Fran, welcome.
Thank you, Sean. Appreciate you taking the time today.
So we were chatting before
I hit record, and you are in the beautiful city, which I wish I could beautifully pronounce, so Buenos Aires, which I have been to as recently as last February.
Gorgeous place, and maybe we'll talk more about how that informs
your perspectives.
But as I mentioned, I asked you on today because I think
the issue of app stores and centralized control thereof is
a big, big, big topic. I was
doing a little bit of, research to remind myself when the first app store launched. I had convinced myself that maybe it was Microsoft or something else, but no. It was Apple in February.
So we're we're coming up on seventeen years,
of the Apple App Store and everything that has, you know, sort of offshoot or,
offshot, I guess, from it.
So
let's start with a bit of a background. I know you are primarily or have been recently a mobile developer. I know you've got a lot of time,
engineering and writing software. Tell us a bit about,
the, the NIM that is Fran.
The
NIM.
We're alive. Right? So, I mean, I'm not a NIM anymore. I guess I've talked myself enough.
But Have you? Okay.
Tell tells you what I know. I I
Yeah. I have a lengthy experience with software.
I did Java back in the day.
Oh, okay. So gives off a little bit of my Yeah, man. That's some nice craps right there. Yeah. Nine is wise. Yeah. 2 thousands mostly, but,
oh god. I'm so glad we passed that stage.
Yeah. It was pretty terrible. But It's still out there running banks everywhere, I suppose. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But then I did a little bit of,
back end work in Ruby on Rails, and that's front end as well. Like, it's,
then onto, like, all sorts of JavaScript frameworks.
And so
I done a little bit of day of his work as well. So, you
you know Nice. So I mean As people say, these days. Right? Absolutely. Which, as as all the the,
the 10 x full stack engineers out there will appreciate. So, I mean, with that, and the reason I I wanted to to pull, you know, that out of you a little bit was
to set the stage for
why in the hell would you tackle something so audacious,
and I'm being quite sincere,
as
a decentralized
app storming.
Let's start here. What's broken? What's wrong? What are the key challenges
with the
centralized app stores? You know, everybody knows either Apple or Google Play.
And, you know, what what's wrong? And then
how fundamentally do those
challenges,
create a lesser
end user experience?
The first word that comes to mind is frustration,
And that for me is a
huge driver.
You know, with it, with it's good and bad sides, right? The frustration itself is enough energy for me to like go and pursue something as big as this.
But, obviously,
this wouldn't have had occurred to me
if, Nasr didn't exist
because
the solution I'm proposing to the centralized stores,
is is based on a decentralized protocol. We can talk more about that later. But Sure. The the biggest problem here
is
that it's not bad per se to have a catalog
or a curation
of whether you call with whether it's applications
or it's music
or whatever it may be.
That's extremely useful, and I don't wanna,
throw the baby out with the bath water in in in a sense that there is a lot of value
with the current app stores or as most, people find applications today.
So
how can we improve that model?
And why I say improve is because I feel they're terribly broken.
In what ways? What what would you not to, you know, throw anybody into the bus, but let's throw somebody into the bus. Like, what's what's wrong? We're gonna throw this. Don't worry about that. Yeah. What's what's wrong what's wrong with them today as as they are?
Right. So while the
intention
is
to give use okay. Let's let's start by by saying that these are marketplaces
where Certainly. Users and developers are are connecting. Right? So,
on the one side, we have the the user,
convenience and frustration.
And on the other side, we have the developers convenience and frustration.
So
we can start by by users because
most people, of course, do use these these systems.
And,
well, we're kind of familiar with, as you said, with
Apple App Store, with the Google Play Store,
and we can extend that to
even package managers as we were talking
about before.
And to me, the biggest problem is that we cannot change the curator. We cannot change the catalog. Cannot change the curator.
We cannot change the catalog.
And this creates a lot of friction and
resentment,
from both sides, but particularly
from
developer side.
Because
in order to get,
you know, the good stuff into these places,
the the filters can
be high, but they can also be
random.
At times, they can feel
Capricious,
arbitrary. Arbitrary.
Yeah.
So, you know, what if they could
like, what what if could this become a market instead of, like, a one fixed place where, you know, if if one
curator decides to have a very high standard or decides to go crazy,
which we could debate what what's the case today,
it would be pretty
interesting to be able to change,
you know, who does this,
who who, essentially, who we trust to do this job.
And to introduce, I presume, competition. And and and what that competition puts upon someone that might misbehave, might get power hungry. Exactly. So free markets. Right? Right.
Then
that that's the big picture because if we start going deeper into each one of the operating systems and platforms, we will find a lot of nuance.
Apple does not behave the same,
than,
you know, the Android platform in general, but also within Android devices, the situation is a little bit different.
Android is What would you say sorry, Frank. Go ahead.
Android is much more open.
Yes. I don't know what the situation with Windows
is today. Nor do I. But in general, desktop seems to be a little bit more open. And I would say the the toughest one is
iOS.
Although macOS, and I mentioned to you, I've just switched off,
last fall after twenty plus years of Mac devices.
And, it was predicated largely by just this increasing
you know, they're tightening the wrench.
And,
to me, what are dark patterns, you know, that dare you download from a small indie developer and try to install? They increasingly encourage you or
stop you from doing it. So
with that, I I I wonder, Fran, who who is doing
the best job? You know, Is it is it an Android? Is it F Droid? Is it these alternative,
Android app stores? Talk to us a bit about
where that wrench hasn't been cranked down all the way, and there's a little bit of flexibility, a little bit of freedom. I know it largely doesn't exist on iOS, and we'll we'll come back to a major lawsuit that may change that. But
where do you see
the
greatest flexibility
today?
Outside of of Zapstore, of course. What works well?
Do you mean at which app store, in particular?
Right. So I mean and I'm less familiar with Android. So, you know, if you look at F Droid or these others, which I, again, I'm only peripherally familiar with,
are they working well enough? Have they also sort of succumb to Mhmm. The same pressures and and and control?
But so F Droid is is an interesting case because that is an app store that works on Android.
Mhmm.
And they do support multiple catalogs. Right? So you you if you if you're not satisfied with the default
F Droid catalog, you can add a different one. And one of the best known ones is, Ision Droid.
And the thing with F Droid is that they
normally
built and signed packages themselves.
So essentially, like, now you're just moving the trust
to F Droid instead of, like, the developer. Right? Right.
Unless it's a reproducible build, but, you know, that's, that's a minor case.
And they have a quite a high standard
in terms of free software
because they require
that,
you know, the components used to build the the application
have certain licenses and they're, like, very
very, you know, I would say annoying with that with that kind of stuff.
So that reduces the catalog, but it also has the downside they that they are building.
So, sure, you can go and add,
a different catalog, as I mentioned, Izzie Android, which
is
a kinda complimentary,
set
of apps that are not on F Droid, but, you know, now you can
install this way. And most of what he builds is, like,
apps that are open and have published source, source code on GitHub, for example.
So that's,
that kinda works, but there are a lot of,
trust implications in in the middle. And
the UX,
in my opinion, is not as good as it could be.
And then there's another contender,
which is called Optanium. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I am.
And the idea here is that you can go
and fetch packages directly from where devs are publishing it.
So, normally,
if
you have a look at GitHub releases,
and you see that a lot of devs not only just publish the source code, but they also build their assets and publish them there.
So there is a huge repository
of, in the case of Android, of APK files,
within GitHub or GitLab or Right.
Is there and maybe there
and there is, I think, a a broad audience,
that that that will watch and listen
from developers and Nostra users and
those that are deep in the technology,
to those that are not.
Could you, for us, us, Fran,
if you have a model,
what are the major
buckets of concern with regard to app stores? I mean, we we mentioned sliding trust from one point to the other.
There's privacy,
there's monetization.
These are things that occur to me. You know, there's build pipelines if we wanna get into the weeds. Like, I know there are various Linux distributions
whose
primary funding challenge is can they put together the infrastructure
to to run, you know, these these builds for the various,
distros and and,
and what have you. So do you have a sense of that? Like, kinda layout for us
what are the,
components
Mhmm. And and attributes maybe, of an App Store experience that you think about?
An App Store essentially provides
discovery.
Right? So users go there to find stuff
and they go there,
to pay for stuff. So there's monetization.
There's the privacy aspect as you mentioned.
And there's
security, of course. Mhmm. So we have all all all these these these components that kinda have to work well together.
And And and that I assume is I mean, that's a significant even in I'm sure we could we could enumerate others, but those alone
are a set of trade offs and a set of incentives
Mhmm. That I I assume are hard to to challenging to align.
Yeah.
So, for example, when you
open a typical,
app store on an iPhone
or Google Play,
even though these
corporations
amass a huge amount of data from a lot of people and and yourself because you're typically signed in,
and they know exactly what you download, when you download, maybe which apps you use at any given time, like,
the privacy breaches are are kind of crazy.
Absolutely.
Despite all that, they
still
don't show great recommendations.
I mean, I would expect with all with all that data, when you open the front page of these apps, you get like, oh, well, these apps, like, are are great because they reflect my taste, all my friends.
And none of that is happening. They're just trying to shove down everyone,
all sorts of, like, games. I don't know know why I get a lot of game recommendations when I don't play any games,
at least not on my phone. So it's it's
it's quite surprising. Right? What's the whole And that's an interesting point. I mean, if I think about
what I would see in
sticking just, for example, within Apple, I'm a I'm an Apple Music user or if it's Spotify,
there is an incentive
for me to sustain that subscription for them to give me great recommendations.
But Mhmm. You you know, to your point, and it perhaps hadn't really occurred to me, those incentives are not the same in an app store. It is, can I just get more apps on presumably, it's can I get more apps on the user's device,
and can I therefore get a bigger cut of the ad revenue that is inevitably, you know, pushed in front of them?
Or for those who do buy apps, of course, it's that 30%
vig or whatever the cut is. Mhmm.
So with all of that and all of those complexities,
why go after this problem? You know? What what drove you to create Zapstore?
What created that itch?
And secondarily,
I I would like to to know, and I don't wanna assume, but
did
did being Argentine did some of the history that you've experienced in the country I mean, are there are there sort of cultural,
geographic,
geopolitical
influences? Or was it, hey. This is an interesting problem. I I'm gonna go solve it.
We could talk a lot about Argentina, but I feel that this is a completely personal problem, you know, it's just personal frustration
and also being a
software developer that basically
trying to verify software through through BGP.
I just, you know, just so bad, like, in terms of user experience that I was like,
I wanna get this right. Like, I wanna do this,
but I'm
I'm putting off sometimes
installing an app because I know I have to go
and find out, like, the fingerprint of a certain key and match it and check this and, like, oh, and it's like when I go to download certain software,
you know, it's not for everything, but some packages require you know, it's it's better if you verify that it it is authentic and came from the developer.
Right. Anything touching Bitcoin, for example, that's that's that's money or for A Bitcoin wallet will be a great example. So
it's like
that that, you know, that sigh. I gotta
just check this and even then it just feels kinda random because some developers are,
are basically sharing their
their fingerprints just like to their release. So it's like, this sounds kinda like security theater because if you if your server was compromised, like, you know, whatever It's trivial. Besides the file, it's it's also gonna be changed. So, like, how do we solve all this? Like okay. Back to your
question for Argentina, like,
I don't see any any influence there.
Yeah. Fair.
Other other than perhaps, who knows how the mind works? But
having some
I think this is this is kind of,
general here.
Distrust for authority.
I didn't wanna put the words in your mouth, but I I might have drawn, you know, that inference. Yeah. I might be a bit of an extreme, but, I think,
you know, in general, when
if you just
talk bad about authority
in just any social circles,
you will not get, like, you know, weird glances that people normally agree. It's like, yeah, I'm doing shit. You know? So,
I guess that could be part of it, but it's it's possibly
something in my upbringing.
Rep rebels rarely come from comfortable circumstances.
How the plans were aligned when I was born? Who knows?
Well, for the moon, what phase was the moon in? Yeah. Yeah. And then like I said, I didn't wanna I didn't wanna push you into, you know, constructing, you know, some sort of backstory. But but I mean, as I say, I think it's an interesting problem. It's a it's a meaty problem to solve and
and interesting to know that it was
in some ways as simple, but also as significant as I just don't wanna deal with, you know, validating,
signatures on on on code or binaries, which again, to those listening who are not developers, that that may mean absolutely nothing. But but I think we'll we'll come to how that builds up to a to a great end user experience.
We'll we'll so from there,
pitch us, if you will, you know, Fran on on Zapstore.
As it is today, we'll talk more about the future, but what's the solution it provides and what are the trade offs
that using it today would would entail?
I'm gonna give a little
intro on
how that frustration that I mentioned,
and specifically, I was talking about security on verifying
packages and download it from from the web,
that most most users don't, you know, don't do, because they just either just download and install or Right. Pull from an app store.
I would say that those frustrations, if I compare the amount of time I put into into into that,
is just like
minimal compared to the amount of effort I put to fix that. Right? So Right. It's kind of crazy.
At the time, I was
I discovered Nasr
maybe in '2
end of '20 '2,
early twenty three.
And
I asked myself, like, if we can verify notes from
strangers because Nasr essentially
is
a decentralized protocols that allow allow us to
receive information and verify that
it it's it was
cryptographic signed by the person who says
it was. So
I just saw a parallel in in in in the way that we do software verification.
And I said, like, what are these
small because there there there are some,
tiny files when you verify stuff with BGP
or when you download
that different packages that is called SHA
sums
Mhmm. Which are like the
digests of,
I'm getting too technical here perhaps, but No. No. And I think and I mean, I would just jump in and say that for those again who who aren't necessarily that deep,
this is and you'll you'll correct me, please, Fran.
This is
to verify, to validate
that the author creator,
developer
of a given either binary, a piece of software that will run on your machine,
or
the source code that one could build
into a binary to run on that machine
is from them. So it is simply to say that Fran wrote this code. Fran published this this application,
and we can know for a fact
by going elsewhere
and verifying
his digital signature.
Exactly. So it's to prevent
that any party in the middle has manipulated, changed, you know, what you're supposed to know. Right? And if you look at Nostr,
Nostr was doing exactly that but for tweets.
Right.
Attribution.
So when I saw that little file, I was like, wait a second, like,
this could be built on Nostr.
At first I thought, like, we could put this little file on Master, but then it's like, oh, maybe we could build an event. And then I found that there were, like, events that were already,
designed around,
files and file hashes.
So then I just started, like,
imagining something something great. And then as I mentioned before, there are, like, quite a few pieces here.
We have,
the first one that
occurred to me was security. Like, how can we verify the the software? But then it's like, wait. But Nostra
is a is a social network.
So
discovery
is there.
Like, if we can use our social connections to
see, you know, what apps they're
using, what do they recommend. Like,
we could add, like,
a a real social layer
on top
of discovering apps.
And then the monetization
part
is that, wait a second, but we have Zaps.
So everything kind of started falling into place. And I was just about because I was part of the,
the first, sovereign engineering cohort in Madera.
Nice.
Some of you may
know. And,
that was
a few months
maybe or
a month or two before going there.
And so all I had was an idea,
and a blog post,
a long one, where I talk about all these topics.
And at the time, I really didn't have any solution, but I was just like I went into the rabbit hole of app stores and how they work and package managers and what do they do and what are the difference is and all that.
So before jumping to a solution,
I asked myself,
first of all, is this a problem big enough? Is it a real problem? Is the problem big big enough?
And can actually Nasser fix app distribution.
And after that and talking it through with all of the legends that were there, in Madera,
I found that it it it sounded great, you know, and I had a lot of encouragement.
So I just started building there.
And you launched in March of this year? Sorry. Fran. I launched I launched in in May
of last year. Like, one year ago exactly. Oh, was it okay? Okay. Was there a was it a point I mean, I know you're still That was
still
That was a
that was,
that was a first release
of the Android app because I see. Okay. The App Store is is primarily,
an App Store for Android
so
far. And maybe it was a CLI that And then later on later on, I I built a CLI because
first,
the idea of providing
a CLI for developers to actually publish their applications. I'm gonna get to that part now. Sure.
And then when I was building that, it's like, wait a second. But I can also, you know,
not only I could do, like, Zaps for publish
app,
I can also
do zaps for install and install these apps if, you know, why why not do a package manager? So that has
been a little bit, I don't know, abandoned, but, like, not not in the,
you know, the,
as as most important project.
And that that has been, like, most people, when when they hear about Zapstore, they think about the Android
app store, and that's the the primary focus.
But, yeah, I've been working on the CLI,
stuff
a lot lately, and I'm gonna have a a read very soon.
Nice. And that is, again, just to sort of do a little bit of translation.
For those on their laptop, their desktop, the ability to enjoy the same sort of discovery, security,
privacy,
in installing
desktop applications
in, in addition to mobile. Correct?
Yeah. That's
that's the plan. That's the plan for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, there's a lot a lot to to build there. I know.
Yeah. Yeah. And and and with what you know, again, it's early still, but,
what does to the degree that you can paint a picture, someone
running an Android device today,
what can they do with Zapstore? What's that experience like?
Since I as I said before,
an app store is a marketplace,
and that is
when you when you start building something that can
be a big problem. Because starting a map marketplace from scratch is very hard
because now you have all these these two sides of it.
So
it's like, okay. Cool. I have some people that are interested in publishing and some people that are interested in using it, but it's like chicken and egg problem
where no one will really come with the other. It's not there.
So what I decided to do is,
is just start myself a catalog where I curated apps that are
of just just random
developers that are done. Maybe most of them are not even aware of Nostra or Bitcoin, but it's apps that a lot of,
my friends, let's say, would use.
So I started building this catalog alongside the app Because the app by itself won't do much if there's no content.
Sure. So I started building this this big catalog.
I mean big, no. Not a big, but small catalog,
but to get the ball rolling.
And the idea there is that
by having this app select, then people will use it. And and I wanted to push, as I mentioned before, like publishing.
I wanted to push
developers on Nostril, like, mobile developers specifically on Nostr
to basically
sign events
that tied to their
apps. So what's really cool is in that catalog,
for example, if you download an app,
like Amethyst, for example,
or Amber,
or Zeus,
there's a bunch of them,
they are signed by the developers.
So when you, as a as an end user,
are
downloading one of these apps,
you can see that they have been signed. They have a Noster event signed by by the developers. So you're certain that, you know, back to the thing about that there's no changes in the middle, like you can be certain that it's
from them. And sure, you can trust, you know, a curator,
someone
who who who collects apps and puts filters and verifies stuff.
Sure. That's great. But that's even going a step further and saying, not only I
you know, this app is of good quality because it's on my catalog, but also,
I was not able to change it.
I am not able to,
I can't modify that sign event. It's immutable.
Exactly. Exactly. I could censor, though,
by
not publishing that event.
Let's say that the curation if for people who are familiar with Nasr,
Nasr works with relays.
And so we use a ton of these relays, you know, in order not to be censored. And in Zapr, the the the idea is the same.
The place where these signed applications live is in our relay.
And right now,
we have one hardcoded relay in the application, so you cannot change it.
But that's not the idea. I would, you know, ability would be to just as any other lost client, you can just change your
manage your relays.
And that's great because now you can have competition. Now is the free market
of catalogs I was talking about. Now, all of a sudden, if I am not behaving
or
you know, maybe I'm too lenient
and I just start having garbage in my Right. Store,
all of a sudden, you can just remove that relay and add another one.
And if we zoom out, Fran, I had,
I published my
conversation with David Strayhorn last week, who you may know goes by Strathat on working
on web of trust. And so
could you talk to us a bit about how web of trust,
whether you choose to use that term or not, sort of layers in and reputation,
gets sort of bubbled up or exposed so that as you say,
I cannot,
with certainty,
know
that,
you know, Fran's not going to to publish a binary that's malicious, but I do know your reputation is at risk if you do. And so assuming you value it and assuming others have chosen to trust you,
by way of this social layer,
I can have a
higher confidence that the application I install
is,
you know, is legit, not gonna do any damage. Talk talk to me a bit about about how that reputation web of trust layers in.
I like the words,
how do you say, how did you say,
high confidence or improving confidence because it's all this
higher confidence.
We
strive to get as as much confidence as we can. You know, these things are definitely not perfect and I will set an example now of that.
But it's maximizing
confidence and maximizing usability.
Right. It's kind of the the goal here.
So one of
the ways in in in in which, you
know, let's say downloading an app from from a given user that's signed with their nostrils keys
is that
this user could be an imposter,
an impersonator.
So let's say that
Vitor,
the author of Amethyst,
all of a sudden has a new, you know, a double,
an impersonator or not, which he probably has.
How do we tell who's the good reader and who's the bad reader?
And the conversation
started through other, you know, for other reasons before,
talking about software in Nostr,
about webs of trust.
And that was another of the components that I was thinking back in my era about
where,
yes, we we have this problem with content like,
articles or tweets and so on, but, you know, for software, it's even more important.
So, you know, web of trust, like, curation of web of trust needs to be central here
because you cannot imagine you're
installing Bitcoin core from, you know,
from the core devs and which actually is impersonator, you know, so that, that will be,
or wallet.
Catastrophic. That will be catastrophic.
For others, maybe not as much, but you know, it's up to, it's up to you to, you know, assess your
trust model. And this is, this is something we constantly do as humans in all situations. So we really have that
markers, you know. We do even that when you we go on the street, for example, we leave a laundry to wash, you know. It's like, well, you know, this store kinda looks kind of okay. A friend told me about it,
that he used it once. You know, it's not like total trust, but it's like, yeah. Well, it kinda makes sense. I don't think they will steal my clothes. If they did steal my clothes, I don't know. Maybe it's like hundreds or thousands of dollars. Who knows? Right?
But we we constantly do that.
And I think and I think it's worth it's great that you point that out. And and one thing I I think is important to emphasize is
the inherent trade off in moving from the appearance of safety with a centralized entity
to
the reality
of a decentralized
approach
is that nothing is perfect. Nothing is a % safe. Nothing is a % secure.
And so I think for those who do wish to make this move
to
more self sovereignty, more independence,
more decentralization,
you know, choose your choose your terms,
it is about,
frankly, growing up and and realizing
that
there is risk everywhere.
And in trusting Apple and trusting Google, you are not getting rid of risk. You are just changing the risk profile
and, the threat model as you say. So,
sorry, sorry for the aside and the commercial, but I think that's really important,
you know, that it isn't
the wild west just because you're not trusting Google and and Apple.
It may in fact in many cases be more trustworthy.
I completely agree.
Completely agree. But we need to again, we need to take the good parts
that they they they got right.
How can we improve the model? Like, just not throw it away. Absolutely.
What what do you think and so how how
which of those good parts have informed your design so far?
The good parts is that
well, they have created these these catalogs. Right? I think before,
well, software distribution
was
it was different before. Right? Like, you
basically just purchase software either on a on a CD ROM or you download it from the web. Right.
I don't recall there was, like, a central place to to get this stuff,
and you trust, like, big brands.
If it shows in the in the shrink-wrap box on the shiny disc, you thought it was legit. Yeah. There was also, like, a big,
well, there were repositories actually, like,
how is it called? Like, two cows or Oh, yeah. Wow. Shareware. The whole Shareware.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's going on. You you just like download stuff from there and, you know, double click install. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Yellow.
Well, and our lives weren't on these devices. Right? So there wasn't I would I would argue
that,
you know,
we didn't have as much at risk in terms of personal data loss and certainly not our money.
Yeah. For sure. Like, the the risk the risk, these days is much higher.
I think, because,
of privacy. Because now, these devices, like, have way more power to, like, leak
private information than than before, probably,
and financial information. So,
yeah, I think there are higher stakes these days than just, downloading that on a Windows computer back in the nineties. Right.
Well and and so, I mean, with
with Zapstore,
with this approach, we get
censorship resistance.
We get
variety.
That's the wrong word. We get choice. It's probably the better word.
What do you see that we need to
be willing to trade for that or in fact give up? So what are the trade offs?
Not even just today,
but where Zapstore is headed.
What are the what are the calculations and trade offs that we're going to need to make to adopt this approach, this model?
They're not trade offs. We're we're gonna be perfect.
I'm gonna you know, now you're on you're on tape as it were saying that.
Oh my. Yeah.
The trade offs is is,
you need to get a little bit more involved
because,
these are not defaults. Zapstore will not
ship with devices,
probably.
We're gonna try to make that, you know, as easy as possible to
to download. But, it's an extra step
that if you're if you're using the default catalog and that does not suit you and you you're looking to to build other stuff,
I mean, to use other then you
will need to do your own research.
I don't know how that's gonna turn out, like, what what the market will offer offer, basically. Right.
In in terms of alternative
catalogs, basically. So,
but it it is definitely,
more personal responsibility. I bet it sounds like Yeah.
You gotta grow up to use App Store.
Yeah. With that said, I wanna There's your tagline, grow up to use Absa.
Noted.
With that said,
I'm a bit obsessed with
UX.
So
it's
I've said many times, I don't know how much it shows, but doesn't matter
because, you know, I know where I'm going. So I know exactly what I, what kind of stuff I, you know, they're not gonna be design decisions.
If it's not there now, it's because I didn't have the time to do it. Sure. Like very short resources basically. But
the idea is to try to minimize,
you know, that. Let's say when you put that in terms of trade offs before it used to be, oh, you wanna be,
super,
secure, you're gonna have to, like, PGP verify,
which PGP is another, like, you know, rabbit hole of how that works.
God bless Bill Zimmerman, but it's just not
what we'd hoped it would be. Too impractical. So I don't know. Was that the best, set of trade offs in PGP?
I don't know. Probably not. Maybe, it was a good idea.
Mhmm.
Maybe
because, you know, ahead of time, like,
long time ago,
we didn't see the world the way we do. There were not not, you know, different the technology was a bit different,
but it's pretty bad. You know? Yeah. Bad. I mean, it's you know, you you touched on it. I think
it's a it's fundamentally, as so many things are, it's a UX problem.
And you get people to use it and and, you know, users and devs
when you get great UX.
Right. Absolutely. We're trying to of course, there's these trade offs. We're just trying to get the you know,
to maximize, you know, in all these places.
So
how was I said before, maximize,
certainty?
I think. Oh, so so yeah. Just higher higher confidence, higher certainty. Yeah. High higher higher confidence and certainty
and and usability.
I don't wanna make compromises
there,
especially
I'm getting it easy to use.
Then
we can open up the discussion of centralization
because, you know, one could argue that if you have a curator, you know, well, then you're just delegating trust, but that's fine. We do that all the time. The point is that, where do you feel comfortable and what's what's so it's it's this delicate balance,
between
convenience,
right,
and
and and and sovereignty. Choice. Yeah. Sovereignty. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think that's an excellent point
about delegation of trust is we all outsource
trust to various parties,
all the time for different things. But in the case of app stores or any highly centralized marketplace or or if we can even call it that, you're forced. You know, it's it's it's, their way or the highway. And I think that's a good seg,
Fran, into
the conversation about
what can you do in the sense of what will you be permitted to do on Android, on iOS.
You probably know, at least here in The US, that Apple last month lost its,
its case. It's,
the the ruling was against Apple and Epic Games v Apple,
and it now
allows external payment or rather will will force them to allow external payment links bypassing, you know, their 30% commission.
And as I understand it may maybe you know more about this. It may enable sideloading.
So that's US only. Who knows what's going, you know, going to follow that. But
what's your take on
where that's headed, perhaps,
and
what's that thin wedge, you know, that you can that you can drive in to to allow to offer this choice
to either Android or iOS or or or wherever? Like, what's, you know, what are
the what are the challenges you're up against there, and and what do you see coming down
the down the pipe?
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting what happened,
the other week because
as far as I understood, it was about payments,
but they're holding on to it. They just don't wanna let go.
It's crazy.
They already lost some battle in Europe.
In Europe, you can apply to have an alternative
marketplace, but it involves a lot of red tape. So it's not as easy, you know. They have They're not going to make it yeah. Not gonna make it easy. Yeah.
So I don't know. I didn't hear much about, the sideloading part in The US.
I don't know if it's gonna happen
if it's gonna, you know, maybe it's death by a thousand cuts.
Because they're gonna have like more, more lawsuits and they're gonna, you know, lose or or and maybe at some point realize that, you know, it's over. Because
one of the things that I don't know if they're realizing, but it's
very
real concrete is,
developer resentment.
I think a lot of developers are, you know, just when they have to publish an app,
end up, like, despising them. Absolutely. You know what I mean? It's it's it's it's so arbitrary, as you said before. Like, a lot of stories
about app submissions,
when they come back and say you need to change this, it's like a it just feels so random that it it does not, like, feels like clonework. You know what I mean? Like, it's not reasonable. It's not reasonable.
So,
who knows is if they are gonna, at some point, wake up and understand this dynamic
and feel that that is impacting their their brand, which is
one of the most valuable things they have,
and just,
you know, open up.
Well, I mean, in in meanwhile, you've got as you say, you know, there's just only so much time in the day.
So I don't assume there's an iOS build coming of Zapstore anytime soon. Is there? Anytime soon. No. It's,
I don't know. Would you? Right? I mean, it's
it's it's it's just too difficult. I don't again,
I'm limited on resources and if we just try to do an iOS, it's kind of impossible. But
again, just to just kind of in terms of priorities, it's Android
and then it's
CLI, like, package manager for
Mac and Linux,
and then
desktop for Mac and Linux.
Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. That's the that's the the plan in that order.
But going back to your question,
because you asked, like, how maybe you can let as a way of leveraging or just, like, sneaking into, you know,
into the stores.
Maybe it gets easier, and that will I would reconsider.
But for now, it's there's there's enough work to do with with all these.
And Android is by far the most popular operating system in the world. Pick your battle. Right? Yeah. And then I think after that comes Windows.
And
macOS and Linux desktop is just not not big. But
the point is, like, who you wanna who you wanna serve first. So for me, it's like freedom tech oriented people. Absolutely. I don't know that, like, very few use Windows.
Yeah. And I mean, I'm a you know, as I mentioned to you, I'm a holdout. I I made the switch to Linux, but I'm still hanging on to my iPhone. And so in hanging on to my iPhone, I have, in effect, voted
to be held captive.
Right?
So,
so I I need to be able to understand and take that trade off.
Well,
with that with that is the loose roadmap,
you know, two years down the road, what is the future of zap store look like?
You know, what what sort of v one, v two
look like for you?
Vibe coding on steroids.
Nice.
I'm I'm I'm at sort of features, but but, yeah, I now I've got a picture of of,
you know, like, how you install
Mountview and You understood it as how I'm gonna build it? Okay. Yes. I did. But I mean, how are you gonna use it?
Ah, okay. Please go ahead. Tell me more. Okay.
I mean, I don't know. I don't know. It just just sounded fun to say.
But I think,
you know, on a more serious note,
the future
of apps
is gonna change. I mean, is is is is changing, let's say.
So
are we gonna still
be downloading apps from developers?
Yes.
Most developers will be,
you know,
powered by
AI agents
for sure.
Most of us probably are doing it already.
At some point, maybe you're gonna have some apps and this is gonna be gradual
where
you can just do, for example, if you,
wanna
that's that's pretty feasible these days. And let me,
define or describe what is Vibe coding for those who may not know.
Okay. Vibe coding is a term introduced by, I think, Andrej Karpathy,
was one of the was he a founder of OpenAI? I'm not sure. But he was he's a kind of, OG
or or the in the AI space.
And he tweeted out something about, like,
there's a thing that I call, like, vibe coding coding that is basically,
just talking to my computer and my phone.
And just, like, as I feel,
you know,
then I I I I build stuff by by by just kind of, like, giving instructions and, like, see how what the what the AI gives back to me.
And you just keep modifying it that way.
So, you know, and that that became kind of a meme.
And, like,
people use And for those who aren't tracking, you know, these LLMs,
be they, anthropics clawed,
various models from OpenAI,
tools like Cursor Cline, others,
you know, the the again, as a hobbyist and someone
the
that the pace of development, the pace of acceleration with these technologies and these tools is remarkable. So please go ahead, Fran.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And the dynamics will change because of now what's what these tools are capable of doing right now,
you know, gives you a certain idea of, you know,
which apps can be totally vibe coded, meaning, yeah, you can just anyone can talk to the AI and they get the app running,
or,
they can assist
developers
and certain things are are are, in my opinion, so far impossible to do. Or just very Such as?
Like, building a a product with a vision because, you know, in there comes the the human values, and this is something the AI cannot do.
Like, what, you know, what are your priorities and
and even, like, just a higher level
direction of a project.
Maybe it can do it in some way. But I feel it's just much better when you give it, like, tight guidelines
and, you know Constraint breeds creativity. Constraints and and it excels there.
It's gonna get better for sure. But at the moment, I feel like
most
apps
are they're like the sweet spot will be like a dev assisted by AI publishing their apps,
and just using it for whatever, you know, holes they can they can they can fill,
with AI patches, basically. But So if we if we take that back to Zapstore or app distribution or marketplaces, I mean, I
don't wanna put words in your mouth, but what struck me when you started down that path
was to ask you, do you mean
no more off the shelf
apps, you know, that I get a bespoke app for me? Is that
what you see coming? I mean, how does that distribution model change? Because
you had started to say that the future of apps, it's themselves will change.
So my question would be,
how will
the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store deal with that?
Because these apps, you know, are if you're they're bespoke
and
basically built on the fly,
like, they're gonna go through a review process of a week? For five weeks. Yeah. Or whatever it is today.
No. That model is dead.
Great point. Like, I'm I'm not saying it's gonna die right away. No. But you're gonna have
a transition period probably and they have to figure out other ways. So that's, you know What replaces it? Is that where Web of Trust reputation and what we've talked about comes in? Exactly. Because I feel like in that sense,
what I'm building with Zapstore
has better ingredients to build that kind of stuff
than they do with these,
big centralized
world gardens. They've got the wrong primitives.
Yeah.
They can build a new thing for sure.
But
we're talking now that if you wanna
vibe an app into existence
and you wanna have, like,
an open market of agents that can fulfill this job,
then it's better to have it, like, connect to as many as possible to, like, a global
free market of agents.
Right?
Right. And that is, like, the kind of primitives that we use in in Nasr and Bitcoin.
Can you okay. So speaking of Vibe coding, can you can you riff
a little bit? What does that wild future look like
of, you know, bespoke apps based on
agents doing my bidding with, you know, using zaps to pay each other? You get where I'm going. So so what does that crazy future look like in your mind?
I guess it's gonna be a transition towards that.
And I don't know if
it's gonna be a % disco back bespoke apps because a lot of the times, you know, there is surrounding a product, you you have,
even culture, right? Like you have like certain UI patterns and stuff and everyone's using the same app. So now people can,
I guess when they're stuck with something, just ask a friend, hey, you know, what are you using? It's like
not everyone will have their own
Nostril client.
You could, which is great, but I feel it's not gonna be one to one.
However, it's not gonna be like
Facebook,
which is one to millions. Everyone, billions, yeah. So it's gonna, that means it's gonna make,
it's gonna improve like the long tail.
Because you're gonna have like way more apps. And that's,
you know, if you can build on an open protocol as an Oster,
like all of a sudden, Oster will have, like, million, you know, million apps. And I don't know if millions of users. We have more apps than users. I'm not sure.
That's it's entirely possible. You know, and I think and and I'll just probe here to see if you've been thinking about this, Fran. You know, what occurs to me is, as you talked about the long tail
and
as opposed to one to billions, it's one to many, whatever that looks like. It seems to me that would also change
monetization
and how developers, you know,
earn a living from be it open source or, or commercial applications. I mean, do you see a scenario where
developer
developers publish code
at at my bidding agents do their thing to customize and sort of all of that, almost like a royalty stream flows back to the developer? Do you have any thoughts or
positions on what that may look like? We've talked a lot about the user experience experience, but on the developer side.
Yeah. For now, we have
the model with
which is
developers publishing apps, which is at the moment a value for value model because,
they just upload their apps to
the Relay, to the Blossom server, and so on. They get downloaded and people zap back as we do, on social media.
Then I hope to
build
a paywall
for developers that wish to, you know, sell an app. Mhmm. That's totally fine, you know, or sell an upgrade, for example. That would be a possibility.
But then how is it gonna change in terms of
AIs?
You know, maybe we have developers that are bots
and they, you know, they receive and maybe, maybe when they receive the money or someone owns those, those bots and I guess that that is gonna be the revenue stream.
But
if they're like devs that are augmented by by AI, well, I mean, if they create a great product
really fast and they can charge good money for it while not spending as much, or they can throw their resources onto AIs. So,
we're going to see
a variety of of of models. But in my opinion, it's gonna take a long time until
we reach the point in we can just, like, definitely Vibe code an app, you know, and, because I mean, from the from the
from the human input, you need to know
what
you want first. And a lot of times you don't know what, even what you want. Cause let's say you even want to build a calculator.
The AI will ask you if you you're gonna ask to give it, like, a product,
description sheet or something like that
before, like, defining the the product.
And most users will get annoyed just by that. You know? It's like, oh, the calculator. Do you want to be scientific? Or Do you want reverse polish annotation? What do you want? Yeah. Do you want this or that? Do which color should it be? All the buttons, this and that. So,
sure, you could get, like, better defaults and so on, but, I feel like, having people that
take their time and they're professionals and that they build applications,
is gonna remain.
Again, maybe one dev can build a hundred apps versus one app,
but there's still gonna be some direction and some decisions made at that at that level.
And,
yeah, users will will just benefit.
And if you're a power user that wants to, yeah, I have the time and I want something, or you're super annoyed about something and you just want something very specific and and you wanna put enough time into describing it,
sure. Why not? You'll have these programs.
Yeah. I think it's really interesting. I'm reminded of
the Japanese phrase, omakase, chef's choice. Right? Which is that,
yes, there are times when I just wanna roll in. And as it happens, I love to do that in great Japanese restaurants is to sit at the bar and
and, you know,
chef's choice. And so, you know, I think this this opens up interesting possibilities
for
developers, product people
to continue to put or to put their stamp on things in that way, in that in that fashion of Omakase.
So as we as we wrap up, Fran, I'd love to get your take, and this may be,
something you've you've thought about as you've gone through this process is, what do you think
this change that you're bringing about and others are working hard on to decentralize
app stores to,
give that choice?
What lessons does that offer
to other tech sectors? So social media, cloud computing,
IT broadly. Like, what do you think are the changes that are coming
that those working
in those other sectors need to pay attention to?
I'm not sure about this one.
Can you give, like, an example? Yeah. Yeah. So so what are the big signals? I mean, you know, we talked quite a bit about Nostr.
Assuming
these changes come to pass, assuming
Zapstore is successful, assuming Nostr, you know, continues and grows and flourishes,
what disruptions
do these technologies represent to business as usual
it's a good one. I haven't thought really much about, like, how will this impact other other other industries. And and not even Zapstox. Just like what what are what are these sort of changes? Yeah. But regardless, it's it's all the stuff that we've been talking about.
If our thesis is right. Yeah. There we go. Right.
That decentralized protocols
in in a in an agent
world
will, you know, make sense and that some money also makes sense,
to to basically coordinate this economy.
Like, that will obviously impact, like, lots of industries.
And,
yes, Absa is just one more instance of of of how that is that it's impacting, but that specifically
in software, I guess software gets, you know, all these
is exposed
earlier to to all these technologies.
Absolutely. I mean, for example, if we if we were to to extrapolate this out
to music, to books, to
harder. Right? Because of the way the rights,
copyright and other works.
So a lot of people are building
similar
projects
on Nostr.
I opted to go with
a software distribution,
but there's people that are building,
well, as you can even see on Zapstore,
you can see,
the guys
that build like the
running app or work workout. So is that like, is, is that gonna revolutionize
the workout industry in some way? I don't know. I have no idea, but that's one way then for social media and all that, maybe we're more familiar.
I think some people are in the medical space,
so they're, they want to improve how,
patients and doctors get the relationship in terms of like the privacy and the data they share and so on based
on digital signatures and they're using Nostra for that.
So I think very slowly, you know, this would
percolate and,
I think that the, the primitives
are so interesting
and the fact of having like open protocols so that people can experiment with stuff and see maybe there are some bad ideas that don't stick. Sure. I hope.
And if not, we're not trying hard enough, right? Yeah, exactly.
So,
I don't know, maybe some industries will,
will take longer,
but I feel like with enough
developers, which Nostra attracts,
we're gonna see people experimenting with all sorts of things
and having ideas that, you know, I I'm not aware of others of other things or problems in specific
verticals. But people that have maybe experienced
in an industry working for
years,
now they see this and they see, you know, when you see an intersection,
of abilities,
you have, like, kind of a tech background and you're,
let's say, you discovered Bitcoin earlier. So then now you see Nasr and then you see the problems in your industry, and now you can basically just conjure something and
visualize it and and and make it happen.
Honestly,
I think the primitives that we have are
are simple, but are very powerful because
basically anything can be built. It's easier to centralize something that's decentralized than the other way around.
So again, to my point, of
of catalogs,
it's not that in Zapstore, for example, you can
download something, you need to know who this person is. Of course, you're gonna have like these
middlemen, let's say, that curate and just present you with stuff that is easy. Oh, I trust this really instead of trusting this person.
What I mean by that is like, that's again, the balance that we're striking
in terms of convenience and sovereignty.
And
since we can do that, you know, all of a sudden it's like, okay, now we have like a gradual, like a slider, let's say,
between like the status quo
in any industry
and
like, okay, what's the cypherpunk dream for this industry, right? Right. But maybe what works is somewhere in the middle. So we can adjust that because,
of course, like, we can centralize more the decentralized, but we we cannot do the other way around.
No. I think it's a great perspective is, you know, we've got the building blocks.
It is permissionless.
It is censorship resistant.
It is straightforward. And so developers, as you say, are attracted and they're experimenting and building. And that's what's exciting to me about, about Nostra, about all of of, what's being built on it. Well,
for closing, Fran, what do we what should we look forward to from from Zapstore in the coming months?
What's the next big, what's the next big release we should look, look out for?
Wow. So I've been
very busy
with internals.
So, like, reworking a lot of the plumbing.
And
it's gonna be great.
It's gonna be great.
It's,
I'm finally
satisfied
with,
with with all the internal stuff, meaning that for users
and devs, like, they will see probably, like, a lot of changes come because now it's much easier to build on. So all the social features, like many more social features, for example, and right now when you enter the app, you can see recommendations
from me and a bunch of my friends. But like the idea is that they should be your friends, your recommendations. And
like having an app packs, for example, and the ability of bookmarking
and saving and sharing
and all that stuff, that's gonna be just way better. Like, you would expect from a Nostra client where, you know, you can you can your experience is more yours than in in Zapsura at the moment. It's not the case. It's pretty, you know, standard for for everybody.
So that's gonna
improve
and,
the ability of managing relays and blossom servers from where you wanna download stuff.
And then a big one,
you know, I I feel I'm working on I I kinda grinding on,
like, 10 different, like, sub projects at the time. So
it just it's very heavy and it goes slow. But, at some point, like, I'm gonna find,
you know, the
the point in which, everything is gonna go faster. Like,
you're building on the dish. I'm going up the hill. Yeah. Basically, I know.
But the the idea is
having
a much bigger catalog because I think that's super important. So by that, I mean,
if
you recall, as I mentioned, Optaneum before, like when you use Optaneum, we have access to basically as long as you can point to the to the APK on Android, like you can you can get it and you can install it. So the idea is
how do you how do we get that at same
amount of apps on Zapstore?
And so I'm, slowly building this new relay, which,
will be basically a proxy
to APKs
around the web.
So you'll be able to search
and, you know, in the back in the back end, it will just go and, you know, find the stuff and index it index it.
And
with that, you know, I feel like
now there's gonna be even more reasons to use it because you can just have like way more apps. And if you put that the social part on top of that,
it's gonna be it's gonna start becoming interesting. And then I wanna separate the relay from what, all
all the stuff that is signed by developers
will go in one place
and stuff that is just like kind of generic and signed by the relay will go elsewhere. So then you can, some people just only want signed apps by developers. They can check on the web of trust. Right.
And,
by the way, those are checks that we do every time you go before installing, you know, there's all the security things where you can check, you know, if you have friends in common, like if you follow who follows school. So that's
an important way of, like, distinguishing
that part.
What else?
Man, is that not enough? That's pretty much the idea.
Just closing
is the Zapster CLI, which,
I'll be I'll be launching, like,
next week probably.
And it's gonna be, you know,
quite nice experience. And the same applies to two packages, not only APKs,
all around the web and GitHub and so on, but also for packages. And in the future, we if we can apply that to macOS Linux desktop,
you know, I think that will be a pretty nice year.
Incredible. Well, I know you're writing code right up to the point that we started recording,
Fran. So sincerely, thanks for for pressing pause. You're gonna let me go now?
No. Yeah. Gil, let's get back to it. Right? So,
I am grateful for your time. Super exciting, Fran. I wish all the best. I'm looking forward to tracking progress and,
I've got zero point one point two running on my machine right now, so I'll keep up. Awesome. We'll we'll check back in a few months. Thanks, Fran. Thank you so much. Bye bye.