Welcome to Pleb Chain Radio, a live show brought to you by Plebs for Plebs, which focuses
on the intersection of Nostra and Bitcoin protocols.
Join QW and Avi as they run down the weekly news and developments, breaking down the current
thing and the future frontier with the foundation of decentralization, the builders, thinkers,
doers, and plebs.
All right, we are live.
Welcome, gentle pioneers, to the lightning-laced airwaves. Today is Friday the 3rd of October, and it is 5.05pm on the east coast of the United States at the time of recording.
This is Pleb Chain Radio episode 131. We have a fun show ahead of you today.
Franzap, creator of zap.store
and actually much, much more
is here to talk about all of that.
And a reminder, folks,
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This show, Knock on Wood QW, is streamed live on zap.stream and any other Noster client that supports streaming such as Amethyst, Noster, Fountain and indeed Primal.
And before we get to Culture Corner QW, the Finding Home Prague episode drops Tuesday on IndieHub.
So take a look when it's out. There will be some teaser videos before then.
And QW, you've been paying attention to Bitcoin and Nostra culture over the last week.
What have you witnessed?
um two things obvi uh i noticed you started the show with welcome gentle pioneers are you uh
you jumping on the bugle bandwagon i'm jumping on a problem with plebs man i am jumping on my own
bandwagon qw they they're they're going heavy on the pleb slop uh they're they're it's almost like
they're trying to cancel the word. So I'm going to push back a little bit to all my plebs out there.
I enjoy your slop. It's part of the reason why I love the community. So, you know, if you're one
of those people that would define, would be defined as plebs slop by the bugle, I'm with you, man.
So don't listen to them. We are plebs and we are still pioneers as well. So you can be both.
So that's something I noticed.
I disagree, QW.
Uh-oh.
There we go.
Well, I think—
It's okay to disagree.
Yeah, of course it is.
It's okay.
Of course.
I think the word pleb was a cry of rebellion maybe two or three years ago against toxic influencer culture.
unfortunately i think that term has lost that meaning in recent months and it's become a toxic
self-affirmation i am is a very powerful affirmation for most people and by calling
themselves plebs they are i believe dimming their own light i i just don't i guess i don't care
enough. I guess it's just, it's just, it's kind of like rules without rulers. We're all just the
same. You know, it's just like, we're just, we're just everyday people. And at the end of the day,
you know, we all vote in the network just the same. So it's not like there's people that were
there before have a different vote than those that came, you know, later. Maybe you have more
knowledge of Bitcoin. Maybe you are a thought leader. But at the same time, if you run a bid
axe, one chip, one vote. We're all just the same people. I don't know. I can definitely see there's
a point to it. But for me, that's not what defined pleb to me. And that's just how it is.
If I were ever to be anything more than a pleb or consider myself more than it, then I would,
And I don't know, I feel weird inside.
It's just kind of something I've always harbored.
Yeah, but let it be said, though.
So you're going to say it right now, Avi is no longer a club.
I have renounced that identity, QW, yes.
Pioneer Chain Radio.
Welcome.
No, but Pioneers, I mean, I 100% agree with that, too.
You know, it's, I mean, I remember first two years, I mean, two years ago, I was talking about the new frontier here in Noster.
I think it definitely applies in Noster that we are pioneers.
We are, we're riding our little wagons from app to app and setting up our little, it's a terrible user experience.
I mean, there's typhoid and everything else you get with the troubles of being a pioneer come with a lot of enduring, I suppose.
So I certainly relate with Pioneer as well.
And Oregon Trail, if you ever play that game.
On that happy note, QW.
Yeah.
So and then this is my politics.
I'm noticing a lot of people putting this is my politics because I think it's mainly just a cry to everyone that would be have disagreeing politics.
I mean, basically, you'll see someone with a chick in a bikini with a Bitcoin logo.
This is my politics.
Or you see a steak on a plate in the middle of, let's say, a prairie.
This is my politics.
I think it's something, a way of people expressing themselves beyond what actual politics is when you get in there.
If you look at all the different social medias out there, it's just lockstep of red versus blue.
Just a lot of never-ending emotional arguments.
I saw this is my politics kind of trending on Nostra.
I think that's cool.
I think it's a way to step back from the everyday news feed of what is politics.
Secondly, the block party is going on tomorrow, Alliance.
We've got about 450 now people, Avi, in our group.
So we just keep doubling.
We're going for 1,000 next, I'm sure.
Nostra Valley 2.0, October 18th.
So that's in 15 days.
Wow, time flies, Avi.
State College PA, are you going to Nostra 2.0, Nostra Valley 2.0, Avi?
There is a 0.01% chance I might do a last-minute FOMO.
It all depends on my son's varsity soccer playoffs.
If there is a game on that day, which there likely will be, or that weekend,
then I cannot go.
but in the off chance there isn't, then I will, I reserve the right to FOMO.
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's going on. And Noster, I heard you were going to be at Nosterville 3.0.
It appears so, yes. We'll be there. That is, in fact, a week after, a few days after Noster Valley.
Was that appearance announced before you even knew you were going?
Yes, that is correct. I was told I was going to be there. And then I checked with the authorities. And I was informed that it was indeed true. So I will be there.
Awesome. All right. Well, more and more about that. And then, obviously, anybody looking to see Finding Home, we're going to put that the show notes. Anything else you wanted to talk about that, Avi? Obviously, you've been gone for three weeks from the show.
yeah yeah well as some of you might have noticed not all but maybe a handful might have noticed i
was gone for three weeks two of those were because i was traveling filming the next episode
of finding home uh the last week was not i was not actually filming finding home
it was my son's varsity soccer game so i had to be there it was an away game
and i could not make it uh for the show but uh my sermon today kw is parts unknown
There are places on the map that exist more in your imagination than in reality.
So for me, Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, was one of those places.
Paraguay, a name you hear, but a place you don't really know.
I went there to film a show inspired by a man who made a living visiting parts unknown.
And in a way, that's exactly what I found.
just not the parts I was expecting. The first thing that hits you isn't the heat, it's the warmth.
A genuine open-hearted welcome that finds its purest expression in the asado. This is a slow
cooked ritual of fire and meat. It's not just a meal, it's a communion. It's the first sign that
you stumbled into a place that understands the importance of a strong human network.
And that network is building something special. So I was there for the Accelerating Bitcoin
conference. And that was a roaring fire of signal, not noise, with conversations flowing
effortlessly between English, Spanish, and indeed even Portuguese for a handful of the panels.
But what happens when the conference ends and the visitors go home?
You find a local scene that's not just surviving, it's thriving.
That their Bitcoin meetup in Paraguay has exploded from a handful of people 18 months ago to well over 200.
You can see BTC map light up week after week, another node in a growing web of sovereign commerce.
They are filling the map.
This pocket of the world, this vibrant ecosystem of expats and locals, of Bitcoiners and Nostritches and Nostra builders,
has been quietly assembling a parallel future, unknown to most of us in the West.
It's a place where the regulatory friction is low and the human signal is high.
a place where people aren't just talking about building they're actually doing it I went there
expecting to find a story I left feeling like I'd seen a glimpse of the future so yeah if you get
the chance go see it for yourself and with that QW I want to bring on our guest a man I met for the first time while I was in Ascension Franz App welcome to Pleb Chain Radio
Thank you guys for having me. Pleasure to be here.
I've been a long-time listener of Pleb Chain Radio.
And let's go.
Are you a pleb?
Well, now that Avi has been announced, he's an aristocrat.
I'm thinking he's doing the same, right?
He is a Noster Evangelist.
Is that right, Avi?
Evangelist, yes.
Evangelist, there you go.
Well, we are, are we pleased with a new nobility?
We leveled up.
It's just all one big role-playing game, you know.
So nice to meet you.
I've been familiar with your work, Fran.
and super excited for this episode.
And yeah, so what were your thoughts on Paraguay as a Bitcoin hub?
Yeah, I was going to say I was actually very impressed
with the amount of people that showed up to that meetup.
I know they grew really fast.
And honestly, I need to compare it to,
I've been to meetups in other places in much bigger countries
that don't even get half of the people.
is that the energy that some expats are bringing is the welcoming locals i don't know but it's it's
just great to say what was wild to me fran as an english speaker is that there were a couple of
panels in spanish and i know i know as a spanish speaker for you that's kind of obvious but but to
me it's like oh there is a whole nostril world that exists outside of the anglosphere now obviously
you're familiar with the Spanish Bitcoin landscape,
the German Bitcoin landscape.
Those are thriving ecosystems that the Anglosphere knows about
but really doesn't really know about.
But the NOSTA was such a pleasant surprise.
Did you find that too, the Spanish NOSTA community there?
Yeah, I thought that the presentations given about NOSTA
were introductory.
I don't know how many people were actually aware of it,
but these days it's getting much more known.
And here, I live in Argentina, we have, you know, for a long time Bitcoiners, but like Nasser was not, you know, even in it's like, let's say 2023 or so, people were not really talking about Nasser, but slowly, but surely.
Now, pretty much every time we meet, you know, Nasser is appearing and even more in conferences.
Actually, now there will be a big conference here in Buenos Aires in about a month.
and Noster already has its presence.
Last year there was a Noster booth.
It was sponsored by some good people
and that kind of worked,
but now it seems we're getting a bigger space
and I'm happy to contribute in any way.
I'm giving talks myself, but yeah, sure.
The public in the micro-blogging part of Noster,
which is the main one anyway
of Spanish speaking people
is small
but we're there
and
I just started
a stream, I'll share more details soon
but also putting out
a lot of
information about Nostra
and Beacon as well
but for the local public
Well actually that's a good point
Fran, if I'm remembering
correctly from one of our conversations
in Asuncion,
weren't you considering starting a podcast?
I have started and abandoned
multiple podcasts.
But I would say that I need to...
The 10 episodes, Avi?
You've got to get through the first 10 episodes.
Nine, apparently, is the threshold.
Exactly.
So I will just shut my mouth
and speak when I reach the 11th.
You know, we talked about this, Avi, when Japan was happening.
It was the Zapathon, but Japanese.
And then Thailand, they had a conference and there was a NOSTER presence there.
But there are these just parallel NOSTER experiences that are going on around the world.
And as there should be, it's the Internet.
It's a NOSTER protocol.
It's something that's,
everyone's going to have a different experience on Noster.
But I just always think that's fascinating.
And I'm sure when you sat there
and you're watching a Noster panel in Spanish,
there was kind of a moment of reflection.
What were you feeling, Javi?
Yeah, paths are known, QW.
I was like, wow, this is,
I had no idea this exists.
And it makes me so incredibly happy that it does.
That was my reflection.
I mean, Bitcoin's no different, right?
Yeah.
I mean, Bitcoin has, you know, Bitcoin's been around.
And I think initially when I, you know, maybe four or five years ago, when I was new to Bitcoin maximalism, let's just say, not the broader ecosystem.
And I found out about the German community through the Einens Wanzig meetups.
There's, you know, there's obviously a strong Dutch presence.
there's a Spanish presence with Lunatic Coin and his podcast,
and then, you know, not just him, several others,
and then across the world, right?
That was a pleasant surprise to me
because I think the issue with English speakers
is we are so Anglo-centric in our worldview.
We think the world revolves around the English language,
and every now and then you see these parts are known, essentially,
And you're like, oh, wow, there is a whole world outside of the little one that we inhabit.
Yeah, I think that's so important to stress and so important to you.
Because, I mean, it's just, yeah, the United States is a big country and there's a lot of world politics going on here.
But it's like there's so much more to experience, all those parts unknown.
So I'm happy to hear you say that, Avi.
Yeah. And Fran, does that bother you that when you meet English speakers and they act surprised that, hey, wait, there's Bitcoin and Nostra stuff in other languages?
I don't get that impression
but
judging by, as we were saying
the amount of content that is in English
maybe a little bit
what's really cool
here is that as you were mentioning
these
groups of
associations like Anenswanzig
that are German speaking communities
basically
now recently
there's 21
which is 21 Spanish
and it's also this aggregation of communities
all across Latin America
and kind of spearheaded by the Bitcoin community
here which are the guys from La Gritta
it's a
Bitcoin maxi amazing space
here in Buenos Aires
if anyone comes this way
absolutely recommend it
and they're doing great work to
spread the word and they are
even just configuring
sending nodes to people
so each community can run their own node.
Even up to Cuba, I would say.
It's pretty massive.
So you mentioned LaCrypta.
And I think in the conference,
whenever you were speaking,
you were introduced as Franz Zapp LaCrypta,
presumably the founder of LaCrypta.
So for folks who are unfamiliar with it,
first of all, is that true?
Are you the founder of LaCrypta?
But more importantly, what is LaCrypta?
Not at all.
there was a confusion there in the organization and i was yeah i'm part of it i'm friends with them
but you know just a typo there um however um yeah i don't know if i can represent them properly
um but yeah i should have said subster
so it is a so what what is it it's a you said it's a large co-working space
in Argentina?
Yeah, it's
it sometimes functions as a
co-working space
but it's really like a
community house, a club, I don't know how you
call it, but there's like tons of
meetups and parties
and just people going there and configuring
nodes and stuff, so
a very welcoming community and also they have
I'm not really
present on there, but they have
like these calls and like an online community through discord that again just spawns to the
whole spanish-speaking community around the world so like way more people participating
and it's kind of funny that they they kept the name la crypto because it just reminds reminds
one of crypto, right? But no, definitely, definitely well aligned with Bitcoin and Nostra.
I'm familiar with LaCrypto through Nostra, just I would see it from time to time. But
beyond that, is it Negro? Yeah. So he joined the alliance. So our Bitcoin mining,
a little solo miners uniting type of thing.
And then Upindo or Wrigley, LaCrypto was one of the charities
that was put in line.
But I noticed when LaCrypto, there's a lot of participation there.
Let me just say that.
So like all of a sudden there was like 20, 30 people that joined our group
and they were all LaCrypto.
So it's like there's definitely momentum on whatever you're building down there.
Or I say down there, but it's in your world.
So let's turn the map around, whatever.
But yeah, I got to say, I may not speak Spanish, but whatever's going on there, there's a lot of momentum.
And outside looking in, I can appreciate that.
Well, there's a reason why we call ourselves the army of La Cribta, right?
I believe it. I believe it.
That certainly appears that there's a lockstep going there.
So, Fran, you are of Zap.store or Zapstore fame.
QW and I are iPhone users
humble iPhone users
who don't actually understand
what Zap.store is
actually I should go back and say
QW and I are humble iPhone prisoners
we don't know what sideloading is
we don't know what these
tools that are being built on Android are
so for folks like us
who are in the dark
what is Zap.store
and what functionality
in Android are you leveraging to build out ZapStore that does not exist on an iPhone Well first off it called ZapStore Maybe there some confusion because people
visit the Zap.Store. They would type that domain and get to a shitcoin thing now because I lost
that domain like over a year ago and for some reason just persisted because Nasser would love
calling zap.something.
But, I mean, it was a good domain,
but it was just way too expensive to renew.
And also the brand should be Zapstore.
So just a clarification there.
If anyone wants to look it up or know more,
it's Zapstore.
Actually, the domain is zapstore.dev.
And in terms of what it does,
how to explain this to iOS users,
well, at least you recognize yourself as a prisoner.
as a first step.
You were one.
You told me.
Hell yeah.
Absolutely.
I saw the light and it could escape.
But
it seems that
Android for now
is much more open.
It was born
as
I think probably about a year ago
after the first iPhone.
what was that year, around 2007 or 2008.
So shortly after, when Android was launched
and the Apple App Store appeared,
also the Android Market appeared,
which turned to be the Play Store, as it is called now.
But essentially, Android was always,
as opposed to iOS, an open system,
an open source operating system,
which is very beneficial because mainly Google wanted other OEMs to adopt it.
And so that was a pretty successful strategy.
They got Amazon and Samsung and other Chinese.
Basically, there's a lot of different Androids around the world
and based on this premise of the open source project.
And so it was always pretty open.
And even though it had like an official store,
you could always do this thing called side loading,
which is simply, I think maybe a pejorative term,
or I don't know if I like the framing
because it just kind of gives me the vibe of something,
you know, that it's kind of sneaking in,
or I don't know how you guys think about like side loading.
But in any case, it's simply installing an app,
as we used to do.
At least I remember when I installed apps on my computer and it was fine.
It was basically up to you to decide the source of your software.
Who knows? Maybe you had it on a CD-ROM.
Maybe you pirated it. Maybe you bought it.
Maybe you downloaded it from a shareware site.
I mean, maybe you downloaded it from an app store, whatever.
But the point is that you had control over what you were doing on your own devices.
and you know in that way side loading so honors that thing that you can just get an apk which are
the the basically the the packages for for android apps and just install it on your device
and obviously and as we know from bitcoin and nostr uh you know designing on an on an
an open system so like oh anyone can publish apps or anyone can of course a
lot of scam started to to have like a lot of malware started to show up so
slowly in time the Google Play Store you know started restricting a little bit
more and a little bit more and and then they started introducing other ways of
of enhancing let's say security but a bit at the expense of sovereignty let's
say of using sovereignty so in some sense it's still comparing to Apple
where you know in iOS you know they can only download apps from the App Store
right? Well, there's a test flood, which is, you know, kind of, I don't know if anything can go,
but it still requires developers to register and so on. But the idea is that in general,
Android is a way more open system. And that's why I decided to start ZapStore on that specific
platform? You know, so this is really interesting, right, Fran? Because the trade-off here is,
on the one hand, so you don't have to call it sideloading, we can call it sovereign loading,
if you want to, right? Sovereign app using. You know, you want the user to have maximal freedom
in what they choose, what software they choose to add to their phone. But at the same time,
that is opening up a large attack surface, right?
So on the one hand, you have anything goes.
And then on the other hand,
you have this incredibly tight, tightly controlled,
fully KYC-ed walled garden
where the developers have to pass through
presumably background checks and all sorts of things.
And the apps themselves that they build
have to go through some incredibly rigorous
and heavy-handed reviews in most cases
to even make it into the App Store.
How do you solve that?
I mean, this sounds like an incredibly binary choice
of anything goes, including malware
and stuff that can steal your funds and so on,
versus this straight jacket of control
that Apple has on their App Store,
especially in the US.
I know in the EU now there's a Freedom Store
because of the regulations and so on,
and we could talk about that.
But how do you strike that balance?
that's that's a great question and that's what i strive to to build with zaps is essentially
creating something for this adversarial environment and assuming that there will be a
attack surfaces and that there will be bad apps and like how do we deal with that in a way that
is not like someone high up deciding for all of us like we all have our different preferences you
know something might be a risky app in some sense for some people and not for others so the idea is
um is to lower like or to shift i would say the curation part so who is taking care of that is
Is that one central global organization or can we push it down?
Maybe that changes per country.
Maybe that is per community or by type of app.
So that maps pretty well with Nostro Realis if you think about it.
So the idea is to let people take their own risk regarding the apps they want to see.
sometimes as you say that there's the central authority that is classifying applications based
on some particular regulation or some particular view of the of the company or politics or who
knows but just like one way of slicing it and really that's not how the world works and we all
know like different locales and different people have like wildly different
tastes for things and some some things that maybe even be I know classified as
as risk in some places maybe for other people or not so as we all know these
central stores are very close to say government regulation pressure so that's
that's one problem because if one day Bitcoin wallets are nothing they want to
see they can just toggle the switch off and we're out of them right so that's
basically what I'm trying to do is like if for some group of people they think
that Bitcoin is a scam well they are able to run their own curation right and
users of that particular catalog or relay then can choose to see that right
there's sometimes it's not a black and white of what constitutes a good or bad
app. So I think just shifting down the power to users and communities is the way forward.
And the idea is to leverage as much as we can what is available for now on Android to do that.
So you've built Zap Store, which is essentially a marketplace, right, where people can have these
apps. And maybe there's a Web of Trust component to how you pick and choose these apps. But that's
you building your marketplace.
Someone else, and by the way,
I do want to get into that as
well, right?
How do you deal
with the situation where there's someone else?
There's another Fran, a dark Fran
who comes in
and decides to build
a separate marketplace where
there isn't that level of curation
and there is no web of trust.
so how would you deal with that in zapper itself you mean no as you know as a user right so zap
store is one marketplace right but anyone can build a marketplace it sounds like right for
android apps so from a user standpoint right your so your marketplace might be safe but
your own marketplace yeah right right but again i think that is is down to something that we kind of
lost in a way as a society which is personal responsibility like these big big corporations
cannot solve everything for you right so at some point you need to be responsible and make
your own right choices and sure then you can then you can delegate but i mean if you don't if you're
just crossing the street with a red light i mean yeah no one's there to save you so you you need to
be careful with these things and how do you pick it's all about i guess reputation of the different
stores um again on apple this is the default but how you pick the right marketplace or app store
on on android well again there's choice so there's to give some context uh the alternative
App Stores on Android are multiple There FDroid is the a pretty well one and and they essentially uh build a lot of free and open source software and make it available and ensure they have no
trackers and stuff so if f droid if you like f droid's model um even though most of the apps
they build themselves and they might have certain risks because you're not 100 sure it comes from
the developer, but you do trust the F-Droid brand, then that's the perfect marketplace for you.
I think bio-beware makes complete sense, right? In a scenario where if there is any harm, like you
said, if you choose to cross the road when there's a red light. Well, actually, that's an
interesting example, but that has some complexities to it. But if you're the only one who can be
impacted by the choice you're making, I think that bio-beware makes complete sense, right?
But even in the crossing of the road example, right, it's not on you because what if you make a car swerve and it kills someone and then it goes onto the sidewalk and kills someone else, right?
So your actions do impact, potentially do impact someone else.
So, for example, if you buy or, you know, if you use some alternative marketplace that's that's unvetted and lacking in curation and you load some malware and then your phone suddenly becomes this hub for spreading malware to other phones.
Your action has impacted other, I guess, innocent users, for lack of a better term.
I'm not saying there's a there's a I'm not expecting you to answer this, Fran.
I'm just posing this as a sort of a hypothetical out there.
That's a hard point.
So I'm familiar with the Apple App Store,
and I know the approval process is just like one day you'll pass,
the next day it almost seems like it's up to whoever's reviewing it.
So it's a human touching it type of thing.
So, you know, we've seen it where Domus was approved and then Domus wasn't approved or it's up for review and it would normally take a day and then it would take three days.
And it would there was no real guidelines, no infractions, no nothing that they could really define.
But it wasn't passed. But then, you know, the same app that was under a different name did pass.
So obviously there wasn't consistency.
How is the Android, I guess the Google Play Store, what's your experience with that?
Apple is known for doing these things, but also a similar experience can happen on Play Store, at least from an anecdote that I heard.
And as you say, they're completely inconsistent.
They don't have very clear guidelines.
is kind of hit or miss, shooting in the dark
and hoping that every release gets approved.
And that's another aspect that doesn't necessarily have to be like that.
For instance, I'll get back to your question,
but on Zapster, you only get basically,
once you get approved for like your MPOP can publish,
then you're trusting the developer,
but you're not trusting that specific release.
that's not the case
with Apple and
Google
specifically for the Play Store that
insist on
checking every single release
right
and it's incredibly frustrating
and it might be because
it's basically
the duopoly and people
can't do much about it
everyone wants to be on the Apple App Store
and the Google Play Store so they just submit
but the reality is
that it's a very painful process for a lot of developers.
And I heard countless stories, even waiting weeks,
and they're getting rejected.
As you pointed out, the Damo's example is a great one.
Like, is it up to the reviewer in particular?
Or is that a company policy?
Or what does it have to do?
It's very difficult to plan for these things.
And that's another thing that definitely needs some change.
It has been tried with policy.
In the EU, as you mentioned, Avi,
there is this, how is it called,
maybe an act that allows for alternative marketplaces.
However, these lawyers are very good.
And what appears to be a win, it's so-so.
because ultimately for publishing on a Freedom Store,
or I don't know how the other ones are called,
all the apps in there need to be notarized by Apple.
So ultimately, sure, maybe you don't have as strict
as a review process as the main store,
but you still need to be approved by Apple,
and Apple can turn you off at any moment.
And you're referring to that legislation
or whatever passed that, you know, I read the headlines,
oh, you know, Apple's going to be forced to sideload, offer sideloading.
Is that what you were talking about?
Yeah, exactly.
Avi just hinted at that because in the European Union,
there's this law, right, that just basically forced Apple to do this,
but they reached a point in which, well, you know, no, it's not really there.
Also, by the way, to create a marketplace, an alternative marketplace on iOS,
I think maybe you need to
comply and you need to show your books
and you need to make sure that the revenue coming from there
is at least something and then you need to pay fees
so it's very complex, it's not that anyone can just set up a marketplace and go
so it's a fine print
and they turn that into
they turn that PR into
a good campaign or just to
see themselves in a good light
when actually it's just
a trick
and unfortunately
Google seems to
want to go down that path
too, which is very
very concerning for Android
because from a duopoly
if we have at least one
sort of open system
all of a sudden now we might
have two
a few weeks ago, they announced that all side loading would also be subject to developer
registration, which means that even if you're not on the Google Play Store, for the app
to install, and this is on Android stock distribution, basically the Android that most people run,
if you're not registered then the app won't install
which is very close to what
Apple is doing with these alternative stores in the EU
they are not on the official store
but still however
they have the last say
so that's one news that
again very concerning because
it would for many devs many users mean the end of many apps and actually
Ftroyd published a blog post about about this topic very recently a few days ago
and for them which they rely on just building apps for from other people or
it means the end of it.
If Google...
What would it mean for you, though,
or more broadly for ZapStore?
Because it sounds like all the ZapStore apps
would have to register as well, right?
That is correct.
So I guess we're just waiting and trying to see
what will happen because it will be enforced
if everything
if they keep their plan
this will start to be enforced
from September
next year and into
2027 globally
so and that was
they were trying to require
also with that KYC like your home address
and everything
so when you're in this freedom
building in the freedom
tech
the last thing you want to be is doxxed
so yeah
Sorry, keep going.
That's absolutely right.
And I don't know how the wider open source community is taking this.
I don't know if it's a way of channeling the opposition somehow.
Because I know for a fact, because now a little bit later I will explain if you want how this app store is working right now.
But essentially, I'm scraping or collecting a lot of apps that are not signed by devs just to offer users to install them.
And I know that a huge part of them come from GitHub.
So people publish their code on GitHub and also build the app and publish that app on releases.
And you see there's like tons and tons of APKs on GitHub that are hosted there.
And a lot of these are just anons.
They're just devs.
that have an account on GitHub, and they put out this project.
Now, there is apparently, there will be a workaround for this new registration scheme,
which is for hobbyists, you might have like a limited permission or how it's called,
where you don't need to show your ID, but you still need to register with your name and phone and all that.
But it will allow a limited amount of installations.
they don't say the number so it could very well be 10 or i don't know but again it's not it's
still a workaround and it's not the main um issue i think it will have it will impact like
a lot of developers maybe a lot some people are sleeping on it i'm not sure um
yeah someone wants to spearhead the the effort i don't know if the eff or some organization like
that. But I know that F-Droid
does have some contacts with
at least regulators in Europe, but
it's
going to have to be a legal battle, I suppose,
because if it's just
users can't
move basically anywhere else,
so it's going to be a
very difficult one. And of course, it will
impact
ZapStore, definitely.
The irony
here is
you know there's a problem i guess what they claim anyway google or is that they're trying
to solve the problem of trust in developers and the way they solve it is they completely
centralize the certification process right by collecting all this invasive data from the
developers and then they give their stamp of approval or or or not in an incredibly opaque
process, whereas with something like ZapStore,
anything that's Nostro-enabled, in theory,
can leverage a very clean
solution to the trust issue, which is web of trust, right?
And either they can't see that, the regulators
and actually Google themselves, or they don't want to see that.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Because actually, if you look at the history,
they've been trying to solve this thing with the same hammer,
but just doing it harder and harder.
Because back in, I think, 2017, they introduced PlayProtect.
and then they kept like doubling down with the same and until now they reach kyc for everyone
and is that the right tool like i think they just want to solve everything with that
as we see maybe in the financial world that has not stopped you know crime or money laundering
that much even by official figures that's like extremely low so the effectiveness of kyc for
stopping this kind of stuff it's it's not going to work and they you know and they keep insisting
so uh fortunately on Noster and that's what I was talking before about like shifting the trust
models because do you want like one big centralized corporation deciding you know which obviously it's
important to have a filter somewhere but where should it be placed should it be them or should
we find other ways i don't think they're actually very interested in other solutions it seems they're
just you know playing on some book and kyc is a solution to everything um on oster since it's well
it's a social network but it's a cryptographic social network in a way because we have signed
messages proving who we follow and with that information we we can derive interesting things
right we can we can draw like a we can map out this graph of of the social network and through
through algorithms we can understand like how much you know could you potentially trust someone
like a follow is not really trusting someone but at least is a signal to without the impersonators
and the scammers right like if just a new endpub comes into an officer and it's like oh hey this is
primal well actually no because i want i i am following primal and i know for sure that it's
them so this is our mechanism uh which is fantastic really because in an adversarial
environment now you don't all of a sudden you don't necessarily need um curators like you could
that's a that's a fantastic second layer and that's that's where relays come in um but web
of trust is a great tool. I don't think these people are familiar at all. And Noster is very
small. Zapter is even smaller. However, F-Droid in a way has solved part of it. I think they're
just choosing not to see it and not to engage in conversation. So Fran, I do want to circle back
in a bit to the web of Trustbit
and the work you've done on Vertex and PageRank.
But before that, right,
let's talk a little more about ZapStore.
So for folks unfamiliar, how does it work?
So if I'm a Nostra developer
and I've built an app for Android,
I have an option, right?
It's a Nostra app that does X, Y, Z.
I can go through the process with the Google Play Store
and see if I can get approved and who knows, right?
Or I can go down the Zap Store route.
So talk about that.
Talk about the apps that you have on Zap Store as well.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's a marketplace, right?
So we have on one side, we have the devs
and on the other side, we have the users.
As a user, well, this is a decentralized app store.
That's the idea.
it's based on Noster, based on relays. And essentially, publishing an app is just
publishing an event. It's one kind of event that represents this application or specific release.
So in this way, we already can basically discard the middleman. We don't care about the middleman,
you know, if that's SAPS or if it's a relay or which relay is coming from, because we have
cryptographic certainty that it was the developer that i follow on noser or that has this and that
reputation is the one that has signed the hash for this file that i'm about to install so that's
that's the main uh principle behind it it's like we we just as we use it for social media right um
like our typical micro blogging use case is that,
oh, I'm seeing notes by a person who has signed this message.
So I'm sure it's genuine.
There's even higher stakes for apps because, you know, they can be,
speech is amazing, but if it's just a bunch of shit poise, okay, fine.
But if it's an app that can steal your funds, like that's a big deal.
so that's why it's so important and that's one of the security aspect i would say
of the store so users can check that and developers can can sign messages and publish
um to it and we have a bunch of of apps that are quite well known in the in the nostreverse
even though it's not at all limited to nostre any app can be uploaded any app can be can be sent to
to the Reader and Blossom server.
So it's,
does that answer your question?
No, yeah, that does.
How many apps are on Zap Store right now?
Now there's about a thousand.
And signed by developers,
there should be around 70 or so and what's the what's the difference in number then well there's
many other applications that i myself or let's say as zap store i have found around and people
wanted to see so i'm just signing it as myself i did not build those apps and i'm working a little
bit on the on the wording on how to make this more clear but the idea is that even if you don't have
that you can still you know you can still use and trust that I index them from the right source
until we get every single developer on us or but then that will take a while
so then there's the
I would say the discovery
because I like to call this
a social
app store
right now feature wise we're not
there yet but I'm working hard on the new version
where
you can start exploring like app
packs and seeing recommendations from
your
your followers let's say from your
closest social network
and that's one aspect that is actually quite interesting compared to you know the centralized
big stores which show you recommendations are usually quite irrelevant at least I don't I don't
find anything anything of much interest there so this is a fresh take on what should show on your
homepage when you when you access the store and then there's obviously the
monetization aspect which is you can zap releases you can zap developers and
encourage you know it's value for value for apps here in the future the idea is
to also have paywalls but for now you can you can just have so just the same
experience that you just zap a note you can also zap and appreciate the work
that went with the developer.
When did you start building this, Fran?
This was about a year and a half ago.
I was fortunate to participate in
the Sovereign Engineering Cohort in Madeira.
Fantastic experience.
and the idea was kind of born there
and the first prototype.
So it's, yeah, more or less since then.
The first version came out May of last year
and it's been a journey.
It involves too many moving parts, really,
because there's the app.
It's just not only the app,
but it's also the custom relay
and there's the indexing part and there's libraries
and there's a bunch of things that may not appear obvious
but I'm kind of maintaining a full stack there.
So as well as a tool for developers to publish their apps.
That also received a lot of work
because it's quite complex to parse these Android files and so on.
but
yeah that's basically
the whole
suite of things needed to
make Zapsware work
Did you go this year
to sovereign engineering?
It was
January of 2024
so one and a half year
Well they did it again right?
They
yeah they liked the format and they
continued doing it I think
they must be going by the 6th
or 7th by now.
It's really good.
I would like to participate again.
Or wait until they have
some chapters elsewhere
in the world, hopefully.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, I know.
When I look to travel to Madeira,
it was a very, very long travel day.
I think 24 hours to finally get there.
based off just the planes from from from phoenix so i i i was i'm planning on it hopefully um in uh
2020 2028 i believe is the next time that they're having the uh the big event so um maybe my son
will be able to travel for that long uh but uh hoping for it uh i'm sure avi will be there
Oh, for Bitcoin Atlantis 28 for sure.
I'll be there.
I don't know about the sovereign engineering.
That's the next big target.
Yeah, but the SEC, I call it.
Yeah, that's because it's all there.
It's all in Madeira, right?
I heard rumblings of things in other parts of the world of similar things Yeah so that what he was talking about the chapters So that be great Yeah So what that That be great the format Go ahead no no go ahead Fran
I really enjoyed the way it was set up
because a lot of it involved, like,
social activities and Gigi's walk and talk
that, for me, was fantastic.
Like, just being there with a very dense group
of very smart people, everyone but me there.
And so super inspiring.
And then, yeah, actually it did end
with the Atlantis Conference on 24.
So every Friday we do presentations
of what we're working on.
And there was such a high energy.
And what I found quite crazy to see
is like the combinations of people
working on different things together.
Like I would not expect this guy
doing something with that guy.
But even with like 20, 25 people,
like all these things were happening.
So that's I think what Freedom Tech needs.
And yeah, I'm very happy that they continue to do it.
I can't say much about the rest of them
because they were quite reserved.
Like they don't share that much.
about what's going on, but super great experience.
I hope, as you guys said, that they can export the format
and, I don't know, get a bunch of nostrils here in Buenos Aires
and do some kind of hacking together.
It would be great.
Well, I'll tell you what, Paraguay would be a really good place
to have the next cohort, just given the groundswell of activity there, right?
And so many Bitcoin expats who've moved there and Nostra expats.
that would be interesting yeah for sure it's um it's relatively close uh you know what you
mentioned about about paraguay the people are are so welcoming um it's kind of um
very interesting story because of you know a big war back in the day and they're just kind of in
between two big countries you know and they they a lot they lost a lot of territory in that they
lost the access to the ocean and they remained like a decimated small country.
And like, in a way, like it sounds harsh, but it just, for some reason, makes them,
oh, like, you know, you're coming here to visit us and they're like extremely welcome
and super warm people.
I don't know, maybe for that reason.
A lot of people say we're, the Argentines are very arrogant.
And so, but I think that that level of energy can be definitely felt.
I'm definitely down. I love going there if some sort of cohort gets organized.
Bobby, start the chapter, man.
You better start brushing up on the Espanol.
It's a long flight, man. It's 10 hours.
Say goodbye to the family for a month and spearhead your chapter.
Franz flight is
just an hour I think
or less
he's a lot closer than I am
a lot closer
was the
down there
the bottom of the world
so a lot of times
it's us who must
fly very long distances
you guys are lucky in the US
there's a lot happening
oh not that much
so was zap store your first NOSTA project
actually it wasn't
I started lurking like
after like the jack effect of December 2022
I was like what's this NOSTA thing
I had heard
JB55 talk about NOSTA
because I was also lurking on Twitter,
didn't have an account.
And he was talking about lightning stuff
and just following what he was doing.
And he started building this damask client for Nasser.
But that was probably late 2022.
So I just said, ah, this thing probably going to go nowhere.
You know, the same mistake as Bitcoin.
And then we got basically Jack
and I saw it again and I saw it again.
So I said, again, I tried this thing out
even though I'm not really a social media guy.
And yeah, I got involved in some conversations
and slowly started to participate,
but I wanted to build something.
You know, I'm a developer.
How can I contribute to make this grow?
I think this is an amazing protocol to build on.
So I decided to create like a comments widget.
So those kind of widgets like Discus, you know, that you would embed on a blog post,
after blog post or a website, but based on Nostra.
So FiatJav had already worked on something, but I thought I could do better.
Or I don't know, I just wanted to try out something.
and I created Zap Threads.
That was the name.
And I worked on it for one or two months
and then I had a call with habla.news.
So all the guys in the team,
they received me super well
and one of my contributions was that,
was the widget for adding comments to habla
which I did not have at the time.
and it was there for
a long time I think now they changed the design
but it's been
the commenting system for
a while and it's also
I think on Nostradal Band
they probably
forked it and fixed a few things
I think it was on
Zap Dot Cooking at some point
I'm not sure but
that was the plan until
I just
thought that
the problem worth fixing with ZapStore was more interesting.
And yeah, just pivoted that way.
But that was the first thing I built on Astro.
And were you a Bitcoiner before then?
Yeah, I've known Bitcoin for a long time,
but it took me
it took me long to understand as well
just to finally
get into the rabbit hole
that was around COVID
but even though I had used it for
even back in 2014
around there
I just used it to get money into Argentina because we've been living in space with a very unstable financial system.
I don't know how familiar you are, but I think it's one of the things that people know Argentina about.
It's like the monetary system here and the financial system is a complete share coin.
and basically
I know
by the way
the only thing I know
about Argentina
is beef
Messi
and Malbec
no
I'm kidding
I am familiar
with it
that's the question
from outside
and
yeah
but
I had a lot of
troubles with that
so
just sending money
it was kind of
crazy to do
maybe lose
half of it along the way between taxes and bank fees and so on so bitcoin sounded like a great
way of moving money in another country and so that was a the first time i used it uh that's
as a utility basically uh i didn't paid much attention so again it didn't fall into
the rabbit hole and fully understand it.
Otherwise, I guess I would not be a collab anymore.
Nice.
So, Fran, you worked on,
I think you were a contributor to Vertex, right?
The web of trust as a service thing that's out there
that I believe uses PageRank,
you know, Google's old search algorithm
to come up with Web of Trust scores on NOSTA.
Is that correct?
So for folks unfamiliar, Fran,
talk a little bit about Vertex.
Yeah.
So Vertex is an idea that was born
after some conversations with Pip.
Pipelia, the social graph guy, I think he goes by
Anastor, and he's a mathematician
and he's the guy responsible for understanding all these algorithms and stuff
but I was looking for a better solution to
derive metrics for Web of Trust
in Zapstore
and just chatting and then we met at a conference
and we said, well, there might be something interesting here
just building a product that could not only be used for ZapStore, but elsewhere.
And that was the beginning of Vertex.
And I was there with him for some months,
and we designed a lot of things together,
including npub.word, which is kind of a front end to the Vertex services.
in my opinion
like the best
Nostra profile
search
that exists
in Nostra fear
but yeah
I basically
I left the project
in the beginning
of this year
because
it was just too overwhelming
I had too many things
on my plate
but
Pip is
is amazing
and
I think he
he got one of the most
valuable
tools on Nasser that is not super well known. Maybe he needs to work a bit better on the marketing,
but everyone should look it up. Now he opened it up. It used to be, I think that you needed some
credits, but now it's like pretty much free for anyone to just play with. And it can solve so
many problems because it just, of course, it's a centralized service. Let's put it that way.
but that is giving you very fast and actionable information
derived from the whole graph right using the PageRank algorithm And also I think he uses what called the personalized page rank which is not a global metric
but it's the ranks from
your own perspective, basically. So how your
MPub sees the whole rest of the network more than the global view.
And I think it has so many interesting use cases.
like one that comes to mind
is
you can order for example
let's say a comment by
Odell I mean a post
on Nosfer by Odell they might have
a hundred comments
but they're normally sorted
by date but it would be really
interesting if you know people who just
are not interesting to me
would go to the bottom and I could just
surface the interesting like people
who are closer to me in the graph
of course maybe I should be able to toggle
that on and off but the idea is that in that way i can i can improve the massive the user experience
then of course everything has to do with impersonators is just off actually a lot of
times when you wanted more information about the network and about um puppies and so on you go to
not sort of the dot band.
Because they have some stats there
and, you know, you can find people.
But the metrics, in my opinion,
were way off.
Even primals are off.
It all depends how you measure that.
But I think Pip did a good work
with the page rank algorithm
where he's doing like a cutoff, right?
So if your rank is like very, very, very low,
he will kind of discard those endpups
and just keep the ones that are, you know,
there could be bots because some bots may provide value.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is human,
but it's like signal on the top and noise away, right?
So he ended up, I don't want to lie,
but 300,000 keys or something like that
that are, you know, at least has some reputation.
and I don't know if they were active every single day.
I think he also released, was it yesterday or the day before?
If you go to mpub.world, now there's some stats
so you can kind of start tracking the growth of Nasr,
how many people are participating and posting notes and so on.
So that's going to be interesting to see.
To me, of all the metrics I've seen,
or at least the quality of the mpubs that are in there,
is very accurate.
So it's basically a way of assigning scores.
Is it to NPUBs or to events as well?
It's only to NPUBs
because it's evaluating the social graph, basically.
Who points to who?
PageRank, what basically says,
is what is the probability?
Out of a random walk,
what is the probability of ending up in one node?
So very well-known people have more probabilities,
so they have a higher score.
But again, some people may think that this global page rank views somehow is assigning a score.
It just kind of sounds like a credit score.
Social credit score.
I know.
How do you not think digital ID and social credit score?
It cannot be conflated with web of trust.
yeah and as i was saying particularly when you have the personalized page rank because in that
case every single end pub has different values of the whole network so there's no way you can apply
like a top-down approach and chinese style you know censor people by by page rank
so that makes a whole lot more sense to me by the way fran right having a personalized
I guess score is not the best word, but a personalized rank or a view of the network,
because it's more representative of human interactions anyway, right? Because my view of you,
right, how much I trust you could be very different from how much, let's say, QW trusts you,
for instance, right? And so these are individual relationships. I think having a localized score
makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, for sure.
But I will say that the signal could be much better.
It's just the tools and the data that we have at the moment.
Because following someone does not necessarily imply a lot of trust.
It might hint at, well, maybe the people I don't follow
or the ones that by consequence are not in the graph,
like it's the people that have a high chance of being impersonators or whatever but yeah it would
be great to have other kinds of signals for example i'm i met abby in person you know and i i or i
vouch for this but you know we had eternal debates on the nips repo about this stuff and it's very
hard to agree on on something the follows are like you know they're there so they're the easiest thing
to implement, but it will be good.
Also, if you consider how many notes you exchange,
if you exchange DMs, if you zapped each other,
also zaps are kind of tricky
because they can be faked.
But if you leverage the web of trust,
then you have a higher chance perhaps
that the zap actually was a real one.
So all that data, which is public, can be used.
And probably mutes.
And I don't know if a lot of mutes are private,
but I don't know.
Those things might also help in that direction.
And do any clients use this today?
Because this is built out as a service, right?
So Vertex is something that, in theory,
a client can plug into.
So Primal could start using Vertex
to show Primal users
only the things that have a high enough score
within their web of trust.
Actually, you said it's not for events.
It's only for end pubs, right?
So it's only going to show them the end pubs
that are above a certain threshold
in their replies or whatever, right?
So are there any clients who are using this today?
There are.
I don't recall exactly which ones now,
apart from ZapStore.
I think on South Atlantis they're using it as well.
and there's
a few other clients
not the big ones but
it is being used
I need to
dig deeper into that one
but definitely I wish
it was more widespread
especially
when you're searching for profiles
and that's
I see so many clients that are just not good
when you type a name
if you're
you're signed in, right?
You should get the result you want immediately
because you should just surface.
And that's exactly the experience on mpop.word
that I would love to see everywhere.
Many times I'm using just a regular client.
The clients I use, I change.
I was using Jumbo.
I think it's pretty cool.
It does have some good search right there.
But I find myself going to mpop.word a lot of times
when I want to make sure that I just type in the stuff
and the right profile will appear.
Have you looked into Vitor's NIP 85 on trusted assertions? Because that takes a slightly different approach, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, I'm not too familiar with that one. I get the concept. I did look at it.
it would perhaps serve as that primitive that I was talking about to put more weight on a certain connection,
if that's what I recall from it.
It would maybe involve like a topic or something like that,
where you could say, I trust Abby on wine taste,
or
that guy, I don't trust him
on certain other things
I don't trust him for car mechanic
advice or whatever
that might be
sorry, I just said you nailed it
and so
there were other discussions
because other people have other opinions
on how this should be done
and there's other ways of doing
a web of trust, absolutely.
There's not only PageRank.
And other NIPs, for sure,
are proposing other things,
but it gets very complicated very fast.
Yeah, there's Nathan Day's Attestations NIP.
That's relatively recent.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, three or four.
That is great.
I love that.
Definitely.
Yeah, actually, I heard about this
for the first time on PlebGenerate Radio
when you had Nathan on.
I was like, man, this is perfect for his app store.
You know, I want people to be attesting
to certain apps or certain releases.
And I talked to him briefly about it.
Yeah, there's too many nips
and too much bike shedding,
too much eternal discussions on there.
But the reality is
the NIP that counts is the NIP
that is deployed and used by people.
You know, obviously,
we try not to duplicate work
and just do things in parallel.
We try to be an interoperable network.
But just proof of work, man.
That's how it has to be.
Well, at least Nostra doesn't have
the same level of bike shedding
as Bitcoin seems to these days.
with the discussion.
Oh, man.
The core versus NOS and all of that stuff that's happening.
I'm just going to point that out.
We don't have to go there at all.
In fact, I don't want to.
You don't want to go there.
No, let's not do it.
So, Fran, general thoughts on, you know,
I guess we're in October 2025 on the trajectory of NOSTA.
first of all the evolution in
this year, right, we're entering the
10th month of the year, then where
you think it's going to go
or the foreseeable, or the
near future, let's say
Oh man, it's
a great question because I'm not really
sure if there's something specific
about Noster
itself, I just want
to see, I would love to see like
more, of course more people
on it, but more businesses on it somehow.
I don't claim to have like the recipe for that.
To me, it was more a year of like the AI
and how, you know, what, that was kind of more
the angle of things that I saw developing and there was a lot of conversation about it on Nostrad But about Nostrad itself the protocol maybe I been out of the loop or something to focus on my things
But is there anything you see super interesting these days about it?
No, I don't.
No, I'm kidding.
Look, I had a really good chat with Max Hillebrand
and a few others actually when we were out in Asensio
a couple of weeks back.
And certainly lots of stuff to look forward to,
white noise and the evolution,
I guess marmot now, right?
Which is,
so there's some interesting stuff there.
I also heard from,
I can't remember who was telling me this,
but there were some rumblings
of onion-routed physical male.
Because, for instance, right,
there's so many,
I guess merchants now, right?
There's Soap Miner, there's Great Key,
there's Leather Mint, right?
And others who are selling their wares for Nostra's apps.
I think one problem there is,
I mean, I'm sure they're all great people,
but buyers could be hesitant in letting out
or giving out their physical address
to someone on Nostra.
So someone mentioned to me
that there is some people
looking into onion routed physical
mating, right? So it would be
you, you know,
you request a delivery of
something, but it's not your
address that goes to
the, right?
It's a property.
Yeah.
That's amazing. I think these services exist
in the world. I don't know if it needs to
involve Nostra.
I will only be in the case
where you don't trust the merchant.
Yeah, that sounds interesting.
I know that a lot of tiny things are being worked on, even like the famous kit replacement
and the toll gate stuff.
And of course, White Noise actually reminds me of that.
That's super exciting.
I wish one day we had finally an interoperable encrypted communications.
We're kind of relying on Signal for now, which is pretty good.
I'm really bullish on that.
I'm really looking forward to when ZapDot's dream works again.
But it goes to the underlying issue.
It's like, you know, we don't have to look forward.
We can just fix what's here today and make things normally ready.
Really just make it simple to use because we have, you know,
the superpower or our special, uh, our, our weapon that we have in our, uh, at, in our hands
is, is the zaps. I mean, if we can just make things actually work, uh, instead of just chasing
all these ideas, um, just, just make some things, refine what we have. Um, you know, zap.stream is a
great product. It's a great, anybody can use it. They can monetize it. Um, it just, it needs to
work and i and it was almost like right when it was being processed getting pushed out to fountain
um primal uh noster amethyst all of a sudden it didn't work and it's like oh it was we're so close
right there because that was such a uh such a benefit to uh to everybody as far as the the
the content community and the and the consumers i don't know if we need to run our own or what we
need to figure out.
ZapDot stream.
Exactly.
ZapDot stream works,
QW.
You just need to run
your own.
That's it.
Roll your own.
Roll your own stream.
I want the one click
installer.
We need to improve the
UX there, Kieran.
I know you're drowning
on DDoS at this moment,
but we want it easier.
I want it.
Our balance on ZapDot
stream, Avi, which
doesn't even make sense.
what did you read when you read our balance?
So before this show, I checked to see if we had enough balance on Zap.Stream.
We're not streaming on Zap.Stream, unfortunately, Fran, because of the DDoS.
But I checked the balance to make sure that there was enough.
And it showed some absurd number, like hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of sats.
I was getting like 18 billion sats on here.
And now I just refresh it and we're at zero sats.
So I don't even know if it's just DD.
I don't know, man.
It's just such a Nostra thing.
But, yeah, that's what we do.
Avi, we're going back to Nostra Nest.
Oh.
I second that, QW.
I think it's about, well, there's a lot of people doing different things,
but it would be great to just kind of polish the stuff that we already have
and make it like even more normie friendly and you know improve the ux and keep iterating and
iterating then just inventing like a bunch of new stuff i mean it's all cool you know we all want to
you know play around with things but just make it more and more attractive for people maybe
have some integration with i don't know other i don't know if primal was working on that like
and integration with other social media platforms.
Just try to build bridges for people from elsewhere
to come on to Nostra.
Yeah, careful what you wish for on that front, Fran.
Alex Gleason built the Mastodon bridge,
and it is a cesspool of just the worst kind of content.
What's your Mastodon username, Avi?
You want to put that out here?
I don't have one.
But that some of these bridges are, I don't know, man.
Maybe you're better off being an isolated island.
We're having our fun here.
That's true.
It could be like a one-way direction bridge, right?
Like you just push the Nasser stuff out and you don't see any of the other stuff
and you just relax on your island.
True.
You know, you don't have to read the blue-haired Macedon people.
people. It is a be careful what you wish for because, you know, when the more popular it gets,
I mean, we talk about these other social media platforms and, you know, the content that's on
there or the politics or the endless bickering. You know, is that just what, is that how we know
Nostra is growing is because all that bickering starts coming here? No. Because we're, no, no.
Because I just think there's something special about these micro communities.
but everybody wants more and more adoption
and it's kind of like a
it's be careful what you wish for
but no
it's purely the alga
I refuse to accept
sorry
just one quick thing Fran
I refuse to accept that
sign of growth is bickering
and negativity
no we have to break that
we have to break that sign
dark nostril Avi it's coming
oh yeah
but it needs to be powered by the algorithms,
you know,
someone has to build the algorithms on us.
Yeah.
But anyway,
what I want is,
is,
is Reddit and Noster.
Come on.
We've been going around that in circles.
I don't know how many specs for communities we have,
but there's nothing working.
I just want Reddit and Noster.
And that's honestly one of the best ways of bringing people on board because
it's topical.
So if you want to read about or write about knitting,
then you just go there. It's simple.
I don't know why it's
not, doesn't exist yet.
It doesn't have to be necessarily.
Satellite.Earth
was having a big revamp.
And I
feel like that was one of the closer things
to...
Yeah, I love Stu, but he needs to
ship.
Yeah, we're so early, man.
Just
always so early.
A few years, I think, the last time I heard.
But then there were other initiatives around communities.
Neil Leesmans was working on one called Community Keys.
I don't know if maybe at the Damas team,
they're all also trying to address this.
I just want to see it.
I would build it, but I don't have the time.
Rabble was trying to do something with communities on NOS Social.
I wonder where that is right now.
All right.
Yeah.
yeah
if it's not on my radar
I'm pretty active on Nostra
if it's not on my radar
well who knows maybe I'm missing out on the fun
but it's just not something
that people are talking about
your vertex cut off score is
is not right Fran
you're missing out on all the good stuff
you gotta turn it down
I just thought about that
one community that
Rabble was talking about during our show.
It's like the meth...
I don't even know. Some meth community.
Oh, the meth.
Yeah, right.
He was using it as an example
of freedom.
Like the vegan meth users
and the carnivore meth users.
Yeah, just some off-the-wall
community, but that's where they lived.
Everybody has a home.
you know
Reddit is another case of
how bad the internet has become
like I cannot access it anymore
every time I go to Reddit
it's like you're blocked, you're bought
yeah
using VPN so
that's insane
the internet is becoming
like so bad, so so bad
I'm so glad that
NOSTA exists man
NOSTA fixes this man
so Fran
any calls to action
anything you want to
any place you want to send
our listeners to
yeah
visit zapstore.dev
and check out the new website
see
if you want to know more about it
download it
ask me questions
I'm pretty active
you can
you can find me on
on ZapStore, that's easy, or friends app on Nostra.
I want devs to, you know, there's still a few devs
that are producing Android apps that are in the Nostra ecosystem
and are not signing our name names,
but it would be really cool if they did.
I'm super happy that one of the latest ones that I was hoping for is Primal.
So Primal is now signing the releases on Zapster.
That's pretty cool to see.
So shout out to them.
And that's about it.
If you know, just hit me up
if you have any questions about it.
I started to write a post about this whole
developer registration thing,
which has me a little worried, to be honest.
I hope to push up.
that soon.
And
yep, that's it.
Awesome.
Anything else you have, QW?
No, no.
That was an interesting show.
We touched on
Web of Trust, I think,
more than any other show, Avi.
It's something that's constantly in development.
It's that
golden goose,
if we can get it right.
So it's just one of those things that carrot we keep chasing.
So I love that we highlight it.
And it's always just so interesting to me too.
Yeah.
And I can't help but think we need another phone option besides Android and Apple.
But that's a big task and regulations might not let that happen.
I was going to ask you guys when are you coming on the right side but I'm not so
convinced about the right side anymore Exactly We wait it out Yeah well you know when the top in and everything going to start falling apart when Avi and I switch to
Android then we're going to get super rugged
yeah we'll be
buying the top
alright well Fran appreciate
you taking the time
and educating us
on everything you do
appreciate you my friend
and we will see you on Nostra, I'm sure.
I'm sure too.
Thank you for this time.
It was a great conversation.
And thank you to all the...
I come to Argentina.
Yeah, there you go.
Wine and Messi and...
There you go.
And Malay.
All right.
Well, thank you, everyone who listened.
All those PubChain pioneers
and pleb chain plebs.
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Make your presence felt via Fountain
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Goodbye.