straycat
david

https://grapevine-brainSToRm.vercel.app

Pretty Good Freedom Tech
https://pgf.tech
neurologist and web of trust enthusiast

Public Key

npub1u5njm6g5h5cpw4wy8xugu62e5s7f6fnysv0sj0z3a8rengt2zqhsxrldq3

NIP-05 Address

david@bitcoinpark.com

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsw2feday2t6vqh2hzrnwywd9v6g0yayejgx8cf83g7n3ue594pqtcpr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qn75n59

Publishing to

nostr.bitcoiner.social

relay.mostr.pub

relay.damus.io

Author Public Key

npub1u5njm6g5h5cpw4wy8xugu62e5s7f6fnysv0sj0z3a8rengt2zqhsxrldq3

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-04-20 20:22:39

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Does that make sense? We have two sigs: the usual nostr one in the “sig” field and the ring sig as the third item in the tag.

2025-04-20 15:46:50

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From the Wikipedia article on ring signatures:
In the original paper, Rivest, Shamir, and Tauman described ring signatures as a way to leak a secret. For instance, a ring signature could be used to provide an anonymous signature from "a high-ranking White House official", without revealing which official signed the message.
I could see this being useful. In some instances, people would feel more comfortable issuing a NIP-56-like report if they could hide behind a ring signature. This would provide an additional source of data that we could feed into a graperank interpretation engine.

2025-04-20 15:09:45

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Hmm, that’s interesting. I bet there could be some applications there. Like if Alice wants to report Bob, she doesn’t want to reveal her identity as the reporter, but she wants the report to be trusted so she makes a list of N trustworthy pubkeys where she’s on the list and signs using a ring signature.
Perhaps FROST could be used for this. Not exactly ring signatures, but related. Any thoughts @npub1man…n9tn ?
Definitely something to keep in the back of our minds!

2025-04-19 22:16:33

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2 more hours to go in my 48 hour fast. Just espresso & electrolytes

2025-04-19 19:28:58

What can WoT do for businesses?
How about this: address the problem of hacked accounts via social engineering. Empower customer service to require social proof before providing access to sensitive data.
@npub1man…n9tn
@npub1clk…pup9

2025-04-18 00:16:25

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@npub12zq…99h8 you were just telling me about this article

2025-04-15 18:50:43

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In the simplest case, Alice would decide.
For example: suppose she runs a personal WoT relay. She sets up a keyword search of her relay’s content for science-related keywords (as selected by her), makes that content available as a “channel”. By subscribing to her channel, you’re effectively trusting her not only to tend to her grapevine but also to select relevant keywords.
Whatdya think?

2025-04-15 02:21:25

Imagine a personalized WoT relay where the relay owner’s grapevine (WoT) creates topic-specific channels of content.
So for example, if you trust Alice and her grapevine to curate science content, you can subscribe to her WoT relay’s science channel:
wss://alice-grapevine-relay.com/science
🤔

2025-04-12 03:36:27

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In the very near future, we’ll be able to ask AI to take a messy repo and make it maintainable, and it’ll do it and do it well. I don’t know how long this will take, but probably sooner than we think.

2025-04-08 18:23:16

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Nice! Ok, it’s bumped up higher on my to do list 🔥

2025-04-08 04:11:11

Radiohead
Karma Police
Every note leaves you guessing whether you’re on the road towards redemption or damnation
brilliantly disconcerting
🎶 For a minute there I lost myself 🎼

2025-04-04 14:51:12

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I have a Rocket R58 and it’s awesome ☕️

2025-04-04 14:19:18

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I’ve been using windsurf for maybe a month or so. It feels like:
Claude 3.7 ✖️me 🟰 5 of me 😂
Today, I’m refactoring the api for my personal WoT relay. It’s like I have a junior tech who knows EVERYTHING but I have to keep on a really really tight leash.

2025-04-03 15:56:35

👀
#note1657…2r76

2025-04-03 15:55:32

👀
#nevent1q…n3kf

2025-03-25 18:45:13

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How about a personal WoT relay, controlled by the user, that provides the rec list. The client provides the UX. If the client starts tweaking rec lists, you’ll know it.

2025-03-25 17:45:35

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Do you think a personalized Recommended list would help with this problem? I presume Primal’s Rec list is still a global one.

2025-03-25 02:34:50

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It’s bc we haven’t yet implemented WoT, not really

2025-03-25 02:32:29

I wonder if the no-cloning theorem of quantum mechanics could offer a non-blockchain based solution to the double spend problem 🤔

2025-03-25 02:04:41

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The idea is that we have no choice but to use the data that is available to us. We go where the signal is. Different people will have different ideas on that.
Example: if you trust zaps more than anything else, someone (a dev) will need to write a (relatively simple) script that transforms zaps into a format that is ready to be consumed by your GrapeRank calculation engine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that format resembles an explicit trust attestation; it has a rating, a confidence, and a context. The format that my WoT engine employs may or may not be identical to the format that yours employs.
I’m not sure what you mean by sentiment analysis, but whatever it is, you or some other dev would write a script to consume raw data (nostr events) and spit out data ready to be utilized by GrapeRank. If it’s a good signal then you could share the “interpretation” script with other users.
Hopefully that makes sense … let me know if it doesn’t!

2025-03-24 17:57:48

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Are any other clients consuming your personalized trust scores using your WoT DVM spec? I really want to see that happen. Do we need to make some noise so devs know this option exists? Talk about it on a pod maybe?

2025-03-21 14:32:31

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At least 😅

2025-03-21 13:44:56

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Something similar to @npub1clk…pup9's Trust Revolution but much more narrowly focused

2025-03-21 13:34:42

Would be cool to have someone do a WoT podcast. There are users and devs with a variety of ideas. 🎥

2025-03-18 22:16:35

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Thought process:
1. Calculate trust using follows and maybe likes which is what legacy tech trained us to do. Plus, the data is plentiful. 🙂
2. But wait; follows and likes do not equal trust!!! 😠
3. Ditch the follows and likes. Explicit trust attestations are the holy grail. 😃
4. But wait! UX will be bad and users are never gonna use them! 😖
(👉🏻most plebs are here in the thought process👈🏻)
5. Calculate trust using any and every piece of data available to us. 🤓
Which is why *interpretation* is an integral piece of the GrapeRank algo. No matter what data source you want to use, transform it (interpret it) into a format ready to be digested by the GrapeRank algo, a process that is 💯 under your control.
🧠 ⚡️ 🍇

2025-03-18 18:07:10

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You’re using your WoT DVM to offer up PageRank scores from follows, correct? Are you calculating other scores as well? Or incorporating other data sources (zaps, reactions, etc) into PageRank?
What I’m working on now creates a blacklist by processing mutes and reports from trusted pubkeys. The blacklist and whitelist can each be toggled on or off. GrapeRank is specifically designed to be extensible, so that data from multiple sources can be used to create multiple scores.

2025-03-18 17:15:28

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My plan, btw, is to export personalized trust scores in whatever format makes client devs happy. From my perspective, once the scores are calculated, exporting them in different formats is not a problem.
Here’s my recommendation: if you’re a dev and you have a specific WoT use case in mind, state exactly what scores you want, how you want to use them, exactly the method and format that you want to ingest them. NIP-51 lists? Individual notes? WoT API?
https://i.nostr.build/paMEoBsx8FWUcpZM.jpg

2025-03-18 16:28:33

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@npub1utx…50e8 I’d love to see your input on @npub1wf4…dgh9's WoT DVM spec, discussed here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/data-vending-machines/pull/38. If enough devs sign off on it, I’m ready to implement it in the personal WoT relay I’m building. It’s still too alpha to release, but it already exports multiple trust scores using @npub1gcx…nj5z's NIP-85.
I think these two NIPs are nicely complementary. One NIP to publish scores as notes, one to make available by API.
@npub1man…n9tn
@npub1clk…pup9
@npub176p…vgup

2025-03-17 21:46:20

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At some point, AI bots will get so good that we won’t be able to sniff them out. At that point, we’ll need to switch from blacklisting the bots to whitelisting the humans. This has been tried and failed many times in the past, but we’ve never had the pleb army that we have now. With nostr + the grapevine, I’m confident we can and will make this happen.
🧠⚡️🍇

2025-03-17 21:41:23

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I agree - if your fellow plebs can sniff out bots and are willing to flag them as such, then WoT is 💯 the solution. The personal WoT relay I’m currently building will gather together all the mutes and reports from trusted sources and generate a composite blacklist which can be toggled on and off at will.
It will need to be user-friendly, of course. Very doable. AI bots are def a problem, but as tools like AI coding agents advance, we’re also gonna find the solutions coming at us faster and faster.
🧠 ⚡️ 🍇

2025-03-17 12:40:54

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GM! ☀️ ☕️

2025-03-17 12:40:02

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GM! ☕️ 🌞

2025-03-10 17:12:45

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This looks awesome. Can’t wait to see where you take this Shawn 🫡

2025-03-04 14:32:04

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Have you compared cursor to windsurf? Windsurf with Claude 3.7 Sonnet is incredible. I haven’t even tried 3.7 Sonnet (Thinking) yet. And I haven’t tried cursor yet

2025-02-24 01:54:55

Using Windsurf. This is absolutely incredible. 🤯
https://i.nostr.build/aoellv6knxmODBZK.png

2025-02-24 00:24:28

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I just got Windsurf to install neo4j and strfry on an AWS instance. Already synced strfry with kinds 3, 1984 and 10000 events. Working now on neo4j integration.

2025-02-23 18:51:56

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btw here is Vitor’s WoT NIP, Trusted Assertions, and its pull request discussion:
https://github.com/vitorpamplona/nips/blob/user-summaries/85.md
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1534

2025-02-23 18:12:17

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Web of trust will be the ultimate solution for hacked keys. My WoT is how I’ll know that Alice’s pk1 was hacked as of T1, that she’s using new pk2 as of T2, and to treat her content accordingly.
Nostr is where true WoT will be launched. We need to get that built first. Key migration will fall into place after.

2025-02-23 17:38:35

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End of this year? The next maybe?

2025-02-23 17:36:40

How long before AI can build an entire nostr app from scratch?

2025-02-22 16:35:38

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In a way, yes. The idea of DCoSL is to generate what I call “loose consensus” on the items on a list; “consensus” because most people will agree on most lists items most of the time, but “loose” because there’s no centralized authority to enforce agreement, so disagreements are allowed and will happen.
But you use the word “standardize.” Here’s the hard question: how does a purely decentralized community “standardize a way” to do ANYTHING AT ALL? Before we can do DCoSL, we first have to agree on the standards (ie the protocols) that we’re gonna use to build DCoSL. How do we generate consensus on those standards and protocols? Thinking about this problem is how I arrived at the idea of the tapestry: a knowledge graph curated with the assistance of your grapevine. If we all use the idea of the tapestry as our starting point, then we can start to build loose consensus for standards and protocols, simple ones at first, but with ever-increasing complexity. Which means our starting point is not a protocol or a set of “standards,” unless you consider tapestry to be a protocol. But it’s not really; it’s more like a meta-protocol. And I’m hoping the personalized grapevine WoT relay will be the first step towards implementing the idea of the tapestry.
I’d be up for an interview. I love talking about these ideas, going back and forth between the abstract big principles (tapestry) and the nuts and bolts of its implementation. 🤓 Do you do a podcast?

2025-02-21 21:18:37

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I think you’re 💯 pct correct that there’s something fascinating going on there, and I think it’s largely undiscovered territory from an academic perspective.
So how could personalized grapevine WoT relays possibly relate to the brain? The challenge that faces us today is to build freedom tech that solves real problems for real people. The reason this is a hard problem is that freedom tech means that in theory, there should be no centralized authority to create and maintain the digital tools and languages that enable our apps to talk to one another. So in theory, our starting point is a digital Tower of Babel, so to speak. Big guess what: as human beings in the analog world, we face exactly the same problem! With no central authority to create and maintain spoken languages, how do linguistic conventions even come into being? How do we arrive at decentralized linguistic consensus? I speculate that the design of the brain is influenced strongly by the need to solve this exact problem. And the solution is twofold: first, organize information (in the brain) into some variation of the idea of a graph database or knowledge graph; second, employ a handful of very simple, very basic web of trust algorithms for consensus formation. This is how a decentralized population of sovereign individuals agree to call a hat a “hat.” And once the necessary digital tools are built, we’re gonna find ourselves using similar strategies of decentralized consensus formation to agree to use “created_at” instead of “createdAt” for kind 1 notes.
🍇🧠⚡️

2025-02-18 21:38:28

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Is CREATE (start)-[r:foo]->(end) better than MERGE (start)-[r:foo]->(end) if you know the relationship doesn’t already exist?

2025-02-17 18:23:00

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I want to see LOTS of different methods used to calculate WoT. Your method using engagement being one of them. Which is why I like the terms “webs of trust,” emphasis on the plural: webs, because there are LOTS of ways to calculate WoT. There are different types of “trust,” different applications for the scores we calculate, and different people have different ideas on how to calculate scores for any given application.

2025-02-17 17:26:01

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You loaded 2.2M nodes and 5.6M edges into neo4j in 3 minutes??!?!? 🤯

2025-02-17 17:09:30

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Personalized WoT relays + neo4j ==> nostr knowledge graph
Development of personalized nostr knowledge graphs is where we’re headed

2025-02-17 16:56:17

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#neo4j, the most powerful and mature FOSS graph database available

2025-02-14 20:47:04

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I can hop on in a few mins …
@npub1man…n9tn
@npub10np…tl5h

2025-02-14 20:22:43

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I’m waiting for @npub176p…vgup and @npub1wf4…dgh9 to hammer out the details of their WoT DVM. If they can convince a few devs to ingest scores using their proposal, that will definitely motivate me to offer personalized PageRank, personalized GrapeRank and personalized degree-of-separation scores (and maybe some other scores) via DVM. I already have some endpoints built out so I’ll hopefully be able to employ the DVM format relatively quickly.
I encourage discussion of their WoT DVM PR, which is here:
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/data-vending-machines/pull/38

2025-02-14 19:58:55

👀 #note14mv…whuk

2025-02-14 19:58:21

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Awesome! We need more builders in this space! 🔥 I’d love to know more about what you’re doing. 👀

2025-02-14 19:54:46

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My site currently generates personalized PageRank and GrapeRank scores in @npub1gcx…nj5z's NIP-85 format. The export function hasn’t been stress tested yet by more than a handful of users, but @npub1xdt…ntxy has also generated PageRank scores using NIP-85, which means we’re (hopefully) soon going to start seeing clients put these scores to good use.
The question is which client is going to be the first!

2025-02-14 19:42:56

🍇 🧠 ⚡️ 🔥 #note1awa…uddr

2025-02-14 19:40:11

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If you go to grapevine-brainstorm.vercel.app you can calculate personalized PageRank and personalized GrapeRank scores and export them in a format (NIP-85) that is easily accessible by clients. The about section tells you a little about it.
NIP-85 is new. I don’t think anyone clients are using it yet. But hopefully they will soon!
Work in progress:
1. personalized grapevine WoT relay that calculates those scores for you, stores them using NIP-85, and uses them to filter data that you keep on your relay. It will use strfry and neo4j, the most mature FOSS graph database that I am aware of.
2. Contextual GrapeRank scores, so your trust network can tell you who are the world’s most trustworthy sources on any given topic.

2025-02-13 16:12:01

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👀

2025-02-12 17:02:33

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We have all grown accustomed to the idea of global reputation scores. But I think we will see — are already seeing in nostr — a change in focus and mindset from global to personalized WoT scores. Your npub doesn’t have a personalized WoT score until you specify the observer npub. You have to ask: what is your npub’s score, as calculated from some other npub’s perspective.
Ultimately, the access to sophisticated, contextual, provable, personalized WoT scores is going to unlock value in ways that we’ve never experienced or perhaps even imagined.

2025-02-12 13:35:08

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GM PV ☕️🌨️

2025-02-11 16:42:27

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He’s followed by 178 pubkeys in my extended follows network but muted by 149 😂
3 hops away from me by follows.
His personalized GrapeRank score is zero because of the mutes.
Personalized PageRank score is way too high than it ought to be, but that’s because pPR does not accomodate mutes.
GrapeRank ftw 🍇 🔥
https://i.nostr.build/XVLB2WSy9pVnbWtv.png

2025-02-10 01:14:00

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Ding ding ding ding!! 😂

2025-02-10 01:04:24

Test

2025-02-09 20:23:27

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Just got mine
looking forward to reading it https://i.nostr.build/kTg4cqh9sKmof874.jpg

2025-02-09 17:27:18

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@npub10np…tl5h bring you in because this is how we could do it for relay tools

2025-02-09 17:25:13

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CREATE INDEX event_id IF NOT EXISTS FOR (a:ApocNostrEvent) ON (a.event_id)
CREATE INDEX pubkey IF NOT EXISTS FOR (a:ApocNostrUser) ON (a.pubkey)
Like that?

2025-02-09 17:23:50

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Here’s the script I’m running now which took about 45 min:
```
#! /bin/bash
sudo /home/ubuntu/strfry/strfry export --since 0 >> /home/ubuntu/neo4jExport.json
sudo mv /home/ubuntu/neo4jExport.json /var/lib/neo4j/import/neo4jExport.json
cypher-shell -u XXXX -p XXXX -a bolt://localhost:7687 -f /home/ubuntu/apocCypherCommand
sudo rm /var/lib/neo4j/import/neo4jExport.json
```
And here’s apocCypherCommand:
```
CALL apoc.periodic.iterate(
"CALL apoc.load.json('file:///neo4jExport.json') YIELD value AS event",
"
MERGE (u:ApocNostrUser {pubkey:event.pubkey})
ON CREATE SET u.proceses=['initialization'], u.foo='bar'
MERGE (e:ApocNostrEvent {event_id:event.id})
ON CREATE SET e.kind=event.kind, e.created_at=event.created_at, e.author=event.pubkey, e.processes=['initialiation'], e.foo='bar'
WITH u, e
MATCH (e2:ApocNostrEvent) WHERE e2.author=e.author AND e2.kind=1 MERGE (u)-[r:AUTHOR {foo:'bar'}]->(e2)
",
{ batchSize:1000, parallel:true}
)
;
```
Some of the things like the edges I’m adding now just to see if I have the syntax right.
I’ll probably replace strfry export with strfry scan so I can use filters

2025-02-09 17:18:44

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These are the commands I used to set up indices and constraints - I had thought it would be redundant to set up a constraint when it’s already indexed, but I saw some nodes get unexpectedly duplicated which is why I added the constraints
CREATE INDEX event_id IF NOT EXISTS FOR (a:ApocNostrEvent) ON (a.id)
CREATE INDEX pubkey IF NOT EXISTS FOR (a:ApocNostrUser) ON (a.id)
CREATE CONSTRAINT constraint_event_id FOR (event:ApocNostrEvent) REQUIRE event.event_id IS UNIQUE
CREATE CONSTRAINT constraint_pubkey FOR (user:ApocNostrUser) REQUIRE user.pubkey IS UNIQUE

2025-02-09 04:41:22

Using #neo4j apoc.load.json and apoc.periodic.iterate with a batch size of 1000 I can transfer about 100k events from strfry in around 45 minutes. More specifically: I create 967 NostrUser nodes, 102602 NostrEvent nodes, and all the AUTHOR edges. Each event node is initialized with properties: event_id, kind, created_at, and author. Each user node is initialized with property: pubkey.
@npub10mt…27hf is 45 min reasonable or should I be expecting a lot better performance than that?

2025-02-09 01:34:42

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The Starks are clearly portrayed as the protagonists from the first episode, and Jaime is an enemy to the Starks. We even watch him be mean to Jon just for fun. So we the audience know we’re expected to hate Jaime.
Later in the show we the audience love Brienne for lots of reasons. So when she comes to respect and even love him, we know we’re expected to do the same.
One character’s judgement of / reaction to another character. Very powerful narrative device.

2025-02-08 15:44:53

Suppose you are a nostr dev and you want to ingest personalized web of trust scores from a third party. Question: how would you like those scores to be delivered? Notes? API? Something else?
Two proposals are on the table and each has live data, which means you can start building #wot into your client TODAY with a minimum of effort.
@npub1gcx…nj5z's NIP-85: Trusted Assertions. Scores are available via kind 3038x events. Notes are available today, generated by my service as well as by @npub1xdt…ntxy.
@npub1wf4…dgh9's and @npub176p…vgup's WoT related DVMs. The API method. Their service is live and I could open up a second service quickly if devs show enough interest.
I invite thoughts and ideas, either in this thread or in the respective GitHub PR discussions linked below. We really need to hear from devs. We want to build for you! 💜
ONWARD!! 💜🧠⚡️
https://github.com/vitorpamplona/nips/blob/user-summaries/85.md
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1534
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/data-vending-machines/pull/38
(I’m not going to ping every dev under the sun here, but repostings are invited.)

2025-02-08 05:37:29

just managed to export strfry data as json, then import json into neo4j using apoc

2025-02-06 20:08:35

For any devs who are interested in an easy way to implement personalized WoT scores in you app, you should consider NIP-85 Trusted Assertions.
https://github.com/vitorpamplona/nips/blob/user-summaries/85.md
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1534 #note1mul…znu4

2025-02-06 19:39:55

@npub1aka…l9dl maybe you should try this out #note1fx4…hzxg

2025-02-06 19:38:46

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Because I’m always on the lookout for anyone whose thought patterns might be converging with mine.
I have a server that maintains a graph in neo4j of ~ 200k pubkeys connected by follows and mutes, and I use the neo4j graph data science library to run centrality algorithms such as personalized PageRank. My server also runs custom coded GrapeRank, which is nonlinear (unlike PageRank which is linear), but unlike PageRank is designed to yield trust scores that are contextual and that can be used as the weights when calculating weighted averages and weighted sums.
For now, I calculate GrapeRank on just a single, very generic context. Next steps include expanding the graph with more node types (:NostrEvent, :NostrRelay … maybe someday :PubkyUser?) and using the data as input for GrapeRank scores in multiple contexts. May or may not implement GrapeRank using neo4j GDS’s Pregel.

2025-02-06 00:02:52

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That doesn’t completely answer the question

2025-02-05 23:57:36

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Let me see if I understand the demo in your video. You requested a list of Odell’s followers and you ranked them according to personalized PageRank using franzap’s pubkey as the source node (source = the specific node in the graph from which pPR calculation is initiated). The results came back very quickly. Is this because you precomputed franzap’s personalized PageRank? For me that takes about 15 seconds because the graph is very large, approximately 170,000 pubkeys extending out 7 or 8 hops and involving millions of follows. Or did you restrict the graph to be only Odell’s followers? Which would have fewer nodes, fewer edges and calculate much faster.

2025-02-05 23:16:21

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Which pubky engineer is working with neo4j and semantic social graph? @npub17lg…p267

2025-02-05 22:38:37

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Suppose Alice is the logged in user, and you have a list of authors A_I that you wish to sort by rank. Step 1: find Alice’s 10040 note, which tells the client where to find her kind 3038x notes. (If not available, use the platform’s default 10040.) Step 2: for each author A_i, fetch one kind 30382 and extract the score using the “rank” tag. Use that score to sort.

2025-02-05 22:31:32

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I just took this discussion to the above thread and I included links to the NIP-85 Trusted Assertions spec and discussion threads. I think it will be valuable to consider specific use cases and ask whether it makes more sense for clients to access WoT scores via Trusted Assertions versus DVMs (or a combo of both).

2025-02-05 22:14:17

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Takes a minute or two to publish them all.
Nostr.band scores are global, unless I am mistaken. My service and Vertex offer personalized scores, which to me is one of the holy grails of WoT.

2025-02-05 22:04:17

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Maybe we should discuss specific use cases. One where NIP-85 is better, one where DVM is better.

2025-02-05 21:54:12

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Vertex has GrapeRank? 👀 Surely you don’t calculate it … (I’d love it if you did!)

2025-02-05 21:49:30

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I found export of data via NIP-85 to be surprisingly fast and easy. I thought it would take longer to publish that many notes. You can test it at https://grapevine-brainstorm.vercel.app/. Just make sure you don’t publish the kind 3038x notes indiscriminately - relays will probably hate you.

2025-02-05 21:13:33

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I can def see that. I’m planning to look into the DVM spec and possibly using it as a mechanism to access some of the grapevine server’s endpoints.
I’ve been thinking about how clients could put NIP-85 to best use. Perhaps: if you can locate 10040 for the end user, use those scores. If not, each client could have its own default set of scores. Personalized WoT scores if they’re available; if not, default to “global” scores, where global means from the perspective of the client dev. This would allow us to bootstrap the WoT service from scratch, since most users will not have generated NIP-85 scores until it catches on.

2025-02-05 20:58:52

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I’d be very interested to hear your opinion: Vertex’s DVM spec versus @npub1gcx…nj5z ‘s NIP-85 to share WoT scores

2025-02-04 20:53:54

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I think and discuss lots of things about which I know very little. Otherwise I’d remain completely ignorant about everything forever.
If I render an opinion or judgment about something, I do my best to indicate my level of confidence. Have I spent a lifetime studying the thing? 2 minutes skimming some random document? Somewhere in between?
I know a little, but not a lot about pubky. I’d love to learn more and be pleasantly surprised about what you’re building. I’m already happy to see you’re incorporating neo4j. Which means you will have easy access to neo4j graph data science library, including centrality algorithms like PageRank. Using neo4j, you can today calculate personalized PageRank and GrapeRank web of trust scores on close to 200k nostr pubkeys, and you can export those scores in a format that is easily accessible by any nostr client. The PageRank part uses neo4j GDS and takes roughly 15 seconds.
So here’s what I want to know: How long before I can run personalized centrality algorithms on pubky? Using real data with lots of real users?

2025-02-02 00:32:51

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Yeah it probably could! I’ve been wanting to dig into DVMs so maybe your spec will be the place for me to start. Definitely let me know when you have something ready for review and discussion. 🔥

2025-02-01 20:56:15

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Do you remember when big blockers used to spam the mempool in a failed attempt to prove small blocks bad?
I ‘member.

2025-02-01 20:11:24

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Regarding NIP-85: zapstore is an app, currently android or desktop. And you’re planning on calculating personalized PageRank. So I presume the calculations happen on the user’s app, cached locally, and can be updated whenever you want. My zapstore will scour the universe for kind 3 notes and use them as the raw data for PageRank calculations.
But that would mean don’t need NIP-85 *OR* DVMs. So maybe I’m not understanding your plan. Who is going to be calculating PageRank?

2025-02-01 20:01:04

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Regarding the WoT on zapstore, follows who follow: iiuc you want the intersection of two sets, Alice’s follows and Bob’s followers. And you want to calculate that quickly. Keeping track of follows is simple: all you need is the most up to date kind 3 note. Keeping track of followers and producing that list within the fraction of a second is the challenge. When I click on followers on damus, my app scours the known universe to compile the list from scratch. Takes on the order of 10s of seconds, too long for your purposes.
So am I correct to assume that zapstore maintains a cache of pubkeys and their follows? In sql perhaps? With a column for follows and another column for followers? I tried that for a while and discovered that keeping it current was a pita. Why? Keeping follows current is simple, but doing it for followers is a pita.
My solution for tracking followers is to use a graph database. Why? Because it can retrieve not only follows but also followers very quickly. To test this, I built a few api endpoints to produce follows, followers, mutes, muters, etc on demand. All very fast. And I have one endpoint currently active which would produce the WoT score exactly as you describe, very quickly, if I’ve understood you correctly. You provide the pubkeys for Alice and Bob and you get back either a number or, if desired, the entire array of pubkeys. I can give you the endpoint if you’d like to play with it, maybe check to see if your code and my code produce the same results.
So that doesn’t use NIP-85. But it does use neo4j, which I believe is very powerful.

2025-02-01 17:05:06

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So maybe we’re doing basically the same thing, except I’m using NIP-85 and you’re using DVMs. To me, DVMs seem too complicated. But in all fairness I’ve never tried building with DVMs.
Having calculated the WoT scores, it didn’t take me long at all to make a button to format and publish the data as kind 30382 notes, plus one kind 10040 note. That’s all that NIP-85 requires.
I suppose DVMs will be useful if I want to make money as a third party WoT service provider.
But if I want to calculate WoT scores myself, using my own personalized WoT relay, is the complexity of a DVM really necessary?

2025-02-01 16:46:38

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Do you think that every nostr client that wants to use PageRank should calculate it from scratch?

2025-02-01 16:16:50

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*precalculation and storage

2025-02-01 16:15:54

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Here’s one way it could play out: either third party services or personalized WoT relays create a big picture snapshot, with generic-ish trust scores for a huge number of pubkeys. This will require lots of raw data and lots of compute. So these are the scores that are in greatest need for recalculation and storage.
Next, we have trust scores that are highly contextual. The opposite of generic-ish. Like who are the experts in some narrow topic. These scores require less raw data, less compute and involve fewer pubkeys. So perhaps specialized apps could handle these calculations. The generic-ish trust scores could be accessed and used as filters so that the raw data used for contextual scores is not polluted by spam.
So two ends of a spectrum: generic trust scores calculated ahead of time with results made accessible for lots of purposes; versus highly contextual, specific trust scores that could be handled on the fly.

2025-02-01 16:08:06

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It’s not gonna be one size fits all. I look forward to seeing the DVM specs!
It is a lot of data. But the question is this: do we calculate WoT scores on the fly just when we need them? Or ahead of time? Right now, we’re trying to do all of them on the fly. I think that’s great for some use cases, but it places severe limitations on what we can accomplish. If we want the notion of WoT to mature, some calculations are simply gonna have to be done ahead of time.
Per NIP-85: there is one event which holds multiple personalized WoT scores (I export GrapeRank, PageRank, & hops, with more scores to be added later) per pubkey. So that’s one event with multiple WoT scores, all concerning Alice, from the perspective of Bob. (“Personalized” means from the perspective of Bob, as opposed to “global” which really just means from the perspective of a big centralized entity like Google.)
We can have third party services to generate and store these events. Right now my app exports these events to my relay. But my vision is personalized WoT relays where Bob will store all of the events that are calculated from his perspective. NIP-85 provides a way for Bob to tell clients where to look for any given WoT score (kind 10040 notes), which can be a personalized WoT relay, a third party service, wherever.
So I see this as basic division of labor. Let each app do what it does best without also necessarily having to provide a complete WoT solution from scratch all by itself.

2025-02-01 15:26:06

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You mean you want to find new people to follow? For now you can go to my app and stratify users in your extended Follows Network by their GrapeRank or their PageRank score. Filter out the ones you already follow (set minimum hops = 2), check out the high scores and decide if you want to follow them. People like @npub1clk…pup9 have told me they particularly want to look at their followers and maybe follow some of them back, but they don’t want to wade through thousands of bots.
NIP-85 allows these scores to be exported so other clients can use them for that purpose plus lots of other purposes.
https://grapevine-brainstorm.vercel.app/

2025-01-31 23:03:02

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fyi I’m going to be issuing kind 10040 notes soon as per NIP-85.

2025-01-31 17:32:45

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Haha yup me too

2025-01-31 17:25:06

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I just looked up pubky on X. Looks like John is speaking at El Salvador today. And I see a short clip from John talking about pubky saying he’s learning from bluesky and nostr (what precisely, idk) and that pubky is being tested internally.
But no mention of any actual users. Or who are his customers and why they will want to use his products. Admittedly it was a short clip. But my impression is too much talking and not enough listening.

2025-01-31 16:58:03

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I’ve listened to one or two of these podcasts with John. I like a lot of his ideas, I think he correctly identifies a lot of problems and correctly identifies many of the tools we need to solve those problems. But what exactly he wants to do with those tools was always too vague.
Maybe his vision is coming more into focus. Looks like the products are getting fleshed out. But is anyone actually using pubky?

2025-01-31 16:50:01

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I like that pubky has a semantic social graph and uses neo4j to power it. But my fear would be that pubky is falling into the trap of trying to build a cathedral, making the requisite underlying structure like their DHT more rigid than it has to be, which is a major critique in my mind of projects like IPFS and bluesky.
I’m guessing pubky users truly control their private keys and their identities, which is true for IPFS but untrue for bluesky which (I think?) holds users’ private keys.
The biggest strength of nostr (in addition to the fact we hold our private keys) is that nostr is resisting the cathedral trap, better than any other protocol that anyone is actually using.
But the nostr ecosystem lacks a semantic social graph powered by a mature graph database like neo4j. This really needs to happen.

2025-01-31 16:35:03

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Interesting. I’ve never heard of pubky but looks like it’s connected to synonym, which you can find in the footer here:
https://docs.pubky.org
So either pubky is a product of synonym or synonym is rebranding as pubky? Not sure