some projects/ideas i found in the last couple of years, that try to solve our current problem of the internet being a centralized structure that is controllable by big corporations or governments and not so easily usable with mesh technology or when not being connected for long amounts of time
https://scuttlebutt.nz/docs/introduction/
https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/
https://www.inverse.com/science/39507-mesh-networks-net-neutrality-fcc
https://redecentralize.github.io/alternative-internet/
https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns
Nostr is very promising : https://nostr.com/
You don’t have to pay relays to use nostr. Been using Nostr for a while and love it, it’s an underlying protocol like AP is for Lemmy, Kbin, mastodon, etc. The main “interface” for it right now is as a twitter clone.
You don’t lose your identity if your instance shuts down which is a major pro (Bluesky also has this advantage over AP). The UX is a little less polished than Mastodon but I find the underlying tech concepts more solid, privacy respecting, and censorship-resistant. For example, DMs are automatically encrypted so relay operators can’t read them.
I’ve heard they tend to harbor a lot of alt-right types. Possibly because users can’t really get banned. Is that true?
Bannability is similar to lemmy. Each “instance” (or “relay” in nostr words) can decide what content/users can live on their relay. The difference is that you are usually connected to multiple relays. So if you want to follow somebody who is banned by other relays, nobody can take that choice away from you. Likewise, nobody can stop you from publishing, though your reach may be limited by relays sharing blocklists etc.
There are some right users there just as there are on any social media network. You can just click block and move on and/or pick relays with stronger moderation policies. If Lemmy has a “left” tilt, Nostr has a “libertarian right” tilt. But over time it’s expanding and becoming more generalized, just like how Lemmy isn’t 100% tankies now.
the problem i see with nostr is that it implements a bunch of pro-cryptocurrency ideas: like paying to use relays for example and with all the sustainability issues regarding crypto and us wanting to create a better network, i would like to leave money out of it
Associating with crypto-fraud is a hard no for many users (I am referring to Nostro which was developed by a crypto-bro).
i don’t trust it because it is very big on the design meaning to be “censorship resistant” and there are certain kinds of posts that people make that probably should be censored, and while i like that some tools exist to make pseudononymous, censorship-resistant communications possible (tor and i2p are good. freenet is fine imho), this one looks like a grift that has a neon sign saying “censorship resistant”… and i am sure that associating with those people will lead to encountering some of that material that probably should be censored.
Replying to this comment so people don’t get put off by it. Nostr has an optional feature where you can tip other users using Bitcoin lightning. So if you like their post, you can send them .001c or $100 or whatever you want. You don’t have to use it though. It’s valuable IMO as a way for content creators to get paid and will be a key driver of content creators choosing to use it over other platforms, but to each their own. You can also dedicate a % of your tips to your nostr relay or app to supporting hosting and development.
Crypto is full of garbage and scams, Nostr uses Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been around for 15 years without a single hour of downtime, a single hack, or a single broken promise. Whatever you don’t like about “crypto” is probably actually other stuff that isn’t Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a way to transfer coins around the world quickly, and it works, and nobody can print away the currency’s value by inflating the supply. It has a trillion dollar market cap for a reason, which places it in the top 25 countries by GDP.
Lightning is a terrible protocol. The Lightning devs themselves state that it’s basically unusable and you shouldn’t even try sending transactions valued more than a few hundred dollars. If you’re bored, check out the history of Lightning; it’s almost like a satire of software development project.
You’re also being a little disingenuous about the nature of Nostr and it’s relatioship to crypto.
The “market cap” polemic is a piece of propaganda. If you tried selling all that bitcoin, the price would tank and you would see exponential declines in the “market cap”.
FUD. I use lightning on a daily basis, it’s getting continual development, and millions are still being poured into development efforts. Some devs stopped working on it and now more new devs are involved, which is common with long-lived OSS projects. You can use it to send money to anybody on planet earth with a cellphone and a halfway reliable internet connection. In under a second. For a penny in fees. Try that with a bank wire. It’s a non-centrally controlled network, like OPs post is about. It does what it does very well, and it has been live and growing for years. Over a few hundred USD, you’re probably better off with a main-chain tx anyways as fees are flat instead of % based.
Yes that’s how market caps work. It doesn’t change that it’s a massive market cap.
Millions for development? Do you have any sources? I’d like to read about it. Thanks
Watching videos from the most recent Bitcoin conference is a good way to get updated on recent development changes to the protocol, lightning included. Bitcoin Magazine if you prefer reading to watching. Github if you prefer reading code to words.
I don’t have a specific source to cite here, just am generally aware of what’s going on in the bitcoin space. Lightning labs is the main company building the protocol, they’ve raised 86 million in funding, though not this year. There’s dozens of lightning wallets, some of which are supported/published by companies like ACINQ whose investment capital measures in the tens of millions. Tons of stuff is being built on it. And more payment providers are integrating lightning: Strike and Cash App are the two major ones. Coinbase recently announced they will be adding support for it, Kraken and most other exchanges already support it. There’s a lot of FUD about lightning, there are some valid critiques to be made for it as a “universal scaling strategy”, but generally speaking, it works well and does what it’s supposed to and has plenty of room to scale. There are proposals (channel factories etc) which will massively help with scaling as well.
Likely there will be more than one L2 in the future to optimize for different use cases. But for large orgs who frequently need to move liquidity around, solutions like lightning are excellent. They can settle their accounts with other orgs and their customers instantly. Think banks, online retailers, online marketplaces, etc. This leaves less money “in flight” and at risk. And it can also be used for micro-transactions for everyday people. A bunch of funding just got allocated to Ark as well, which is another L2 solution similar to but different from lightning. Fedimint is another project/proposal to look at if you are researching all this.
@Alphane_Moon @makeasnek
> you shouldn’t even try sending transactions valued more than a few hundred dollars
this is true about all of the alternatives too, Lightning is just the only one honest about it. And as someone who’s been using lightning to pay my phone bills, I can say it works ok.
You don’t see the problem with a payment system that is fundamentally unreliable?
Why would you pay your phone bills with lightning? I don’t know which country you live in, but where I lived there are so many easier methods to pay your phone bills.
@Alphane_Moon You are the one saying it’s unreliable but also you are not using it. Here is someone using it and saying it is reliable ok. Go figure.
Why would I use a payment system that developers themselves call unreliable? Are you serious?
I am not even talking about overall usability (i.e. recipient support) and UX/UI…
Yeah, if they used monero instead of lightning would be a better option for the user. Not a lightning fan. Layer 2 solutions seems a waste of time and money for me, lightning included…but well, that’s the result of the blocksize war.
You can either increase blocksize (and therefore decrease decentralization) or build L2s. Look at ETH with their big, frequent blocks. You can run a Bitcoin node on a 10 year old laptop, good luck running an Eth node with those specs. You need at least 1TB of space, and it’s gotta be SSD, and you need a pretty fast processor. Which is why many Eth nodes are hosted in corporate datacenters, over half the network. You can split hairs over what counts as a “node” etc but the end result is the same: increased centralization due to large chain size/requirements.
Monero doesn’t need L2s yet because it doesn’t have the transaction load to fill up available chain space enough to impact decentralization. Long-term, we cannot store all transactions on every node and do that forever. Small txs do not belong on chain. I love XMRs approach to privacy, it will need L2s at some point. Or pruning, which comes with some significant tradeoffs.
Yeah you’re probably right about that, I’m no expert and this make a lot of sense …I hope to see XMR face this transaction load issue…that would mean more people using it
Turns out Nostr’s founder (who is a crypto-bro) is super sketchy:
https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-fiatjaf-nostr-donation-2024-6
oh shit. super bad guy. glad i never installed a fucking client. fuck everything about this.
Wait till you find out about some of the nazis etc who have contributed to the linux kernel. One guy even murdered his wife! And Linus himself is… well let’s just say some of his behavior is “problematic”. Oh and Richard Stallman my lord. Lemmy/AP has some interesting people as well. Nostr is an open protocol worked on by dozens of people. I would also question the motives of a “journalist” who makes it their business to dox anonymous developers, especially people developing software that could get them imprisoned in certain countries.
All the individuals you mentioned made their contributions and statements under their real names.
The Tor team largely publishes their work under their real names:
https://www.torproject.org/about/people/
They even have a board of directors:
https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-new-board-members/
Has the lead Nostro developer mentioned anything about his support for Olavo de Carvalho (the claim that “Pepsi-Cola was flavored with stem cells of aborted fetuses” is particularly wild)? I will note Stallman, Linus have provided feedback to public criticism of their statements/approaches.
The Lemmy tankie issue is definitely a major problem.
We have a lot of projects like that. Too much for anything to go mainstream actually. We need to focus on one or a few so we have higher chance of popularizing it