They always say, oh, terrorism.
What is terrorism?
You know, maybe the actual terrorism is them completely sucking
all of the energy out of our money and causing people
where they can't even pay their bills.
Like that causes real terror in the world.
And who are the terrorists?
The people who are diluting our money supply.
So don't be mad at us because we're just going
to a different solution that actually fucking works
and we're not being robbed every day.
We're the terrorists?
No, you guys are the fucking terrorists.
And we're just trying to protect our money
from you. You psychopaths.
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs.
My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast.
Bitcoin block height is 819040.
And the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today's episode is Bitcoin talk, where
I talk with my guest about Bitcoin and many other things
as well.
Today, that guest is Will Kasarin, AKA JB55.
Will is the creator of Domus, an iOS client for Noster.
It's my favorite way to use Noster.
And it's also the app that jump-started the wider
adoption and awareness of Noster back in December
of last year.
Will is a great dude whom I've had the pleasure of hanging out
with at multiple conferences.
And it was great to get him on the show.
We covered a ton of topics in our talk
from the events of the past year,
like Elon censoring Noster and the CCP blacklisting in China,
to current and future Noster developments,
zaps and zapportizing, what's next for Domus, regulations,
Bitcoin and monetary terrorism, and a whole lot more.
If you're not familiar with Noster,
you can check out the show notes where I have a link for you
to download the Domus app, as well as a couple of Noster 101
resources.
I'll do a Noster 101 episode soon, I promise.
I've just been slammed between baby preparations,
fiat mining, and of course, knocking out
a bunch of episodes of another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
As always, you can watch the video version of this episode
on rumble, YouTube or X by searching at Walker America,
or listen on fountain.fm, or wherever you get your podcast,
by searching for the Bitcoin podcast.
If you listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast on fountain,
consider giving the show a boost or creating a clip
of something you found interesting.
If you haven't checked out fountain yet,
I highly recommend it.
You can send Bitcoin to your favorite podcasters
and earn Bitcoin just for listening to the show.
Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk
with Will Kassering.
How's it going, man?
How have you been?
Pretty good.
Just having a burp, man?
Oh, well, hey, cheers.
I've got my Miller line.
I've got a bottle of something stronger underneath my desk
as well, just in case.
It's always been a couple bottles under the desk.
It doesn't hurt anything.
But man, how was in Australia?
Karl and I were bummed we couldn't make it,
but with the baby popping out soon,
it was going to be a little difficult.
That's fair.
Yeah, I mean, it's a completely different vibe from Costa Rica.
It's in the wonderful city of Tokyo,
and that was an amazing experience
and getting to meet the actual local Japanese users who
used Nostra completely differently from the way
that we use it, which was really fascinating to learn,
to see all that and to get ideas on how
to kind of optimize our clients.
So different how so in terms of their usage?
Yeah, so they actually did a whole presentation on it,
so I thought they were actually using a different client,
just because you'll notice that sometimes when you're
seeing Japanese text, they're not actually
replying to anybody.
And that's actually, but they're all just using
DOM as an amethyst.
So culturally, I guess it's kind of rude to reply directly.
So they just kind of use it as a chat room,
and they just kind of air reply to each other.
Yeah, it's kind of strange, but it's just culturally different,
I guess.
Wow, so you're just, there is no reply
guying or directly adding someone.
It's more of just implied that this
is part of the conversation that's going on.
Yeah, and I imagine a part of it
is because they're a relatively small community.
I don't know if that would work at a larger scale,
but for now, it's kind of working for them,
and they seem to be happy using it that way.
Dang, that's really cool.
I watched a couple of the presentations
I saw, Jack and Snowden's, obviously,
because I think that was probably one of the most watched ones.
But I also caught yours with Miljan and NVK.
Enjoyed that one a lot as well, but I've
still got a backlog of ones I want to go through and check out,
because I know Rabil had one that people were saying
was really solid and just providing some great context
and advice moving forward.
Were there any others that you'd be like,
you should go and watch these top of the heap?
I really like Alex Gleason's, because what he's doing
is actually pretty important, and then that presentation
really makes it clear that how important that is.
The idea is that we're not isolated
as a decentralized network.
In some sense, all the decentralized networks are together.
And the minute we start bridging with each other,
then it becomes one big network.
So he was arguing that Nostra's a part of the Fediverse
already.
Interesting.
I think they're part of the Fedors,
but that's how you look at it, I guess, right?
No, that's interesting.
I mean, it's kind of a fair point that I guess,
well, at least from the top-down perspective,
like if you're thinking about from regulators' perspectives,
looking at it's going to be centralized media
or centralized social media and decentralized social media.
Like these are going to automatically get bucketed
together by the people that are hopefully not soon,
but probably at some point going to start sniffing around
a little bit more.
I don't know.
So that's interesting.
It looked like you guys also had a pretty good time there.
I saw some videos.
They looked like there were some shenanigans to be had.
Well, I didn't know, like, oh my god,
like Wiz was really, really kind to our stay.
He kind of put us up in the Grand Hyatt,
and he treated us well.
And I got to check out the Manpool offices.
But yeah, you can get some, go to some pretty DGen stuff
in Tokyo.
So I got to experience some of that.
That's amazing.
Do I remember correctly?
I mean, do you know some Japanese?
Yeah, I don't that much.
Just probably like a few phrases here and there.
But it was enough to kind of get me through Japan
and talk to some people.
But it's hard because not many people speak English in Japan,
even though they're supposed to learn it.
If you don't have any Japanese knowledge,
it can be kind of difficult to navigate.
So yeah, just a little bit, but not too much.
OK, I was, Carl and I went to Japan for our honeymoon.
And I can definitely attest to the little English spoken.
But I found people to be very nice and welcoming,
despite there not being much of a language crossover.
There were also like plenty of nice people
who like we got lost in a couple of train stations there,
like in the Tokyo Metro, because it's just huge.
And some very nice guy carrying a baby
was like speaking perfect English.
And like, you look like you don't know where you're going.
Can I help you?
It's like that was very kind of you, sir,
with your child in tow.
No, it's an amazing city.
It's like everyone's so polite.
You know, people say that they're like rude,
but they're not rude.
It's just they're actually some of the nicest people
like on the planet.
Actually, sometimes they just get flustered
with like dealing with us crazy foreigners all the time.
But you know, otherwise, it's like such a clean city
and everyone's so polite.
So yeah, I definitely want to go back.
Oh my God, it blew my mind.
I was still smoking cigarettes at the time.
And like the fact that it's like you do not smoke a cigarette
walking down the street, like you want to smoke,
you go to the designated smoking area.
I pretty much just stopped smoking for that trip.
But you know, because it was like, OK, this is this is not worth it.
Worth it.
So I guess the kind of social pressure there
was pretty effective in that regard.
But yeah, it's a it's a cool place.
It's it's massive to what is it like 15 million people,
something like that.
Yeah, I mean, it's like I think it's like almost
we're approaching the population of Canada and like a small city.
It's it's mind blowing the scale.
And what's even more impressive is the fact
they keep everything so clean.
You know, it's and I think it's a part of the fact
that they don't really have anything to there's not
me there's not much of a to go culture.
You're not like taking food anywhere.
No one carries around stuff like so there's like no garbage cans
anywhere. But yeah, that's very clean.
That was a trip. The lack of garbage cans.
I know some of that is because there was a terrorist attack there.
A while ago where there was I think it was like
sarin gas was put in garbage cans.
And so I heard that that is one of the reasons why they don't
in addition to just being much tidier than let's say
probably your average American or Canadian.
I can't speak for those of you north of the border, but not the same.
Yeah.
Well, man, it's it's great to have you on here.
We're just going to flow with this.
I've got some questions for you just because
I just put the feeler out there that you were coming on.
And I know people always have questions for you.
I've also got a list of enhancement requests.
No, I'm just great.
Absolutely kidding.
Let them out. Let's go.
No, no, no, I have no enhancement requests.
Just keep doing whatever you think is best because it's working.
But yeah, we'll we'll flow through this and have some fun
along the way, I think. And yeah, I'll do just a quick intro
and then we'll dive right in.
Sound good. Sounds good.
All right. Well, greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs.
My name is Walker, and this is the Bitcoin podcast.
Today's episode is Bitcoin talk, but I have a feeling it will be more
of a no-ster talk or just a talking talk.
But I'm joined today by Domus creator Will
Kasserin, aka JB 55, aka Wild Bill.
I'm so I. Yeah, I just I decided it sounded like a cool nickname for you.
And I know you're you were Bill Kasserin on the app store for a while now.
Now, I think it's under Domus, but I remember seeing that I was like, Bill, OK,
well, Wild Bill, it is. Well, my middle name is Robert.
So my cousins used to call me Billy Bob.
So if you really want to know me, you can call me Billy Bob.
Wow. OK. I'm just going to save that one away in my back pocket for later.
But you are creator of Domus, which pretty much launched,
I think, the more mainstream awareness of of no-ster in general.
I'm also going to say no-ster throughout.
I know I know you're a no-ster guy and you definitely know better than me,
but I can't change the habit at this point.
It's just it's stuck as no-ster in my head.
So just a fair warning. That's fine.
Yeah. But that was a it's we're coming up on like a year now,
since I joined no-ster, it was early December.
That was right around, you know, I remember I joined.
You gave me a warm welcome.
You and a couple others that were that were on there.
I was using Domus on test flight.
I had heard about no-ster maybe maybe six months before that,
because I was just perusing Fiat Jaff skit hub as one does.
And I saw this no-ster thing and I was like, what what is this?
And then thought no more of it at the time.
I was like, I'm not technical enough to understand what's going on with these things.
So whatever.
Then saw you post about Domus and that it was on test flight.
And I was like, well, that's really neat. Let me try this out.
Carla was on there like a few hours later.
We were playing around on there.
And then a couple days later, it was like Jack was on there kind of
and posted about it on Twitter and things just blew up.
That was also right around the time that Elon decided
it was a good idea to publicly name no-ster as the list of like no-no words
and no-no apps that they were going to block and weren't going to link to,
which was just a like a strizand effect moment.
I think people were like, hold on, I've never even what is this no-ster?
Like I've heard of all these other ones.
I've never heard of no-ster, but maybe
I would love to kind of hear how that time was for you.
But maybe first we just back up a little bit
because I know you were a you worked on Bitcoin.
You were a developer on lightning.
You were working with a record label that was selling and utilizing Bitcoin
back in maybe 2017, 2018.
So I'm like, oh my God, 2013.
And I think you heard about Bitcoin for the first time in like 2010.
You were, you know, mining on GPUs at that point, which is wild looking back.
But maybe we can just start out with who is Wild Bill Casseron,
aka Will and how did he get here today to now being the the creator of Domus,
which is the biggest and still pretty much, well, not the only anymore,
but still the biggest iOS no-ster client.
Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm just a big nerd,
kid or nerd who just likes tinkering with computers and like tinkering with new tech.
I've always kind of been obsessed with, you know, how technology can,
you know, bring us into, you know, the Star Trek future.
Like that's what I want to be working on. I want to be working on, you know,
Dyson spheres and spaceships and stuff.
But I feel like before we can get there, we need to like fix our money, right?
And fix some of the core things that are broken in our society.
Like we can't even speak freely to each other online without like being feared of,
you know, being censored.
So, you know, I feel like at this one point in time, like, I feel like as a
software engineer, I can have a huge impact just from like writing some code.
And so that's, that's like the most motivating thing that keeps me going every
day. It's just this idea where you can make these huge impacts just from
writing a bit of code, which is just like crazy to think about, right?
Like our ancestors, you know, they were building like skyscrapers and like
nuclear and like the Manhattan project and physical things and like things that
are way harder than this, but, you know, I'm just like this, nobody in my closet.
And I can start doing these crazy impacts on the world.
So I think that's just, it's a really cool time to be a software engineer.
And, amen. To be fair, our forefathers would look at these
crazy lines of computer code and think, what is this like alien witchcraft
that these guys are doing?
I would call you be burned at the stake at this point.
Most certainly you are a heretic who is somehow making magic internet money
and doing all sorts of nefarious things.
But so that's a great little intro.
But now let's let's fast forward.
You'd been working on Noster for how long before the things really started to blow up?
How long were you working on Domus?
Did you work on anything else besides that in the Noster ecosystem?
Yeah. So Noster was just like a side project, the client I was working on.
You know, this was just a hobby I used to pretty much only work on on weekends
because I had a full time job at the time working on a startup.
And I was mainly working on lightning because I was working on core lightning.
I was working on an app called Ellen Link, which was a core lightning wallet,
which I still use for my zapping.
I think I'm the only answer of that.
And yeah, and I just, you know, I just love the lightning network.
I just, you know, I loved how it was showing how Bitcoin could actually
work as a payment option because I've always been a huge proponent of
actually using Bitcoin and not holding it.
You know, some of my best stories is just giving way to way too much Bitcoin.
And now I like I'm in pain thinking about how much I get away.
But in some sense, it's like, well, you know, but those are the moments
I'll remember.
And it's like, those are all the very important learning moments in my life.
So, and it was, and the people who received those Bitcoin are, you know,
well, most of them lost the Bitcoin.
But, you know, I just, I just love the idea of actually using it
for its tenant purpose.
Because otherwise you're not using this beautiful thing that Satoshi gave us,
like this, even like the script interpreter within Bitcoin, I just,
it's just this beautiful thing that I've written software for.
And, you know, so I feel like lightning network was like that first time where
you can actually use a Bitcoin.
So, so I've always been really passionate about it, but I ran into this issue
where I realized not many people knew about it, not me, but it was too hard
to use.
So I was really passionate about just making it easier for build these lightning.
Yeah. So Nostra was just a side project and, and yes, it just, I started
April 2020, April of last year.
So it took like, and then that December is when Jack found it and then kind of
blew up. But yeah, it was just a side project.
Yeah, it was just a side project.
Well, it's amazing what can, what can come of, of just a side project.
It's kind of a beautiful thing.
But, you know, I still remember one of like Jack's first notes on there was
something the effect of this is just like, this is just what Twitter felt like
pre 5000 users.
And it was just such a cool thing to see.
I don't think I joined Twitter until 2010, maybe.
So a couple of years behind the early adopters of that, but it was a pretty
neat feeling to see all of a sudden you've got Jack Dorsey, who's just
like this, you know, legend and who built this incredibly, incredibly useful
platform that, you know, got taken in certain directions that I think he's
probably, you know, not as happy about some of the ways that it went, but
ultimately he built something that was so, so valuable.
And then for him to provide that signal to say, I see something that is as
valuable or more so than the thing I was building.
That was just like huge for me where I was like, wow, this is really amazing.
And I'm not a developer.
I don't write code.
And so I was like, well, at least let me just use the ever loving shit out of
this beautiful protocol and try to mess around on it and try to tell people
about it.
But, you know, soon after that initial kind of blow up, it was like, I think
it was, was it early January you implemented zaps?
I think you were talking about the spec in late 2022, like late December, and
then January it went live.
How long had you been kind of working on that idea for zaps?
Was that coming from like, from the start when you, you know, because you had
all this background on lightning, you were like, this just makes sense.
Or did it kind of develop a little as you went along?
Yeah, I didn't think it was possible because I was thinking about it for
like the past year.
And I just thought like, well, you'd never be able to verify them properly.
And that's like, it's still kind of true.
You don't really know if a zap is real.
And that's why if you have a zapper who's like creating fake zaps, like, yeah,
that's, that's possible.
But I at least got to a point where I was like, well, if you controlled your own
node, you know for sure that the zaps that you're node sending out are true
and correct.
So I thought that was like useful enough for most people that I was like, you know,
I'll just go by the bullet and write the spec.
I thought at one point I might be 12 to do it, but then I realized like, I could
probably do it with Elinural.
So yeah, it was a long time coming and it was a lot of, it took a long time,
but back and forth I worked with Kieran as well.
He refined the spec early on.
But yeah, it's once, once I released it, just to see, to see the explosion of
activity around it was insane.
Like I think, I think Snort had it implemented and Amethyst had it implemented
or Snort, I think had it implemented before I even had it in Dommas because he
just reverse engineered what I had and implemented it.
So just see the energy and the, see the excitement around it was mind blowing.
So yeah, I think it was, Noster was already so interesting to so many people
before that, but the addition of zaps made it something I think that was just
naturally attractive for any Bitcoiner, especially one who maybe was a little bit,
maybe a little hesitant about this, you know, new social media thing because
that's all they knew about it was, oh, that's just some new social media app,
like not having any of the in depth knowledge of this yet, not maybe realizing
the parallels of a decentralized protocol, you know, as is Bitcoin.
But as soon as apps come into play, it's like, oh, wait, we can just send
Bitcoin to each other.
And there's, you know, no one in the middle, maybe there's a, you know,
if you're using a custodial wallet, sure, there's a custodian in the middle
handling that Bitcoin.
But that was such a powerful thing.
And it was a little bit after you implemented zaps that you also got the
news that China had requested kindly that Dommas be pulled from the app store
in China.
And I still remember, remember that.
I mean, do you think it'll ever be back on the app store in China in some
distant future, A, and then B, I don't know, like, how was that as far as just
a roller coaster of emotions?
Like you're building this new stuff and it's amazing and people are loving it
and people are using it all over the world.
And then it's like, CCP is basically like, nope, sorry.
Oh my God, you're making me remember all this crazy shit that happened and like,
it was crazy, wasn't it?
Like the whole nostril.
Yeah, it started with that nostril.
It was wild.
It was from Elon.
And that's where, I think that was the craziest thing.
Yeah.
Like to actually see, because, you know, there was a lot of craziness going on
around that time.
And then the CCP thing happened, which was like, what the hell?
So you obviously like, you know, it struck a lot of like, chords somewhere.
And people were paying attention.
Whether, you know, someone was saying the CCP was like posting on Nostril.
Like maybe they're doing like counter counter propaganda of some sort.
Like they're trying to like flood it with stuff to make it look like it's a CCP
operative or something operation.
I don't know.
I mean, I wouldn't put it past them, I guess.
You never know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I think people in China are still using it.
I get messages every now and then like, oh yeah, I'm still using it.
We're using it within the country.
So it's pretty cool.
And it shows the power of this technology.
It's going to be, it's going to be difficult to stop.
They're going to have a hard time stopping it.
But it's interesting.
There's, you know, you mentioned there's a lot of Bitcoiners that joined.
And it's interesting.
There's still lots of Bitcoiners are still very skeptical of Nostril.
And I'm curious, I'm curious what their mindset are, what their mindset is,
because, you know, it's working, you can get Bitcoin.
So like what's, what's not the leg really?
I don't know.
I do see that sometimes still.
I saw today that, that Stacy Herbert joined Nostril, which is great.
She was a little bit of a holdout.
It's great to have her part of the flock.
You know, I don't know what the, the hesitation is.
I think perhaps, I guess if you're an on chain maximalist with Bitcoin,
you're like, oh, this lightning isn't even real.
Like I'm not even going to, I'm going to waste my time with it.
Maybe that's one thing, but I feel like that's probably a pretty small minority.
I think maybe for a lot of people, it's still just, maybe it just still feels so new
and feeling like you're, you're behind the wave, even though it's still, you know,
we're still so early, as we say, maybe that's part of it.
I don't know.
And people keep linking me this Parker Lewis argument,
which is like this idea where Nostril is taking away the brain energy from the Bitcoin space.
And I don't, and I just don't see it that way.
I just see it as a way to like inject new blood into Bitcoin.
So I don't know.
It's, it's a weird perspective, but I've heard that a lot as well.
I haven't heard, or I should say, I haven't read that article from Parker.
I'll have to check that out. You know, one, I had Preston Pish on this show as one of my first guests.
And one thing he said, I thought was super insightful about, because he is like a full Nostril bull, like absolutely loves it.
I mean, you know, he's been on since the beginning, trying to figure out how to get relays running and just experimenting and having a good time,
shitposting and zapping, of course.
But he basically said that he thinks that Nostril is on a level of importance with Bitcoin, because free and open communication is on par with free and open money.
And he made the point further that without decentralized communication channels without censorship resistant communication channels.
How are you going to actually coordinate the exchange of value between two people across the world.
And know that, okay, when I'm sending you my address, you're actually receiving my address because I know that it you know I'm sending this to your, your Noster keys.
So he views Noster at a more macro level is like, this is the way you're coordinating economically to be able to actually, you know, utilize Bitcoin in its censorship resistant way.
You need to be able to communicate between people in a censorship resistant way, which I thought was like once he said it, I was like, yeah, it's an excellent argument for it.
But I don't see that I don't think I can agree with the brain drain argument because I view these two things as being kind of developed in tandem and helping to build off each other.
Yeah, and it's not zero sum. It's like we're going to attract new developers and those developers might get interested in Bitcoin.
No, but that that point about like free speech and like speech online is is becoming increasingly important, especially during elections in the states where there's been concern of a lot of censorship and a lot of, you know, propaganda and control of these, you know, big tech corporations
to spread, you know, certain message to try to sway the, you know, population to vote a certain way. So we might see Noster become like actually like an election topic. And people within within some administrations actually are talking about it right now and they've been talking to me as well
like they want to make it a part of their campaigns like look this is could be a way to bring like to restore democracy in the United States. So if we if it went that big and it went into the political sphere that would be that could be the point where it kind of takes off which would be really interesting.
I know that RFK or at least somebody in his team joined Noster. It was a number of months ago now I think it was maybe around the Miami Bitcoin conference. I don't know how active he's been on it since then.
But it's also interesting. I mean, if you've seen the stuff Brett Morrison is doing with true vote, whereas utilizing Bitcoin and open timestamps and and Noster. I think it's going to be interesting to see again.
Right now Noster is a is being used as a social media decentralized social media protocol. But obviously, it is an open protocol that you can build absolutely anything on starting with, you know, social media is an obvious first thing because it's what people want right it's
something that's going to actually attract users attract people to use this protocol. But I'm curious kind of what what you're most excited about in terms of the next evolutions I know that you've been really jazzed about about kind of email replacements I think you've been
working on one maybe has another side project for for a while. But what do you kind of see as the coming next down the pipeline. There's probably still a long way to go on getting massive adoption of the social media side of Noster but what do you think comes alongside or comes after
that that you're really looking forward to and you think where this protocol is going to really, you know, kind of shine.
Yeah, I mean so like a lot of the things we use, you know, they're kind of you there all your data is is, you know, closed behind silos and you can't really see you don't have access to it's not really transparent.
So like this whole idea of like radical transparency with the data is kind of an interesting idea. And that's why I really like that that idea with like the true vote or whatever that app was where, you know, even like I'm not even sure how 100% works but even just the fact that you can
pull notes from a public database and actually have some transparency around notes and you can see everyone who signed everything you can you can tell everything and make sure like the tally is correct.
But even that that simple thing is very, very powerful idea. I think a lot of people lost trust within the systems because they're being counted behind like curtains and you can't see the process where Noster radically opens up everything.
So that's one thing that's maybe we'll see more of that this idea of like transparency and how that affects, you know, these types of systems but also, you know, even just if you know the corporate world.
I really I'm really interested in, you know, what if we could, you know, get more like corporations on what we have a suite of tools for like Slack and email and, you know, business related tools that you know and that could actually be a good way to make a sustainable or profitable
infrastructure business so you know what types of what types of like corporate solutions are we are we building on Noster is really interesting. Obviously all the other public stuff as well like ZappStream, you know, the floxter is really cool like we replace meet up because meet up sucks.
And I guess overall just like what is what does it look like when all these apps are working together, you know what does it mean for a floxter to talk to your Slack app or your floxter to talk to your Dhamma's app and what happens when you're making highlights and so I think this greater
or like, you know, really showcasing the interoperability features and what that how that plays out is is really exciting to me as well so but yeah again we're just so early we're not even scratching the surface really.
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No, it's it's it's so true and I think it's a really interesting point about kind of the, let's say the corporate world or I mean even if you think about governments, you know, even maybe it's even something small maybe it's local municipalities but just being able to coordinate and communicate in a secure way.
And to, you know, if I imagine if a nation state maybe the CCP was the first nation state to run a relay, who knows.
But I think that we could, we could legitimately see that happening in the not so distant future, where it just makes sense, whether it be for their own internal communication, or to perhaps to try and, you know, get people on their relay and be able to see what they're saying,
because it is a, you know, pretty radically transparent. So, well, it was interesting because I went to this, this digital sovereignty conference in Spain, and I thought it would be interesting to go to because it wasn't a standard Bitcoin conference I'd normally go to.
And it was full of like a lot like EU like government people, you know, people I wouldn't normally talk to.
But it was interesting because they were I was telling them about Nostra and like, you know, like, wow, they're like we could use this for at the UN like I was talking like this the IT guy for like some UN organization.
And like this seems like this would be great for like independence from tech corporations like that's what we need to be and we need to be neutral and like, yeah, perfect like use a relay like start building this up.
He's like, well, well, we need these clients and something like we need these types of tools and like, well, these are the things we could be building, you know, even though it's for government but like, you know, governments are here for now until we turn into like an Ancap state.
You know, we might as well make it, you know, give them proper technology versus whatever closed source systems they're using right now.
Got it is just absurd how not only closed source but just antiquated. So many fucking government systems are like anytime you try to do like literally anything like the fact that you're still need to send physical paper.
And so often for things that are quote official, or the fact that we use social security numbers as basically in the US as basically like our de facto identity that's like keep this number safe.
Otherwise somebody can steal your identity and this was literally invented like specifically just for social security. And then they later realized, oh wait, we need like a universal identifier for our population so we've got these social security numbers let's just use that.
But like this system was never built for that to be the end all be all of identification. And it's just another example of like government basically just, it's like, well, if it's broke, let's not fix it, you know, they're just there's no desire to actually improve or innovate there.
I think my my my C my CRA account which is like the IRS in Canada, it got okay, I guess. And so I got locked out of my my tax account, which is like this is great I'm locked out of my tax account I can't do anything.
I guess you don't have to pay them right to like fix it I had to like fax, like all like all my identity and stuff and I like that. I don't have a fax I do like an app that did faxing and then like, it didn't work I'm like this is just what am I doing faxing in 2023.
Well, Paul Krugman is definitely still faxing in 2023 but for the rest of us it's like okay gonna have to go down to like a local FedEx or USPS and use their fax machine this is, this is fucking ridiculous.
But I, yeah, I don't know it's a the nice thing is I think that the pace of government innovation is so far behind the private sector and certainly so far behind the open source community that it's kind of like this nice barrier.
Like, it takes the government so long just to catch on to the fact that something is like they maybe should pay attention to no stir. Like, it's just it's going to take them a long time but that's like a good thing.
It's like with Bitcoin to they ignore it or they don't even know about it and for several years. Then they hear about it and then they ignore it for a while and then when they finally decide you know what we should we got to do something about this it's like well too late, you know cats out of the bag.
The genie is not going back in the lamp like it's here now. So that's kind of like a, I'm grateful to government for being so fucking slow and efficient because otherwise we would be, we'd be in a lot more trouble I think.
And so, one thing I wanted to talk about a little bit was on the topic of zaps, and also on the topic of let's say revenue models and general monetization.
I know this is something you and I have talked about this at some length. As soon as you came out with zaps you put out a note that was basically put this idea in my head of zapportizing where it's like, well you know you could just, you could just pay to for somebody to see your
business as you can attach a note to this zap and what an interesting thing that would be for companies to use and I was like, well that's fucking brilliant. Recently, we've seen a lot of what people are, I think calling spam zapping with like one sat zaps, just flooding into
Satoshi or well now no longer Waldo Satoshi for a lot of US based people that's a that's a whole different topic. But I'm curious on just kind of your take because I see both sides of the zap spam like nobody likes spam right.
Nobody likes getting force fed advertisements. At the same time, this is like the first sort of spam that you're actually getting paid for and you're getting paid for in hard money and yes it's a very, very, very small, you know, just one sat or two sats, but at least it's still something.
I mean, I think the easy answer to that is like message threat or message thresholds for the zap I think Kaia implemented this already in his telegram bot. But I'm curious if your thoughts on zapportizing on this being perhaps an interesting way to bring in, let's say more
value to the protocol has evolved at all. And just kind of if you maybe at a zooming out. Do you have anything in mind for sort of the future of zaps in general from the user facing perspective. Hopefully Apple allows you to put it back on at some point in the future but I'd love to get
your take on that. Well it's interesting because I think that so I think we're in Prague and you're about to do a zapportizing talk. And that's when I added it to the notes. But I'm pretty sure that triggered something with an Apple. And that's what eventually led to the the note zaps getting removed.
I'm pretty sure was also freedom forum was after that after Prague I'm pretty sure. Yes, first announced it. So I think there was something that got triggered with an Apple because of that. So, so you're it's your fault. Oh, no, just here we go. No, I just think they like kind of got spooked like well it like an advertising model like
that's gonna go through I don't know there's something that went up the higher. But I think it's still a great idea. I mean I removed it temporarily because of that but there's I'm gonna read it because it's a it's just makes a lot of sense. It's kind of cool some people are complaining
about it that. Oh, well that you know people can just pay for a spot under my thread so you know. So maybe there'd be an option to disable it if you're a user you don't want to see that but I think it was pretty cool.
People could leave messages. Yeah, in terms of the one I mean the one that messages are kind of annoying. It's like people fling and pennies at you. Yeah, it's like okay. That's nice but you know stop. So maybe it's a super easy thing to do the threshold thing like you like you mentioned you would just
at Dom is going to have push notification soon so there's gonna be an option where you just don't notify me if it's under 20 sats or something and that's pretty easy to do so nice. Now I think that that's that's huge and I do agree with the flinging pennies and Algae because it's in my opinion it's like okay you're
you're telling me like that's the beauty of zaps right. It is a signal about how much value you assign to what you are doing and how much value assigned to that other person's attention or to their work. If you're just zapping them for the sake of you like what they what they noted.
But it's probably a good idea for anyone listening if you're if you're trying to zap for ties to at least up the sats like just a little bit. You know, keep your zapping budget the same but just decrease the frequency and increase the value a little bit because I, I'm personally a I've been with
I've been with Zapp since 2006 ever since I could, you know, default my zap amount and that's that's felt like a good number for me it's like, for talking in fiat terms I think like 24 cents right now. And this is 25 after today who knows.
And this is why I set the default to 1000 because you know I never intended zaps to be something like you click on every post it's like you, if you really like a post and you you should zap it a high amount it's I feel like that's more impactful than just getting like 25 five set zaps right.
So, but it's, yeah, I think once we introduce one tab zap people just decide to like reduce the default amount like five and it's just in zap everything which is, which is fine but I don't know I don't know if like that is as impactful as it could be though.
It does kind of, because I love the way you were describing zaps originally and still to this day but it's, it's a value signal right and so if you make it so that it is such an insignificant amount that it is no longer, you know, quote valuable.
You've just kind of replicated likes again, but just with exactly really really tiny micropayment for it.
So, so this is this is why we wanted to, and this is why we at Domest HQ we've been looking at ways to what would incentivize people to actually want to zap higher amounts.
You know, some and ways to get around the whole note zapping issue that Apple does not allow.
So one of the things they do allow which is interesting is you're allowed to buy physical things with zaps.
It's like for some reason I think it they made that concession because I'm guessing Instagram because Instagram has a physical store you can sell stuff and the idea of them taking a 30% tax off of physical
purchases on Instagram might have been like way too much or something so maybe they have this concession for that so I was thinking maybe you know what if you wanted to buy something physical for someone else.
It's like 50,000 sets and anyone can click that button or maybe do it more than once. So you're buying a physical purchase for them.
Maybe that's considered a note zap. I don't know, but I'm just trying to I was trying to think of loophole to get around it.
No, I think that that that makes sense. It's also such a like it's one of those things it's like this is just a stupid rule.
This just doesn't actually make any logical sense like you because lnu are all invoices or just lightning invoices regular ones are just strings of characters it's like, you can just post them anywhere, and anyone can pay them and you can do this
literally on any social media platform, you know, yeah, no stir aside you can do it on Facebook, and you can do it on Twitter and you can do it on Instagram and anything.
And it's like to draw this line at no you can't do it at the post specific level just seems so like obtuse to specifically have an issue when it's a button like you know you can post a lightning invoice on Twitter, and someone could pay it.
But for some reason if you turn that invoice into a button that's not like technically I don't think invoices are allowed and Thomas has us right now, both 11 invoices that converts into a button.
I don't think that's allowed because it's like a button you press and to buy something. But they haven't really caught that I guess.
What makes I just don't like what could possibly make the fact that something is a button like is it does it make it too easy.
So that that their justification for the guidelines says it says, I forget the exact wording, but it's something along the lines of, if you encourage people to if you make it easy for or if that will, if that transaction ever ends up being a sale of some type.
If it ends up encouraging sales of things so imagine if you did a post that was like, I'm selling these shoes or I'm sorry I'm selling this like JPEG, you know, send me 50,000 sets and the person who sends me 50,000 sets then I'll send them the JPEG.
So that's like technically not allowed because you're anyway so I don't know just having this that button there apparently isn't encouraging people to do those things but you can do those things anyway so it doesn't make any sense to me.
Well, right and it's like the fact that they're okay with the transaction of physical goods.
Right. If there's if there's a physical good involved but it's like as soon as it's a digital or virtual good. That's like that's where they draw the line again just seems like.
I think they're just right they're just trying to protect that that huge revenue stream of 30% on digital purchases and you know anything that encroaches on that they're going to try to stop so they don't even have to follow their own guidelines right they can change the
guideline if it doesn't match what they want to do so.
I mean that's kind of the that's the bitch of working with these app stores I know that the EU I believe it was passed.
But didn't they just put something through that Apple's going to have to allow alternate app stores that went through recently didn't it.
Yeah so it all comes down to you know are people going to use this distribution method are people going to go download this and like how does how does notification will notifications work on side loaded apps.
Because like if you think about it a lot of their app security relies on you know apps or review.
So it's not on the app store well like basic functionality work like probably not like so will people who want to use them.
So whether they're loud or not I don't think it's going to be a huge impact.
I mean I guess this is where like like PWAs are pretty useful for a lot of this.
I mean I guess you can I think you can use iris and snort as like you know click add to home screen and put it on there.
I haven't done that with iris or snort but so I assume that it still works OK.
The main issue with that is that you know so extensions don't work plugins don't work Safari plugins don't work with PWAs.
So if you want to view you if you want to use a not your app as a PWA you can't use the plugins that protect your private key.
You know on on on iOS we have an extended called no store and it's a plugin for Safari on mobile and allows you to hide your private key from the web apps.
You can't use that with PWA so and that's and that's going to be the theme with with you know with Apple is that if if it's too easy to get around the app store they're going to start gimping PWA so that you can't even.
You know that just no no extensions is one example of that so it's not like a perfect solution.
No I mean that's a that's a fair point.
You know I would like because we're talking about Apple loving those sweet revenue streams of 30%.
I'd like to shift a little bit to revenue streams of another manner and that is with regard to to relays and incentive models.
I think I think I'm going to start talking about footster.
I you know what I just for you just for you I wore a footster.com shirt.
I haven't I haven't updated the website in a while I got to get to that.
But yeah for anyone listening footster.com.
Go there and see some feet and then go on no stern post your feet.
It will usher in the next bull run.
I'm just sure of it.
But a footster aside we can circle back to that.
One of the topics that I think was really prevalent at Nostereca and I'm curious if it was at Nosterecia as well was monetization and just sustainable business models for relay operators and for client developers.
Because obviously a lot of people have been doing a lot of this just kind of out of the goodness of their heart.
So far but you know electricity costs money and hardware costs money and upkeep costs money and your time is also very valuable.
So I mean maybe it's it's best to start on the client side just.
And you obviously run a huge beefy relay for Domus.
Which is sure just a quite an endeavor to do by itself.
But then you've also got Domus the client and I'm curious if you've if you've thought more about I know in the past you've talked about kind of a you know a Domus purple or whatever you might call it that's basically like a paid version that you look at as you know kind of like OK maybe you get some additional features but also it's a way to you know.
You built something really valuable.
People find it valuable and I think want to give value back. Have you thought of any other alternate models. Are you still leaning towards the kind of enhanced Domus purple version as the best bet or where's your thinking at on that now.
Yeah I mean you know the the value for value model was looking extremely promising you know especially if we if I just knew if we scaled up the amount of users that you know and note zapping what it took us to a place where it was it would have been fine monetization wise.
Obviously Apple acts that. So now you have been forced to look at more at the traditional models like subscriptions and Domus purple.
So just I think two days ago I started working on some premium features for Domus Domus purple.
We're going to try it. You know I don't think we're I think master is big enough that what's going to make a huge impact.
It's fine if you just want to like pay for your servers but if you're trying to like if you're trying to take over the world you know you know people people want Domus Android like you know that that takes resources.
We ended up hiring somebody. So fortunately we're able to get out the open sets grant for Domus iOS for 150 K which is pretty good and so that's paying we use it we're using that to pay an employee to like work on that Daniel he's really good.
But like you know what about Android right so I'm currently not being paid so I'm kind of just like I'm like well let's see if I can get another grant for for Android but it's like oh no maybe I only already have one grant so they're they're not really willing to do that right now.
So it comes down to it's like well if I you can only get so far with grants you know what do we do.
You know you know and you know we have a merch store and that's that's not really bringing that much money.
You know what about subscriptions we calculated it and it's like well even if we get a decent number it's probably not going to be enough to even just pay for another employee so it all comes down to it's like you know what do we want to do do we want to scale this up like and then that's
that point you need to think about like you can do VC funding which has always been something that like Jack personally told me like don't do it but I'm now I'm like Jack well it's easy for you to say you know you made like billions of dollars of VC funding.
So now I'm kind of struggling with that right now and maybe I'll probably have another call Jack like you know what year it's like been a year like what should we keep doing this route or like what's what's your idea.
But it's it's been a really big challenge for me just trying to figure out I've had much more respect for like running a business now because it's a lot harder than it seems and especially in this new space we're not no one's merely making any money right so it's definitely challenging.
Now and I mean it's difficult to because these are truly kind of uncharted waters. And especially I think when you're building in an you're building out in the open.
It makes a lot of things more simple but it certainly adds a layer of complexity I think maybe there's sometimes this a feeling by some that you know well this is, you know, this is open source so you know I'm just going to like I don't need to pay anything for this and you know nobody
deserves my my precious bitcoins. But I think that there isn't an appetite I'm looking forward to the premium features because I know I will be happy to to sign up for that.
Can you give us any of a sneak peak taste of what some of the just where your things I don't want to spoil anything, but the general direction that you're thinking for some of the premium stuff.
I mean so I mean I really like the translation thing within Dhammas, the universal translator but the biggest issue is the UX is just terrible like if I want to get, you know the best probably the best translator is not sure that that line translate
that not sure that wine, but you have like fumble with API keys and like when you reinstalled Dhammas is like you lose your API key.
And it's just like a pain he asked I feel like an obvious one is just provide that as a as a premium feature is like you just get translations to turn on.
So that was an obvious thing so I implemented that two days ago and that's ready to go.
I really want to do a thing where if you're like the first person to subscribe like I'm going to have like numbers on the account so if you're like one of the first you can say I'm number one I was the first subscriber.
Maybe you could show that off on your account. And this is like and this is going to lead down to more what I really want to do and I think that's probably the best back for making money on this protocol is just really cool, you know perks that you can add to your
profile right you should. Maybe there's a limited time thing or it's like this month there's like a special feature you can make your profile look like golden or something.
And if it's only available for this month and you can buy it and support Dhammas and just just make like these pay I mean this model has been used by video games and like you know I think Counter Strike is like a good example where you can buy
skins it's like a billion dollar game at this point just from the market so I don't know I'm going to try that just because it's I got to try everything but absolutely in terms of premium features I want to definitely want to add more multi account.
I maybe I won't even make multi account premium but yeah I have to think about it. I'm still working on it.
No that I mean honestly I think multi account is something that at least I know switching between my Walker account my footster account and my stop the presses account I would definitely pay for a premium feature like that.
I think the skins are an interesting one too because I just called I just started playing Diablo for had never played it before.
We were very deep in Baldur's Gate three before that I love the other ball.
Yeah wow what a game I actually started our second play through everything we're like maybe we should try out Diablo and there was a there was a Black Friday deal on it so awesome.
Guys went all the way to act three.
We went all the way to act four.
Four.
Oh yeah.
Oh no no Baldur's Gate.
Yeah no we played we played all the way.
It has amazing couch co-play which is fantastic because like usually when we game it's like one of us is playing you know for playing like the Witcher or like one of the new result of games it's just always single player so finally being able to do a side by side it was like yes this is amazing.
I'm sure you would have Diablo too.
How could you have known.
Is it is it too predictable.
Yeah.
I mean I like a little hack and slash what can I say you know it's a it's fun but I was blown away because I saw the whole just all the different skins and like the fact that you can buy all of that.
You know these platinum coins for their in game currency to upgrade these various skins and depending on the season that it's in.
Yeah.
And I think I saw these different upgrades and I'd read about some of it in one of I think it was actually one of dirt Gigi's pieces where he wrote about how players within I think it was maybe Diablo two basically switched to using a different type of or you know emergent basically in game currency
that were provided like the gold in game was was not very useful but I digress the point being it blows my mind people will pay like for these video games a lot of money for these cosmetic upgrades that often are maybe only lasting for a season.
And so I think the core of it is the core of it is like you are you you're doing something that you're really passionate about you love the game.
Yep.
You're with people who also love the game. And you know it's just a way to kind of show off like you know I look cool or like but like how how that's not that different from a social network like video games or social networks in some sense.
So if you kind of like you're like oh like I'm being funny I have this funny clown profile this month or like just like something that's just I don't know.
So things like that I think could actually be a big, a big thing in Nostra but who knows. It's still early so.
I would say I think so too and that was kind of what I was getting to is that like, I would find that honestly more attractive in a social network than I would in game but granted maybe I just haven't gotten deep into Diablo enough yet maybe I'll change my
maybe I'm biased towards towards Nostra but I think that that's a good place to start with it. I mean people like to have fun to like keep Nostra fun keep it weird give people options to you know express themselves however they should choose maybe it's a an
an animation of cascading feet. I don't know just off the top of my head.
I'm going to have to add that now that you you gave me that idea.
It'll be a special feature where you can like send the feet to people and it'll like rain down on their screen.
I think it's a pretty nice idea.
Well, another thing in terms of so that's kind of the client side.
In terms of the relay operator side, because I think this is something where like this is what I heard I think probably most frequently alongside the client monetization was relay monetization like,
what do we do for this there's a lot of paid relays now obviously which is fantastic and people are happy to pay for that. They're happy to pay for something that's a little bit improved performance.
Do you think that there are other models that like, what do you think about content specific relays, like as in a relay that is just, again, let's just off the top of our heads use the example of feet, because it's just sitting right there but this is this is a footster relay.
There's a good opportunity there whether it's feet maybe it's just, you know, an Instagram style relay, maybe it's a TikTok style relay that's only allowing short videos I saw that I think was it was it you or was it Pablo that just published something about 140
character that's probably that filters out. It was Pablo. You guys are both building so much constantly sometimes I get it mixed up, but I think that's really cool.
Do you think that that's a good model for relay operators to try and find their niche, and then to say okay if you want this niche that is something that you can pay as a premium offering to say, I value the content this relay provides and curates for me.
Is that something that's sustainable as it scales or is that just kind of a nice to have.
Yeah, I mean, like, do we pay, you know, website operators for running websites like do we pay Bitcoin nodes for running a Bitcoin node I don't think there's this idea of like paying relays I don't know even if it makes even make sense because relays are actually pretty cheap to run like a run mine and
it's not not that much money and if it gets too big I just wipe it and start over like I did that recently with my relay. So I think this like this idea where you know relays every relay needs to be making money is kind of silly and like imagine if the web if you're that was like your vision of the web
and like every website need to be making money to stay online. Maybe if you're like a big relay that's like hosting lots of content, then you may maybe want to find clever ways to monetize it but you know we're moving to a more decentralized model and also where you can run your small relay that
can only host your stuff and clients can still find your content. And maybe that's just running on a Raspberry Pi and you know monetization is not important. So, I think, yeah, that's kind of like my thinking I'm moving toward recently is that it maybe is not as important that people are talking about.
You know that's I hadn't thought about it from kind of the web perspective before but that makes a ton of sense. Like, if every relay has to always be making money that's maybe that's not as as scalable and it's pretty cheap.
Maybe it's going to run a relay like yeah it's expensive for my relays it's like the biggest relay because your relays but most relays are not that big and to run it you probably cost like 20 bucks a month like it's not a not a big deal.
Okay, okay. Now that I think that that's a that's a good perspective and perhaps people's thinking is going to evolve around that as we go forward but back to content specific relays. Do you think that that's something that is widely desired or do you think, let's say, maybe this is kind of
the algorithmic front because I know you've been you are not anti algorithm algorithm you are a chronological feed maximum so to speak but you're not anti algorithm and I think for me and I'm guessing for you and for a lot of people.
I think the most important thing is just the ability to opt into something or opt out just as long as you have a choice for how you see it so how do you kind of see the. I think I heard in your nostrilsia talk you said you think next year is going to be basically the the year of the algorithms on
Twitter. What do you envision that looking like, you know, are you still going to always be a chronological feed maximalist or is there a type of, is there like an in case you missed it feed like I know jacks talked about that is one of the things that early Twitter did really well was like, you've been off for
a while. Here's what you missed when you come back like I'll be a you know an algorithm maxi when I I program my own AI that just it knows me so well and it picks up that it finds interesting for me like that would be really awesome you know I it doesn't exist exist yet but you know the
important thing is that we set up these are clients in our system so that you know I can just plug in that AI bot when it's ready and it can start feeding me the algorithm is but the important thing is that it's my choice and then I'm and I get to choose it's the same idea it's the same arguments
around moderation as well you know that was one of the big things that was when I went to this concert this conference in Spain they're worried about like oh what about like misinformation and disinformation.
What's like no like those are only like the bigger the bigger concern is that you know you have one person deciding what's what's true and what's not true.
You know so you know the market again solves all these problems if we have a market of algorithms if we have a market of trust and safety teams.
Then you can pick and choose what you think is like appropriate level of moderation or the appropriate algorithm. You know the centralization part of it is what causes the negative effects of algorithms and moderation not to say those things are bad on their own.
It's just the centralization aspect of it so yeah I feel like Nasser is is going to be really can have the best moderation it's going to have the best algorithms because it set up the right way.
I think that that's honestly a phenomenal point just that the the problem isn't moderation itself it's the centralization of it because as things centralize that means a smaller and smaller group of people get to decide what is quote best for everyone else.
And you know invariably one person's utopia is another person's dystopia like that's just how it works. And so the the ability to have choice I think is just freedom of choice is so important there.
Another thing I wanted to touch on was I saw Jack talking the other day I think he was quote quote noting rabble with regard to what's it going to really take to grow noster.
And he was talking about search. And I saw in true noster style like a little I think it was maybe earlier today where you posted like OK so I've been working on coding up this this you know a plane or you know full text search engine for the past eight hours it's almost ready.
First of all just such a classic noster moment. There's always sense of happening like I'm not at a restaurant like having a nice dinner with my family and like you know and then the bat sign goes up it's like Jack needs something and like I'm like well you got to fix this I'm like fuck fine I'll do it.
I like pull out my laptop I write some code and like eight hours later it's like alright guys I think working. But that just goes to show is like I like I actually do like respect you know Jack's you know he has his knowledge and his wisdom from his past you know building Twitter it's like I respect that and like I think he's right like I think search would be amazing if we have.
Imagine if not sure was a much better information information like searching you know device where you can just like put all your notes in one place and like search them efficiently and like it becomes way more powerful and you know so yeah I think he's right and I think that's why it's almost done I just did the rest of it today mostly so I'm excited to have it in Thomas hopefully soon.
Honestly that's awesome and then the idea of kind of layering in value over the top of that where you know even with things like highlighter calm that Pablo built out.
Where you're then assigning value to specific notes or two parts of notes you know with zapps zapps in general to the whole note but with highlighter to parts of long form notes that creates a really interesting layer on top of search where you know you have the potential to really make a value based search algorithm.
Which is kind of interesting granted there are ways that you can of course as we talked about earlier maybe game that with you know what would you call it wash yeah happening.
Or something but you know in general I think that there's so much more potential there to actually deliver higher quality information and a better search experience do you do you anticipate is this is the search engine going to be built within.
Or do you think this is going to be something separate. Yeah so this search is specifically.
So as as a Dhammas person I'm like a client maxi so it's like everything whenever I see like some centralized service like primal or something or some search relay.
I'm like fuck I can do that within Dhammas I'm going to do this.
I want all of those features to be on your phone and because why not like we have the technology to do that.
So obviously it's not going to be have a full view of your entire of the entire network you know I can't store the entire search index for all of NOS on your phone.
But you know when you're receiving notes and when you're receiving stuff you're going to be building a local index of stuff you've seen.
You know whether you go to someone's profile page you don't scroll all the way down there's still notes down there you might not have seen.
So your your phone will know about it when you search it's going to try to search your local local notes if you can't find anything then maybe it'll hit a remote search relay to search for the rest of the wider area wider network.
So yeah search is going to get a lot better very very soon which is exciting.
Honestly that's that's awesome because I feel like it's there's I've only been on this protocol for just just shy of a year now.
And already I'm like I've bookmarked a lot of stuff like that was a really nice really nice feature to be able to use.
But there's so many things where I'm just like oh I remember so you know somebody said this like months ago and I'm trying to find it and it's like trying to scroll and it's it makes it difficult.
And so I think that that's a also I think search is just a big part of discovery in general, like when you have a more advanced searching method.
It makes discovery a little bit easier. I know on Damos now, you know, for some time now there's been the ability to follow hashtags, which I think is is really nice for people who are just getting started.
And I when I was switching switching between accounts, maybe it was like a month ago or so.
I saw that I saw the onboarding experience again for the first time in a while and it looks, it looks great like I still remember the first time I onboarded to Damos but now it's like, it's very nice and you give some some right you know here's some hashtags that people typically follow
here's some, you know, accounts that fall into each of these categories.
Are you guys building that out some more do you think that that kind of onboarding process is an area just across no stir across different clients that can be improved upon a lot or what do you think is kind of the is that a big part of hashtag grow no stir, or is it more about the external
outreach.
Yeah, I mean, I mean the reason we built all that stuff is it's the number one thing that people complain about is when we get feedback from users and it's the number one thing was like when we watch users use Damos, like they'll go they'll open up those creating account, and then they'll just not
following anyone and they'll just like leave and they're like what is this it's just there's nothing here follows the Damos account by default I've actually finally removed following me because like people are like what the fuck is this like crazy guy with like laser eyes and my feet it's all I see when I first
started to get the hang of it. So I think that was a good feedback from Jackie's like you need to not auto follow you I'm like okay that's probably that's probably true I'm kind of crazy.
So, so that was helpful for onboarding.
But then it's just like yeah having like recommended, you know people to follow is kind of important. I think I think I lose perspective of that, you know I'm biased because I have my account already and I have all my followers I don't really care about onboarding but it's a struggle for a lot of
people to follow. Sometimes it's I remind I need to remind myself that I like logging out and creating a new account to see how bad it is that experience. Another thing we want to do is which would be kind of cool is is imagine if you wanted to onboard your friend and you know like the types of
accounts they would like to follow. So you maybe you would create this code where they if you if you sign up with Damos you enter this code and you'll have your account set up with people already automatically followed.
So we're looking at that as well as like an onboarding thing so yeah we think it's pretty we're pretty important for you know just getting people to you know this overall idea of retention which is something we've been focusing on a lot more at Damos.
So that's why we're doing push notifications onboarding.
Because yeah because people are just Lee coming and leaving and that's not going to work so.
That's it's such a tricky thing to because I mean it's much like with an experience using Bitcoin.
If somebody has a difficult even just like marginally difficult or not optimal initial experience.
It wouldn't just be the only thing that sticks in their head for maybe years afterwards where they're like I you know I tried this Bitcoin thing or I tried no stirring it just didn't it you know it just comes down to like it didn't work.
Yeah, you know it just didn't work.
And to make basically to make it as foolproof as possible where it's like when you're coming in.
You don't have to make too many decisions because as you get to the broader and broader user base. It's like okay. You need to oh well hello there little football.
Penny.
Well hello there penny.
The it is does does she have an account night yet you want to be set up an account for you.
I think there's a pretty pretty big catster community I don't have a cat but I do see a good amount of catster posts.
We lost the train of thought thing I think.
No that's okay. Well you know what that's the that's the beauty of these free roaming discussions, because I did actually there was one other thing on the topic of onboarding and just new folks in general.
Do you who do you think is going to be the next wave of nostrils the next wave of no stir adopters and perhaps a better way to frame it would be who do you think the next like community of people is that's going to get censored by whatever platform they're using right now.
Like you know we had a pretty big influx of redditors recently. And I think that much like Bitcoin. A lot of people will come to no stir because their hand is forced a little bit.
They're not going to necessarily seek it out when everything's working fine and they're centralized platform.
But once they start to feel the pain a little bit once they realized, oh, okay, I can be censored or I'm not seeing what I would like to be seeing because somebody else is controlling the information flow.
That forces people to to get smart, you know, and to figure out okay what alternatives are out there.
So do you have a feeling for maybe, you know, maybe it's going to be a lot of folks in the the media sphere, who realize you know what,
I need to have a way to do censorship resistant publishing and have, you know, and maybe they're running their own relay, just be able to have their own backlog of information they put out.
But I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
I mean, what we've been seeing is that every now and then like a country will just like come online. Like with like Thailand was just a thing like see him hashtag see amster, you know, all of a sudden like a large geographical area just like came on board usually from a viral, you know,
TikTok, big TikTok video from some influencer in Thailand. And that's enough to kind of bring large, large groups of people. And one way we've been supporting that at Domus is that we'll notice this and they'll start, start creating their own like geographical relays within that area.
So now we have a feature in Domus where if you have that region set on your phone, it'll automatically add those bootstrap relays. So again, going toward this idea of engagement like you're more likely to be, you want to interact with people are speaking that language.
So it makes sense to have that in your bootstrap relay list. So that's just one thing we've noticed. You know, obviously North America is actually one of the biggest users of Nostra right now. So maybe yeah, get more North American users, but I don't know, I don't maybe not maybe that's not the going to be the biggest thing
maybe it's going to be the rest of the world and North America catches up but I don't know we'll see.
It's kind of interesting the idea of countries turning on, like, on mass. And, you know, that you're probably right it probably is from like a couple of influencer ticktocks, where people just all of a sudden get the get a bug in their ear and say oh I should check this out.
So on the topic of ticktock. I know something that you know people have talked about is, and we kind of touched on this earlier but a ticktock style experience now I think the ticktock algorithm is pretty toxic in general because it really is brilliantly designed to keep people
hooked to keep their attention to keep them just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling endlessly.
And done in a different way where there is the option to, you know, choose your own adventure, right, let's say, to choose your own algorithmic path.
That's clearly ticktock tapped into something that people really like I mean every other social media platform basically copied that model.
I mean do you think we'll see a no-ster client spring up that is, you know, maybe based on their how their relays are filtering and how that client chooses to surface the events.
I actually that it'll be basically that that experience mimicked.
I think that I think the ticktock algorithm is probably one of the best algorithms ever I've ever seen because I noticed it like it pushes me out of my bubble every now and then and it puts me into somewhere crazy.
Like it put me into like I was like outdoor cooking or something and I'm like I would have never normally scrolled for that stuff and now I'm like out or outdoor cooking maxi.
I do like I think that what they're actually doing a pretty something interesting with their algorithm is trying to like at least push people out of their bubbles.
So I that's not one thing I like about the ticktock algorithm but yeah sometimes it's just like oh it's just mindless scrolling it's so bad.
And you know a lot of people they fault NOSR for that. It's like they they open up Thomas and they expect an experience like that they want to just not follow anyone and scroll.
I get it's like you know you they're busy and they don't want to spend all the time and you know best their time into this app and try to figure it out and try to follow people who they might be interested in they don't that that's like way too many decisions to make for the most people.
They just want to scroll and be shown because like in theory like we you know it's not it's not hard to figure out like what people are interested in just from gathering data and what they're looking at like what ticktock does is they look at if you're watching a video for a certain amount of time.
And if just the videos that you watch the longest just happens to be the ones that they think you like the most and actually works pretty well.
So but that just requires them to collect a lot of data on you and they build a really interesting and like a very invasive personally invasive profile on you so maybe we can start doing that client side.
I'm maybe I'm kind of hopeful for maybe we can start doing the stuff with like privacy preserving ways of doing it.
I know but we'll see but yeah again next year you're the algorithm people just start playing with these ideas and start building so.
Well and I think obviously there are there are good and bad ways to surface people an experience that they like and collecting a shitload of personal data and build in this massive profile of this person and how long they spend on each video and maybe
there even eyeball tracking I don't know that's a pretty fucking invasive way but I think the one of the opportunities with no stir is that okay.
Building from an opt in perspective from the beginning gives you the opportunity to say okay like what are you into like what do you want to see more of like I think if.
And again maybe you know one of the beauties or beautifully terrible things about tick tock is that you don't have to do anything right like you're just opening it up and it's all just served to you there from the moment you have the app downloaded.
You don't need to follow anyone it just it just there and you're just at the feeding trough drinking in all that sweet info sludge.
But, but I think you know, I perhaps I'm overly optimistic but I hope that people have slightly more patients to be able to say okay let me at least take 10 seconds to say I'm into this and this and this and this.
And that starts to build my experience because I think one of the beautiful things that actually shocks people in a really good way about no stir is when they see a client like Thomas and they look on the app store and they see.
No information is collected about me like that's that's truly unheard of like you there's I cannot think of another app.
That does that maybe you can I don't know, but it's it's truly unheard of because everyone sells your information the state, the age, are United States postal service is allowed to sell your information.
Like, anytime you sign up for something new through our USPS service, you will guaranteed get a flood of new robo calls within the next day and robo emails it's just like a fact and I just think that that's that's so genuinely fucked that our information is just thought of in this commoditized way.
And that's one of the things that I love so much about no stir is that you're, you know, you're not this product anymore. You know, it's not the freemium model where, you know, if you're not paying for it you are the product no it's granted, you're not paying for it on no stir either but at least you can see that
they're not, you know, nobody's collecting things.
I mean, I mean, I've only kind of like worked at startups my entire life. And one of the things that's so common is just like a natural thing it's like oh you just turn on the analytics so there's even a website where it's called I think it was called segment dot I O where they just streamlined the whole process
you don't you don't turn on one analytics you can just select all the analytics you want, and then press one button and it gets added to your website.
And the thing that changed it for me is when, you know, I was going through all these analytics, and I found one it was like this mouse tracking one, or if you could open up and you can see where they move their mouse on the page like where they were like, and it was like this is just so creepy.
It was just like the creepiest like, it felt like I was like, like a boy or like looking in on your family dinner. Like it was just disturbing like, I was like, at that point I realized it's like, do we even need this like I would we weren't even using it it's just we collecting all this data.
And this personal information for what like are we going to make business decisions based on this like no it's just like, so I just had that after that moment I'm like we don't I just like I just became a product like an anti analytics max I just felt like it's unnecessary.
You can make business decisions without it's not that it's not that important so I don't think it's necessary.
The mouse tracking is such just like a unnecessarily creepy one to it's like I think eyeball tracking is probably like the pinnacle of creepiness. And I mean obviously there you know a lot of things are supposed to protect you from that.
But I'm sure it is probably done more than we know.
It's it's a sad thing that, and maybe no stir is the chance at fixing this a little bit but the incentive model is just so broken on these platforms and honestly for for a lot of businesses in general the incentive model is broken but particularly for social media, any sort of news media as well like you just see the, even
Twitter's advertising model change where they're now, they're now paying, you know, out a small sum for the vast majority of people but they're paying out something to people for how many impressions they're getting, how many verified impressions they're getting I should say.
And, okay, that's nice but at the same time, I've noticed that you see so much more, like if this is even possible on Twitter, even more just overtly inflammatory or just, but at the same time it's like people are making these really inflammatory statements or questions but they're so mundane and predictable,
because people just know like, oh, this is what gets engagement, and I'm going to do this because when I get more engagement, I get more money. And it's such a, it's such a sad thing to see that.
But at the same time, it's like, well, that's just the, that's the world that we're playing in in the centralized playground. I don't know, it's just, it's a bummer to see because the quality of information that you see is then degraded because of the broken model.
This is why I'm like such a believer in the value for value. It's like it feels like it, you know, fixes a lot of these corrupting issues. You know, even just with the advertising, you know, that model in the sense that you're going to, you're going to say whatever you want that you got to say to make the money and it's, you know, it,
and it's in some sense, it's just corrupting what you actually want to say, right? Why can't you just say what you want to say and get paid by people who want to hear what you want to say?
So, you know, it should be that simple, but unfortunately, like we, we, everyone's just relying the ad model and the ones really explored any other way because that's just where all the money is, right?
Maybe that'll, maybe that'll never change, but it's, it is kind of a sad state of affairs.
No, it's, it's so true. Like, you're, you're essentially self censoring, because you believe that what your new behavior is, is going to accrue you a slightly larger chunk of an already pretty small pie.
And unless you're one of the accounts on X that has literally hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, it's like, is that 10 bucks a month really worth the degraded information that you're putting out there?
Probably not.
But it's sad. I mean, that's, that's why I'm still honestly very hopeful about value for value enabled through no stir. And honestly, for zappvertising in general, because I think that that is a chance to incentivize better behavior, because it's like when you cut out the middleman,
and you're delivering more of that value or all of that value straight to the intended recipient. I think that that just naturally starts to align incentives. It creates a more pure free market for good high value information.
And there's always going to be ways this can be gamed. You know, if we think about as well just something I've heard a sailor talk about because he's actually talked about no stir quite a lot.
And one thing he brings up as just a something that, you know, needs to be thought about is just the propagation of AI bots on no stir. Like in these coming years, I think I think it's not just going to be a problem for no stir, I think it's going to be a problem for all platforms
like Twitter, even though they're apparently, you know, verifying everyone and their grandmother still can't figure out their damn problem. Like it's, it's just absurd.
Yeah, I mean, I still I see the blue check on Twitter. It's like your thoughts on that for no reason on Twitter. It's like, you know, they're all they're still all bots. So is it even working?
No, it's truly not the amount of times I will see a my wife, Carla Bitcoin, but it's like Carla Bitcoin.
I will retweet something of mine. I'm like, oh, that's weird. I thought Carla already retweeted that. And then I look and it's like Carla Bitcoin is a handle but with like Stefan Levera's PFP still because this this scammer is in the process of like smolting between one of their
nation's and another. And it's like, I don't see how that's so hard to fix, like with just like a couple of if if then statements. But apparently it really is and I'm probably oversimplifying but it seems like there's some pretty simple checks you could put in place.
And then it makes you think they don't want to fix it because their engagement numbers are going to go way down across the board. Right. I'm really excited. I want more spammers come to Nostra because then it's like, then we'll start working on solutions like the spam is kind of weak on us or like
you guys can do way better. It is there's there's like one like optimism bot or something. Okay, well, it's cute like I'm really like you can keep trying. Right. Right.
Well, that's an interesting point that it's it's not really a problem yet that that needs to be fixed. But do you see, you know, the ability for in the next couple of years like people are going to be using various, you know, various programs that are going to get more
sophisticated to spin up innumerable bots that behave more and more like actual users. Do you think that Nostra is zap model is actually a way to kind of guard against a little bit of that because you still when you attach a value to spam, the spam becomes more and more
difficult to operate at scale. Like, even if you know, five years from now on Nostra, one sad is going to be worth more than it is today. And even for somebody trying to spam one set that's going to be more difficult. So is is Bitcoin enabled value on Nostra kind of the the wall that ends up
protecting Nostra from a lot of that shit. Yeah, I mean, this is why I'm really interested in like these email solutions because my email inbox is a complete disaster and it's phillospam. And so I'm like, Well, if we just had zaps, if I just had like, use just zaps to prioritize certain
messages, right? And I imagine spam and like fake accounts and AI bots are going to start slowly take over and the only defense against that is real like things you can't create for free, like what are things you can't create for free on the internet? Well, we have something called Bitcoin and sats.
So just it makes a lot of sense that we will start to use that for filtering. You know, maybe not even just filtering but like ranking content, like maybe the stuff that goes to the top your feed is is the paid stuff and that the very bottom is spam and garbage.
So by the time you scroll down, you're like, Well, there's nothing worth down here. Unfortunately, you know, a lot of, you know, people are sending messages for free will get caught in the bottom but you know that's good just because that's just going to be the reality is that, you know, if spam gets that bad
then we'll need to rely on on sats more.
I mean, at least, at least it's built in really as I mean, it's a knit, right? It's already, it's already out there and I think that's a, that's a powerful thing.
One other thing I want to be conscious of your scarce time in this world, but just a couple other things I wanted to just tap on before we close out. One is just, I'd love to get your thoughts just on the wallet of Satoshi news in the US and then also UTXO announced that
Nodeless was getting hit with some money transmitter shit up in Canada. So just, you know, do you see more of that type of enforcement coming down the pipe for, let's say for no stir clients like is that going to are the regulators going to turn their sites to no stir because of zaps.
And because that's, you know, our clients going to be charged with money transmitter, you know, violations. Is that something that you're thinking about at this time or is that they're still not paying attention enough.
I mean, I can never under underestimate how stupid they are. So I'm sure they will try to post it like that. We're like, Oh yeah, you're transmitting money in Dhammas, which is like not even technically true.
You're using another app to transmit the money. So they should be going after those apps first. This is why it's important that we should be focusing on non custodial solutions.
And that's one of the biggest criticisms of this aspect is that it kind of makes it harder to do non custodial.
But I feel like once people, yeah, if they start pulling the shit more and more and people start getting cracked down more and more, like that's the point where I'm like, Well, maybe we'll need to revise this aspect to make it easier to do non custodial like get rid of the LNUR requirement, which is something I've always talked about.
But yeah, I mean, I even just me, I started, I'm using this KYC exchange in Canada called Shake Bay. And even now I'm like, Well, I'm going to ditch that now because if they're going to start coming after me, then for running a lightning note, I wouldn't be surprised that they start running coming after people just like running lightning nodes, right.
And I use the lightning the Dhammas lightning note for to like do our merch sales and basically do all the commerce for a Dhammas. So a Dhammas. So yeah, who knows, like, it's it's crazy world out there.
And it's, it's sad that we're at that state where I mean, and perhaps this is just always the case for new technologies that come about.
It's just happening at a much higher rate now because of the information age that we live in. But when you see countries like the United States and like Canada, just decide to absolutely stomp on good tech, because they don't like the people that are operating it
and it shows not to jump through all of their hoops.
You know, and it's all like it all comes down to just protecting from money laundering and terrorist financing and stuff that is never even being done at any meaningful scale through these, you know, Bitcoin enabled solutions, certainly not even close to the scale that it is through the traditional
systems that just it grinds my gears will it, it really does and it's sad to see like people providing great services, like because, you know, people may have problems with wallet of Satoshi for being custodial.
But that is a great service that they were providing in the US. And now it's like, I'm going to keep this this phone forever. I won't be able to update the app, but hopefully I'll still be able to use it through a VPN if they, you know, aren't letting traffic at all to the US.
But it's sad to see that like that's people getting cut off from a really valuable service. And, you know, I don't know, it's a, it's like, you know, they always say, Oh, terrorism, like, you know, what is terrorism, you know, like, what maybe maybe the actual terrorism is them like completely sucking all of the energy out of out of our money,
and deflating our currency and causing people where they can't even pay their bills. Like that causes real terror in the world. And who are the terrorists is like the people are diluting our money supply so don't be mad at us because we're just going to a different solution that actually fucking works and is and we're not being robbed every day.
So we're like, we're the terrorists. No, you guys are the fucking terrorists. And we're just trying to protect our money from you. You psychopaths. So you know, fuck them. Like if they eventually come after me, I'm probably going to leave the country and you'll find somewhere in El Salvador, something because I don't know, you just the face or the states are failing, I think, and they're just
they're scrambling to grab as much money as they can before the whole system collapses. That's what it feels like.
Amen. And it is fucking sad, like you genuinely think about the damage that inflation does to people, like, not just like the little things like oh your groceries are more expensive like when economies collapse.
And even when they like just when you go into a session, the even the fucking government statistics will show you that more people die, because more people commit suicide, or more people get sick and don't get care.
This is actual harm, material harm being caused by them just being corrupt, irresponsible fucks. And it's, it's fucking sad. And then as you said to turn around and try to push the blame on to people building open source projects or closed source
projects that simply don't follow all their rules. We're literally building like the life rafts to get away from their broken system and they're just fucking trying to pop them with knives. Like what the fuck?
It's just like, get do something better with your lives to cause more misery for people just trying to survive and to build life rafts from your from the chaos of that even sued.
So it's just like the people who engage in that type of stuff is just like bottom of the barrel, like, just very disappointing that there's people on this planet who don't see what's going on and maybe they are just like they're just feel like they're just doing their job and they don't
they don't really know what's the bigger picture but it's a yeah I mean Bitcoin has showed us the light and this is the only path forward and that's why I've been dedicating most of my life just building on Bitcoin building, you know, on Bitcoin adjacent tech and it's just the most
important thing for humanity right now. It's really sad that majority of the world still sees it as like a scam or not as important as it is but it's the most important technology that you know that I work on that at this point in time I think so.
That is a, that is a really nice note to start to close out on because I don't know how to quite follow that. I do want to say though I'm, I'm so grateful to people like yourself will who are doing the actual building on these protocols like Bitcoin and no
because these two things give me so much hope in the future. At a time when we are just bombarded with the negativity of the fiat world and of the negative consequences that the fiat world has brought upon us.
I would, I think I speak for a lot of our fellow plebs when I say I would be in a pretty dark place. If I didn't have the hope that Bitcoin brings me for the future, because it really is this.
It's a light in the darkness and it's something that it's actually gives me a little bit of faith in, in humanity's potential again. And I think the more people that get that hope and get a little bit of that faith in what we can accomplish together in a very decentralized
way, the better off we're going to be. The last thing I'll end on will is, are you reading anything right now that you would recommend besides notes on noster. I don't know how much time you have for the written word on the page between building and, you know, zapping and
everything else but
for some reason I'm reading something called it's like skunk works by Ben rich that the guy who runs Lockheed Martin.
Because I went down this like rabbit hole of after the David Grush interview with Joe Rogan about like UFOs. I'm like, I'm just like, is this real like is this actually happening or is like, this just another fucking
Psyop. So I started I was just like really digging deep into, you know, what are the competent parts of the US government and like what were they capable of during the times where all this shit was going down. And it is pretty impressive.
So a lot of times we talk about like the government's a competent but there are very small teams within the government who are like really, really good. And Lockheed Martin was one of those examples who built like the spy planes in the 50s and stuff.
So I just find that fascinating about and now it makes me wonder it's like, you know, what are they, what are the competent teams know about Bitcoin and Nostra and like are they doing something about it. And they're just not telling anyone.
Anyway, so that's always always fascinating to me like kind of like the black projects and stuff. So anyway, that's what I've this is a random thing I'm reading you. I just want to know.
No, no, you said it's called skunk works.
I'll have to check that out. It's a little bit of a terrifying prospect that there are competent parts of the government. But what can you do I guess, but will I want to I want to thank you for sharing your scarce time with me here today.
You know, like Bitcoin, your time is very scarce. You spend the vast majority of it building. And for that, I thank you. And thank you to everyone else out there who will listen to this later for sharing your scarce time with us.
So we'll thank you so much. I'm going to go and note about this right now. Maybe I'll post a picture of my feet. Maybe I won't. We'll have to see but thanks so much for all you do.
And thank you. This is awesome.
Cheers. Cheers.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. If you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast, head to Bitcoin podcast net or hit me up on social media.
On noster, head to primal.net slash Walker and on Twitter, search for at Walker America or at TIT coin podcast. You can also watch the video version of this show on X or on YouTube by going to youtube.com slash at Walker America or rumble by searching for at Walker America.
Bitcoin is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million. But Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.