relays without owing anything to the server host.
A look at how Nostr operates …
Think of it this way. Nostr is essentially a storage system of Notes. Its storage system is distributed across a variety of relays (servers) that have no general consensus or agreement.
Now you (the client) can subscribe to any relay you wish. The client can request notes from public keys (the other users) and changes also publish notes. Public keys subscribed to the client will be the only ones who can receive the note. Each public key has a unique signature associated with it for differentiation.
The client can block any other user from publishing information to them, however, no one can interrupt another public key from publishing to others.
The published notes are capable of containing any structural data that is condensable.
Relay recommendations are shareable between users, and it’s very simple to add / remove relays from a coded list of subscriptions.
Censorship resistance
Through this method, Nostr allows the basic human right for anyone to speak freely, but of course no one is obliged to listen. This flawless execution is not possible in a centralized social network.
Currently, Nostr has less than 100,000 daily active users, and a total of around 720,000 unique public keys activated.
Here’s all the possibilities Nostr might have in store for its future.
The challenges Nostr faces
[1] Legislation could be a concern for the network, as there’s no clear or systematic approach as of yet for dealing with illegal or dangerous activity. If a solution isn’t found, the protocol would likely be under severe scrutiny of US lawmakers.
[2] Spam protection has been proposed (NIP-013) which is an anti-spam mechanism that prevents activity outside of a 3-step separation from the client’s social network. However, only a handful of users have adopted this so far.
[3] The current infrastructure has multiple weak points that would be detrimental to the network if it were to scale quickly.
[4] Currently the network is unstainable with non-incentivized relays. For a sustainable future, all relays cannot operate for free.