Someone asked me about de-centralized social media iOS app Damus, which uses the Nostr protocol -- and has been promoted heavily by Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey.
Things I like:
1. Looks simple
2. Neat UI/UX
3. Easy to get up and running
Things I don't like:
1. The private key / public key is difficult to use
2. Interoperability with different clients is not fun
3. More crypto bullshit
I've tried other Nostr clients. It's pretty much the same thing.
The biggest problem with Nostr, though, is all the spam.
Right now, it's overwhelmed by crypto scammers.
The folks who run Nostr do very little moderation.
This is what the global chat looks like.
When I look at Nostr (and Damus, by extension), I feel like they've learned all the *wrong* lessons about decentralization.
What makes decentralization work isn't the tech in and of itself.
It's the community that uses it.
And quite frankly, I don't like Nostr's community.
Nobody would care about Nostr if it wasn't for Jack Dorsey donating $245,000 towards the project.
And that's the real story to me:
Twitter's previous billionaire CEO wants to hurt Twitter's current billionaire CEO by throwing money at decentralized, open source projects.
But not all decentralized, open source projects are worthwhile.
Especially ones that have pretty much just become yet another vector for crypto spam.
Many people don't understand that, when it comes to software development, time is more effective than money.
You can't just throw $1 billion at software and expect it to be any good.
You need someone who is dedicated, puts in the work -- more importantly -- models *how* it's supposed to work.
Just because Jack Dorsey throws money at something doesn't mean it will be amazing.
I was just thinking this myself, not much of a coder but there is more to code than just writing code, you need to be able to actually think how and who is going to use the end code, etc. and be competent, learn and learning requires a lot more skill.
