“...a milestone for open protocols...”
- Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter
Have you ever wished you had gotten into Bitcoin when it was a nickel a coin, back when you could mine it on your PC? Well, here's your chance at the next big thing.
These are the early days of Nostr, a new, decentralized, un-censorable social media platform built on an "open protocol," so hop on board and fasten your seat belt...
Nostr stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays" but to me it's the "Wild, Wild West" of the internet... And I think that's a good thing.
As one who frequently leaps before looking, I jumped into Nostr feet-first, full speed ahead, and damn the torpedos. I'm not one of those insufferable wusses hampered by a compulsion to "RTFM" ("Read The F(ine) Manual") before setting sail on a new adventure.🤣
Consequently, perhaps, navigating Nostr has been a little like standing up to the storm surge in Lahinch... Which is why I'm writing a few articles to help you get started.
up until this year Nostr has been the purview of geeks and developers, working hard to build-out tools and user interfaces ("clients") for the common man - i.e., you and me. The good news is that the first-fruits of those efforts are now available. Newbies can choose from a fair variety of apps and platforms, but be prepared for some bumps along the way.
I believe that Nostr may just be the perfect storm that could blow tyrants off the map. It constitutes a triple-threat of truly honest money (Bitcoin), rapid and cheap micropayments (Lightning), and uncensorable social media communication (Nostr mediated by client apps). Nostr enables social and private communication, creation of interest groups, and the unstoppable free exchange of monetary value directly peer to peer among everyone with internet access.
Nostr users are called, variously, nostrholics or nostriches, and I'm sure more monickers will develop as time goes on. There seems to be a rapidly growing migration—nay, for some, a veritable Exodus—from twitter to Nostr. While I'm not quite ready to completely abandon the older platforms, the time has definitely arrived to dip a toe in the waters...
Don't hesitate; get started right now. Download and run a Nostr client and jump in feet first. Try one of the clients I like best so far:
You can get some more background on nostr and browse some other nostr apps at https://nostr.org/.
Your unique identity on Nostr is the gift of a world-changing technology known as asymmetric encryption. Instead of giving up your personal information to "join the club," you begin by creating a pair of keys; one public, and one private and known only to yourself.
Whichever platform you start with, be sure to securely copy and save your private key in a backed-up password manager. Once your private key is secure, you can try out any of the available clients by logging in with that key.
Don't worry about messing up; if you're prone to worry, just experiment and start learning how Nostr works. Once you figure out the ropes, you can always abandon your initial key pair, start over, and begin to develop your social reputation in a more orderly fashion.
This is what a Nostr private key looks like:
nsec1l5a6gpucf7u70luuxgmn7g3vzlzdwvtv4thata4nn5v9x2epdkrssdn5cs
This is what a Nostr public key looks like:
npub176yq5hmru5svvfgqumy5028xngjeh6mjqf9w887x42ntala8725se3l3j4
You can in fact experiment with the above account by copying the private key and logging into any client you may wish to try.
I'm still very much in Nostr learning mode; won't you learn along with me?
In the next installment, we'll go a little deeper into the mysteries of Nostr; what relays are, setting up and connecting a Bitcoin Lightning wallet to your Nostr account, figuring out how to Zap Sats, and some of the "Other Stuff."
But get started today!
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