nips VS gotosocial

I'm interested in this too. While I note the [slightly chaotic] plethora of NIPs[0], and many of them look blockchainy, NIP-01 is looks ultra pragmatic and simple, and is the only one that is required to be implemented, AFAIK.

  [0] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips

For you and others following. Common in early nostr apps. The web-extension spec is defined in https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/07.md. Most apps check for window.nostr, then fail silently when it's missing or blocked. There are also some popular extensions in that list.

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md

The TLDR is that when a Nostr client supports NIP-65, it broadcasts to all known relays (which is continually updated/expanded) the list of relays that User A posts their stuff to.

This means that as long as User B is connected to at least one of those "all known relays", their client now knows what relays User A posts their stuff to, and will specifically fetch things from those relays when it needs to load User A's things.

It's essentially the Nostr take on the Gossip protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocol

I think your best bet here is Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays): https://nostr.com https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr

Nostr isn't a federated platform like Mastodon or Lemmy, it's more similar to the AT protocol created by Bluesky, whilst being far simpler to understand and write apps using it. The nostr protocol is defined by a series of NIPs (Nostr implementation possibilites https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips), the most basic of which can be implemented in a client or a relay in 50-100 lines of code in any modern programming language.

Each user runs a client, anyone can write a relay or run any of hundreds of existing implementations, both clients and relays can choose to support a number of NIPs. Users have a public-private keypair, and distribute notes to relays signed with their private key, which are verified by relays. Clients subscribe via websockets to any number of relays (I usually have 20-30), and receive notes from all users on those relays' databases, or filtered by the public keys of the users you're following. Relays for the most part don't communicate with each other. If you're ever blocked or banned from a relay, you'll still be able to have your notes seen as long as you have at least one relay in common with anyone who wants to see them. I run my own as well for extra resiliency.

At the moment there's ~50 standardised NIPs, which add features like likes, zaps (bitcoin tips for notes), user status, post expiration, mentions, search, DMs, and public chats. Nearly all of these are supported by popular clients and relays. While nostr is primarily used for social media at the moment, it's already possible to build upon as a protocol for pretty much any online service.

The total active user count on most public relays I'd estimate is somewhere around 500k to a million, though the nature of the protocol makes it impossible to estimate its true size. The perceived community on most relays before following anyone frankly can get pretty cancerous, mainly due to a lot of clients sorting notes by new by default, so I can only hope to high heaven it'll improve as it grows.

Though like any new non-centralised platform, it's more difficult to get started on for most non-technical users as they have to pick one of hundreds of clients to install, and requires caution to never leak your private key and be very wary of which clients you trust it with.

There is no "zaps balance". Zaps are just receipts of lightning payments.

The basic idea is that a lightning node will detect when the invoice with a nostr note inside is paid, and then send the receipt to nostr as a nostr note, with the original bolt11 invoice inside with the signature from the user who sent the zap.

It's all describe by NIP-57, a spec I put together to support this:

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/57.md

I was working on c-lightning at the time and I thought it would be really cool to replace the "like" button with an instant bitcoin micro-payment. I think it worked out quite well! There are many sites utilizing zaps in all aspects of the protocol, such as a decentralized market for AI job requests (data vending machines), zapgoals and zap fundraisers. All built on this note type. protocol synergy!

Take a look at NIP-23: Long-form Content https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/23.md .

Honestly if a server allows free login, then it shouldn't matter how the donations are spent, the admins are probably at a loss anyway. I've seen large phpBB forums run on donations for a long time, so maybe federated socials can work too. One unfortunate thing I've noticed from running a single-user GoToSocial instance is that it consumes a lot of storage, I'm getting 8Gb just from myself and the instances I follow. This could be brought down with more agressive cache settings, but it still shows that people using these new social media still have habits from Twitter or Reddit, where bandwidth and storage is paid for by advertisers, and don't realize how many gigabytes they're casually moving around. I really hope this won't be the downfall of the Fediverse.

I'll be starting my own instance of the fediverse, something for myself and family only. I'll start with gotosocial, and add a reddit like alternative too, but haven't decided between kbin or lemmy yet. Maybe I'll add pixelfed down the line.

gotosocial is easy to install and easy to use, but you need 3rd party apps on your phone or computers to use it properly. Another option is snac2, you need to compile it manually but it is easy to use once compiled. Its web interface is kinda outdated, but it is usable as it is. Both are very light on resources, and can be installed on $4 vps.

[2] https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial

GotoSocial would be another option (also in Go with SQLite backend.) Although you'll need a front-end because it doesn't ship with one.

https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial

Not sure if you only want Mastodon. If not, I am running https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial on a CPX11 Hetzner instance which costs 5.18 euros/month. Am hosting a few other things, but CX11 instance for 4.51 euros/month will also do well.

The main one is how they handle keys[1] which broke federation with Pleroma for a while. There's also some weirdness with their HTTP signing which breaks Honk follow requests but I'm still tracking that down.

[1] https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/issues/11...

Compare mastodon, pleroma, misskey, friendica, gotosocial, pixelfed, peertube (https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial) and their main forks.

As u/riffic mentioned, Mastodon is quite heavy. But since mastodon follows (mostly) standard protocols, you can host an alternative. I’m really interested in Gotosocial, which is written in Go so it can run on a cheaper VPS. But it doesn’t seem to support all features (which will be a common thing with alternatives).