blu

The reason Nostr growth is stagnant is mostly cultural, not technical, IMO.
Sure there is still some deep weirdness with the UX compared to the centralized services (like being unable to delete or undo posts/likes/reposts, or that the phone clients still have weird little bugs and are still under featured in some basic ways).
Remember, there was a LOT of excitement here not long ago, and many people left after joining despite the fact that it kept getting better. Which should tell us something, no?Why was this? My guess is because there's only like three topics of discussion here:
1. Bitcoiners talking about how great Bitcoin is
2. Bitcoiners talking about how great Nostr is
3. Bitcoiners talking about politics
There's outliers who break the mold for sure (and we need more of them), but even Bitcoiners are interested in other things and going where people outside of Bitcoin are, and so even most Bitcoiners left.
In many ways Nostr is more fully featured compared to Twitter/X, and in other ways it's even less buggy, but despite the bugs people still use it because that's where so many interesting people are and talking about all sorts of things. Most people are fine dealing with the bots and whatnot and for very few is censorship a real selling point (for now).

2025-06-27 01:43:33 GMT

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Also, this awesome handcrafted blog was hugely helpful to me while thinking through all this: https://gwern.net/ref/gwern-design

2025-06-27 01:40:46 GMT

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If you want a flexible template, checkout my site's Github: https://github.com/thebrandonlucas/blu
I've managed to get it to where you can just upload things to the `md` folder as markdown, and it auto-deploys to my site's VPS via a Github action and it just works. But because it's written in svelte, you have full flexibility to code up whatever else you want if needed. I spent a lot of time building it that way so I could have the low barrier to publishing while also having the full power of a webapp if I later wanted it. Sounds at least on track for what you're looking for.

2025-06-27 01:11:10 GMT

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There should be a "request edit" NIP, "git" not "got" haha.

2025-06-27 01:09:56 GMT

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This is cool but FOSS alternatives already exist for GitHub, such as Gitea. Pretty easy to setup and already mirrors a lot of GitHub functionality and fairly widely used. Why reinvent the wheel just to integrate Nostr? And if we do want to integrate Nostr with a Got service, why not just fork Gitea and add the Nostr stuff to it?

2025-06-26 13:49:42 GMT

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That phrasing, without doubt, had an immense positive impact on the world's changing views on slavery. Even the fact that you feel the need to call it out as hypocrisy is downstream of the effects of that "all men are created equal" statement. Be careful about ridiculing the foundations of your own belief system just because its creators were not as "evolved" into it as you are.

2025-06-26 03:47:55 GMT

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If you just want to do blog/article posts, quick and dirty way is Substack or Ghost. If you want more flexibility/code it yourself, HTML + Caddy on a VPS is straightforward.
Let me know if I can help, I went down the rabbit hole on all these tradeoffs recently for my own site.

2025-06-25 21:38:39 GMT

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I would love to read that longer form if you made it, as I and the community would greatly benefit from it.

2025-06-20 12:35:20 GMT

Fear to Attempt:
https://blucx.substack.com/p/fear-to-attempt

2025-05-11 23:30:35 GMT

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Cool! Would be great UX to add a QR code, and option to auto copy invoice to clipboard (Right now I'm assuming user must manually mouse highlight/copy, then can only pay via a lightning app on the same device?)

2025-05-06 11:47:52 GMT

"AGI poses an existential threat to humanity and I'm extremely concerned about the future"
"Anyway, back to working as hard as we possibly can on creating AGI"

2025-03-21 03:11:15 GMT

"I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Cæsar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, History

2025-03-19 15:24:12 GMT

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The trending feed is all about bitcoin, for example, but I attributed this to the clients just posting the most popular accounts/notes there, not a deliberate effort by the clients to make them "bitcoin" or self-referentially "nostr" specific. It's just the sort of content most people want here.

2025-03-19 15:19:36 GMT

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It's because you invented it, and you worked on bitcoin, so other bitcoiners are the ones who found out about it and took up its development and formed its community, and now that's the community of people who use it, and the network effect has been constrained to us. So even if your feed isn't showing you much bitcoin-related content (which surprises me actually), the people on here are mostly still bitcoiners or people who know about bitcoin. Add to that the fact that most Nostr apps integrate bitcoin concepts like zaps like you mentioned. And then add to that some glaring UX issues, both within the clients and within the network in general (you never know how many likes/comments/zaps/engagement something is getting). Finally, most people don't feel strong incentives to switch away from X or their other alternatives, so as long as there aren't strong incentives to bring in people who aren't into bitcoin in one way or another, it'll remain seen as a "bitcoiner thing".

2025-03-10 18:36:49 GMT

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You can get a phone number or transfer your current one with jmp.chat without needing a sim. Then get the cheogram app to use it. It forwards calls and texts you receive. The UX is terrible but it works pretty very well once you get used to it, and you can pay with bitcoin

2025-02-22 17:15:32 GMT

Made a package for the Bitcoin UI devs out there:
<bitcoin-qr />: A Zero-Dependency Web Component for Stylish Bitcoin on-chain, Lightning, and unified BIP-21 payments.
Try it out here: https://bitcoin-qr.blu.cx/
Source code: https://github.com/thebrandonlucas/bitcoin-qr
https://image.nostr.build/0403d9923aea79319e114de42ddd3cacfbcbe7bdc2d593fe34671bc90f3c803d.png

2024-04-21 02:16:32 GMT

In the new mutinywallet design, how can I swap my onchain to lightning? Trying to do this in the mutinynet version of the app

2023-12-20 18:57:23 GMT

"It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. […] No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves."
-- Karl Popper, On Freedom

2023-11-12 23:55:34 GMT

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https://payjoin.org/

2023-11-03 11:57:44 GMT

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If you want to learn more in depth: https://brandonlucas.net/articles/bitcoin/payjoin

2023-11-01 02:51:11 GMT

Wrote an article on the benefits of payjoin for Bitcoin:
https://brandonlucas.net/articles/bitcoin/payjoin

2023-05-14 14:36:15 GMT

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Ah, so using nostr wallet connect! But based on this PR implementing is definitely non-trivial 😅
Awesome job though, this ux improvement is a game changer

2023-05-14 13:22:47 GMT

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Woah, would love to see how this works under the hood

2023-05-04 14:43:49 GMT

Where is the startup working on lightning micropayments for AI-based requests?

2023-04-21 03:42:17 GMT

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Also note that you can do this with your own self-hosted node if you’d like to as well (doesn’t necessarily have to be a Voltage node)

2023-03-16 14:36:37 GMT

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You could also charge flexible subscriptions for usage of advanced features through the use of something like LSAT

2023-02-28 12:41:17 GMT

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Ironically, he seems to be working on cbdc’s now: https://www.snb.ch/en/mmr/papers/id/working_paper_2021_03

2023-02-26 15:20:28 GMT

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Same here

2023-02-25 23:52:47 GMT

How are clients searching by hashtag in nostr? Is that in a NIP?

2023-02-25 04:09:18 GMT

Aaand now the .com appears to be working: https://nostrlytics.com/

2023-02-25 04:02:04 GMT

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Working on the beginnings of this idea here, where people can visualize their data by pubkey: https://nostrlytics.netlify.app
Planning on adding a lot more stuff to it, maybe eventually if we build out enough graphs this could be something clients could just import and use like an npm package

2023-02-25 03:52:23 GMT

I've starting working on a way to visualize nostr events by npub: nostrlytics.netlify.app. Intention is to eventually have it show charts/stats for whatever people want to see for their own npub's events. Right now there's a bar chart showing number of events by kind for a given relay and npub/nip05, but I plan on adding a lot more. Try it out and let me know what you'd like to see built!

2023-02-24 23:50:53 GMT

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I don’t understand the push for PoW on nostr. Seems like a waste if we can just use lightning paywalls? Plus this way the relays get rewarded
Maybe I’m missing something though?

2023-02-24 23:10:55 GMT

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This site also does it and a few other things: toolkit.nostring.stream

2023-02-21 19:13:36 GMT

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Thank you sir, zapped!

2023-02-21 18:34:07 GMT

On the latest damus release, when I try to zap a post my wallet defaults to 1000 sat payment and it looks like I can’t change it. User error or is damus setting this default?

2023-02-15 22:45:06 GMT

- they’re selling your data because of your desire to view someone else’s content
-> therefore your data/content has value
-> therefore you could make money from your data/content directly, even as a regular user.
instead of platforms simply using the content of one user to attract the attention of another user so they can sell to advertisers, you could cut out the middleman and have creators and viewers have a direct financial relationship. Creator provides something valuable, user pays them in return
This is a strange idea for most people still I think, the idea that their post on social media has value that they could get paid for. That they don’t need to be an “influencer” to get some value back from the content they create, however much of it they do create. That they don’t need to wait on some platform to hand them the money it decided they deserve.
But lightning is making all this possible and it’s so exciting to see

2023-02-15 22:03:19 GMT

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informative read!

2023-02-13 22:46:54 GMT

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The fact that it doesn’t just have to be used as a twitter-like social network. It can be used for blogging, games, shared clipboards, polling apps, etc. it’s use cases are wide ranging
nostr.net has a list of a ton of the projects being worked on for reference

2023-02-08 22:02:02 GMT

Why haven’t we seen more projects using LSATs? The idea of paying for a specific piece of content once and having a “ticket” so you can return later and still have access to it, without any sort of login/identity required, seems very useful

2023-01-29 22:54:16 GMT

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I guess one solution would be to setup some sort of account like you said, but there would need to be a good way for me to tell if the person even can receive tips in the first place

2023-01-29 22:52:46 GMT

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Good point! I know @bumi and the people at Alby have a lot of integrations like this for Twitter, Youtube, etc.
One question I’m unclear about with this approach though is: how does the receiving end work? What if the person you’re tipping doesn’t have LN setup? Where do those sats go? Tippin.me adds a little lightning tip button to every tweet for example, but I don’t know where sats I send people are going, or whether they’re setup to receive

2023-01-29 22:15:12 GMT

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I’d be happy to work on this if enough people are interested.
Agreed! I’ve gotten so much value from Stack Overflow but there’s no way I know of to give back small amounts directly to the poster, on a per question basis. There’s also so many people who I feel like would post solutions but don’t since there’s no real incentive for them to once they’ve solved their own problems.
At its most basic we could have people pay a small amount to post for spam reduction then have people pay back via a value4value tip button, stacker.news style. Giving ideally could be as simple as hitting a like button.

2023-01-29 21:43:41 GMT

Has anyone built a stackoverflow equivalent powered by lightning yet?
Pay a little bit to post to reduce spam, which would be easily recovered if you have a valuable answer?
Imagine how many more people might post answers to solutions they’ve found online if they were getting paid for good ones, instead of essentially doing it as charity like on stackoverflow now

2023-01-27 14:21:57 GMT

Is it possible to see the pre image of LN payments on Alby? I feel like I used to see them but can’t find them anymore

2023-01-09 16:20:40 GMT

This would be cool for something like #[0] to add if the maintenance cost gets prohibitive: https://github.com/Asone/LNFilestoreServer

2023-01-05 23:21:23 GMT

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Thanks for the link! As I understand it, it is a model in which a content creator basically has to ask their users to donate in proportion to the value they feel they were provided, correct? I think lightning micropayments are a perfect use case for this, but I still think a lot of people will want to be able to just set a price and charge for content. I can imagine a situation where relays can get overloaded and not enough v4v payments are coming in to cover the cost, for example, since v4v doesn’t rely on proof of payment, and potentially only a small subset of people are paying to publish. I guess all I’m saying is a relay that allows predetermined pricing as opposed to v4v seems more realistic when things start to scale, but I could be wrong

2023-01-05 23:03:56 GMT

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I thought value 4 value is basically a donation model?

2022-12-30 23:14:41 GMT

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This was a point of confusion for me too at first, so thanks for this. Your site & transparency are much appreciated!

2022-12-28 15:25:27 GMT

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Out of curiosity, where are the files hosted & is it open source?

2022-12-28 13:51:57 GMT

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All good, confused me at first too. So much new stuff to learn!

2022-12-28 12:51:47 GMT

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Right, that’s my nostr username but the NIP05 identifier is [email protected], although seems to be working now!

2022-12-28 12:50:26 GMT

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Yes this worked! Thanks! Astral.ninja was confusing me because its throwing a “failed to verify NIP05” error but it seems to be working

2022-12-28 12:47:58 GMT

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Do you have a @getalby lightning address/account? I think this’ll only work if you have an alby account, so you’ll have to login to that first

2022-12-28 12:46:13 GMT

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How can I verify my Nip-05 works on Damus after adding my pubkey to the alby profile page?

2022-12-28 12:43:44 GMT

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This one got me too, you have to go to the actual alby website getalby.com, then click dashboard -> settings -> profile settings

2022-12-28 11:55:07 GMT

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Is the vision for nostr relays to never host files themselves, but only text? In theory, you could just base64 encode videos/photos as messages and clients could interpret them themselves as data URLs, but others have said relays would explode if we did that. Was just wondering if it was possible to do this with relays or if we just have to accept centralization for files for now

2022-12-28 04:37:43 GMT

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Might be missing something simple but would it not be better to use micropayments to deter spam instead and leave the PoW to Bitcoin? Would also help publishers

2022-12-28 04:10:31 GMT

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Maybe spotty relay connection?

2022-12-28 04:00:58 GMT

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Looks like .mp4 at least is successfully interpreted on Astral but not Damus yet

2022-12-28 04:00:02 GMT

testing video url:
https://i.imgur.com/ej4y2KD.mp4

2022-12-28 02:39:43 GMT

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Got it, thanks for building this! Is the code open source by chance? I was wondering how it worked to think about how this could also work for videos, but would probably have to charge a fee due to size of the data

2022-12-28 02:11:49 GMT

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Err, meant are you paying for hosting out of pocket. Looking forward to an edit feature haha

2022-12-28 02:11:00 GMT

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Are you paying for uploads out of pocket? Do you plan on keeping it free as it scales or requiring some form of payment as more and more people post?

2022-12-28 02:07:39 GMT

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The “hype” is more about what’s possible with the protocol that wasn’t before, than any particular client

2022-12-28 02:05:33 GMT

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To be fair it’s not even in the App Store yet, it’s improving quickly and will probably totally unrecognizable (in a good way) in a year

2022-12-27 17:39:07 GMT

Is there a way to look up a someone by @username on here?

2022-12-25 21:06:14 GMT

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Thank you for this! using clients is getting easier and easier but I feel like it’s still not easy to find documentation on how to actually set up your own relay

2022-12-25 13:54:46 GMT

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Testing

2022-12-25 13:54:26 GMT

lnbc210n1p36s4svpp5mvr34cp6eq8egsxtqargx3ulhjx9jz35sau7q7j4wk2a9k56fr3sdqqcqzzgxqyz5vqrzjqwnvuc0u4txn35cafc7w94gxvq5p3cu9dd95f7hlrh0fvs46wpvhdne59e97j0p0fcqqqqryqqqqthqqpyrzjqw8c7yfutqqy3kz8662fxutjvef7q2ujsxtt45csu0k688lkzu3ldne59e97j0p0fcqqqqryqqqqthqqpysp5fk4z0srgws8uj3z4xru9z90ggna34q5fapuhhu27aekrv5jggh7q9qypqsq4ls3u5tu0mak3y6ghsn4lnrtlvjeacxhvy2hrrh05p9k977mq5y96fxlzk560xqrpp4ajpvqjzg6darw8xlqlwm388dyvq9ewrpkr3cqnn7f4u

2022-12-22 22:13:15 GMT

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Yep, same with video and audio

2022-12-22 16:16:14 GMT

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Very true, I’m not knowledgeable enough about nostr yet to know how that could be filtered or only shown on clients which ask for it.
I’m pretty sure this is already being done for images though right? I remember seeing images on astral.ninja, so I think the same concept would apply to videos

2022-12-22 16:10:57 GMT

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I think, technically, you could even do audio/video now, right? You could just encode the information as a string (I.e. base64) and then just have the client interpret that string as audio/video in using something like <video src=“data:video/mp4;base64,{base64_encoded_video}” /> and it would work. Obviously for that amount of data we’d need to work on some sort of payment/incentive structure for relays, but this can be done now to my understanding

2022-12-20 01:47:25 GMT

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thanks!

2022-12-20 01:46:08 GMT

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How are you getting the invoice to show up as a UI instead of just text?

2022-12-19 02:51:37 GMT

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Yep

2022-12-19 02:44:12 GMT

Test