Initially, Elon said he wanted to buy Twitter to make it the open free speech town square.
And then immediately locked down the town square and said that you can say whatever you want,
but we're not going to let your content be seen by everybody.
If you don't know anybody that has been censored or banned or something,
or if it hasn't happened to you, it's really hard to think about how that can affect you.
I have this conversation sometimes with people privately.
I would say, unfortunately, yes.
But then sometimes no, too.
Jack realized that Blue Sky was making all the same mistakes that Twitter did.
They were basically recreating their own Twitter with maybe a sprinkle of decentralization here and there, but not truly decentralized.
Noster is also a community.
Noster is also the people.
Noster is also the content.
Once I went all in and I started really trying to build relationships,
I realized that I don't need to go back.
Ever build real trust with someone in Nostra
and had no idea who they actually were?
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Let's do this.
Welcome back to Going Bitcoin, Derek.
Everyone interviews you about Noster.
I want to talk about what Nostro has done to you.
So let's talk building.
Okay.
What's the difference between a protocol, software, and a platform?
I like to tell people that platforms like X or like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
all those are platforms and they all run on top of a protocol.
Protocols are like email or like the web or like Nostro.
now all of these platforms they use software so nostre when we talk about nostre we say nostre
is a protocol whereas i mentioned the web or email being a protocol so so with with the web
you can use chrome you can use safari you can use firefox those are all pieces of software
that run on top of http like the web protocol okay they can all view the web web pages but
Maybe they'll view them a little bit differently.
And the same goes for Nostre, where Nostre, maybe we have Domus, we have Primal, we have
Amethyst, Coracle, and the list goes on and on.
All of these different pieces of software, they're their own platforms that exist on
a protocol.
They exist on Nostre.
And since they're all on the same protocol, just like the web, they'll all show similar
pieces of the protocol.
They'll maybe show it a little bit differently, but the underlying technology
the underlying technology is the same protocol just like email maybe i use gmail maybe you use
outlook maybe you use hotmail whatever i recommend proton or maybe you use proton there you go
if you have proton i use proton yeah but uh we can all email each other because it's all the
same protocol no matter what client or app or no matter what piece of software i'm using
same as nostr because it's all the same protocol no matter what app you're using we can all
communicate. People say Nostra is just infrastructure. What do you think?
I mean, if you want to get technical, sure. Nostra is the decentralized infrastructure,
the relays that people run. It is the apps, the software that people run. But Nostra is also a
community. Nostra is also the people. Nostra is also the content. You can have a protocol,
But if nobody uses the protocol, it's not very useful. So you need your community. You need the people. You need someone to build on that protocol. So I think that that's a very narrow-minded thought to say that Noster is just technology.
I mean, sure, at its basic level it is, but that basic level facilitates all of us to be able to build a community.
And the fact that we can build our community and we're given the tools and it's open for anybody to build their community, I think that's very powerful.
I think Noster is a community that leverages technology.
So Noster is permissionless.
Yes.
What does permissionless mean to you personally?
that means that anybody can build and anybody can say anything that they want you don't have to ask
for permission if i wanted to say something on nostr i could i don't have to ask somebody if
i'm allowed to say that i just do it but i think more importantly is that if i want to build
an application, I can do it. I don't have to ask any like large tech provider if I'm allowed to
have access to build. I just build. If I want to run a piece of the infrastructure to help out,
to help out the community, to help out the network, I can run a piece of that. I don't have to
submit a form and ask permission to run a Nostra server. I just do it. It's really how the internet
should be. If I want to participate, I can. And if I don't want to participate, I don't have to.
I can do as little or as much as I want to, and I don't have to ask either way.
And I can be anonymous?
If you don't want to use your real name, if you want to be an avatar that isn't your face,
that's cool. You don't have to KYC. You don't have to sign up and give personal information.
You don't. You don't have to give your phone number. You don't have to give your email.
You don't have to scan your face.
Now, here's the funny thing.
If a Noster application wanted to take your name, wanted to take your phone number, wanted
to scan your face, they absolutely could because anybody can build anything, right?
They can sell it.
Yeah.
I don't have to use that app.
But if a company or individual shows up and said, hey, I want to build an app that KYC
and takes all of your personal information because we're going to sell it to become profitable.
Cool.
They can do that.
I don't have to use that app, though.
I have the ability to use any app that I want. So maybe they're the best doing something and people
use that app because sure, I'll give away some privacy. Convenience, but there's a free market.
Yeah, it's a free market. So the market will choose. Some people may use that and some people
won't. And that's the beauty of Nostra is that if somebody wants to build that, they can.
Ever build real trust with someone in Nostra and had no idea who they actually were?
Well, with me?
Yes.
Well, it's a frustrating story for me.
So my early days in Nostra, I realized that I could build something on Nostra.
So I built Nostra Plebs, which still exists today.
It's the number one most popular Nostra identity providers.
It gives you a way to turn a public key, which is really ugly and no one's ever going to remember, into something that's identifiable.
So I can be Derek Ross at NosterPlebs.com.
You can be, you know, all in Bitcoin at NosterPlebs.com.
I am all in Bitcoin.
So you have that.
Versus NPUB 1, 2, A, B, X, Y, 3, you know, no one's going to remember that.
So anyways, I built a very, since I'm not a developer, I built a very bad hacky version of this.
and it was going to work and it was going to be bad, but it was going to work. And I was talking
to an anonymous friend of mine. His name is Semi Soul. He's a developer. His profile pictures,
you know, whatever, it's a cat or something. Like I have no clue who Semi Soul is. I've never heard
his voice. I've never seen his face. I don't know anything about him. It could be Jack Dorsey as far
as I know. I don't think it is. Anyways, I don't know who it is. He became my business partner
for Nosterpleps. And in the beginning, I didn't overly care too much because he was helping me
build things. I had known him a little, you know, for a short amount of time,
maybe six months or so on Twitter and Noster. That was good enough for me. Like I knew him well
enough, I had to trust him a lot in the beginning to be able to build this application for Nostra
Plebs' business. But once we figured out our business relationship, what I was going to provide
and control and what he was going to provide and control, like we each had bits and pieces that we
became reliant on each other to run, we ended up forming a great business relationship. And
a couple times whenever we had some differences of opinions and thoughts, like I had said to a
man, like this would be so much easier if we could just have a conversation and like over a video
call or a phone call, you know, so we don't have to talk via typing and text. And he's like, I'm
not going to do that. And that was frustrating for me. And it's like, well, this conversation is
going to take so much longer and be so much harder to figure out. But I came around and I understood.
I said, okay, if you want to stay anonymous, that's fine. I trust you and I respect you enough
that if you want to be anonymous, that's fine. Nostra Plebs is still going to this day and we're
still a service provider today and we're still building services. And him and I still talk all
the time about different enhancements and stuff. So in the beginning, it was a little hard, but
it worked out. Yeah. Well, he's a man of principles. Exactly. Yeah, that's what he wanted.
And I think that because of that, I wanted a little bit more control of some things
from my protection. So for his protection, he wanted to be anonymous. And for my protection,
I said, well, I need to have a little bit more control of some stuff, you know, give and take.
And it worked out.
And I think he's happy.
I'm happy.
And it's been a good business partnership because of that.
When did Noster start feeling like home?
So I went pretty much all in in the beginning, but I would say a couple months.
Like once I realized that I didn't need to go back to Twitter, that I could build on Noster.
And there was friends that I felt like I abandoned on like Bitcoin Twitter.
And there was people that I would talk to and say, come on, come over to Noster.
You know, I miss seeing your content.
And, but once I kind of started to build my own community and make relationships there,
I realized that, okay, this will, this will be okay.
The majority of my friends have now from Twitter come over.
The few stragglers, I'll still talk to them from time to time.
And I do.
To this day, I still do.
And I, even just last week, I said to them, I said, hey, you still didn't come over yet.
Like, I miss you guys.
And, and that's okay.
I think once I went all in and I started engaging and commenting and really trying to build relationships and become part of this Nostra community, I realized that I don't need to go back.
Should one avoid the universe?
So in the Domus app, there's a feed called the universe feed.
Some apps call it global.
It's not really global.
I mean, it's not really universe because it's not a fire hose of all content on Noster.
It's a fire hose of all content on the relays that you're using.
But in the beginning, that's how we found everybody.
Like if we rewind to the first, I don't know, six months or so on Noster, you went to global,
you went to the universe feed.
That's how you found people.
But now I don't go to global.
I don't go to universe.
I stay away from there because that is seen as spam and a lot of just unwanted content.
There's also relays that are hooked to the Fediverse, like Activity Pub or Mastodon, Fediverse, whatever you want to call it.
We have a bridge between Noster and the Fediverse, which is cool because that means we get to connect two different decentralized social protocols.
So we connect Noster and we connect the Fediverse by this bridge.
But that means we get a fire hose of all of the Fediverse content that wants to bridge with us too.
And it's not fun really anymore.
It's too much.
Like new users should definitely stay away from the universe and global feeds.
You're not going to have a good time.
It's just a lot of spam and it's hard to navigate.
So I think that it's not useful anymore.
Ever posted something on Noster, regretted it, and realized you couldn't delete it?
So let's talk about that. So we say there's no delete on Noster, and that's medium true.
Some applications do support delete. The protocol...
Do they?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Because I did have my...
Amethyst has a delete. Nostrudo has a delete. Primal has a delete.
but they're more delete requests.
So it's not a guarantee.
What it is, is it's,
I'm going to create this delete request,
send it to all the relays.
And if a relay wants to comply to delete it, it will.
Now, most of them do.
However, there's local caches.
So like Domus, for example,
has a local relay that runs on the phone, NosterDB.
if you get a note that has been deleted the nostr db that runs on domus doesn't delete that request
so it stays look so if i make a post and you see it and i'm like oh shit i gotta delete it and i
hit delete you won't see that i deleted it maybe all the relays that i use i won't show it at all
but on yours I can see you would still see it okay and I've made notes and I've posted them
to specifically test this functionality and I've deleted them and they do delete and then I think
they're deleted and some people say yeah I've never seen this note I know it's deleted and
then I've had some Domus users say to me oh I still see it because it's in their it's in their
local cache. Now, Will has said, he goes, oh, maybe, you know, maybe if I word it as a delete
request, maybe, you know, I like how Primal and Amethyst word it as a request. Maybe someday I'll
add that. So maybe that's coming to Domus. But users need to realize that it is a request, that
it won't go away everywhere. So maybe you could delete it from 90% of Noster, but there's that 10%
that it won't go away.
I didn't know you could do that.
And I really had a few FF, what the F moments,
like, you know, when you do typos,
you haven't finished a message and it goes.
Oh, yeah.
And then you send the next one, like thinking,
okay, if they see this one, they will see the second one.
But I didn't know you could actually delete it.
Well, as you said, ask.
Clients that honor deletes,
if they would see that note on a relay,
but then they would also see the delete request on a relay,
they can hide it still technically exists but maybe it doesn't show up in people's feeds because
the client then ignores it that's why i said you can't actually delete but there are ways to hide
it and it i don know if that good or bad uh some sometimes i delete my typos if i can do it real quick like if i notice the typo within the first few seconds like oh shit quick delete delete delete delete But if I notice it like five minutes later Where do you click on delete
Because you said delete, delete.
It's just a feature in the app.
Domus doesn't have it, but Amethyst does and Primal does.
So it's just a button you just click
and it pops up and says, you know,
do you want to delete this?
So send this delete request, you hit yes.
And just like publishing a note,
it goes out to relays and publishes a delete request.
But if a relay doesn't get the delete request and they don't honor it, then the content's still there.
But I delete from my own personal typos.
If I don't see it, it doesn't exist.
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So your Nostra handle says the purple peel helps the orange peel go down.
Explain.
I think I stole this saying from a Nostra developer named Camry.
He used to make the Noster relay called No Stream.
In something like January or February of 2023, I think he said this in a Noster nest when we were talking one night.
And I was like, I love that saying.
And I truly believe it.
Now, what it means is that with Bitcoin, people say that's the orange pill.
So we started saying Noster is the purple pill.
So how does the purple pill help the orange pill go down?
Well, Noster can be a stress-free, fun way to use Bitcoin.
Because it's with lightning and it's with zaps.
And you can just press one button, one click, and you can zap a piece of content.
Or you can put a lightning address on your profile and somebody can easily click a button and zap you.
So it kind of it takes the B word, the Bitcoin out of everything.
And it's just a very fun and stress free, frictionless way to use Bitcoin.
So I truly believe that, you know, since most of the world is not Bitcoiners, that Noster can be a lot of people's first touch with Bitcoin.
They come for freedom of speech.
They come for control of their attention.
They come for control of their social feeds.
They come for control of their identity and their content.
Whatever the reason that may be, they decide to join Noster, we'll orange pill them through.
We'll zap them.
Yeah, we'll zap them and we'll orange pill them through their purple pill.
So I truly believe that that happens.
And I know several individuals, they weren't Bitcoiners when they joined Noster and they're Bitcoiners now.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
My friend Roya, she's my favorite story about this.
Yes, please do.
She came to Nostrica.
Maybe you met her down in Costa Rica.
She came for freedom of speech.
She has family in the Middle East.
And she said, my family, like my community there, they need freedom of speech.
So she came to Nostra through freedom of speech.
And then she fell in love with Zaps.
and she started to learn about Bitcoin and why Bitcoin was good and the monetary system and all
this other stuff. And she's a Bitcoiner now. She has a hardware wallet. She buys Bitcoin. She
zaps constantly. But she was not a Bitcoiner at all, at all before Noster.
What was missing that made you build it?
My most important one I feel that I built was a Noster event meetup scheduling app.
We had several attempts on Noster.
We had an app called Floxter that was built about a year ago.
The same developer then kind of abandoned Floxter and built an app called then Troop.
And it was the same thing.
There were event scheduling or meetup apps, but they were on Noster.
That developer has since left Noster.
I actually saw him a couple months ago and asked him how he was doing, if he's coming
back to Noster.
And he's just like, I'm just, I'm just not feeling, you know, I still think Noster is
great.
I love Noster. I just, I'm working on other stuff and that's fine. But he abandoned these two apps
and it kind of never completed them. So we have these incomplete thoughts. And I really think
event scheduling, you know, like we need to get off of meetup and we need to get off of Eventbrite.
Like, I think that this is really something here. And then we had another developer. His name is
Terry Yu. He, he actually works on Domus and as a part-time project, he started building
an app called CoMingle for events. And it was available only on TestFlight on iOS.
So now we have these three partially built, partially abandoned, incomplete thoughts.
And I waited and I waited and I waited and they never finished them. And that's fine. That's fine.
And then vibe coding kind of came along and I had the ability to fill this need. And I said,
oh man, I want to schedule. I literally need this. I'm scheduling a meetup in Las Vegas,
an event, and I don't want to use meetup and Eventbrite. And I'm trying to schedule my Bitcoin
Noster event on these apps that are half broken. This is horrible. And it was a bad experience for
me. And basically I frustrated myself so much that I said, all right, I'm going to build it.
I'm going to fix this. And I built an app called Plectose to fill my personal need and a need I
thought that Noster really needed. And people have been using it. And now the Orange Pill app,
just recently, the Orange Pill app, I talked to Mateo, the CEO, founder of that company,
and I convinced him to publish all the Orange Pill app events onto Noster. All their events are now
published on Noster. And you can go and view them all on Plectose or Noster Cow or any app that
supports a calendar. And what about Grow Noster? Grow Noster came out of the need to grow Noster.
Last year in Prague, I organized a Bitcoin booth where I did a bunch of fundraising,
crowdsourced fundraising and raised funds to have a booth at a large Bitcoin conference in Europe
at Prague. It was very, very successful. We had tons of people there. We purple-pilled tons of
people. We did a bunch of onboarding. We talked about Nostra. We were the busiest booth every
single day of that conference, elbow to elbow. It was a huge success. And then afterwards,
I started having conversations with people saying, we need to do this again. We need to be at every
Bitcoin conference. We need to be at every meetup. We need to onboard people in person. I think
this is going to work. Well, how do we do that? And myself and a couple of other individuals
started having conversations about this, thinking of ways to do this.
And my friend Avi Burra and I started talking with another mutual friend of ours, Open Mike, who comes from the music industry.
He wanted to grow Noster through onboarding independent musicians and artists.
and Avi and I both agreed that this was a great avenue to onboard musicians to Nostra and Bitcoin
because they're a group of people that are getting screwed by Spotify and so forth and big tech
algorithms and stuff. So they need Nostra too. Everybody needs Bitcoin. Everybody needs Nostra.
So we decided that we needed a way to be able to organize in a more concentrated effort to try to
make it easy to onboard communities. And more importantly, we wanted a way to help people have
meetups and help people organize events. So maybe at a Bitcoin conference, maybe we have a booth,
maybe at a Bitcoin conference, we have a Noster side event in the evening or a special Noster day,
or maybe you just run a local meetup and you, or you want to start a local meetup and you need
$500 to rent a venue and you don't have $500. Like where do you turn if you want to do all this
stuff? You can't go to OpenSats. OpenSats is amazing. They sponsor Bitcoin and Noster Education
and Bitcoin and Noster Developers, but they don't do like growth and onboarding. And sure,
that's kind of education, but it's a gray area and they really don't sponsor that.
so we decided well well what if we held an event and we charge some funds for the event
and then any type of profit that we make we then put in savings to then help sponsor the next event
and then we can roll that money forward roll those funds forward so if anyone comes to us and says
hey derek i want to have a local nostril meetup and i need five hundred dollars to rent this event
space or a thousand dollars, you know, not a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things,
but a little bit of money could make our very small event be very successful. You know,
how do I do that? Can you help out? And it's a way for us to give back. It's just a way for us to
try to organize and grow Nostra together. People that are like-minded and want to grow Nostra and
believe that these smaller meetups are how we help people grow their individual communities.
Ever built something on Nostra that didn't work out? And how did that hit you?
Yes. So NostraNest was my second app, if you count Nostra Plebs being the first app.
NostraNest was my second app. NostraNest was hugely successful, I would say, for the first year.
but the application could have been so much more and i'm not a full stack developer and i couldn't
develop all the features that it needed so it took me about a year of trying to find a developer
until i found and i found a developer i did some crowdfunding kieran was the developer we raised
funds. Kieran was paid and he built Nostra Ness, the new version, Nostra Ness 2.0. And I,
it was successful in the beginning, but it's hard to continue to pay a developer
to work on your open source project. And he has his own projects that he wants to work on,
you know, his own passions. So me continuing to go to him and pay him or expect him to do things
for free, that's just not going to work out in the long run. So NostraNest, I would say,
is very stagnant project. That saddens me because I think it could be so much better,
but I'm not a developer, so it's hard for me to build these features. However, now thanks to
vibe coding. Now that these new tools are available that weren't really available to me two years ago
or even a year ago, now I'm able to build and I'm hoping to make it more successful now.
I wouldn't say it completely failed, but it just didn't gain traction.
And part of the reason it didn't gain traction was maybe because in the grand scheme of things,
nobody wants a web app. Nobody wants to go to a third-party Nostra website,
sign in with a browser extension or paste an NSEC into the app and sign in.
That's hard.
It gets back to the more technical reasons.
And me being a technical person, I thought, oh, it's no big deal.
People can just use a browser extension.
The majority of people don't do that.
The majority of people want a native application.
So I wouldn't say NostraNest has been a complete failure,
but it's been very unsuccessful in my mind compared to where I hoped it would be.
But now I'm hoping to turn that around.
Thanks to Vibe Coding, I'm working on Nests.
But also, I didn't want to leak it, but whatever.
We'll do a leak.
Primal is building Nostra Nest support into their app.
Okay.
So Primal will soon come out with a new version that has Nests built into it.
So it'll function, since Primal is one of the most popular Nostra apps,
everybody will have access to Nests through a native application.
and I think that'll be huge for Ness adoption and then once Primal does it other applications
will do it too I know Vitor has talked about adding it to Amethyst and uh I'm gonna I'm gonna
bully Will and I'm gonna get I'm gonna get him to add it to Domus I'm gonna say Will come on man
we have it in Amethyst we have it in Primal come on I'm gonna yeah now Will's a good friend and he
said he would he would support Ness at some point in the future he's really focused on NoteDeck right
now so maybe in the future it'll come to note deck or maybe it'll come to damas once other apps uh
add it i think it's on their roadmap but it doesn't have a set nostranets i don't know if you're
because it's just you're being too tough on on it but that's where my first conversations on nostran
happened and the first concert remember jay playing uh piano live on nostranets yeah
yeah i remember and that was the first that was the first like nostranets concert we had yeah i
remember and it could be so much more you know and it will be and i want it to be so in my mind
it's not a complete success it's not a complete failure but it's not where i want it to be so
i'm hoping that when it's added to some of the most popular nostre apps in the future and i have
confirmation now that they're working on it i'll be excited you know three months from now or
whenever that is that that launches i i can't wait that's nostrils for you you know like in
three months or in two months things happen so quickly yeah yeah it's gonna happen it's not dead
and it's gonna get better i'm gonna i'm gonna make sure of that you've built projects that give people
a voice why well because i truly believe now that anybody that should be able to have their voice
and their opinion and their ideas heard the more ideas and the more opinions the more thoughts that
we have out there, I really think the better that we are as society, as humans. I think that
it's bad to be in echo chambers, and I think it's bad to have people silenced. So empowering and
enabling people to speak, I think, is really, really, it's empowering for me to know that I
was able to help somebody do that. You just said echo chamber. I get annoyed when people say that
Noster is an echo chamber. I don't think so. I think it's a Bitcoin echo chamber. It is.
You think so? Oh, yeah. That's okay. Somebody has to be first. Yeah.
Like with every piece of technology, piece of software, somebody has to be a first user.
The Noster first users are Bitcoiners. They recognize the freedom to transact. They understand
the freedom to communicate. It makes sense. If the first group of people are, you know,
people that love freedom technology. And that's kind of our echo chamber, really. But maybe in
the future, I hope we have so many other groups and communities of people, but somebody has to be
first. And if 80% of our conversations on Nostra are about Bitcoin, that's okay.
This is my experience, and it's true. I'm a Bitcoiner, so I'm talking about Bitcoin content.
content. But I get a larger variety of Bitcoin content on Nostra than I get on X. Maybe it's
the algorithms. I don't know. Maybe it's the algorithms. Yeah. Also, now you have to like pay
on X to get reach. What does X say? Freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. You have to pay
if you want to reach people. And that's crazy. That's a different conversation. But yeah, maybe
Maybe if you're not paying, then you don't have the reach and people can't reach you,
maybe. It's probably the algorithms, yeah. Noster's definitely more signal, though. It's
always been that way. It's always the people that are talking about the cool things that
are building We not sure we talk about number go up because who doesn like to be right or validated or see a green candle Like people like that We human But we also talk about all the building and all the cool features and all the services and all the apps and the new fun stuff that people are doing too
Do you feel responsible for how people use the tools you build?
To an extent, sure.
Because I want, I'll say from a user experience standpoint.
So if I build something that doesn't work well, I need to understand how they're using the tool, the app, the service, so I can help them use it better. Absolutely. But if I mean, do I feel responsible for like things they're posting or things they're saying? Like, no, no, not at all. But yes, for how they're using it? Absolutely.
There's another application I haven't mentioned yet called Yakback.
Think of it as like micro podcasts.
Okay.
Like a minute.
Exactly.
It's a 60-second voice message.
That's all it is.
So like you as a podcaster, if you wanted to post like 60-second like little interactions on Yakback, you could.
And there's several apps that have actually started to implement Yaks.
And there's more that are – more apps are coming along the way.
Anyways, these Yaks, when I was building it, I wanted to make sure people were using it in my vision, using it how I intended.
And I worked with a couple users when it launched to make sure they were using it how I wanted them to use it.
And because it's only 60 seconds, but in theory, in theory, if any application adds support for these voice messages, they can be longer than 60 seconds if they want it to be.
And that was kind of tough for me to grasp.
I was like, well, that's not my vision.
I don't want it to be like longer than that.
I want it to be 60 seconds.
So tell me about an impactful moment in building in public.
Fiat Jeff, the founder of Noster, he actually helped me with Yakback.
And I think that because I was building in public and I published an idea for an application
that he actually really liked, he decided to work on it with me.
So I published the application.
Fiat Jeff doesn't really like AI coded apps.
He looked at it and he's like,
hey, I've always wanted to do this.
This is an idea I like.
And since you did it, I'm going to help you.
So what he did is he contacted me and he said,
hey, I'm going to rewrite some of this code
to make it work better because the AI wrote it bad
and the AI shouldn't have written it this way.
And I'm like, but it works.
He's like, but nope, it needs to work better.
and he's a very talented guy.
So I was like, hey, I trust you.
You're awesome.
If you believe that it can work better,
please make it better.
And then he said to me, he said, this is great.
You can be the public and deal with all the issues
and talk to people about it.
And I can just like work on it on the back end, basically.
So I don't have to deal with all the bullshit.
You know, I can just work on it.
And that's kind of like how our relationship is now.
He's added features.
And when there's bugs, I contact him and he fixes it. And it's a nice relationship that I truly believe that it's because of like my like passion and the fact that I'm public and talk about this and have, I don't want to say like influence, but I can talk to people about things.
And now that these applications are building the Yaks into their apps, like I was able to facilitate that and be the developer relations role and kind of facilitate all that.
That because I did all that in the public, Fiat Jeff decided to help me and decided to build with me.
Would I know?
Yeah, that's very exciting for me.
That was almost kind of like starstruck for me.
I talk to Fiat Jeff all the time, but the fact that he said he wanted to work on that with me, I was like, oh, wow, that's really cool.
That was cool for me.
That was very cool for me.
I'm very proud and very honored to work on that with him and to have him talk to me about it and dedicate his time.
We have a good relationship together now.
Why do you think people don't understand the impact of being censored?
What are they missing?
You know, it's hard for people to see outside their purview. If you don't know anybody that has been censored or banned or something, or if it hasn't happened to you, you haven't experienced it, it's really hard to think about how that can affect you.
it's like oh well I've never been censored it doesn't hurt me and that's correct but if it did
it's hard to determine and realize what that actually means so if you've never dealt with it
it's it's kind of like out of sight out of mind right if you don't if you don't see it it doesn't
exist and that's it's hard to be empathetic and realize what other people could go through
can you still speak freely on Nostra or does your visibility come with new pressure
Oh, this is a good question. And I have this conversation sometimes, not publicly. I have this conversation sometimes with people privately. I would say, unfortunately, yes, but then sometimes no, too.
I can't think of any exact examples off the top of my head, but there definitely has been some
times where I've wanted to say things. I've typed it all out and then I was like, nope, nevermind,
delete, delete. And I just, you know, I delete it all and don't post it. And other people have
recognized that too. They've literally tagged me in posts and say, Hey, I wonder what Derek Ross
thinks on this. And then somebody else responds, he, he's an Oscar CEO. He can't talk about this.
And I'm like, you're kind of, I mean, you're not wrong.
You're joking, but you're also kind of serious too.
And I've, oh, I said it's not truly self-censorship, but I've had to word my responses very carefully.
I try to think more on how I'm going to respond to certain things.
and it's probably not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things but sometimes I think if
I wasn't as publicly visible maybe I would respond differently it's almost like I have a
responsibility to say and do things and I don't like that feeling it's it's a weird position to
be in. But then sometimes I also think it's Noster and we thrive on authenticity and we thrive on
being able to be your true self. Basically like saying, fuck you, say what you want. And I do.
It depends. Finding the balance. Yes. Finding the balance is hard. It really is. I try to give back.
as much as I can because of that, because I do have this voice. So I try to use my voice to help
others as much as I can, whether that is something as simple as sharing somebody's
post, somebody's work. So if you were to ask me to look at something that you're working on,
or a post piece of content and to share it, me doing that is being a part of your algorithm.
And I like helping people out.
And I think that kind of identifies with who I am.
So it does weigh heavy on me, but I try to give back as much as I can by helping people
out, helping surface, surface users, their content, help with user discovery, helping
the ecosystem as much as I can and being involved as much as I can so I can give back.
Have you ever thought of quitting?
Oh, I love it.
I do.
Like, I think yesterday you had a 23 hours flight.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
It's a lot.
It's, I mean, it's until recently, it was a second unpaid job and now I'm getting paid
part time through Soapbox.
So I love that.
But it's a lot to work a second unpaid job, probably more hours a week than I work my
real job.
Because, you know, I'm always, you know, available in the evenings, nights, weekends, you know,
throughout the day if I'm not busy in my day job. I try to make myself available to as many people
as possible. I go around to conferences. I talk. It's a lot. I kind of jokingly say that I'm going
to keep going until I can't, until it's too much or until something breaks. I hope that it doesn't
because I love it.
I love the people.
I love helping people.
And I love the developer relations role.
I love freedom technology.
I truly love it.
Until that changes,
until it becomes something that I hate,
then I'm going to keep doing it.
What's one story that made you think
that's what Nostos for?
So in recent times,
we see the UK and Australia pushing forth bills to require age verification and KYC to use social
media, to use music applications, like to use YouTube, to use Spotify, to listen to songs with
bad lyrics or something. We see this now literally happening today. And this is the exact reason that
Nostra was built, that you shouldn't need to KYC, you shouldn't need to verify, you shouldn't need
to scan your face to be able to listen to a song and to be able to post on social media. And we
actually see this happening now. How do you protect yourself from platform addiction?
Nostra doesn't have these algorithms that pull us back in, that make us addicted,
but maybe you can become addicted to the community
and to the zapping, to the friends,
to the whole movement,
the revolution that we're participating in,
like all of it.
If you want to be drawn in, you can be.
The first 15 years of my life,
there was no internet really,
that I grew up where I could play outside
and be outside and I love that.
On the weekends,
Like I barely use Nostra really on the weekends,
maybe the winter.
But in the summertime, I'm outside.
I'm in the woods.
I'm hiking.
I'm on my boat.
I'm swimming.
Like I'm doing stuff with the family.
Like it's no big deal for me to put my phone down
for a day, two days, the weekend or whatever
and disconnect if I want to.
Have fun in meat space in the real world
and touch grass and touch water.
So I think that I'm able to do that.
What's something that feels decentralized but isn't?
I'll say blue sky.
You know, when people think of blue sky.
People think blue sky is decentralized?
Yeah.
So people were flocking to blue sky because it was a decentralized and open communication protocol.
But how can you truly be decentralized when you have a CEO and a central entity that controls everything?
And they have one central server for everything.
Like they have an identity server that they run.
So Blue Sky is, you know, it's these dinos.
It's a decentralized in name only.
They're not as decentralized as Noster is.
I remember when Blue Sky was first pitched years ago as a decentralized Twitter.
I remember it.
And they started a Discord, I believe, for it.
And I joined the Discord.
And it was really cool.
It was like, we're going to build a decentralized Twitter.
This is awesome.
And I was very excited and followed the project for a while.
And then Nostra came along and I was like, oh, this is being built by Bitcoiners.
Yoink.
And I went in and I went in.
Jack realized from interviews and talking with him,
it sounds like he realized that Blue Sky was making all the same mistakes that Twitter did.
Because it was literally, it was a project that was birthed from inside Twitter,
was X like Twitter employees were building it.
so then they were basically recreating their own twitter with maybe a sprinkle of
decentralization here and there but not truly decentralized and that's why jack left like he
literally deleted his blue sky account he left the board of directors and he went all in on
nostr because he realized that you know nostr was better and i i think that at the end of the day
people don't care the average person does not care about the technology stack they just want it to
work. And if Blue Sky functions and works better than Noster and says they're decentralized,
the average person's not going to look into it. It's just going to work. And they know that it
works for them. So then they try Noster and it's a little buggy and things don't work as well. And
they're like, oh, well, I'm going to use the thing that says it's decentralized, but it works better.
And that's good enough for them. Check it with Fiat Jeff, but I've been told that he had an
interview with Blue Sky. After the interview of Twinis, he said that they were a bunch of
communists. Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, they interviewed him years ago when they were looking
for developers and everything. Yeah. So he looked into it and he was like, oh, I don't want to do
this. And then Nostra was born. But that's a funny aside a lot of people don't know.
What's the difference between free speech and free reach? And do you think most people confuse
the two. Yeah, I do. And I think that Twitter X, Elon has helped play that role, helped confuse
people because initially Elon said he wanted to buy Twitter to make it the open free speech town
square and then immediately locked down the town square and said that you can say whatever you want,
but we're not going to let your content be seen by everybody. So, and they coined the phrase
freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. And that in theory, I guess that kind of exists on
Noster, right? Because I can say whatever I want to on Noster, but that doesn't mean that
if I'm only publishing to one relay and only one relay sees my content, that doesn't mean that
every client and every relay see my content. But the difference is, is that I'm in control
with Noster and that users are in control. And if they want to see my content, they can subscribe to
my profile. They can subscribe to my relay, things like that, and they can see it. So I still think
Noster is better in that regard. It's just that it requires a little bit of proof of work maybe
to find that content. And the fact that you're in control and you're not permissioned and you're not
having to deal with an entity to say that you're allowed to have reach or you're not allowed to have
reach, which is literally what Twitter or X does, that they're telling you you're allowed or you're
not allowed to have reach and you can pay for the reach. You don't have to do that with Nostra.
They don't tell you anything and they just shadow ban you and make sure that you don't
reach anyone. That's the worst thing is they just shadow ban you. You don't know that you don't have
reach. You're posting up a storm and you think, man, my content must suck. Nobody's interacting
with it, but it's because you're shadow banned and you don't know. Or just, yeah, only a couple
people see it or something. Yeah. Nostra isn't the same way, but we at least put you in control
and give users the power to be in control, to find content.
Is freedom on Nostra quietly being shaped by clients?
I'll say, sure.
And that's by design where you can have a client, an app, do whatever they want to.
And since it's an open protocol and anybody can do whatever they want to, there will be
apps that maybe display content in a more centralized way So there a client called Primal
Their take is to run a little centralization piece
to make Nostr better.
Nostr is very decentralized,
meaning there's servers or relays all over the world.
And these relays are your Nostr servers
that store your content, your social transactions.
They store it all.
Sometimes relays can be down
because they're just run like individuals like me.
They can be slow.
They can be overwhelmed with content.
Who knows?
They're just pieces of software that people run.
And for whatever reason,
sometimes one relay is more performant than another.
Well, this creates a little bit of a performance issue.
if I have to connect to all of my relays to view content,
sometimes this can have a negative effect.
So Primal said, let's fix this
and let's come up with our own caching or index server.
So what they do is they go out to all the relays
or a majority of them, probably not all of them.
They go out to as many relays as they can
from hundreds and hundreds of relays
and they download all of the content
and they put all that content on,
think of it as one central relay.
So then primal users connect to that one central relay
to view all of the content.
Now they can do multiple things then
since they're kind of now the central relay.
You know, they can make it fast and performant for people
and that's the whole reason that they do it.
But then they could also, if they wanted to,
they could filter, sensor content.
And because now that centralized piece is in play, some people don't like how Primal was handling it for that reason.
Primal realizes this, that they are a central point of failure now.
So they built their application to allow other people to run a indexing or caching relay.
And then they give their users a choice.
so I could run my own primal indexing or caching relay if I wanted to.
And then I could tell the community,
hey, if you don't like the way they handle stuff, use Derek's.
You could run one.
We could say we could use CK as a relay.
Anybody and everybody can run one.
While on Primal?
Yes.
So you could run your own.
I could run my own.
It's still a centralization piece, but there's user choice now.
So you could use Derek's centralized relay.
You could use this person's centralized relay.
You could use primal centralized relay.
I have to choose.
I cannot use yours, mine, and primal.
It would only be one.
Because it's this, think of it as like an aggregator.
There's relays all over the place.
This indexer, it pulls them all together into one central relay
to make user experience faster and better and more performant.
But with that central piece, now there's potential for any type of filtering or centralization.
And some people don't like that.
Centralization works better, but the whole point of Nostra is decentralization.
Yeah.
But the counter argument to this is, if you don't like what Primal is doing, then use a different app.
I use Amethyst for Android.
Amethyst only exists for Android.
for iOS you have Domus
which we've talked about
you can also use Nosteur
it's N-O-S-T-U-R
it's like the French saying
you can use Nosteur
you can use irish.to
you can use jumble.social
you can use coracle.social
there's nostrudel.ninja
there's all sorts of
Nostre apps out there
that are all web based
and some of them
actually Coracle has an Android
and an iOS app
that you could install the Coracle app on your phone.
But many of them are web-based.
So there's all sorts of choices.
And that's the beauty we've talked about earlier
is since you have this identity,
this key, private key that you control,
if you don't like what one client is doing,
take it and go to another one.
You live with your content and your followers.
It's literally how Nostra works.
If you think like the average person
does not care about decentralization and censorship.
Like we've said this, they don't.
Until something happens that affects them, they don't care.
So the average person would use Primal and not care about their central caching relay.
They won't.
They just want their app to be fast and performant and work.
But maybe in the future, there'll be multiple indexing services that people can run.
Maybe I've talked about running one specifically for this reason,
because every time this comes up, people kind of shit on Primal
for running a centralized service.
And then I say, you know what?
I like these guys.
They're my friends.
I've met them multiple times.
I talk to them all the time.
Primal guys, I'm going to run a Primal caching server
to give a second option.
To answer your question, long-winded, get back to it.
Clients can absolutely centralize,
but we have user choice.
Primal knows they have a centralized piece of the puzzle.
They know that.
And that's why they try to give you as many user controls
and as user options for the more powerful,
powerful users that want these type of choices. That's why you can request deletes on Prima
easier than if, for example, you were using Iris. Is that the case?
Well, it would delete off the caching server. Yeah.
Okay.
I believe whenever you publish, it publishes to all of, it goes to the caching server and
then it goes to all of your relays or vice versa. I don't remember which way it goes, but
your content that you post still does go out to all of your relays. Primal forwards it or
broadcasts it on to all of your relays that you use. So it's not like they're just keeping your
content or your delete request only on their server. They're sending it on to all the other
servers that use all your other relays that you use. For me to understand that they could if they
wanted. Yeah, sure. If they wanted to, I guess their application could only publish to their own
one relay if they wanted to. Any client can do that. Yeah. What about the algorithms within
NOSTA clients? Most, I'll say most, the majority of NOSTA clients don't have algorithms.
Well, one, because algorithms are hard. And two, some people just don't like algorithms.
but also uh you know there people are waiting i would say some developers are waiting for the
best way to implement them like like iris has a for you algorithm primal has trending algorithms
snort now called phoenix has a uh algorithm like a for you type algorithm and what do they do they
they look at content for you you know they they but they give you a choice you know you don't have
to use it if you don't want to. The algorithms are open source. So you could go to the projects
like Git repository and you could look at the code if you were a developer. But I think one of
the more interesting approaches that we have is this DVM. It's very technical. It's called a data
vending machine. It's what Primal uses. It's what Nostrudel uses and Amethyst uses, where you allow
other developers to build all these different feed types, these different algorithms. And if
you want to view that feed type, that type, that content from that algorithm, you just have to
navigate in the app and find that section and then view it. So it doesn't replace your home feed
unless you want it to. Is there a way to unclick the algorithms? So you can do that on Primal.
Primal has a, they call it a feed marketplace. The feed marketplace is a collection of algorithms
and feeds that people have built, other developers. So you can choose to view some,
a feed that a different developer wrote, and you could then go and look at the content and see
how the algorithm works. So it's very open and it's user choice. That's something that we don't
have like on like Twitter, you can't use and choose your own algorithm. You know, you use the
company's algorithm and that's what you get. Whereas with this feed marketplace, I can choose
developer one's algorithm developers, two algorithm developer, three algorithm, whatever.
You can completely change that and pick and choose if you want to. So it's tons of user choice.
Not every client has that. Some do. There's like three or four that have that built in.
And Domus wants to add similar features, but they want a different approach to it.
They want it to be local first, meaning that the user is more in control and can create their own algorithms and their own feed types instead of using what somebody else has already created, like what a developer has already created and running themselves.
so it's just a different approach to tackle the same goal so i think that's always been a goal
with nostre developers is to have like a feed store or an algorithm store where you can buy
and choose and pick and configure all the algorithms yourself if you want to and i think
we need that like when people hear algorithms i think oh algorithms are bad they don't have to be
bad. Algorithms can be good. Algorithms can be good if they're open and they're transparent and
they give us user choice. If I can personalize my feed, that's great. Yeah. So if you can do that,
and we're slowly getting there. A year ago, the feed marketplace launched.
Domus is working on their own internal version of this for local first. And they're slowly
getting there with their AI, like Dave in the app. You'll be able to say to Dave,
Hey, Dave, build me a feed of this content and AI will go out there and build your content.
And then you'll be able to save that and then have your AI built feed that you personally built.
So that's how they're going to do it.
So it's coming.
It's just, we just, you know, we got to give developers time to build it.
To wrap up, I want to ask you about the big picture.
Why do we need Nostra right now?
Well, I think as we're seeing this happen now, as more governments and more tech companies advertise for Noster, show us that there's a KYC and a permissioned internet where you have to request to do certain things.
There's a divergence happening and there is a permissionless open and free internet happening.
And we're really seeing this happen in real time.
And it's really weird to me.
It's something that people have kind of warned about for years that this could happen.
And that's why we need freedom technology, because this will happen someday.
And then literally over the past six months, we've seen it actually starting to happen.
In real time, it's accelerating.
So I truly believe that we're going to come to this tipping point where the average person
is going to know that this is wrong and that the internet is changing or has changed. And there's
this open, free, fun internet over here. I think we're moving that way. And Noster will be there
for when people need it most. What does success look like for you personally,
not for Noster? For me personally, I think success for me would be Noster's aha moment,
the light bulb moment where we purple pill somebody.
I purple pill somebody.
They go home, they purple pill their whole entire community,
and we start seeing Nostra growth happening
where Nostra is growing by tens of thousands of users a day,
millions of users a day.
Similar to what happened with Blue Sky,
there was an incident that happened in Brazil
where Brazilians got locked out of Twitter.
Oh, yes.
And Blue Sky blew up from that
because they needed an alternative
that couldn't be turned off.
So, I mean, Blue Sky could be banned too.
But that's the funny thing
is that they moved over to Blue Sky
and they grew by millions and millions of users like a day.
It was crazy.
I don't know what they're at now,
but at one time I looked,
they were at like 30 some million users.
now that number has gone down a little bit but they still have a you know many many millions of
tens of millions of users and i was kind of sad thinking this was nostrils like chance to to shine
we could have literally shown them hey and then part of me was like oh man i hope blue sky gets
banned next because then then we can see the blue sky is still centralized and that you can't ban
Noster, they can't ban all the clients, all the relays, all the servers. So my metric of success
is I want to see Noster go mainstream. Then I know that what I've been working on and spending
so much time of my personal life, so much of my personal money, blood, sweat, and tears over the
past two and a half years that I want it to be for something. I want Noster to grow and take off
to where it isn't just 20,000 people using it on every day on a daily basis.
There's millions of people using it.
If you stopped building tomorrow, what would you hope would stay?
I would hope that somebody else would step up and take my place and build
and continue pushing and growing and onboarding.
I know there's other people that do.
I have plenty of friends in this industry that are contributing just as much as I am that are building and onboarding and trying to grow Nostra.
I truly believe that it takes a community of people.
And so if I step down and I decide to not do this anymore, I hope 10 people step up to fill my void.
Last one.
Fast forward to 2035.
what's the one way you hope no store has changed how we live online i hope that we get to a
method where everybody can run their own relay and if they want to with like a click of a button
i think that maybe we'll have like family relays or something like every house will have a relay
and we could literally do that
maybe we'll get to the point where
technology
becomes so easy
that
people don't really
they don't know they're using Nostra
they're just using their next favorite social app
we don't say hey do you use Nostra
we just say hey
let's communicate let's talk
and nobody can be
censored because everybody runs their own content
and broadcasts
to their friends and their family
and their community relays.
That's the utopia.
Yeah, it's a beautiful question.
I hope we can get there.
And I think that we will.
We just got to keep building
and we just got to keep working hard
and getting the message out there
and eventually we'll prevail.
Yeah.
It's been a pleasure, Derek.
Thanks for your time,
this generous conversation
and everything you are doing
to keep voices free.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
It was a great conversation.
I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with you.
So where can people follow you and your work?
Well, you can't follow me anywhere else but Noster.
I deleted them all, I said.
So you can follow me on Noster.
I'm Derek Ross at grownoster.org.
That is my Noster address.
You can also check out grownoster at grownoster.org.
And then you can follow all of the things that I'm saying and doing and building
and all the developer relations stuff that I'm doing with Soapbox by checking out Soapbox as well.
Can't wait to have you back. Until then, stay sovereign.
Thank you.