Latest / Simply Bitcoin / William Casarin | Creator of Damus App | Simply Bitcoin IRL

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William Casarin | Creator of Damus App | Simply Bitcoin IRL · Simply Bitcoin

0:10
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of
0:12
Simply Bitcoin IRL. Today we have a very special
0:17
guest. We have William Kazarin.
0:19
He developed the DAMAS app, which is one of the most popular
0:23
apps that people use to interact with Noster.
0:26
So I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
0:29
I think a lot of people don't know the face behind this
0:33
amazing app that was built for Noster.
0:35
So I have so many questions. You guys know me, I'm a
0:38
geopolitics guy, so I have so many technical questions about
0:41
Noster with the feature of social media is, you know what
0:45
his outlook is on this. Of course we we all remember
0:48
what the whole thing with the App Store, how they wanted to
0:50
take away the Zaps and all that stuff.
0:52
So if all those questions lined up, it's going to be a great
0:54
show. But before we jump into it, I
0:56
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Anyways guys, no more delay. Let's bring up William on stage.
1:33
William, how you doing man? This usually never happens.
1:37
Usually we start it late. I'm very glad that we started a
1:40
little bit early, but how you doing bro?
1:43
This is crazy. So, you know, you're relatively
1:46
unknown a couple years ago and you're just propelled into
1:50
stardom because you're proof of work, man, which is awesome.
1:55
That's the way that Bitcoin should be.
1:57
That's that. Love the Bitcoin ecosystem for
1:59
that. So before I start getting into
2:01
any of the questions about Noster and and Domus and all
2:04
that stuff, how has that been going from zero to 100 in a very
2:08
short period of time? Yeah, I mean, this is, you know,
2:12
not my first open source project, but it's.
2:14
Definitely one of my first projects that kind of blew up
2:17
and this is actually isn't very it's not very common.
2:19
If you're like a regular open source developer you know
2:21
sometimes it's hard to get people to interested in your
2:23
your project or your library. But yeah I seem to struck a
2:26
chord with this one. People seem to love it.
2:28
Obviously the the social aspect you know has driven it a lot.
2:32
You know we we we've never had like a social network that we
2:35
can build on our own before we've we've always kind of
2:37
relied on you know corporations and big tech for that.
2:40
So now we have this protocol that we're building on and.
2:43
And it just feels very communal. It feels like everyone's kind of
2:45
like building it together. There's a lot of passion, a lot
2:47
of grassroots, a lot of bitcoiners.
2:49
So yeah, it's just tons of fun. Yeah.
2:51
And I kind of wanna focus on that a little bit.
2:54
Right. Which is this idea that it kind
2:56
of struck A chord, right? We're living in this age of
3:00
censorship, man. Like in the.
3:03
And again, not to get into politics or anything, but you
3:06
see it in the United States where, you know, if you have
3:09
certain political beliefs or whatever, you know, you're
3:11
getting the platform. You're getting the platform on
3:13
YouTube, on Twitter. But the Twitter files came out
3:16
where the US government was literally asking Twitter to
3:19
censor certain people, even though that was specifically
3:22
against the 1st Amendment. It's never been as highlighted
3:26
as it is today. The importance of of, you know,
3:30
of, of Noster, of, of of also the app that you built for
3:34
people to interact with it in an easier way.
3:37
So, you know, you talk a little bit about that.
3:41
What's your take on everything that's going on, all this
3:44
censorship? Was it the inevitable results of
3:49
centralization? Yeah, I think, I think it's
3:54
pretty, it was a pretty weird situation in the early days of
3:57
the Internet where we had these protocols where things were
4:00
mostly decentralized. We had websites, we had e-mail.
4:02
That's kind of how the Internet was built.
4:04
And then we got into this weird state in like 2002 thousand to
4:07
2010 where, you know, these companies started building these
4:10
monopolies on network effects and that became very powerful
4:14
because it's really hard to leave their, their platform once
4:17
you're in it. And with that much power you
4:19
know, they have, they have the power to, you know, censor and
4:22
and control people usually just because of advertising money,
4:26
right. They just, they just wanna make
4:27
the most money on advertising. So you know, if you're saying
4:29
something that the advertisers don't don't like or don't wanna
4:32
be associated with. Then you know they have no
4:34
problem like removing like they're just profit and their
4:36
business like that's what you know that's what that that's
4:39
what they care about. But this just you know we
4:41
shouldn't be building our civilization on you know that
4:46
that state of things it's just kind of ridiculous like you know
4:48
the the the the countries you know that makes America
4:51
specifically was built on you know very specific foundations
4:53
of free speech and things like that like you said.
4:55
So when we're when we're transitioning into the
4:57
cyberspace like we should try to you know retain some of those
4:59
properties. Instead of just like building
5:01
our speech on top of these corporations, which doesn't make
5:04
any sense. So yeah, so I think we just got
5:07
into a weird state. And now, you know, people, I
5:09
think because of Bitcoin, people started to care about protocols
5:12
more. And so people are more open to
5:15
this idea of building on protocols.
5:17
So, you know, social networking just made so much sense.
5:20
Yeah. And and I love the last part
5:23
that you said, which is because of Bitcoin, people started to
5:26
care a little bit more. And it's interesting that you
5:28
say that because it was not too long ago we had a CEO of Start
5:33
Nine also a good friend of mine, Matt Hill, and he was talking
5:36
about that. He's like look like you know the
5:38
whole thing about Start Nine which love the node personally
5:41
use it myself, it's my daily driver.
5:44
And and you know, it's it's about the idea of sovereign
5:49
computing the way that he was talking about it and he said
5:52
something very similar. He said, look like Bitcoin, you
5:55
know, the the mere fact of, you know, not having to trust
5:58
someone else's copy of the blockchain, trusting your own
6:00
copy of the blockchain was kind of like the Trojan horse to get
6:05
people to start thinking about, you know, sovereign computing
6:08
and you know, running their own, you know, server, so to speak,
6:11
or personal server, so to speak. Before Bitcoin, you know, that
6:15
conversation would have never have taken place.
6:17
So it's interesting how Bitcoin kind of started this whole
6:21
movement, so to speak, sovereignty, the, the idea of
6:26
not censorship, resistance and all that stuff.
6:29
So what it is, What attracted you to Noster in the 1st place?
6:35
Like what was it about Noster that you wanted to work on
6:40
versus working on something like Bitcoin?
6:43
Yes, I mean, I got into Bitcoin pretty early, like 2010, and
6:46
I've always just found it. Bitcoin to me always represented
6:50
this idea that you know we can actually reclaim sovereignty in
6:52
cyberspace again. And you know it's not impossible
6:55
to do so, right. When you know Bitcoin set the
6:58
the standard. Then it became like, well, we
7:01
should be doing this in every everywhere online, right.
7:03
Why do why do we give away, you know our our data?
7:06
Why do we give away like allow these companies to control our
7:08
speech or allow us to, you know say what we're allowed to say.
7:11
So something that I always It just seemed like the natural
7:14
next step after Bitcoin in the sense that when you know we have
7:16
free money but you. You know, what are we building
7:18
our our free speech online on top of like, what's that
7:21
protocol? You know, with money we had
7:22
Bitcoin, but we didn't really have one for speech, at least
7:25
online. So, you know, the first thing I
7:27
looked at was Mastodon and it was like, OK, that might that
7:29
might work. But it turned out Mastodon and
7:31
fed in this activity pub, which just turned out to be worse than
7:35
Twitter somehow, because it ended up creating these little
7:37
factions online where if you joined an instance in the
7:40
instance admin didn't like you, they could just ban you and
7:42
you'd lose all your followers. So I'm like, well, that's just
7:44
not gonna work at scale. So yeah.
7:47
And then I found this project by a bitcoiner, Fiat Jeff.
7:50
And he was working on Ellen Earl at the time.
7:53
And you know, I was working on Lightning at the time.
7:55
I was working on sea lighting. And then I'm like, well, this
7:58
seems kind of cool. So yeah, so we're playing with
8:00
built a client and on a weekend, and I was using an iPhone at the
8:03
time and decided to build a client and it was, you know, the
8:05
first mobile client. And then I was like, I was just
8:06
amazed at how simple it was to build on, on this protocol.
8:09
I'm like most other protocols. But so I was just, yeah, I got
8:12
hooked right away. So and let's talk about, you
8:16
know, Noster in itself a little bit.
8:19
You know, for anyone who's not familiar how it works, you know,
8:22
how does the centralization of it work?
8:25
Like, is it very similar to Bitcoin in the sense that people
8:28
are running nodes? How does that work?
8:31
Like what ensures what ensures censorship resistance and you
8:37
know, for the thing to operate the way it does?
8:41
Yeah, so like if you're this is a Bitcoin podcast, so if we're
8:44
gonna compare it to Bitcoin, it's quite different than from
8:47
Bitcoin in the sense that you know with with Bitcoin you have
8:50
a single Ledger and everyone's trying to agree on on that state
8:52
of the Ledger and to maintain decentralized updating in the
8:56
Ledger, you need this process, which is proof of work and
8:58
mining. Yeah, but this is a very special
9:02
thing. Like this is a very unique
9:03
thing. You really only need it for
9:04
money and Ledger. It's actually a very inefficient
9:07
system that you don't really wanna build on top of.
9:08
It would be really silly to have one global.
9:11
Social network that's on a blockchain and you build blocks.
9:13
So yeah, so not sure is not a blockchain.
9:15
It's not like Bitcoin at all. So the way that you maintain or
9:19
the way that you build your sensors resistance is I can give
9:22
an example with let's say if you're using Twitter or X.
9:25
Now if you if you wanna send a tweet, the way that it works is
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that you send it to, you know you come with your tweet and
9:30
then you send it to a single server and that's typically run
9:33
by Twitter and then you know they have the unilateral choice
9:37
to to to accept or reject or or deplatform you.
9:40
So the the biggest issue there is that single server.
9:43
So the what Not sure just provides actually a pretty
9:45
simple solution which is instead of sending it to 1 server
9:48
controlled by one person or one entity, you actually send it to
9:51
let's say 5 or 10 different relays.
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So that even if one server bans you, it doesn't matter because
9:56
other people can get your messages from all those other
9:58
servers. So just that simple idea, we can
10:01
build on that and start building these more decentralized
10:04
communication systems like social networking working, but
10:07
you can build more of the social networking on top of this and
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what would those things be? Yeah, so you have my curiosity.
10:16
Yeah. So actually, you know, Master's
10:19
always mentioned in the context of social media and that was
10:22
like a big motivating factor. But in reality all it is, is
10:25
it's a store and forward network for kind of like messages of any
10:30
kind. So the way that.
10:33
The way that this works is that the typical kind for like a
10:35
tweet would be kind one. And so kind is like a piece of
10:38
data on the message which is just the number and you can
10:40
change it to anything you want. So you could have like kind 1337
10:44
and it can represent anything. It could be like application
10:47
data, it could be, you know, some people.
10:50
Anyway, we can get into examples, but.
10:52
One of the first things I added the protocol which it didn't
10:55
have the when I when I joined was like just likes.
10:57
So if you wanted to like a post, there was no way to do that when
11:00
I when I first joined. So I created a simple spec that
11:02
says OK, you can create a new note of kind 7 or I think it's
11:07
seven and then you just reference another note and then
11:10
there you go, you got a like. So this network is very
11:13
extensible. That means anyone can join and
11:15
kind of extend it and extend the functionality.
11:18
Another thing I added was zaps. So zaps is just a receipt, a
11:21
lightning. A Lightning payment receipt.
11:23
So now on Nostra, on all these Nostra clients, you will see a
11:26
little ZAP button which you can Click to send lightning to
11:29
people, and then it's actually shown on the post that you can
11:32
actually sum up these zaps. And so, yeah, so it's a very
11:35
flexible protocol for decentralized notes and
11:38
communication. Yeah.
11:40
And no. And dude, interesting.
11:43
Interesting. So do you.
11:44
And one of the things I wanted to ask you, William, is, and I
11:48
think you touched upon it in the very, very beginning with the
11:52
concept of the network effect, right.
11:54
And you know, Twitter's now X, very strange, you know, But
11:58
whatever the naming, it's very, very strong, man.
12:03
You know, like you have everyone on there as a, you know, as a
12:08
YouTuber, as a content video, content creator, right.
12:12
You have something very similar with YouTube, Like, you know,
12:14
yeah, the rumble's dope. I could upload videos there, we
12:17
could live stream there, but the real numbers are going to come
12:20
on YouTube, you know, And that sucks because you're put in this
12:23
predicament where it's like you, you know, the platform that has
12:27
a gun to your head, metaphorically of course, is
12:31
also the platform that you're going to get the most amount of
12:34
engagement and whatnot. So do you see that, like, and we
12:38
all know that network effect are very, very difficult to break,
12:41
right? Like, you know, just even the
12:43
mere fact of another platform catching up to YouTube.
12:45
Of course they can keep banning people and they can, you know,
12:48
they can selfdestruct, so to speak.
12:51
But is that something that you think about, right?
12:54
The How will a platform like Gnoster catch up to Twitter's
13:01
network effects? Yeah, so I see maybe there's a
13:05
similar question even on the Bitcoin side of can bitcoin's
13:08
network effects catch up with Fiat money?
13:10
And I think so, just because it's a better idea.
13:12
And over time more and more people adopt this better idea
13:14
and and you know and and Bitcoin is a very strong like you know
13:19
once people get it, they wanna encourage other people to get
13:21
it. So you know if you wanna break
13:23
existing systems then you need those types of effects.
13:26
So the way that Nostra does it is is a little bit different.
13:29
It's not incentivizing it via like greed or anything like
13:31
that. It's actually just when you
13:35
build on top of this network you actually gain everyone else,
13:39
everyone else's network effect who's already built on the
13:40
network. So what does that mean?
13:43
So what I was talking about before when in the activity pub
13:48
case, the Macedon case, if you were to build your following and
13:51
you got banned from an instance, you lose all your followers.
13:54
Because the reason you lose your followers is because you don't
13:56
actually control, you don't own your data in that network.
13:59
So the big the fundamental shift in Nostra is that every piece of
14:02
data you put into the network, it's owned by you in the sense
14:05
that it's signed by your private key.
14:08
And everyone else can validate that you know there's no trust
14:10
in the system, so that if no relays can't send you invalid
14:14
data as if your clients are verifying it.
14:17
So this is actually a really important property, because you
14:20
know the one anyway. That's one important property.
14:22
The other important property is once people start owning their
14:26
data and start putting their data into these networks, they
14:28
feel more confident about putting their social graph into
14:30
this network. And then so more and more
14:32
connections tend to tend to happen on this network.
14:35
And then so let's say I'm building an application and I
14:37
wanna, you know, I I wanna create a new chat app or new
14:40
social app. When I create an app I just, I
14:42
get everyone because it's like a open network and it and there's
14:45
network effects that already exist.
14:47
I can create a new viral app that kind of expands on that
14:50
network effect. So it's like this viral nature
14:52
the the protocol is a very viral nature to it that which I think
14:55
might start steamrolling but we'll see.
14:59
But that's. I think that's really important
15:00
because if you don't have that, then it's not gonna it's not
15:02
gonna work. Yeah.
15:04
Yeah, I agree. Anyway so let's talk about the
15:08
app that you developed which by the way, I was I what I say was,
15:12
and I'll get to why I say was in a second.
15:14
I am a huge fan, but I was an even bigger fan when the zaps
15:20
were enabled. Which I know I'm not your fault,
15:22
but it was awesome, dude. Every single time we dropped a
15:26
new simply Bitcoin episode or simply Bitcoin IRL, I would
15:29
literally copy paste, put it in there.
15:32
I get zapped like 1000 Sats. It was amazing.
15:35
It was such a good it was such a good feeling.
15:38
So and as an Apple user like what the fuck you know?
15:42
And then I have another thing. Maybe this is a crazy question
15:44
but I I think if Steve Jobs was was alive, man.
15:48
Like I don't think he would go for that to be honest.
15:52
Anyways, maybe I'm not even crazy, but dude, I love this.
15:56
It is, it's amazing, you know I'm huge fan.
16:00
I've personally, personally use it.
16:04
So yeah, so you know, a lot to impact there, dude.
16:09
What was your reaction to the the Apple thing?
16:13
Like that's such bullshit, bro. Like, I was enjoying that so
16:17
much, you know, like. Be able to go ahead.
16:20
I actually have good news on this area in this front, so.
16:23
A bunch of other Nostra clients are trying different things and
16:26
there's another client called Current.
16:27
As of like probably a week ago they got notes apps on the App
16:32
Store and they and they did something very interesting.
16:35
So they provide an option to buy a small amount of Sats.
16:39
It's an optional purchase, but you can buy Sats within the app
16:42
and apparently this might be OK with the App Store.
16:45
They didn't tell me that when when I talked to them.
16:47
So they maybe there's like maybe a new decision within the
16:49
company or maybe they just weren't clear when they're
16:51
talking to me, but. If this is an option, there's
16:54
potentially we can get Notes apps back into Domus, but we'd
16:57
have to provide a way to like sell people Sats probably at a
17:00
horrible rate. So we're looking at that right
17:03
now to get the cuz. I 100% agree the app is just
17:06
1000 times more special once you have those notes.
17:09
Apps just feel so good when you're zapping people.
17:11
Yeah dude, it was. It was so it was so nice.
17:15
It was so nice cuz you were able to cuz if you're able to
17:18
normally what you do to monetize contents, you have to go through
17:22
KYC, you have to fill out a form, an approval form,
17:24
whatever. Just the mere fact of just
17:27
connecting wallet of Satoshi or whatever your wallet of choice
17:31
is and then immediately just got just stuff going in from you
17:36
don't know who it's from. It could be from anywhere around
17:38
the world. Like it just it was it was
17:39
freaking awesome. So does does that concern you a
17:42
lot at all that yes. Like we're building open source
17:46
software you know we're Bitcoin. Super exciting, all of this
17:50
stuff, but maybe not on the desktop side of things, but on
17:54
the iPhone side of things specifically since it is like
17:57
kind of like a walled guard in the Apple store, the App Store
18:00
on on there. Does that worry you a little
18:03
bit? Even on the Bitcoin wallet side,
18:05
I actually predicted back late of last year, I said, but I said
18:10
it was going to be governments. I had no idea it was going to be
18:12
Apple. But I said look the the the fact
18:14
that this is such like a bot, like this is such like a single
18:18
point of failure is going to be used by governments.
18:21
That was my prediction, like against Bitcoin wallets.
18:23
Fast forward. It wasn't governments and it
18:25
wasn't against a Bitcoin wallet. It was Apple themselves and it
18:28
was against the Domus app, right?
18:31
So that's does that worry you at all, you know?
18:34
Yeah, the issue isn't necessarily that they're doing
18:38
it. The issue is that there's too
18:39
many people who use Apple. Like, you know, if we had a more
18:42
diverse market of like, you know, phones and things like
18:45
that, then maybe this wouldn't be an issue.
18:47
They'd be like well then you know those get out competed and
18:49
people will eventually, you know, choose the non Apple
18:51
option. But their hardware's just too
18:53
damn good and there's too many damn people use it.
18:57
So yeah, it's definitely tricky because they have a lot of
18:59
power. When you said like ohh, I'd be
19:00
worried about the governments or Apple at this point, I was like
19:03
you know who's the biggest, the more scary entity and and at
19:06
least in digital life is, is probably not the government but
19:08
probably Apple because they they're, you know imagine if
19:11
imagine if the government says OK we're gonna take 30% tax on
19:14
all your transactions like every digital transaction.
19:16
I mean, they basically do that anyway, but these days with
19:19
inflation, tax and stuff. But yeah, it's it's, it's it's
19:22
kinda, I mean centralized entities of any kind that they
19:25
are, they are risk. But This is why we build it on a
19:27
protocol and not a specific platform.
19:29
That's why we, you know, Domus isn't just, you know, a
19:32
centralized server that Apple can say what to do.
19:34
It's like, you know, on Domus users can still receive zaps
19:37
from Android users and desktop users.
19:39
So, yeah, So, I mean, it's gonna be really hard for them to stop
19:42
what's what's, what's coming and what's happening.
19:45
Yeah. Well they they can't they can't
19:53
stop zaps. And what do you mean?
19:47
It's gonna be very difficult for them to stop if if they have
19:50
this monopoly, so to speak, What do you?
19:54
Zaps are just information right. Zaps are just you know anyone
19:57
can send you a ZAP. And even if even if Dom, even if
20:00
Apple says Domus people can't ZAP other people, well, they you
20:03
know they can't stop other people from zapping you on Domus
20:05
right. So that's still allowed, like if
20:07
there there actually is a the ZAP button still on a.
20:10
On all the posts in that domus, but you just can't click it.
20:13
Domus users can't send zaps, but you can still receive zaps just
20:15
fine. Gotcha.
20:17
So I know, I think you told me in the beginning that you're a
20:21
fan of Apple products. Has this made you an Android
20:25
Maxi? No, because I just don't like
20:28
Android. I just think they're clunky.
20:32
I'm a Linux maxi. I love my Linux box, but I love,
20:38
but I love Mac hardware. I love my Airpods.
20:40
I love how everything works together so, so nicely.
20:43
They have really good products, so I just wish they would stick
20:45
to building hardware and stuff thinking they deserve 30% off
20:48
every digital transaction, peer-to-peer between
20:50
individuals. It's like this is making any
20:52
sense to me, but. Yeah, I completely agree.
20:55
I'm a huge Apple fan as well. And you know, it is what it is
21:00
and you know, it kind of sucks. And I'm sticking to what I said
21:04
about Steve Jobs. I think if Steve Jobs was still
21:06
alive, I don't think. I don't think they would do
21:08
this. I really don't think so.
21:11
Anyways, Yeah, I mean. Yeah go ahead.
21:14
If there's if some if some magical company comes along and
21:17
makes hardware as good as Apple and it's like more free freedom
21:22
and like open source and open hardware maybe modular hardware
21:25
like I would obviously switch but like to imagine a world
21:29
where that is gonna happen anytime soon.
21:30
It's just it's really hard right.
21:31
So yeah it's expensive to make phones like they the you know
21:35
there's a reason everything costs too much.
21:36
It's like a huge investment to get that to that level of
21:39
quality into that level of like you know, the things that that
21:42
require that are required to make a phone are just insane of
21:44
that of that quality at least. Of course.
21:46
And then also they have the market for it, right, which like
21:49
kind of justifies the R&D and just it's better like at this
21:52
point I would say like phones are better than laptops in a way
21:55
cuz you could that you could tell that they've invested so
21:58
much more money into, you know, making this thing just so
22:02
convenient in your hands. But yeah, I completely agree.
22:07
And yeah, I don't see a world where you know, how old is Apple
22:10
is like 40 years old. Like Microsoft just shit the bed
22:15
completely. So it's just basically Google
22:17
versus Apple at this point Anyways, all right, so you know
22:22
we have Elon that that launched, you know, that has has his hopes
22:27
and dreams at making Twitter that has now x.com into the
22:33
Everything app, so to speak. I think that is a horrific idea
22:38
just because of. You know, the censorship
22:41
concerns. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm getting
22:44
like little flashbacks of those videos in China of the people
22:47
like scanning their eyeballs to like get on train, like
22:50
everything's apparently through WeChat over there.
22:53
So what's your take on that? It's just like, it's like
22:57
combining all the worst ideas from like like just look at what
23:00
happened to PayPal, you know, it's basically a company from
23:02
from, you know, on. And it's just a complete
23:05
nightmare mode if you want to see what like CBDC future would
23:07
be like just own a PayPal account and if you would say the
23:10
wrong thing they'll just literally close it and steal all
23:12
your money. So it seems like you know that's
23:14
just gonna be more of that plus complete KYC identity
23:18
verification. I just like I don't.
23:20
It's just like what is he doing? It doesn't make any like this
23:23
makes zero sense or you know maybe some people would wanna
23:26
sign out for that but I don't. I don't know it's just it just
23:29
seems insane to me I think. But I really think Nasr really
23:32
front run the whole everything app idea because you know you
23:36
can only really build that on an open protocol that is very
23:38
interoperable. So I feel like Nostra is is the
23:41
stuff that people are building on.
23:42
Nostra are gonna become the Everything app.
23:46
Interesting, Okay, That's a bold statement.
23:49
The people that are building on Nostra are gonna are gonna
23:52
become, are gonna be the Everything app.
23:54
Do you think we'll ever get to a point where the the the Domus
24:01
application is gonna be as seamless as that's what our
24:03
application is today? There's no reason why it can't
24:08
be. You know, it's really just
24:09
developer resources and it's mostly just me working on it and
24:11
I feel like, you know I got pretty close.
24:13
It's not as fast and but like that's just a matter of like
24:16
hammering away and making it faster.
24:17
But yeah, there's I'm working on new technology right now that's
24:22
gonna improve like syncing between between phones and even
24:25
potentially making phones into relays themselves so that it's
24:28
be more peer-to-peer. So there's a lot of technologies
24:31
that that are yet to be built out.
24:32
But yeah, I I do truly believe that Nostra has has the best
24:36
shot at being everything at because you know look at look at
24:40
what happened. Like with the web once, you know
24:41
we had a way to have these protocols that we can build on
24:45
and and everyone was building different applications and you
24:47
know in some sense I see HTTP as like the everything app for
24:50
applications at least on the web.
24:52
It's a way of connecting all these different different
24:54
things. So Nostra is just a more
24:56
powerful way of doing the web. It's kinda like a new, yeah, new
25:00
form of web, which is instead of documents, instead of web pages,
25:04
you have these applications that we're building on top of and
25:06
then the data within the applications are all shared.
25:09
Yeah. So it's like a pretty profound
25:10
technology that will lead to a lot of interesting use cases
25:14
like that, like the everything at.
25:16
Yeah, interesting. Interesting.
25:19
So do you? Do you?
25:20
It sounds like you need help. Do you need help on on Noster Is
25:23
if anyone any open source developers out there?
25:27
You know is that something that you are interested in and your
25:31
thousand yes. So go to domus dot io slash code
25:34
and you know we have like 600 issues open if you want to start
25:38
hacking on Domus. It's completely GPL open source
25:41
free software. Yeah let's and I feel like if we
25:44
that's kind of been my goal in the past like two or three
25:47
months it's just kind of build an open source like I wanna I
25:51
wanna be like the Linux of of of like Nostra in the sense just
25:54
like look at how many people contribute to Linux.
25:56
There's like thousands of developers they've really it's
25:59
it's an insane project I wanna get I wanna get we need that we
26:02
need that scale if we're gonna beat these corporations we need
26:04
a lot of people working on it. So yeah I've been trying I've
26:06
been specifically trying to set up Domus for to make it easier
26:08
for contributors to contribute. But yeah, there's a lot of other
26:11
open source projects where you can kind of jump in or even just
26:13
build your own project. And yeah, it's it's a huge dev
26:16
community, so we'll. Be so.
26:18
I have a question for you. So Twitter is obviously a
26:21
business. You know it relies on sponsors
26:24
and you know now it's direct subscription model.
26:27
And you know any type of way that Elon's gonna try to, you
26:30
know, try to figure out how to monetize this thing.
26:34
What is the, what is the business model for Noster?
26:38
Like what you know, like how do you make money from Domus?
26:42
Is that is that completely? You know, is that just
26:47
completely contributor based like people supporting you?
26:51
What's the monetization aspect of it?
26:54
Or is there none? So actually, you know, almost
26:58
like the very first month I've launched, when I launched Zaps,
27:01
I was probably making 5000 to 10,000 bucks a month on Zaps.
27:05
And that's just like I I don't have that many.
27:07
I maybe have 100,000 followers. But in terms of like influencer
27:11
people I'm not like that big. So it's just picturing a world
27:14
where people are actually more and more people on this like
27:20
more and more people are joining the network and this network
27:21
effects gets bigger and bigger and and lots more people are on
27:24
lightning and maybe buying Sats through the app and just like
27:27
zapping people who are who they like.
27:29
I just think the value for value is such a powerful model in in
27:33
this system. We just have to hit a certain
27:35
scale for it to like be like in nuts and amounts of money, like
27:38
the amount of money people are making on the on the Twitter
27:40
side is is pretty high right now just because there's so much
27:42
advertising money. But I feel like if everyone,
27:45
like if we had a couple 100 million people on on Oscar or
27:50
even just like a 10 million people or something, everyone's
27:52
zapping, like I think it could be getting pretty crazy.
27:55
How's the growth by the way? It's it's hard sometimes it's
27:59
hard to to track that like one example of this is basically a
28:05
large part of Japan like a Japanese subculture of like
28:08
Nasha users now. And there's actually we actually
28:10
have a a conference in Japan in on November 1st and you can sign
28:14
up on Nostrada world it's called Nostrgia.
28:16
But the reason why it's kind of hard to measure is because they
28:19
actually have their own relays and we don't actually see a lot
28:22
of their activity on the main relay on like the North American
28:24
relays because there's activity going on in the country and we
28:27
don't even see it. And that's kind of the cool
28:28
thing about this protocol is that you can have these pockets
28:31
of like Geo, Geo pockets that have their own relays and and
28:35
you might not even. So there could be N number of
28:38
users and we have no idea how many people are using it.
28:40
But in terms of like all the pub keys we've seen on the network,
28:42
I think it's around 1,000,000 people.
28:46
And the growth of that is it's slow and steady.
28:48
It's not like anything crazy, but it's definitely impressive
28:52
so far. So one of the things I wanted to
28:54
ask you before we kind of change topics a little bit was.
28:58
The follower account, right? So it's interesting because
29:01
every time I like press the load button it like changes.
29:04
So like I sometimes I have more, sometimes I have less.
29:08
Like is that does that have to do with the relays?
29:11
Like what? What?
29:12
Like, how does that work? Any app that has a follower
29:16
account is a centralized app because that means there's a
29:18
central source of truth for how many people follow you all.
29:22
The best you can do is like this relay that I'm talking to, like
29:25
give me all the contact lists on that relay.
29:28
So contact list is, it's just another note, it's kind 3 and it
29:32
basically just has all the pub keys that you follow.
29:35
So if you want to get everyone who follows you, you actually
29:36
have to pull down everyone's contact list to see if you're on
29:39
the list, which is actually really slow.
29:41
That's why like it doesn't automatically do it in Domus.
29:44
And and of course that will change because depending on
29:46
which relay you connect to, they're gonna have different
29:48
sets of contact lists of different people.
29:50
You know, imagine if I connected to the Japanese relays and pull
29:53
down, I can actually see everyone in Japan who's
29:56
following me, right? If they if they even publicize
29:58
it, like because sometimes there's private lists that you
30:00
can't even see who's following you.
30:01
So this idea of like a follower count doesn't actually make any
30:04
sense when you think about it in the decentralized system.
30:06
Anyway, that's been my excuse as to as to why it's not good in
30:09
Domus yet. But I I have some things that
30:12
I'm working on that that'll improve it, at least from your
30:14
local view. So we're actually building a
30:17
database into Domus so that it'll start collecting these
30:19
lists over time and then. Isn't that isn't that
30:22
centralization? No.
30:24
You know if you're if you're just a node who's like pulling
30:26
down stuff from the network and and everyone, each node will
30:30
have a different view of the network, right.
30:32
So like they might be connected to different relays and they'll
30:35
have a different follower count for you, then.
30:37
So individually you'll you'll have different counts and then
30:40
eventually the idea is that they'll be eventually
30:42
consistent. If you see a wider and wider
30:43
view of the network, then you'll have a more and more accurate
30:45
follower count and and that's kind of where Domus is going is
30:48
that it won't maybe not be accurate at the start, but that
30:50
over time the count will get more and more accurate.
30:53
Gotcha. Interesting.
30:54
I always wondered that cuz you know, I was like, hey, you know,
30:57
today I have less today I have more and I was like OK, maybe
31:01
it's some technical thing that I don't understand.
31:03
It's an interesting, interesting way.
31:06
I love the way that you described it.
31:08
Anyways, so another question. So do you know we've heard this
31:13
theory 1000 times, which is this idea that a lot of the clown
31:17
world that we're all experiencing right now is
31:20
socalled peak centralization? Do you do you buy into that
31:24
theory that we're we're in peak centralization society and now
31:29
we are you know, whether you believe in the theory from the
31:31
sovereign individual right, which is you know the
31:34
information technologies is really going to change the
31:37
relationship between the state and the individual, the the
31:40
individual and these powerful institutions.
31:43
So do you believe in that theory that we're living through the
31:46
last days of peak centralization and we're going to decentralize
31:50
as a society? I mean, I could totally see it
31:54
going the other way as well. Like, imagine if it just gets
31:56
much, much worse and becomes much more dystopian.
31:59
I don't see why. I think Bitcoin was like the
32:02
first, you know, light in the darkness that I would, I would
32:06
hope people would care about and move toward.
32:09
But there's no guarantee, right? If if people don't care about
32:11
decentralization, then, you know, and people just enjoy
32:16
being sheep and being sold as data to these companies.
32:21
Well, actually the majority of people are fine with that.
32:22
If you think about it, most people are just too busy trying
32:24
to pay their bills to care about decentralization or why it might
32:27
be important. So yeah, I could see it going
32:29
either way. Interesting, I mean, and by the
32:32
way, I do agree with you, I think I say this all the time,
32:35
is the bread. And people are so distracted
32:37
with the bread and circuses like they just, you know, like I
32:41
think it was on the heart. It was on a Natalie Bernell
32:46
podcast and she asked Sailor. What keeps you up at night?
32:52
And then his response was people just don't care about sound
32:55
money. And you know and I I I kind of
32:59
you know and I know this is kind of Bitcoin related but it kind
33:01
of applies to this. I think people love convenience,
33:06
you know, Like, I think they just love convenience.
33:09
And you know I think the the it's it's just.
33:13
Bit corners, just like, no, you know, like I would rather run my
33:16
own note. I'd rather do my own thing, have
33:18
my, you know, have my own information.
33:20
Fuck that. Hold my own private keys.
33:23
But the vast majority of people, especially in the developed
33:26
world, they're like, what? There's that famous meme of like
33:32
of of the guy, like cooking on the barbecue.
33:35
And then they're like, they tell him, like, look, the broken.
33:38
The money's broken and the guy like, looks and he's like,
33:40
that's interesting. Did you see the game on Sunday?
33:43
And that just kind of like my like, it just kind of gives me
33:47
like, it perfectly represents what I feel like is happening in
33:50
the developed world where convenience is, is is king.
33:55
People are so comfortable. There's a lot of wealth,
33:58
obviously, in the developing world.
33:59
You know, you pitch someone on Bitcoin or you pics, you pitch
34:02
someone, they get it instantly. Yeah, it's.
34:04
Instantaneous. They're like, yeah, what do I
34:06
sign up? There's a phenomenal idea.
34:09
So what's your take on that? Yeah, I mean I think people are
34:13
are happy with convenience up into a certain point and that
34:16
certain point is like when they can no longer afford like
34:18
groceries and then they're like what is what is going on?
34:21
Like why is everything so broken.
34:22
So I think inflation is like this thing that I think is
34:25
pushing people to start thinking about like you know why why is
34:29
this happening and and they start going down that hole like
34:31
you know what is money and you know why is money getting
34:34
devalued. And then you they realize it's
34:35
like ohh, it's a centralized the centralized entity AK, the
34:37
government which is like actually printing more money and
34:41
literally out of greed and like just to line their pockets and
34:45
to line their their buddy to like help out their buddies.
34:47
And then they're like and then they'll they'll start to be like
34:50
well this is not this is not cool.
34:51
This isn't fair and and that's where things start to get really
34:54
scary because yeah things get people get really angry.
34:58
And so this is the thing that I'm I'm obviously concerned
35:00
about that is like the the breakdown of civilization when
35:03
this thing's when this happens. So it might get really ugly, and
35:07
maybe this discussion of decentralized protocols is it
35:09
probably won't be even that important because everyone will
35:11
be killing each other. So I don't know.
35:15
Yeah man, yeah, it's it's interesting to say the least.
35:22
So I kinda wanna go back to the aspect of I was saying, look,
35:30
we're reaching peak centralization.
35:32
You know, get where the world's decentralizing.
35:35
You're like, no Nico, it could definitely get even worse.
35:38
So I kind of want cuz I haven't really heard that often, heard
35:42
that argument often. Maybe people have a more
35:45
optimistic perspective because of Bitcoin.
35:47
So you know, just like why do you say that?
35:50
Like why do you think things can get worse?
35:54
I just think like, you know, it's really, I mean I'm, I'm an
35:58
optimist. Like I I kind of, you know, I
36:00
would like to see that route. Like you know, Bitcoin is this
36:03
bulwark of freedom and and free money that could sway the tide.
36:08
And I and I totally think that could happen.
36:10
It's just I can't say for sure. You know, who knows, right?
36:12
Because you know the world is very complex and there could be
36:16
these Black Swan events where it just pushes us into a darker
36:19
area. So I I think anything can go.
36:21
I think the world's too complex to say.
36:22
Like for sure that Bitcoin will save us.
36:26
Interesting. OK, All right.
36:28
I like that. I like that.
36:30
And that also kind of puts a fire up everyone's ass, right?
36:37
Cuz they take it a lot more seriously, so to speak, because
36:42
don't take it for granted. Obviously this is a fight.
36:44
We gotta keep fighting and we gotta keep pushing.
36:46
And you know, I don't believe that it's gonna be as simple as
36:50
it is. Oh, well, we have it now and
36:52
we're just gonna like, stroll down into happy into a happy
36:55
future. No, I think it's gonna be a
36:56
continuous fight that we gotta fight for. 100%, I completely
36:59
agree. I just don't think they're just
37:02
gonna go gently into that good night and say, hey guys, you
37:04
found sound money, you found, you know, decentralized social
37:09
media that we can't censor and control the narratives on.
37:12
We're just gonna go gently into that.
37:14
Good night. You guys won.
37:15
Here are the keys. You know, I completely agree.
37:17
Yeah. Maybe because I'm I'm bitter
37:18
lately because of Apple. And I just realized like, ohh,
37:20
this is this is me coming up against the the existing power
37:23
structures. And you know, I struck a nerve
37:25
and I'm like, I just, I'm like, OK, we have zaps.
37:27
We have the zaps protocol. Obviously, like you can't stop
37:29
it. So you know Apple's just gonna
37:30
accept it's like, Nope, I'm like, OK, so I guess we we gotta
37:33
keep fighting for this if we want, you know, sovereign
37:35
individuals to send, you know, lightning and Bitcoin to each
37:39
other on Apple devices, like it's not gonna be easy it's
37:41
gonna be a fight. So.
37:42
Yeah, so you were saying this earlier and got me like very
37:47
excited cuz we so obviously we make content.
37:51
We love value for value. Shout out to the guys at
37:56
Fountain, we're gonna be on geyser very, very quickly on
37:59
Thomas. It was amazing.
38:01
Geyser is awesome and they have good nostril integration now.
38:05
Yeah dude, so many people, so many people are huge fans.
38:09
And if Start Nine has like an app for for Noster as well.
38:14
But yeah, so this idea of the value for value thing, right?
38:19
Dude, you're making 55 cent G's a month.
38:21
I was until they axed the. Yeah, but obviously dude, you
38:25
created the app. So like, you know, like that
38:28
makes perfect sense. Like you know, people want to
38:31
support you want to support your proof of work.
38:33
But you know as a content creator and simply is like not
38:38
to toot our own horn or anything, but in terms of
38:40
Bitcoin channels, like we're pretty, we're pretty decent size
38:44
for Bitcoin only content channel and the value for value doesn't
38:49
come close to the sponsorship model like currently the
38:52
sponsorship models what pays the bills.
38:56
So in an ideal world, it'd be fucking amazing.
39:00
Value for value, you know, Because then.
39:03
That's just, it's just awesome, you know cuz this is just you're
39:05
just being supported by your your your viewers and that'd be
39:09
incredible. So here's here's my here's my
39:11
theory. Like I think, I think the reason
39:13
why value for value isn't working is because it's not
39:16
designed right. It's not designed correctly.
39:18
So for the reason I what do I mean by this?
39:21
So you know in the early days of of of of Domus, we we only had
39:26
the the, the ZAP button on the profile until I get to it, you
39:29
had to go to your profile and click it and no one would ever
39:32
do that, right. The minute we added the ZAP
39:33
button to the post, basically the there's a value for value,
39:37
revenue went through the roof. And I'm like this was just one
39:40
small design design decision that completely changed the way
39:43
that people use the app. So I think that you know if we
39:46
just slightly tweak make it easier for people to ZAP, make
39:49
it easier for people to actually do it.
39:51
A good example of this is like there's a website called ZAP
39:53
Stream and you can actually do Zaps in a live stream situation.
39:58
So that's just another example of like just make it easier for
40:01
people to support people and make it fun.
40:03
Because if it's not fun or easy, then they're not gonna ZAP you.
40:06
So anyway, So I think we're still early.
40:08
I think the reason we're seeing the, yeah, the low ZAP review is
40:10
just because it's not designed well yet.
40:13
Interesting. We.
40:14
Well, OK, OK, OK, OK. So it was a simple UI issue,
40:19
right? That which, like, which hundred
40:21
X? The amount that people were
40:23
zapping? Dude, that is freaking
40:25
fascinating, OK? That was it was mind blowing for
40:27
me. When I'm like, I'm like that's
40:29
why I knew when they when they told me that I'm gonna, they're
40:30
gonna have to remove those apps. I'm like this is gonna kill ZAP
40:33
revenue because it's just people love how easy it is.
40:35
If you just make it easy, people do it.
40:37
Yeah, that's the whole point like and it's and it's so like I
40:41
remember like it was it was such a good feeling, bro.
40:43
It was such a good feeling. You up like you, you, you link
40:46
your content, you do whatever and it's like thousands apps
40:49
here and there and you. Just and you got that little the
40:51
the haptic feedback it feels good.
40:53
It's like ohh and feedback it's like it's actually it's actually
40:56
not about it's for it's actually feels good for the person who is
40:59
zapping it. That's the I think there's a
41:01
psychological aspect of having like haptic feedback on a ZAP
41:04
button. It actually just feels good.
41:05
I don't like yeah even if like yeah it's just crazy.
41:09
I actually there's something that I discovered when I was
41:12
when I removed the ZAP button. So we have this feature in Domus
41:14
where. If a user turned on the only
41:17
zaps mode in Dumbest, it would actually remove your like button
41:20
for other people and people got so angry when individuals had.
41:26
If you were an individual and you chose that you don't wanna
41:28
be liked because you you actually won't even see likes on
41:30
your post if you turn. If you turn on only zaps mode
41:33
and but The thing is this angered people who wanted to
41:36
like their post even if they would never see the like.
41:39
They're like I still wanna ZAP it or I still wanna like it.
41:41
It's for me. It's I don't care if the other
41:43
person doesn't see it. I'm like.
41:45
I discovered something really deep about psychology of that
41:47
day. It's not for you.
41:49
It's actually for them. They wanna feel good about
41:51
zapping. They wanna feel good about
41:52
liking. And yeah, just make it feel good
41:55
for them and make it easy. And then people do it.
41:57
Dude, that is so freaking fascinating, right?
42:00
And that makes me 100 times more optimistic.
42:03
So it was a UI problem. It was literally a UI problem.
42:08
And it's so I guess you could say that psychologically we
42:12
haven't cracked the nut yet. Here's another thing we can do.
42:15
Like I haven't done this yet, but people have been asking for
42:18
this. Sometimes they people forget and
42:20
not think about zapping your post.
42:22
They they maybe they want to, they want to support you, but
42:24
maybe they're busy and they they didn't get it.
42:25
They didn't see the post or they didn't have time to ZAP it.
42:28
Imagine if in Domus you could set up and you can actually
42:31
already do this in some gnostic clients.
42:32
I think Snort Social does this. Imagine if you said OK every
42:35
time I ZAP any anytime I ZAP anyone.
42:38
I want to actually send a proportion of those apps to
42:39
these people that I want to support.
42:42
So just make it automatic, make it easy and then.
42:45
You know, you'll just start getting a passive income stream
42:47
just from people zapping and using the app regularly.
42:49
So there's just stuff like that. It's a design decision and we
42:51
can do it and it could just really drastically improve
42:54
supporting people. OK, so wow.
42:57
This is this is fascinating. OK, so do you think we'll ever
43:02
get to worlds where. So I know that the.
43:07
I know that you guys have the image hosting natively through
43:10
the app. Do we get Do you think we'll
43:12
ever get to a world where we have video natively supported on
43:19
the app as well? I think anytime you have like
43:23
high bandwidth operations like video or audio and you want it
43:28
to work well, you basically are forced to rely on centralized
43:33
solutions. But doesn't mean you can't have
43:35
decentralized centralized solutions in the sense that
43:38
maybe you could run your own CDN or your own video stream
43:42
service. But.
43:43
Yeah, it's it's it's a little bit harder to do peer-to-peer
43:47
those are used. Those are typically peer-to-peer
43:48
technologies which is Nostra isn't really peer-to-peer so
43:51
gotcha. So do you see, do you see a you
43:55
know cuz that's that's the vision speak after speaking with
43:58
with Matt from start nine and whatever do you do you see this
44:02
more decentralized world where people are you know for example
44:06
like from my start nine I'm, I'm, I'm running a noster relay
44:09
right. Like, I'm doing that myself,
44:11
right? So do you see this world of of
44:15
more and more individuals kind of running their own sovereign
44:19
computing, sovereign server, you know, and you can get kind of
44:22
it, you can get kind of tricky with it cuz you can build that
44:25
into a router. And a router is basically
44:27
already like a dedicated computer, just, you know,
44:30
plugged into your Ethernet port. You could definitely put like a
44:32
little, you know, a low end server already there that's also
44:36
a Bitcoin node. I guess you know where I'm going
44:38
with this, right? Do you see that world kind of
44:41
developing, or is that just a pipe?
44:44
Is that just a pipe dream for us crazy bitcoiners?
44:50
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm one of those people.
44:52
I run a node, I run a Lightning node, I run a Bitcoin full node,
44:54
and I have it on the Internet. But it's not easy.
44:57
It's not easy to set that up. So I think most people are not
45:00
gonna do that. It's actually kind of hard to
45:02
run. Network services on your home
45:04
network, there's like, you know, ISPs really block a lot of ports
45:07
and make it difficult. Sometimes they have dynamic
45:08
ports. And so I think it's actually a
45:10
pretty difficult prospect for most people.
45:12
But this is where Nostra actually works really well for a
45:15
lot of people because you don't have to run anything, you just
45:17
you just connect to a bunch of relays and if those relays go
45:19
down, it's fine because you're connected to more than one.
45:22
So that model just happens to be really easy for people.
45:25
And I think that easiness is a partial.
45:28
Personally, why? I mean the big part of why.
45:31
Domus and Nostra are successful, are becoming more and more
45:34
popular because you don't have to run a node, you know, I think
45:37
Bitcoin is like, you know, because in Bitcoin you have a
45:39
specific reason to run a node. You know, you get to privately
45:42
view your balances and your transactions without relying on
45:45
a third party. And there's actually good
45:46
reasons for that. But you know, in Nostra it's
45:49
like, well, you know, all the conversation, all the
45:51
conversations are mostly public and so there's not too much
45:54
incentive to run your own whether unless you're just like
45:56
backing up your, your, your stuff, which is actually really
45:58
useful. I mean, I run.
46:00
Local backup as well. So yeah I know there's different
46:03
reasons running. I don't I don't know if you if
46:04
there's a very strong reason to run a Nostra relay except for
46:07
backups. But yeah, I mean maybe one day
46:11
maybe one day just Domus just makes it easy to to run maybe
46:14
your phone becomes your node right on.
46:16
I feel like on Nostra we're we're more likely to be able to
46:18
do that versus like a running like a lightning or or Bitcoin
46:21
node, which is much, much harder.
46:23
How much data is stored on a Nostra relay?
46:26
Well, Noster relays are just text, right?
46:28
They're just JSON blobs which can be stored very efficiently.
46:31
So you know, I probably run one of the biggest Noster relays and
46:35
I think it's up to like 300 to 400 gigabytes only because like
46:39
within the first couple months I didn't have spam protection on.
46:43
So like half of that's just spam.
46:44
Now it has has that rate limiting and stuff, but it's
46:47
it's very, very efficient with storage and you can put a lot of
46:50
stuff in it. Gotcha.
46:52
OK, so it's not like Bitcoin at all just because it's text.
46:56
Yeah yeah it's well yeah and you know Bitcoin that's they're
46:59
storing the every the world's transactions and you know in in
47:02
in your case you could actually just run your own kind of
47:05
private community and and that would get low traffic and not
47:08
need to not have huge storage requirements it's not like you
47:11
and then and there's another thing we can do on Noster which
47:13
is you can actually just like prune everything and not worry
47:16
about maintaining states or anything.
47:18
So yeah, it's you. You have much more flexible
47:21
options for reducing the size of your your data.
47:24
So you're talking about spam. Like, what do you mean spam?
47:26
Like, what is that? What does that mean?
47:28
What does that entail? Yeah, so if you're running a
47:31
public relay, which means that, hey, it's kind of like we're
47:33
doing this for fun and anyone can post messages when you when
47:37
you do that. Like, you don't need to do that.
47:38
You can have paid relays and people actually do have paid
47:40
relays where you pay like 10,000 sats to send a message.
47:43
But if you wanna make it easy for new people to get on, it's
47:45
really helpful to have a public relay.
47:48
So whenever you, for instance whenever you join Domus, you can
47:50
actually just create an account and start posting.
47:52
You don't have to, like there's no sign up process, there's no
47:53
e-mail, there's no data collection.
47:56
So all you have to do is generate a private key.
47:58
But that has a downside, which means that anyone can generate
48:00
infinite number of private keys and spam your node and put
48:03
advertising on it and stuff like that.
48:06
So yeah, that's if you don't have rate limiting on your on
48:09
your relay, then people can just spam it like at full speed,
48:11
which is not good. Gotcha.
48:13
Interesting. Interesting.
48:15
So in your eyes, William, we have these two futures in front
48:21
of us, right? We always say it on the Simply
48:23
channel. It's either Bitcoin or slavery.
48:26
I definitely put Noster and Damas on the side of Bitcoin,
48:30
Definitely put Cbdcs and x.com, Twitter, all those centralized
48:38
social media platforms. Definitely on the side of
48:40
slavery, what is the future of social media in your eyes?
48:44
If you if you were master of the worlds, how would you envision
48:49
that world? Yeah, I think we're moving to,
48:53
especially now that we have Nostra, we're moving to a world
48:54
where social media is less about corporate money making schemes
49:01
and advertisement. It's more, it's much more human,
49:03
it's much more it feels, it feels better.
49:05
I feel like people on Nostra are just tend to be happier because.
49:09
They're freer like that you actually feel free.
49:10
You know that no one can censor you.
49:12
You know that no one can de platform you and actually just
49:14
that makes you feel really good. And because I think what happens
49:17
a lot on social media is that people self censor themselves
49:19
because they're worried about being themselves because if they
49:22
post the wrong photo or they say the wrong thing then the and
49:24
that and that and if it's not corporate ad friendly then
49:28
you'll be removed or if if someone else reports you then
49:30
you'll be removed. So there's so much self
49:33
censoring happening on these networks, and it's actually.
49:36
Very unnatural state. It feels very wrong.
49:38
It feels very corrupted and it feels very unhuman because
49:41
people are just, you know, we wanna just speak freely with
49:43
each other and we don't feel like we, you know, I don't know.
49:47
So I feel like we're leading to a world where social media is
49:50
much more human, much more, you know, connect, you know, much
49:53
more local, much more community based, much more less
49:56
algorithms, less like mind control from like algorithms
49:58
advertising. So I don't know.
50:00
I think, I think we're moving in a good future.
50:02
I love that. And by the way, I feel I felt
50:05
that 100%. I think like the first noster
50:10
things that I said were just like things that I knew that
50:13
there was no possible way I was going to be able to say that on
50:16
Twitter. And to my surprise, then I
50:20
figured out that you can't delete stuff.
50:24
So I was like, wait a second. Oops.
50:27
So yeah, I mean, that was interesting.
50:30
But yes, I do 100% agree you you definitely feel a lot more free.
50:37
Definitely feel a lot more free. Do you think that there's.
50:41
Because I'm going to play the devil's advocate for a little
50:44
bit because you know, of course as a bitcoiner, you know if
50:48
someone who makes content I, I, I think censorship is like
50:52
literally a crime. But you know the other side
50:55
would say you know one of their main talking points is hate
50:58
speech right? Like hate speech this hate
51:00
speech that you know, terrorists, drugs, you know, non
51:06
KYC bad people you know, etc etc etc.
51:11
What would be your response to that?
51:14
I mean, I always say like information wants to be free,
51:17
you know, in, in the sense like what?
51:20
We don't apply the same standards to like let's say
51:22
websites for instance. You know, anyone can start a
51:24
website and put their hate stuff on there, like, you know?
51:27
Or you know, I, I guess, you know Alex Jones was censored
51:29
off. You know, there's but he has his
51:31
own website, Infowars and you can go there and you know, so
51:33
even if you don't like his speech, you know, there's a
51:35
place on the Internet where you, you know, you can you can be
51:37
free. So why do we, why do we have
51:40
different standards when it comes to social networking
51:42
versus the Internet? Like, you know, the Internet, on
51:45
the Internet information wants to be free.
51:46
And if you want to control or center that, then you know, it's
51:49
just not the place for it. So that's how I that's how I
51:51
view Nostra as it's just a different world and it's a
51:54
different reality that people need to accept.
51:56
Because it's, you know, because it's not a centralized solution.
51:59
There's not a single place where you can go.
52:00
There's not a trust and safety team that can you can go to and
52:03
say you need to remove this content.
52:04
So it's just a new reality and just I think people just need to
52:06
live with it and what what are the consequences of that new
52:09
reality I have I have my own like I I think it's a forcing
52:12
function just like the self censorship just so that you
52:16
don't want to be like want to be the platform as a forcing
52:19
function. I think the mere fact of not
52:22
being able to deep platform certain speech, in my opinion,
52:26
it's a forcing function in the sense that it will actually
52:29
force people to tell the truth in the long run because they
52:33
can't just take away anything that they, you know, that makes
52:36
them look bad, you know, to talk about politicians, right.
52:40
So I think in the long run it it kind of kind of forces people
52:43
to, you know, tell the truth and have integrity and be honest
52:46
about things, you know it. Completely gets rid of the
52:49
people who rely on censorship to to win arguments, so it kind of
52:53
elevates the argument. Now you have to use ideas to
52:57
fight an argument and and the best ideas have to win because
53:01
you no longer have this like slimy trick where you can just
53:03
deep platform someone to to win an argument.
53:06
So I think I think it's gonna improve discourse it's gonna
53:09
make you know people be more honest and and especially with
53:13
that feature like you said you know you can't delete stuff you
53:16
can technically delete stuff but it's it can't but it's not
53:18
guaranteed right. So in basically you can't delete
53:21
stuff. So it actually increases the
53:24
amount of integrity on the network in the sense that you
53:26
know that you can't just be slimy and say something rude and
53:29
then be able to delete it. It's like you actually have to
53:31
stand for your speech. And it makes people think twice
53:33
when they're when they're sending a message into the into
53:35
cyberspace cuz like they'll know it'll be there for.
53:37
And you mean it's out there, right?
53:39
It's information, yeah. So let's talk about something
53:41
else that, you know. Also I've had a little bit of
53:46
experience making content which is copyright, you know, and
53:52
obviously you're saying that most of most of stuff, not all
53:56
of the stuff is, is text based. But you could still say that
53:58
some text is copyrighted. And I I like the whole copyright
54:04
thing on the Internet is such a giant clusterfuck, to be
54:07
perfectly frank. You know they've they've built
54:10
in systems where you know it's it's automatic and they'll just
54:13
generally just scan everything. They'll see if has a copyright.
54:18
But it sounds like because of these decentralized social media
54:22
platforms, A copyright's gonna be very, very difficult to
54:27
enforce, if not impossible to enforce.
54:31
So I think that's one of the unintended consequences of this.
54:36
Yeah, I mean I'm glad that Nosher is a text based protocol
54:39
because the fight of copy or copyright in terms of like media
54:44
and like movies and images and things like that, I think that's
54:47
a much bigger fight and obviously there's protocols
54:49
that. Are better at getting around
54:52
that, so just BitTorrent and things like that.
54:53
So yeah, so I'm happy that I don't have to fight those
54:56
battles, cuz there are people who cuz imagine if Nostra stored
55:00
images and people start uploading legal images like
55:02
child porn, things like that, and that would just instantly
55:05
kill relays, right? So it's actually really
55:07
important that. That's not in Nostra's fight,
55:11
cuz I think the more important fight is free speech and I need
55:13
to focus on that. But the copyright issue is like
55:16
not something that's typically dealt with cuz it's yeah,
55:18
because of the text, right. So, gotcha, Okay.
55:21
Interesting. So what you're saying is that it
55:23
doesn't really apply to the Nostra, the Domus or the Nostra
55:28
protocol? Yeah, I mean, people could start
55:29
publishing like ebooks or something that would be
55:31
interesting, but then it's like. Yeah, they need us to start, but
55:35
typically the note sizes are so like they're restricted, so you
55:38
can't put too many things into a single note.
55:40
I think the Max size on a lot of relays is like 100 kilobytes.
55:43
So it'd be it'd be very inefficient and kind of stump to
55:46
do that. Gotcha.
55:48
All right. Well, I wanna use the last
55:49
couple minutes or so to talk about any hidden features or any
55:54
future things that you have on the domest roadmap that you know
55:58
that you can reveal to the audience today listening.
56:02
Yeah, I mean. I think we're gonna bring notes
56:05
apps back with the if if this actually works if this this
56:08
thing that current is doing you know with having in app purchase
56:11
that purchases Sats. I need to figure out how I'm
56:14
gonna do that maybe let's have have my nodes like send sats to
56:16
people through Apple Pay somehow but you know I think notes apps
56:19
coming back is gonna be a thing in the future.
56:22
I'm I've been working hard on this the Nostra DB which is new
56:25
engine which is gonna be much more efficient at syncing and
56:28
potentially even make Domus a more of a peer-to-peer.
56:31
Nostra app which would be really cool because imagine if you can
56:33
just sync notes between your phones.
56:36
Yeah there's there's so much stuff like I wanna I and I'm a
56:38
big fan of like stories on on Instagram.
56:40
Like I I don't wanna use Instagram anymore.
56:42
The only reason I use Instagram is to this story so I wanna add
56:44
stories maybe like a profile grade of images.
56:47
Yeah there's literally it's like a limitless the things we can
56:49
add and we just make it better and better and so expect all the
56:53
of all those things in in in the near future So man that's that's
56:56
really exciting and I I I really think that you know this will
57:01
shine the more they censor and in countries where you know the
57:08
the powers that be are not a fan of free speech.
57:10
I think you know apps like these are just like dude like our
57:15
protocols better said like they're essential for human
57:19
communication freedom of speech. Anyways, William, it's been
57:23
quite an honor and privilege to have you on the show today.
57:26
A huge fan of what you've created.
57:29
Obviously the community is as well.
57:31
It's been extremely well received and thank you so much
57:34
for coming on Simply Bitcoin today.
57:36
This is an awesome chat. Yeah, thanks for inviting me.
57:38
Appreciate it man. So why don't you tell everybody
57:40
on the interwebs listening where they could find you specifically
57:43
and where they could find more info about Domus and stuff?
57:48
Yeah, I'm actually mostly only posted on Nostra these days.
57:50
So if you go into a Nostra client and type in
57:51
jb55@jb55.com, that's my Nostra address, so you can find me
57:56
there. And you have a website jb55.com
57:59
I guess. But yeah, that's where you'll
58:01
find me. Awesome, dude.
58:02
Well, thank you so much. I'm gonna put you backstage for
58:04
a SEC guys, Thank you so much for listening to another episode
58:06
of Simply Bitcoin IRO. If you enjoyed the show, you
58:08
know to do smash that like button.
58:10
Consider subscribing if you feel like we provided you value.
58:13
And we'll see you tomorrow for a brand new episode of Simply
58:16
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58:19
Peace out, y'all.