Nips Alternatives

nips reviews and mentions

• Why isn't Bluesky a peer-to-peer network?
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Jan 2024

  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

• Today I'm launching Flare, a video sharing site built on Nostr Like YouTube
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 21 Dec 2023

  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.

• RSS can be used to distribute all sorts of information
  9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Nov 2023

  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

• Ask HN: What is the next great online community?
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Oct 2023

  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.

• Nostr: A Decentralized Messaging Protocol
  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Sep 2023

  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!

• Why even let users set their own passwords?
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Jul 2023
• Where does iris upload it's images?
  1 project | /r/nostr | 9 Jul 2023

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

• Nostr NIP-05 : Mapping Nostr keys to DNS-based internet identifiers
  1 project | /r/Namecoin | 7 Jul 2023
• Greetings! I'm here to tell you about Nostr, a decentralized and censorship resistant social communication protocol that has recently added protocol level support for Moderated Communities. Developers are actively building this on Nostr and would love your help and support. Let us know what you want
  5 projects | /r/RedditAlternatives | 6 Jul 2023
• I happened to learn about Nostr by chance.
  1 project | /r/Namecoin | 6 Jul 2023
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