Why Nostr? What is Njump?
2024-11-30 22:58:09

Shaun on Nostr: Welcome to the Nostr, welcome to try YakiHonneđŸ«‚ ...

Welcome to the Nostr, welcome to try YakiHonneđŸ«‚
quoting

Welcome to the Conduit Signal

Good morning friends, both old and new. Welcome to the very first of our monthly updates on the development of the Conduit platform. We’re going to use this as the hub for keeping people in the loop about our progress. We’ll make sure this is fun and educational along the way, too.

This first letter is a manifesto. It gives new followers vital context before introducing our flagship demo: Conduit.Coffee. Future updates will be shorter and more to the point. So, while we wish you a happy Black Friday, there will be no discounts on words today.

Onward.

Reading commitment: ~2,800 words / ~11 minutes

What are we building?

We’re making a new platform for online shoppers to discover products they love and trust. A place where all the product reviews you see are real. A platform where you control your buying decisions and are not manipulated. This is a destination where you can both shop in private or choose to share your purchases with your friends. And by friends, I mean the ones already in your network—not a bunch of new ones you need to make.

It’s also an interactive marketplace for stores to connect with their customers. It gives them a forum to create content, chat, and listen to their customers—all out of the box. An infinite online mail-order catalog combined with a live editorial section and chat. Did I mention thousands of users are already sitting there, waiting for the stores to show up?

This might sound a little insane or idealistic. And it all was
 before the combined power of the Nostr and Bitcoin networks existed. Leveraging this tech allows us to create the place we describe above. We can unlock the internet’s true potential and bypass the big e-commerce sites. It gives us the power to make online shopping more direct, transparent, fair, and enjoyable.

Why are we doing this?

Today’s e-commerce environment feels like a game rigged against the consumer. Fake reviews, intrusive data tracking, and manipulative algorithms are completely normal. Your data is being sold—including all your credit card purchases. Companies are building profiles on you. They’re so good that it feels like your phone is listening and feeding them tips (is it?).

Most of us find ourselves caught up in a manipulative algorithmic loop. We’re in the Matrix, losing the diverse freedom of thought that makes us human.

image “You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” - Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)

You are the product and they have the tools to influence you. Your mind and attention are being mashed up, tossed around, and sold to the highest bidder. Worst of all, the consumer doesn’t get much value from it: their services aren’t geared towards you. The reviews can’t be trusted since the discourse around a product can be bought and manipulated, with no effective way for the user to know who the faceless army of follows and likes came from
 can I trust them? Is it even real?

**And is it even all the merchants’ fault? **Now that the game is afoot, they must take part or die. Even our favorite brands must compromise their values to stay afloat. It’s hard to blame them either
 it’s the playing field itself that’s set up with bad incentives.

On top of all that, the merchants need to work their asses off to stay relevant. Making apps, newsletters, and text bots while sneaking in product placements
 whatever they need to stay at the top of your feed. Then we, the consumers, respond with dummy accounts, routing services, ad blockers
 whatever we need to salvage what we’ve got left of our attention and privacy.

It’s a stupid and wasteful game.

We’re told: “This is the way it is now.” These are the new rules; the technology is here to stay, and we are at its mercy. We’re pretty sick of it
 and we’re here to show you: this is a lie.

The Good Old Days


Imagine yourself in the early ‘60s, when cash was king. Long before the internet age.

You stroll into a convenience store to get a coffee and your favorite magazine, Outdoor Life. You hand over some change and get the goods; transaction completed.

image “They’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ‘em
 Freedom.” - George Hanson, Easy Rider (1969)

The magazine’s advertisers know only that you like the outdoors. They serve you their top brands alongside the content in a manner that emphasizes good taste. The paper can’t watch your eyes. The pages must have enjoyable content and design. Advertisers must captivate you with their branding. They need to take some risks and be creative to earn your attention.

From there, you might have ordered something by mail off one of the pages. It wasn’t perfect, and a bit slow by today’s standards—but it was a fairer and simpler game. There was also nothing illegal or immoral about doing all this in private. Our culture used to respect privacy
 remember the phrase “mind your own business”? This was normal.


are gone?

We have an intense desire to return to some modern version of this. Our ability to express our unique and diverse selves through commerce is dependent on it. Our respective cultures need this diversity to remain rich and robust.

But we also recognize the convenience and connectivity of the digital age. We’re not Luddites—far from it.

If we’re honest, none of us wants to go back to the way things were before. We’re aware that we are accepting trade-offs for our privacy and freedom of thought. It’s so cool that I can tap a few buttons and summon objects to my door. It’s amazing that I can (sort of) figure out what to buy without being in a store.

image What if I told you
 you didn’t need to make tradeoffs anymore?

The challenge is great.

How do we create a system that has users and merchants interacting like the good old days
 but with modern convenience? How do we connect users and merchants so they can both win? How do we do this while allowing users the option for complete privacy and zero manipulation?

The centralized services of the Matrix have set high expectations. They have unmatched speed and vast catalogs. We have tough work ahead of us.

Why the hell would we pursue this? Because it’s a worthy goal—a hill worth dying on. We need to see this in the world for future generations.


And we can be successful in our mission thanks to Bitcoin, Nostr, and open-source code. And because the incumbents are too big and reliant on the old systems to adopt these new technologies.

The Potential of Nostr

For those of you new to this: Nostr stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.

“Nostr is a simple, open protocol that enables global, decentralized, and censorship-resistant social media.” - Nostr.com

We’d recommend exploring nostr.com if you’re tech-savvy, or nostr.how if you’re looking for something more accessible. We also recommend Lyn Alden’s write-up for a less technical deep dive. If you’re an investor or a VC, try Max Webster’s article here.

So what does this mean?

Nostr is a protocol (like HTTP), not a platform (like TikTok, X, or Instagram). It’s completely open, and nobody owns it.

image And everyone there is proud to be a “Nostrich”

It has clients (apps), relays (simple servers), and key pairs (user profiles). Each of these interacts with different events (text, images, etc.) in different ways:

  • Users access any client with their secret keys.
  • Clients allow users to view and interact with events fetched from any relay that they choose.
  • Relays store and serve events signed by users through the clients.

Anyone can spin up a client. There are already dozens with their own unique spin on the network. And we guarantee they’ve already got a version of your favorite social media site.

Anyone can host a relay. There are already hundreds serving different enclaves of the network.

Anyone can generate a secret key and start building a social profile to interact with any of the above. There are already millions.

Imagine if you could transfer your TikTok account to X in an instant. Then over to LinkedIn. Maybe you’re feeling Instagram? Whatever you want—your friends, content, messages, and profile would come with you. Now, imagine if you could control the content you see on these platforms, too.

This is Nostr.

A New Cyberspace Frontier

The network is a giant constellation of interactive events in cyberspace. All organized by identity, time, popularity, value, or whatever you see fit. All secured by cryptography without needing to trust a big company.

image “A whole new world. A new fantastic point of view. No one to tell us no, or where to go
” - Aladdin (1992)

Every user is a navigator in this space. Their client is a powerful telescope. It lets them observe and engage with the constellation in their own way. Some may focus on the vibrant nebulae of social interaction. Others may seek the dense star clusters of commerce and exchange. Your reputation and relationships travel with you, wherever you go. They foster a sense of continuity and community across the vast Nostr space.

The potential for this technology to connect us all in a way that was never before possible is so damn exciting. It’s easy to imagine a future where more people have Nostr identities than email and social media accounts combined. If you spend any time on there, it seems like the open source developers are dropping a new feature, update or application every single day


Of all the things this protocol can do, we are most excited about e-commerce. It hasn’t been properly tackled yet. Nostr allows us to connect users and merchants without actually being a middleman. We can become like our ‘60s Outdoor Life magazine. Except, we’re now infinitely connected and social.

The Role of Bitcoin

As much as we’d love to, we’re not going to waste too much time evangelizing Bitcoin here. There are plenty of people doing that already. We do suggest that if you’re new to Bitcoin, you check out these resources and start learning right away:

You’ll thank us one day.

In short: Bitcoin is a completely permissionless, energy-based form of money. It’s already changing the financial landscape under our feet. Most importantly, it can be sent peer-to-peer without a central authority. This can be done cheaply and somewhat privately using the Lightning Network. Soon, it will be even cheaper to use Bitcoin completely privately with e-cash.

It’s the future of money—but we’re here to make it fun. We want to create an app so engaging, useful, and easy to use that people will buy Bitcoin just to take part. We want to showcase Bitcoin’s practical benefits in e-commerce.

image As promised, Tom.

Nostr and Bitcoin

A match made in heaven: a currency based on energy, with no central bank
 and a protocol based on reputation, with no central authority.

Bitcoin is already integrated into the Nostr network. Users can send each other micropayments called “zaps” along with liking posts. This is a killer feature that is already changing the incentives for what users post. It seems to encourage valuable content instead of blatantly provocative discourse. Who would have thought the ability for folks to put their money where their mouth is on social media would drive out all the annoying people?

This is the tech that lets users send value to the stores and to each other directly, without Conduit handling any transactions. This also ensures the most valuable content can rise to the top. Users can sort reviews by most zapped or a minimum follower count. This will make faking a valuable review unfeasible.

The Future of E-Commerce

With those bases covered, let’s address the idealistic claims we made at the beginning:

“We’re making a new platform for online shoppers to discover products they love and trust. A place where all the product reviews you see are real.”

  • Nostr’s search parameters are more powerful than any traditional social media site allows. You can find profiles and events based on reputation and value. This includes follows, engagement, and zaps. The same can be said about filtering reviews like we discussed earlier. You can also filter anything to be within your friend network, or even your friends’ friends, and so on.
  • If you’d like to see for yourself what’s possible, check out the search on Primal.

“A platform where you control your buying decisions and are not manipulated.”

  • Nostr is a place where you can choose your social feed algorithms. The Primal client linked above now has this feature. But it has been in the ecosystem for a while already through “Data Vending Machines.” We will be leveraging this technology on our platform, too.
  • Our use of open-source code is relevant here, too. We will prove our statements by posting our codebase in a public forum (our GitHub page).

“This is a destination where you can shop in private if you want or share your purchases with your friends.”

  • We will enable privacy by creating throwaway profiles for users when desired. This will not compromise essential features.

”
by friends, I mean the ones already in your network—not a bunch of new ones you need to make.”

  • We covered this above: your profile and content follow you wherever you decide to plug in.

“It’s also an interactive marketplace for stores to connect with their customers. It gives them a forum to create content, chat, and listen to their customers—all out of the box. An infinite online mail-order catalog combined with a live editorial section and chat.”

“Did I mention thousands of users are already sitting there, waiting for the stores to show up?”

  • Anyone with a Nostr identity can hop between clients. So, the whole network is already available to merchants who are ready to plug into Conduit.

In summary: Nostr already has most of what we need for our e-commerce vision built in. Including a specification for marketplaces that we’ll be using and expanding.

Our First Steps

We’re already deep into the UX design of the platform (shoutout to Emi and Dylan at Santoral). We’ve also spent a lot of time designing the general architecture and back-end systems. This includes developing custom relays and relay controllers.

But how can we have a platform if there aren’t any stores?

Enter Coffee by Conduit

Today’s proof of concept release is for our flagship store: Conduit.Coffee. This solves the problem of needing a first store on the platform. It also lets us test our ideas and shows future merchants that we’re not afraid to eat our own cooking.

image Or rather, drink our own coffee. Which is definitely happening.

Coffee by Conduit is a simple shop. We accept Bitcoin in exchange for fresh-roasted coffee beans that we ship to your doorstep (US only, for now). We provide receipts in any format you need, including a private Nostr direct message.

From here, we’ll iterate and add features until we build our dream marketplace.

image Zima Purple, in the beginning.

Supporting Open Source Software

Obviously, any coffee sales will help us with overhead and development costs. If you take the plunge and try our delicious coffee—thank you. We’re grateful for all our early adopter customers.

But, we know our work rests on the foundations of countless open source contributors. So, we’re committed to giving back to the open source community from the start.

In that spirit, we will donate 2.1% of coffee sales to an organization called OpenSats. They’re supporting dozens of developers writing the open-source code for the Nostr protocol.

It’s something we will do every step of the way. We may give to similar organizations in the future but
 we’ll NEVER go below the 2.1% donation of our own store sales to support open-source software.

F.O.S.S. FRIDAY “DEAL”

Here’s a fun idea to get us started. Black Friday? How about Free Open Source Software (“FOSS”) Friday?

To celebrate the launch of our demo product, we will 10x our commitment to OpenSats for the rest of 2024. Yes, we’re donating 21% of all sales for an entire month. The price of the coffee bags stays the same at USD $21; our profit goes down, and OpenSats gets more funding.

Get Involved

If you’re excited about the potential of Conduit, we invite you to get involved! Here are a few easy things you can do (besides buying our coffee):

And, of course, feel free to reach out with any questions by direct messaging either of us on a Nostr client!

The Future is Exciting

We see so much potential in the Nostr/Bitcoin ecosystem. We’re thrilled to join the renaissance of powerful, free, open-source software.

We plan to be the worst part of Jeff Bezos’s epic midlife crisis, so we’ll start by misquoting him


This is Day 1 of Nostr

We see the potential in this space for a revolution in e-commerce, and we’re working hard to make it happen.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. We’re at the very beginning of something transformative. See you around Christmas time for another update—there’s a lot cooking on our end.

Cheers,

Eric FJ - Caffeinated Operating Officer, Conduit Hodlings

Acea Spades - Caffeinated Tech Officer, Conduit Hodlings

Author Public Key
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