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Last week, Retric, member of the CKB community, proposedNOSTR binding protocol(Nostr Binding Protocol).
The Nostr binding protocol is used to create a one -to -one mapping relationship between Nostr Event and CKB Cell.Ordinary users can be based on this protocolCreate and distribute native assets in the Nostr social network,With RGB ++, the assets on these NOSTR can also be controlled by the Bitcoin address.Client developers can build products on it, different from ETH DAPP into two systems (one is a chain server, the other is a smart contract on the chain), NOSTR binding protocolBring a new development paradigm for DAPP,It uses a consistent system with different data levels to build DAPP.It is reported that the NOSTR binding agreement can be in the futureSeamless integration to the CKB Lightning Network to solve the problem of native payment in social networks.
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NOSTR is a public -private key, minimalist information transmission protocol, and is committed to creating a global social network with anti -censorship.Nostr uses Relay to store social data (such as posts) and transmits it to users. The software run by the user is called Client.
On March 9 this year, at the first Bitcoin Singapore conference co -organized by Nervos Foundation and ABCDE, Retric made a “”Nostr ecological development status and problem“The theme sharing?
The following is based on the sharing of Retric, which can help everyone better understand the NOSTR protocol:
This NOSTR protocol should be the simplest thing in this conference today.Compared to some technologies or protocols talked about by others, it is the easiest to understand because it is also very simple.Nostr wanted to do at the beginning was actually a “Twitter”,But this Twitter is not controlled by Elon Musk, but a more decentralized Twitter. It will not do some bad things, will not block others, and have some freedom of speech.It wants to do this is a more realistic starting point, that is, to make such a software, for this reason, a decentralized agreement on social networks is called NOSTR.Then develop until now, everyone has begun to realizeThese things are actually not just a Twitter, but more like a better Internet structure. We can make various applications on it.
The Nostr agreement I will briefly introduce it first, it can actually finish this agreement in one sentence:This is a data, signed by a private key. This data spreads on different Relay or relatives, and then sent to the client.In essence, I sign a fixed format data. After the sign is signed, send it to some relatives, and then I ask other users to pull this data from these relatives to read this data through the client.
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Nostr’s core thing is a Jason structure, which will have different fields. Each field represents a meaning.For example, PubKey is the signature of my signature and sending data. For example, it has a content column. This representative said what the content of this data is. It can be an arbitrary string.It can be a Twitter I posted, or a number or a encrypted thing. There is no restriction on the protocol.There will also be a signature here, which means that I have made a guarantee for the data I posted to ensure that this data is indeed sent from me.
So the core of Nostr is that simple. It actually means that I have signed a data I wrote a piece of data through a certain private key.After this data is sent online,The NOSTR network structure is also very simple. There are two structures, one is called related, and the other is called Client.
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Relay is a server that is a server that everyone can set up.The role of this Relay is that it has been running online. I went to the prison to listen to the data that I just said, then receive it, and save it., I’ll give it to him again.
The second part is how this data spreads, that is, a specification of spread, there will be a lot of details in this.For example, I passed this data to Relay, do they communicate between Relay and Relay?In other words, after I passed it to Relay, would the RELAY help me save these data completely, and then find it at any time, will it give me?In fact, there are such details.NOSTR’s answer is “I don’t care, you think”, whether it is actually a strange reaction, but sometimes I think I thinkWhether it is a relatively clever strategy.Sometimes it seems that no matter in the real world or the Internet, sometimes because of too much control, it hurts something, so I think it is actually very interesting.
For example, I give a simple example. When we use the traditional centralized social network, the centralized server will save all your data by default.Then when you ask me, I can give you any time, but because Nostr is no longer, what will happen here?Some Relay operators want to be bigger and stronger, and he wants to save all the news. This is a kind.There is another kind of enthusiast. I just want to engage in a small node. I only accept the data I like to accept their data.There are others who are willing to accept your data, but I may not want it after 30 minutes after receiving it. I want to delete you because the disk of my server may be limited and I don’t want to save it for so long.
Therefore, it will actually evolve many different roles, and these different roles may have different division of labor.For example, if some really want to run it as a business, then I will do a professional service node to provide you with a relatively stable and long -term service as much as possible.There are also some enthusiasts that he can also run that kind of LAN, so it will evolve different division of labor.
One phenomenon is that most Relay nodes are willing to receive some of your news, but it cannot guarantee that it will be saved for a long time.This structure actually seems to be more suitable for some social models in our real human society.The real social model, for example, I am chatting with you here today. As soon as I speak, you can hear it, you know, and then leave the venue.After two days, some people do n’t remember what I am talking about when I do n’t remember well, but some people buy a recorder here and write down each word you said.It will not keep it all the time.
This is actually very similar to what we happened in reality.Because NOSTR does not specify many details or many other things, it doesn’t matterIncluding the need to communicate between the Relay and Relay, do they need to synchronize the news that they have, it does not specify, but it does not say that you cannot.So many Relay will pretend to be a client, and it will also find other Relay for its data and synchronize all the data.But it does not make compulsory requirements, saying that you have to communicate. One of its reasons is that if I make this requirement, you must communicate, and it will become every relay.In that case, it is a very big test to operate Relay.Maybe only those professional service providers can operate, and personal enthusiasts may not run.So this is some considerations behind it to make this simple agreement.
To sum up, I think the NOSTR protocol is very simple.On the other hand, the interesting part is actually such a node now. After we have Bitcoin, after Blockchain, the consensus we want is, it is like we all sit down and say that we use a unity todayFormats and unified protocols to make some social networks or some products of the Internet. It actually appears at a very interesting node.But now this node I think has such a direction that wants to work hard, it isWith a very simple data structure, a simple exchange agreement is used to do something on WeChat and Twitter.So I think it may be simple to look at it at a glance, it seems that it is not interesting.But if you think about the time behind it, the meaning of this will feel more interesting.
Another point is because of its structure, which actually has a large number of verifications on this client.In fact, there is a verification of one thing. Was the data you published by you really declare the public and private key, and only do this verification.Why do this verification, because if I send a Twitter and say something that should not be said, this will be sent to Relay.Relay is responsible for sending it to others. If Relay does not make verification, Relay can say that I forged a wonderful words you said to other users.Because I have a signature when I send the data, it can be verified by the client that gets that data, saying that the signature he signed is completely matched with what he said, so that Relay can not lie to others.Essence
Therefore, one of its verification is this verification of the signature. The verification of this signature actually actually controls the past Internet, such as WeChat, and the server on WeChat is controlled by itself. It can write anything on the server to write anything on the serverYou have no way to determine whether it lied to you, because all the rights of all data are on the server.But as long as there is the simplest verification, we can actually peel the rights from the server and hand it over to the user who owns an account.As long as you have a public and private key, you can let your friends do verify, and confirm that it is not that others must pretend to be me or something wrong.
So what is the development of Nostr?This is some data I have turned in March.Because this is a distributed network, its data is actually not very good. This is the data I have obtained from the Nostr. Band website.Nostr’s total user may be around 370,000, and daily life may be 12,000.In total, how many people have run through this node, there may be 2000+.But how many nodes have been online, it may be less than 200.Probably such a situation, so there are still fewer users.
In contrast, you see it compare with the Bluesky protocol.Bluesky should be said at the end of last year that they reached 2 million users. The data on the right was statistics from those users who ran away from Twitter. You can also see that Mastodon ranks first, and Mastodon is a relatively old -fashioned brand.A protocol, and then some people went to OST News, and some people went to Bluesky. Nostr was actually the fifth echelon, which was relatively small.
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This is a general development situation. Of course, there are many things behind Nostr that are actually invisible to this kind of data. For example, some proposals were submitted to the agreement, and developers submitted some PRs to it.These development activities or some discussions may not be able to count these data, but if you click these links, you can actually see that there are still many things that happened, and a large number of people are trying to contribute to this agreement.This is something that everyone uses NOSTR to do, not just to say that I really make a Twitter, but also a lot of applications to make some music categories. This Youtube type application is also used for blogging.
So if I come to sum it up, now we thinkMost users are actually Developer or Maker.They are interested in the agreement themselves, want to develop things on it, or I am a person who wants to do something. I will be on your agreement. Maybe there will be fewer people in ordinary kinds.
Why is Nostr so simple and the vision looks good, but the development is not very satisfactory. I think it is because I have encountered three problems. In fact, I actually found that there are actually many small details of details when I write this PPT, such asClients, some product experience.But this kind of thing is actually difficult to make it clear, so I think it is more important to raise three points.
The first big problem isHow do you find the content sent by a user in the Nostr network?Because we said earlier that the operation of the entire NOSTR protocol is that I signed things locally, and then I can send it to countless Relay.Other users can grab the data I sent from these Relay to read, such a model.But there is a problem with this model. After my data was sent to Relay, when my friend wanted to read this news, how did he know which Relay I was put on, and he had to know which Relay had my data.He only went to read.So now a big user experience problem is that when many people use NOSTR, he will ask his friends: “Hey, which Relay do you use, I want to set the same RELAY as you set, so that we can exchange this data together together”This is a very stupid way.
Of course, many developers have proposed some detailed solutions. For example, there is a proposal of NIP-65. It probably means that I put my data on which Relay on the information on the RELAY.EssenceThen I spread this information to all the Relay as much as possible. In this case, my friend would first go to Relay to ask a question. My friend usually sent his news.After getting this information, he went to the Relay I often posted, and asked them to ask for these data. This is a method.
It is divided into two models, one called Inbox, and the other is Outbox.For example, like inbox, it allows users to define some news about me from which Relay.If you want to do other things on Twitter, you can send this information in this Inbox Relay.The other is OutBox Relay, indicating that I will send some of my news to several Relay of A, B, C, and D. Probably the meaning is that I have sent some of the Relay information I often posted, first posted on the Relay.
But this has a technical problem that was born, how do I know where the news is.So this will actually have this problem, and there are some solutions that I use some algorithms. I can download as much information as much as possible on the entire network.Then from some of the information mentioned by some information sent by other people, try to calculate the probability of the data he posted on the data he posted on.Through this probability calculation, find some Relay as far as possible, and then find your data when others want to read your data.There are also some let users define some Relay they will use, do some groups, and let other users find you through these groups. This is some of the existing improvements.
The second problem is also serious, called calledContent GovernanceEssenceWhether it is content products or social networks, a large part of energy is to put on how you to maintain the content on this social network.For example, you definitely do not need to brush a video of someone else when you tweet, right, this is a very bad experience.As for these companies, they will do a lot of operations behind them. It requires many people to filter these contents, or use algorithms to make some content matching. Among these parts, the market is relatively blank.There are several reasons for this. One reason is that everyone will be very exclusive to algorithms on this platform.Because it seems that whether it is Tiktok or YouTube is an algorithm to control us, but in fact we really need algorithms, but what we need is that I can switch the algorithm.
I don’t want to say that I can only accept the algorithm they want to promote with the mandatoryness they want to promote with YouTube or Tiktok. I hope that there are many algorithms that can be switched at any time.If I don’t like this algorithm, I can exit with options. This view is also slowly accepting.It is just that this one, whether it includes artificially or some operations on content, or some things in algorithm technology, these are relatively lacking.So the main problem of this part is that our network is composed of everyone. It requires a mechanism to determine which content is good, which content is not good, which content is that you will be interested, what content may be youIf you are not interested, this is actually a question of content governance.
Here are some of the existing improvement plans listed, such as the first Labeling Data.There is a dedicated data on this NOSTR that allows users to mark some data themselves, or what its attributes are.Just use this Labeling to make some data, but this application is not wide, because it is simple, no one wants to do this.No one is willing to act as your Social Member to help you do some of this kind of work. Early Internet society has such a spirit of construction.In fact, everyone is more likely to use it as a consumer. Of course, some people have proposed that I can do API.I specialize in some services, I go to collect some data from the entire network, and then I go to filter or classify, and send some more likely news to users.This solution is very easy to do, but it has a huge problem, that is, we are doing this and we go back.It will become said that I do n’t find the NOSTR protocol for data, but it becomes a API that I specializes in a good job, and the data for this API for this API requires data.Then the protocol is doing this API and another Twitter or another WeChat, so this solution is very good.The problem is that everyone doesn’t like it. If you do this, everyone will spray you.
There is also a scheme called DVM. It wants to do some interfaces specified by the Nostr protocol to do the classification or algorithm of this data.It probably means that you give me some Cong of the Lightning Network, and then I will return to the data you want, you stipulate the data format, but there are some problems.
The other is Noscript. It is another idea. We directly put these code directly as the content of these filtering algorithms or some technologies needed by some classifications as content, and directly put them directly on NOSTR to let Relay store.Then the client directly pulls these code and make some local filtering or recommendations locally.Of course, this is even worse, because it is just some ideas and some people are discussing.
The third more serious problem is actually a problem of entrepreneurship,PMFEssenceNow Nostr’s a large number of products or developers can not find PMF because he needs to face a lot of competition.On the one hand, the centralized traditional products, on the other hand, may be from the web3 blockchain.What they do n’t do if they do n’t send token, so it actually lacks some business models and faces the problem of network effects, because the less people move, it means that fewer people will continue to move over.So PMF is a big problem.
One of Nostr’s largest client is Damus. I don’t know if everyone has used it. Its developers posted a push at the end of last year, saying that 2024 may be the last year of Damus.Because he will continue to do it again, if he can’t do it in 2024, he can’t make money.Therefore, this is also a problem to find sustainable development for public items of social networks.
In fact, all the problems in this, I think it is also an opportunity.For example, like the last PMF, I think if we can have more places that combine blockchain, there can be some more common business models, and to make some combination with the blockchain fund, it may solve this kind ofA financing issue of public goods.
Finally, I thinkNostr is a new solution for developing Alternative Applications.If you want to make some alternative products, there may not be only two extremes, one is called Blockchain, and the extreme is Twitter.It is not just this. There may be a middle zone called Nostr. It is not based on the blockchain, but it is not an exclusive software.Thanks.
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