I just, I won't look at the phone anymore. I'll trust it. I fully, I fully trust
technology. Is that better? Maybe? That's great. I don't know, we'll see. I never know
how to start these things. How are you doing, Pablo? Good morning. Good morning.
Pretty good. Excited. Another episode of No Solutions. Well, it's not even an
episode, right? It's a dialogue. Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, I'm not sure. People
will call it episodes anyway, but I see there's a dialogue. You know, that's the
problem with naming. You're not in charge of naming. That's another thing. Like,
people, you're not even in charge of your name. People will call you whatever.
It's cool. School makes this very apparent. It doesn't matter what your name is. It's
like, you'll get your own name. Anyway, I digress already. So, yeah. We go on a tangent
before hitting any point whatsoever. I listened back to the first one and
and it's actually, I was able to listen to it. That's okay. So, the sound quality
was okay, but it's, I hope we will improve. But one thing that we didn't talk too much
about was, like, what this experiment actually is. We talked a little bit about,
you know, it kind of came out of sovereign engineering or some of the things we
discussed during sovereign engineering. We want to kind of refine and have a more
open, more public dialogue about it. And I think that's a large part of it. But it's also,
the way I view it is, the whole problem space is way too big for one person to come up with a solution
in some sense. So, the only thing we have is dialogue. I think to navigate this whole space,
like, how should we build it and how should we build it right? And how do we think about
Noster and SAPS and, you know, building something on a Bitcoin standard, building something,
like, rebuilding the internet, reinventing the internet on a Bitcoin standard, so to speak.
It's too big of a task for one person or even a couple of people. You need to
muddle your way through and talk about it and have many, many dialogues about what might be
not the correct solution. I don't think there is a correct solution, but what are the right trade-offs?
How can you think about it? What is the, what would be the pro or cons of doing it this way
as opposed to that way? And I think the way I see this, the way I see this, like, no solutions,
conversations, dialogues, whatever, is I want to talk to the people that are closest to that,
that have been closest to that for the longest time, and to kind of have a, almost like a time capsule,
in some sense. How did we think about it in January 2025? Oh, now it's February. So how did we think
about it? Time flies, man. And just to see where we're at, and maybe, maybe something useful comes
out of it. And maybe it's also, my hope is that we will also get better at explaining to regular people,
why is this exciting? Why is this a massive opportunity? And why, I think I mentioned it the
last time as well. If you're just a regular JavaScript developer or whatever, you just learned how to
code. Why should you take a look at this? And why is this exciting? Yeah, I think explaining these
things is, is just so hard. And the closer you are, the harder it gets. Um, I was listening to,
to, to Adam Curry on, uh, on Joe Rogan last night. Oh, he went again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.
He was like six or seven times now already, I think. He's not regular. Yeah. Um, and at one point
he started talking about Bitcoin and the way he was explaining Bitcoin, it, it wasn't too compelling.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, no, but I, I believe in Bitcoin. No,
I don't believe on the other shit coins. And it, that puts them in regular, in the same footing,
you know, it's a, it's a belief system. And, and it's not about, oh, I believe in this one and you
believe on this other one. Yeah. Um, and I, I think it does, uh, a huge disservice when you
explain things in the wrong way. Yeah. Um, which is something that I see a lot. Um, I saw Hussard
wrote, uh, wrote, um, a long form made like a year ago, making that point, saying something like,
uh, a bad explanation is worse, worse than no explanation, which I think is a very good point.
Yeah, I think that's true. One of the things that you've mentioned a bunch of times in, uh,
in, in cyber engineering, uh, I think we, it's a, it's a good point to, to touch on is the, the
distributed cognition. Yeah. I think it's a very, very useful way of thinking. Yeah. You want to,
you want to touch on that? Yeah. I, I, I mean, those are not my ideas. Um, uh, there's a lot of,
you know, like people that are way smarter than me that point this out that all the hard problems,
all the interesting problems are actually not solved by one person. They're all solved by
distributed cognition, by, by like, you know, who runs an airline, for example,
who, who, who steers a large cruise ship. It's not like one guy you need, you need like a hundred
people to do these things and no single one person can tell you how it works or like who runs America
or who runs a big country or who runs a big corporation and so on. So we put systems in place
and we, we have various things that hopefully self-regulate and that's what in combination
with humans runs the thing. And I think, um, just kind of, you know, who came up with the idea of
X. It's a very hard X as a placeholder, not X as in like the new Twitter now. It's a very,
he ruined, he ruined the X word.
Yeah. Oh, what a shame. No, but it's a very, it's a very, um, hard question to answer because
you don't actually have like true real original thoughts, so to speak, like everything is a remix
of, of something else and so on and so forth. And so there is, um, I mean, the, the way I look at all
that is that there is a reason why, for example, in the West, the logos is sacred and why in the US,
the first amendment is the first amendment that it's about free speech and having the ability to
actually speak freely about things and discuss things. And the, it's, it's the only way to figure
out what you actually need to do. It's the only way to get a grasp on a complex thing that doesn't
have a well-defined problem space. And I think all those things are the most interesting problems.
All the most interesting problems don't have like a definite solution. Evolution is a great example.
Yeah. Like, like the problem space of life itself. What is the perfect organism? There is no perfect
organism. The question makes no sense. Exactly. The question makes no sense. And I, I view Nostar
under the same light, for example, I view the stuff that we are doing under the same light. What is the
perfect Nostar app? There is no perfect Nostar app. It's, it's first, first of all, it's even hard to
even say what Nostar is in, in, in, like to box it in, in some sense. Yeah. And, and I think that's why
you can't figure it out. Like you, as a single person, you can't figure it out. You don't, you don't
even know. Like, even if you build a thing and you think you understand it from start to finish,
if you, if you actually shoot it out into the wild, if you actually ship it, if you actually release it,
the people will use it in surprising ways. That's always what happens. So you don't even understand
what you built yourself. You know, like the people that, that created Viagra, for example,
thought it was a heart medicine, you know, like it's, I always use this example because most people
know it. And that's true for absolutely everything, you know, like it's true. It's true across the board,
like pick your thing that was invented. The people will use it in very surprising ways. And, and, and so I, I,
I think we're at a point now where, um, it's absolutely crucial to have these conversations
and also involve kind of, how should I put it? Let me start, let me start somewhere else.
I think we figured out a lot of things by building the first iteration of the internet.
Hmm. And a lot of like rebel is a great example. Rebel knows a lot of things about social media
and the history of social media and how things went and, and how all this built and how this came about.
And he knows all the mistakes that were made along the way, basically.
So it's important to really hear these people and not repeat those mistakes. I think, I think it's,
it's, we, we actually have a chance of, you know, building the next iteration of the free and open
internet. And I would like, it would be a missed opportunity if we repeat the mistakes of the past.
Yeah. And I, I think one of the, the things, um, one of the benefits of having these conversations
and especially about opening them up, uh, like we're doing now is that it, it is very easy
to just default to no store. And like the stuff that we're working on, it technically, it looks
a lot like the old world, um, like the peer to peer, like the strictly peer to peer technologies
with a VHD, they architecturally, they look very different than a client server model.
No store looks a lot like a client server model. It looks very, very similar. It's just changes.
It's a very small change that is incredibly significant. Yeah. The servers are stupid
and very much replaceable. And also you don't use one server. And the data, I think that's the main
difference. And the data is there. Yes, exactly. The authenticity of the data is in the data. And
that makes all the difference. Yeah. All the difference. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter if the,
the data is coming from, uh, a server that you do not trust, the signature is there. That's all that matters.
Yeah. Um, but from an architectural standpoint, it looks very similar. Yeah. It looks extremely,
extremely similar. So it would be very easy to default. And it is something that we keep
seeing. It is very easy to default to having the same answers that we had before. Yeah. The same
answers of how do you grow? Trying the same thing because it worked in the past. Exactly. Exactly. And
just trying to rebuild the same thing. Um, and I think opening up these conversations
where we have free, because that it is the thing that we do not have the answers. Yeah. Yeah. We,
we are not recording ourselves thinking, Oh, this is how you need to do it. Yeah. No, not at all.
Uh, it, it is quite the opposite is we are opening up. Trying to figure it out. We're trying to figure it out.
Yeah. Like the first slide or among the first two or three slides on the day one of server engineering
is you are the guinea pig. Yeah. Yeah. Which is still true. Yeah. It is very much true. Yeah. Um,
and we are, and we are too, and we are too a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. We're just trying to figure
these things out and what this is, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, I think the,
the default architecture of how most of the things in the web work right now, they, over the last 20
years or so, they impressed various thoughts into the minds of people and developers. And it's very,
very, very hard to undo that. And it's actually lies. I mean, you talked about this a couple of
times already, but it's very much worth pointing out. And it's one of the, one of the themes we,
we had in, uh, in the courts as well. It's like, for example, there is no global, there is no global
view of the whole thing. It's impossible. It's an impossible problem. If you want to have a global
view, you need to actually build Bitcoin. You need to rebuild Bitcoin. You need proof of work,
all the limitations, everything, everything else is a lie. Yeah. You know, like the, the,
the global view count of a, of a YouTube video is a lie. It's a complete lie. You can't have the
global view. It's, it's, it's always wrong. It's always outdated. This is how, because the speed of
light and how information works and all of it, it's like, I don't want to get into the deal of why it's,
the details of why it is a lie, but it's always a lie. The like count of your, of your, of your tweet,
it's a lie and so on and so forth. And even within Bitcoin, Bitcoin, you, you need to reveal
Bitcoin. Bitcoin only claims to have the truth of its own system. Oh, absolutely. And that's why
inscribing shit on the blockchain is retarded, right? We already talked about the retardation of
NFTs last time. Let's not repeat that. But, but, but Bitcoin doesn't claim to have a global view of
the other stuff, of everything that is not within the system. You can't have that. But, but I think
that's so, that's so, you just have to be okay with having an incomplete view of the thing. Yeah.
You just have to be okay with things potentially being out of order or incomplete or what have you.
That's just, that's just how the world works. And there is no way around it. If you, if you, and, and,
and the reason why I think it's super important to, to, to talk about this and, and really like,
we have to land on some things where you really drive this into people's heads, because it's like,
if you, if you fix this, like, if you fix this problem, you reintroduce centralization,
you have a central authority. And with that, with that fix, with that supposed fix of the problem,
you reintroduce all the things that made all the stuff that we use right now terrible.
There is no way around it. So you, you just have to be okay with there being no global. And that's just
how it is. Yeah. I think that they are, there are things that we don't know. And there are things
that we do know. And it's, it's provable, provably impossible to have a global view.
Yeah. It just makes no sense. From, from a, and, um,
In physics terms, it makes no sense. Yeah. And so you just have to be okay with that. And also it's,
it's, uh, there, there, there, there's just, I don't know, there, there's so many problems that are
like this. And, and I feel like we, you know, I don't know, maybe we should list them all out and
kind of, maybe that would be helpful. But one, one issue is like the, the, the problem of naming
came up so often, which is the same problem. It is the same problem, which relates to, um,
there is no global database of, um, like handles of like usernames. If you have one, then again,
it's like you, you, if you're, you're back at square one, where there is a central server, which
tells the world, like, who is who it's a problem that DNS tries to solve. That's why DNS is like
one of the archival skills of the internet, because it's like, it's a centralized solution. It's like,
you have to map IP addresses to human readable and understandable names. And so there's a central
registry and that's how things work. But as we know, a central registry, the issue with a central
registry is whoever is in charge can remove the entry points, can remove the, the, whatever is in
the register. And so if we actually care about long lived and I kind of hate the word censorship
persistent because that's, it's also, it's, it's such bad marketing in some sense, if you want to have
something that has a hundred percent uptime, which says the same thing, um, then you must not have the
central register because the central register can get down, uh, can go down. And I think all of this
stuff is important to, to, I don't hear this talked about too often. It's I, or let me rephrase that.
A lot of people do talk about this stuff, but new people come in, they try to build something,
they build something and they try to fix exactly these issues. And they try to give everyone in
Noster like a username, for example, that works everywhere and so on. And, and, and so, okay,
that shows me they haven't ever deeply thought about these issues and they don't understand the
problem space, right? Because it's impossible. You're trying to do an impossible thing. So maybe don't
spend your time on trying to fix the impossible problems, trying to fix the possible problems
and be okay with some things being messy and remaining messy. Yeah. To me, one of the interesting
aspects of, of just freedom tech in general is, I mean, as Matt would say, how much it humbles you,
how much it, it forces you to be okay with constraints that are unremovable. There are constraints
that cannot be withdrawn. Um, and it is a, it, I, I think it's, um, it's a very self-actualizing,
um, moment where, when, when you accept the constraints and you accept moving forward without
trying to be perfect, without trying to have the username, without trying to have perfect data,
data guarantees, like, that's also something that keeps coming up, is the, the guarantee of the data.
There are no guarantees. You cannot have them. Yeah, no, it's, yeah, I, and I feel like...
By guarantee, I mean the availability of the data. Yeah, sure. No, but that's the best you can do.
I mean, and I feel like we, we know this. Every, everyone who, whoever, like, you know,
like, everyone who has been around a couple of years and worked with computer stuff for us,
a computer scientist and so on, it's like, RAID chose this clearly, for example. RAID is a great
example of like, okay, there's only these couple of trade-offs. If you have a RAID system, what do
you want to achieve? You want to achieve that if one hard disk goes bad, not everything is fucked.
And so there's these different kind of RAID levels and so on. And, and if you compare RAID to Bitcoin,
for example, Bitcoin is like an extreme RAID system, where it's like, as long as one
hard disk, so to speak, survives, everything is fine. For RAID is like RAID 5, for example,
if like one goes bad, you're still fine. If two go bad, you're fucked again, you know?
And, and so, so that's the trade-off that you have. There's like, how, how fault tolerant is
the system? And I think that's, that's what, from an engineering perspective, that's what we should
focus on. If you want to have something that's long lived and resilient, it has to be fault tolerant.
Central servers are not fault tolerant. And we see this over and over again. I mean,
we see it like, you know, everyone uses Wallet of Satoshi to receive steps. Wallet of Satoshi gets
banned from the US. Okay. Everyone who is in the US has to use something else. It's not very fault
tolerant, you know? We see it also, you know, like, uh, lots of people nowadays use Primal.
And don't get me wrong. I love Primal. I think they're, they're doing a great job of, you know,
getting, pushing NOSTA forward in terms of UX and just raising the bar higher and so on. But if Primal goes
down, if the caching server goes down, if the wallet goes down, like it goes down for many,
many, many, many, many people. And I think that's why that's, that's actually what, what NOSTA,
from an architecture standpoint, is really, really right. If like, if one relay goes down,
it doesn't matter. Like we'll nuke the Damus relay, I think like at least two times by now. And
Damus is used by a lot of people and it's a big relay. That didn't matter at all. You didn't even feel it.
It didn't matter at all. You can't even tell. Yeah. You can't tell that the thing happened.
And, and so if you have a system that works like this, I think that's the right approach. And that's
why, you know, like, I think there is a way of building it right, so to speak. I think Blossom
would be another example. You know, we're not there yet because we don't have like, not every client
has like automatically healing links and all those kinds of things. But in theory, it's, it's the same
principle. Um, just like with NOSTA, if one relay goes down, it doesn't matter. If one Bitcoin node goes
down, it doesn't matter, you know, and if one Blossom server goes down, it also doesn't, it shouldn't
matter. It's like, you just grab it from somewhere else. But again, it's like a trade-off. There is
no perfect solution because the answer can also be like, if we want to rebuild YouTube, for example,
you can't host every single video on every single hard disk of the world. You know, that also doesn't
make sense. So, so what is the right trade-off balance? What is the right amount of, of, of
replication? What is the right amount of deduplication? And so on. And also if you overdo it, I mean,
IPFS showed this clearly. They had other problems as well, but IPFS, they, they did deduplication to
the max. And then it was impossible to retrieve files because it's just like one shard goes offline
and you can't, you can't reassemble your file. And it was just way too complicated. But anyway,
Fiat Jeff has a lot to say about IPFS.
Fiat Jeff probably has no funds. I think you want to be at the systemic level,
you want to be for a hundred percent fault tolerant at the edges is, is perfectly acceptable to not be
fault tolerant. Oh, absolutely. But, but that also, that also leads us to, to the next issue of
this doesn't come for free. So someone has to run the things and someone has to actually,
you know, like host your image or also run the relay and all those kinds of things,
or run the mint or run the Bitcoin notes and so on. And so, so it all kind of hangs together because you,
you will never have the perfect solution of like, it's super easy to use. It's super fast.
It's like super convenient. It's super fault tolerant and it's free and you don't have to think
about anything and you don't have to do anything. It's not how the world works. It's also,
again, no free lunch. Yeah. There literally is no free lunch. And you see this,
I mean, that's true across all areas of life. Not everyone can have their private chauffeur and,
you know, that goes on, that comes in the Rolls Royce and so on. Like most people will need to
learn how to drive and use their own car and potentially fix their own car, all those kinds
of things and so on. And yes, we can make steps towards that direction as was shown with Uber and
bold and so on, make it easier, make it more convenient and so on. But it's still, it's like,
you're living in the European Union, there's a new stupid law passed, Uber is illegal,
we're back to square one. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know.
Yeah. So, from the work that I've been doing with NIP-60 and NIP-61…
It came out of conversations like this, by the way.
100%. The number one issue that people raise is, oh wait, but the mints can rug you. Yeah. Yes,
they can. That's the idea. That is the idea. You should never put a meaningful amount of money into
the thing. It is not for your cold storage, but it comes from this sense of, I should have perfect
guarantees of everything. It should be seamless UX and no one should be able to rug you. Yeah,
perfectly secure, perfectly available, all those kind of things. And like, I think one of the,
I, I mentioned, I, I did this, this, uh, this talk in, uh, in summer engineering about the, the,
the summer in Legos. It's about having building blocks. Yeah. With different trade-offs, because it
is all about the trade-offs. With different trade-offs that increase the design space that we have
available. Yeah. The tools that we can. Yeah. So, I, I don't see, obviously, I don't see, uh,
not Sagan and Ip60 as the VF. Yeah, yeah. I, I don't have most of my Bitcoin there, obviously. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. But it is one more tool. Yeah. And then LSPs and opening your own channels is,
it's also a tool, and liquid can be a tool, and site-chasing, no, but. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, um, yeah, but I think the issue is we don't even understand the tools right, and most
people, um, don't know about the tools at all, basically. I think that's the issue. I think in,
in the real world, so to speak, we don't have this issue. Most people know what a hammer is,
most people know what a sharp knife is, most people know what a saw is, and so on, and they know
when to use what, you know? Like, most people don't try to eat their, I don't know, like soup with
a chainsaw. It's like, that's, we understand the various tools and the various. There probably
was someone. I'm sure someone tried. I'm sure someone tried. But, but still, like, we are at
a point now where, like, we just built the tools, like, basically yesterday. Yeah, 100%. Absolutely.
Again, I keep coming back to Blossom, just, uh, I like it a lot. Yeah, that's the main reason. But,
it's also, um, so, a little over a year ago, it didn't exist at all, not even as an idea.
And, um, now it's, it hosts this podcast. So, this podcast, now I call it a podcast.
Oh, goddammit. See, that's how, that's how indoctrinated I am. So, just, just for the record,
this will not be a, just another podcast. This thing will end, and it's like, we're gonna have
a couple of conversations, record them, and that's gonna be it. But still, the fucking ep3 files,
they're served on the Blossom server. So, if we are right about our assumptions, and things work out,
as we hope they will, like, this will be around for a while, and, uh, it will be very hard to
get rid of the mp3 files, potentially. And so, um, now I lost my train of thought. Where was I going?
It's the waves. They're so loud. Enjoy, enjoy the breeze.
We, we barely, we, we just made the tools. Oh, yeah, exactly. Like a year ago. So, a year ago,
all of this stuff, most of this stuff didn't exist. Like, uh, NIP-60 is like, I don't know,
six months old now or so. Yeah, maybe six months. And, and we're just figuring out, okay, when can we
use this? How do we use this? And when does it make sense? Where does it fit? Yeah, exactly. And I
really like the building block idea. I think, I think that's also, that's also, I think now is the
right time to really open it up and talk about all this stuff. Because I really think we have
almost all of the building blocks now. It's, I think, two years ago, three years ago, I wouldn't
have been as bullish as I am now because there was a lot of stuff missing. Like, how do we do this?
And what about privacy? What about DNS? All those kinds of things. And, and we, we have made so much
progress in figuring out all these little things. Like, how do you, you know, like, um, how do you look
up other people? How do you look up other relays? How do you, how do you do discovery and Osterite
without relying too much on DNS, for example, and all those kinds of things. And we figured out a couple of
things and, and I think, yeah, maybe, maybe that would be one outcome. Just be very clear about what
kind of Lego pieces we have, so to speak. Yeah. I'm not sure. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's,
uh, that's a useful. So for, for example, I, I think, um, NIP 89, which is the, the discovery NIP,
uh, and I gave a talk in, um, in Tokyo about, uh, discoverability in Osterite doesn't suck.
And I, I think NIP 89 is a, is a good example because in the past, I mean, in the present,
we, we think about app discovery and by app discovery, I mean, capability discovery.
Yeah. Uh, via going to some fucking officer and, and getting, and getting, uh, getting,
seeing what's possible. And I, I think NIP 89 is like, uh, is still a very underexplored, um,
building block that we have available, which is radically different because instead of going to
this place where you, you find what can I do, you, you see the people doing the thing. It's,
it's the same principle, right? Like the app speaks for itself, what it can do. Yes. Yes.
Yes. It's just like the, the, the signed message speaks for itself.
Very much. It's, it's very much the same principle. And so how do you, because it's also
like in, in, in an Oster world, like how do you get to the sign Jason? It doesn't matter whether it
comes from a central server or whether you got it on a USB stick or whatever, just like how,
how do you get a new valid Bitcoin block? It doesn't matter. That data speaks for itself. So
it, it, that's the only way how it can work so that it can ignore any central authority,
any supposed central authority. And this is the same idea, right? Like you basically ask the app,
tell in a self-sufficient manner, what you can do and what you can handle and how people discover you
and, and get to know, get to get, get a hold of this information. It doesn't matter.
Yeah. The, the people, the people interacting with the tool is the distribution of the tool.
Yeah. And, and you, you're just, if I see that you are live streaming, for example,
and, and I follow you and I see that you are doing the thing and I'm unsure what the thing is, like,
like, why, what, what is GG? What's the context here? NIP89 is that building block that, that takes
you from that point of utter confusion of what's going on to, oh, this is a live stream. I didn't
even know that this was possible. Yeah. Um, and I'm using live stream as a placeholder because
literally anything, all the things fit in that, in that, in that box. Yeah. And that is just one more
building block. It is just very different, very new. It's a very, it's a very different idea. There is
no equivalent on, on, on, on the legacy web, uh, that has that capability. Again, Natsack is another,
Blossom is another, Ensight is another. There is so many of these tools that are just completely different.
Um, or not completely different. Blossom is not completely different. Blossom solves a very known
problem. How many times have we tried to solve? Oh, many times. So many times. Yeah. And this is such
a stupid, simple, left side of the curve solution. Yeah. And it will also, it will not work for
everything. Oh, no, no. It's like, torrents might be the better solution for, for some things, you know,
like really large file stream or whatever. I don't know, but it's, it, it's not a one size fits all
solution. There, there isn't any, right? Yeah, there isn't. Right. That's the point of the
thing. There is no solution. Okay. We arrived. There's only, there's only, there's only trade-offs.
Yeah. That's the whole point. No, but I, yeah, I really liked it. But I, I, I coming back to what you
said about Adam Curry explaining the coin on Rogan and doing not the best job he could do. I think
that's where we are at in the Nostra developer space right now. I feel like, um, I think everyone
has their own reason to work on this stuff and be excited about, about it and so on. And there,
there might be quite a bit of overlap in regards to what are these reasons, but I think we're not very
good yet at explaining like, why, why should you take a look at this? I mean, just like with, with
Bitcoin, we were, I think kind of terrible in some sense, um, trying to explain to the world why, why
is this important and why should you take a look at it and so on. With Bitcoin, it's I think harder
because money is like an icky subject. Yeah. Um, most people, you know, like either have too much or too
little and it's always a taboo subject and, and people. And also the Bitcoin approach is so
counterintuitive. If you, if you believe in Bitcoin the first time you heard it, you're
either a massive genius or you need to arrive to the conclusion it's obviously a scam.
Yeah, it's, um, I think we'll have an easier time now, but it's still, it's still kind of weird
and some things are counterintuitive. And, and I think, I think the, the killer app of Nostra is you
can't be rug pulled. I think that's the killer app. Yeah. I really think that's a killer app, both for
the users and for the developers. I think everything else is kind of like a side use
case in some sense. And, but I, I do agree with, with, um, um, what a lot of people are saying,
like in the end we will be better than the centralized solutions, but you see this also,
you see this again, coming back to Bitcoin.
It is, it is, it is another Bitcoin podcast. It's, it's terrible. I hate myself right now.
It is a podcast. Oh my God.
Failing on all fronts. But, but fiat credit rails can never do what Bitcoin does. It's impossible.
Yeah. So Bitcoin, give them enough time and innovation. Bitcoin has to be better than fiat credit rails.
There is no other way. There is no other way. It's, it's, it's, it's the better thing. It's the
better solution. It's the superior system. And there's many technical reasons why this is the case.
And I, you know, I don't want to waste time to get into those. I think the same is true for Nostra.
I think it's the superior solution. It really is. And I think the, the legacy centralized systems
that we now have with, you know, like YouTube and X and Instagram and whatnot, and I don't know,
TikTok and so on, they will never be able to do what Nostra will be able to do or what Nostra already
is able to do. Like SAPs show this very clearly. Like you can only do like micropayments without a
signup. You can only do on Nostra and with Bitcoin. There is no other way. Everything else,
like that, that's already something that we can do way better than anyone else.
And we'll have more and more and more of those things, but I don't think that's the killer feature.
I think SAPs is an incredibly important feature. I think it's a novel thing. I think, again, I think
we don't understand it right yet. I, I hope to talk about SAPs at length at one point, but, but, but not
today. Another day. But the, the thing about being rug pull resistant is something,
it actually solves a problem. It solves a problem for users and it solves a problem for developers.
How many people have there been that built their whole developer career about the fucking Reddit API?
They're all rug pulled now. Everything is garbage now. And the same goes for YouTube and every other
API and all those kinds of things. It all goes away. Every API, even if you don't get cut off,
the API just changes the interface and you're fucked again. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. No, it's terrible. And, and so, so. I, I tell you, one of the, one of the moments where
I said, all right, I, I need to go full on, on Noster was that company that we, uh, that I was working
in, um, uh, the KYC issues and they were changing the, the, uh, provider for their KYC and their, uh,
banking partners and whatnot. Everything's different. I, I, I had to start learning a new API from some
proprietary KYC thing and I was hating every single second of it. And I was comparing the work that
I was doing in Noster with learning this stupid fucking API, hating myself. It's like, no, this,
this cannot be it. There has to be a better way. There's got to be a better way. Yeah. Yeah.
No, it's awesome. It's just not fun. It's not fun. It sucks. It's, you know that you're wasting your
time. Yeah. You're building that, you know, I had this friend, um, who works on, uh, civil engineering
and he was, he was working on, on designing dams. And he was telling me that the calculations that they
make, uh, have to build in the assumption that the dam must last for 500 years. Yeah. And I was
wondering what piece of code have, have I written that has withstood 10 years, right? How, how much
code, what's the percentage of code that has been written that have withstood one year? It's, it's,
it's almost all disposable, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's, it's kind of a sad state of
affairs, right? Yeah. It's, um, but I mean, with the dams, it's interesting because, because that's
the right way of, of looking at the problem. It's like, if, if a flood comes, it's a catastrophic
event and one time in a hundred years, a really big flood comes. So the whole dam has to be built
to withstand this event. It's like, uh, uh, you know, once, once in a lifetime kind of catastrophic
flood or earthquake or what have you, and you have to take all that into account. And if you're doing
your thing properly, then it actually works. And we do very, very little of that, um, in the kind
of, you know, like thinking about the web infrastructure and the internet infrastructure
of, of, of those kinds of things or, or building out products or building out various systems that
the most things are completely disposable. And, and I, I'm old enough now that I really kind of,
you know, I'm a grumpy old man where it's just like, I saw all the things come and go. Can we kind
of stop doing that? Doing like the next MySpace and then it goes away and then we, we move on to
something else and then it goes away. And then, and, and it also, it iterates quicker and quicker
and quicker because things speed up. And then it, it, then it was this. And then it's like,
it was musically and musically was around for, I don't know, 10 months and then it became TikTok.
And now TikTok basically got banned or whatever. And people moved on to the other thing, Snapchat,
I forgot Snapchat and all those kinds of things. It's, it's also fine. You know, like the, the new
generation has to find their own thing. And it's like, you don't want to join Facebook because mom is on
Facebook and so on. It's all, it's all okay. It's, it's, I don't want to be too grumpy and too old.
Like I do, I think I do understand it to some extent, but still like, if it comes to infrastructure
stuff, you know, it's, that's why I like email so much. It's like email. I, um, yeah, I just,
I actually just mentioned this yesterday. It's like people thought ICQ was superior to email.
You know, email is still around, ICQ isn't. So email got something right. And so can we, can we,
can we do more of this? Yeah. I think when, when one of the, the incredible benefits that gets you
not quite there, but very close to there is what we discussed a few times when you decouple the
building of the, of the software and the running of the software, if you like built infrastructure,
don't run it. The authors of RFC 822, they've, they've all moved on from SMTP. They're all retired.
Yeah. But they were not running the thing. Yeah. They, they weren't in charge of running the SMTP
servers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think what, what kind of, I mean, they were all
idealists as, as were the early internet people. Yeah. And I think Noster is full of idealists.
Yeah. And, and that's perfectly fine. But I think, I think we have an opportunity now to mix the best
of both worlds because I am a capitalist as well, you know, like it's contrary, contrary to popular
belief. I like Stallman and the new licenses, but I'm still not a communist, you know, like I'm not a
full blown commie. Sorry. So shocked. Sorry to disappoint. But, but I mean, there's a reason
why we were never, uh, able to build out the 402 error code payment required. It just, it didn't
work. It doesn't work on, on, on, on Fiat payment rails. It just, it doesn't work. It can not work.
They didn't understand this back then. I'm convinced that like, it's very hard to really understand this
and really internalize it that, that Fiat implies like Fiat credit, Fiat rails are credit rails and
credit requires KYC. And so you can't do all those things. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's something
that took me like years and years and years to figure out. And I feel like most people still
haven't figured this out in some sense. It's, it's, and so now we have now, now we actually have
the building block with, you know, like for example, e-cash. E-cash is a great example for that.
It's phenomenal. E-cash fixes 402. It absolutely does. In the header of your request, you can put some
e-cash and with that, the request is paid. You don't even have to go back and forth and do like
10 round trips. It's just like, here's five bucks. Give me the Apple, you know, it's like whatever.
And, and, and so I think we have the opportunity now to do what you just mentioned, actually think
deeply about the infrastructure we want to build, come up with something that anyone can run. So again,
like you want to build infrastructure. You don't want to run everything yourself. Then you're just like,
then you're like Apple or Google or what have you, you know, like that doesn't make any sense.
And, and it doesn't have to be all altruistic and all like, you know, like Richard Stallman type
people that don't believe in money. You can actually build services that scale, that are useful, and you
can make money if you run your service well. And I think that's how things should be. I think we
touched on it the last time as well. It's like, that's how restaurants are run. It's like, it's no
secret what's happening there. They provide a service, they do it well. They sell something that's
actually scarce. And if you do your job well, you can make money on a restaurant and you can do it
for a long time. And that's why you can't have multi-generational restaurants and inns and other
things that are actually fantastic businesses. And you can have fun while you're doing it.
And you don't have to take over the world and you don't have to, you know, compete with McDonald's
and capture the whole food market of the world. And like, it's like, all these ideas are, I don't know.
They don't run a compliance department. Restaurants don't have a compliance department, which is
the goal. Yeah. But I feel like in the, in the, in the web 2.0 era, at least, and we're still in this
era, I think at the, at the end of it, but, but it's still, it's always, the question is always,
how can you take over the world? How can you take on Google? How can you, you know, replace Facebook?
Yeah. Like you launch a video thing. How do you kill YouTube? Are you the YouTube killer?
You know, it's like all of that's bullshit. It's like, you don't have to, if you're, if I'm starting a
lemonade stand, I'm not going to be the Coca-Cola killer. You know what I mean?
It's like the, uh, like the, the concept of hyper Bitcoinization, you know, it's like, oh,
but when, when are you going to be able to sit in any coffee shop and, and pay, pay with Bitcoin?
And when is everything going to be basically, it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to.
It's true in my life. It's true in your life. It's true in my life. We don't need all the other
people to agree with us. My life is very much hyper Bitcoin-wise. It has been for a while.
So I feel like the whole discussion is moot. But, but I think, I think it, it stems from the same
problem of an all or nothing approach where when are, when is Nostra going to replace Facebook?
It doesn't have to. No, no, no, not at all. And in some sense it also shouldn't. It should, it should,
it's, yeah, I'm surprised still that I feel there's a lot of overlap between other communities
that have identified the problem. I think, I think they, they have identified the issue,
um, but they haven't necessarily landed on the right solution. Oh, a hundred percent.
Um, all the Mastodon people is a great example. They, they know the problem. Well,
the, the, the, the solution sucks. Sorry, Mastodon people. I mean, most of,
a lot of the Mastodon people went to Nostra now and so on, but, but even broader than that,
I think a lot of the, the, the self hosting people, they have identified the problem really well,
but I still think most of the solutions are kind of very limited in some sense. It's like you, you then,
okay. So, so either you use, I don't know, like Google drive or whatever,
or whatever centralized service, or you run absolutely everything yourself in your own server
rack in your kitchen. And if one time you're in, you're in a place where the power goes out and
your whole stuff is down for like a month or whatever, you know, like that's, you know what
I mean? I think we can do better than that. I really think we can. And again, Blossom is a great
example for that, where it's like, you, or, that's way better. That's way better. It's
better than a Bitcoin podcast, but the, the Nostra has the right, right architecture. It's like, I,
I want to host my own thing and it's kind of a fail safe if everything else goes down or whatever,
but I don't want to be personally responsible for all the infrastructure all the time. I want to pay
other people to do it for me. And I don't want those people to know what I'm doing. I don't
want those people to be able to shut me off in a meaningful way or control me in a meaningful way
and those kinds of things. And I think that's the right, those, those are the right parameters.
Like it's none of your business. What, what, what I do with, I don't know, like, you know,
what kind of lightning payment your node routes, for example, it's none of your business.
If you pass on an encrypted message that I send, it's none of your business what's in there.
It's like, I mean, that's what, how the postal office used to operate. At least I'm not sure
what they do now, but it's probably illegal in like six different ways. Yeah.
I don't know. I feel like an old man ranting, but I, no, but, but one of the things that I've seen
is, um, you know, the, the local first movement, uh, where it's like the idea is that applications should
be, um, should be performant, it should be expected to work offline. Yeah. It should,
they, they can, they can still use the internet, of course. Yeah. Um, but, but the application,
the state of the application should be on the application itself. And instead of, oh, you are
not connected to the internet. So you cannot edit your document, you know, nothing, your OS doesn't
boot because your internet is down. Um, and I, I, I listened to, to a bunch of, uh, podcasts from
the local first community, which is, I didn't even realize there is a local first community.
Oh, there is, they have, they, they have a conference. Oh, really?
For real. At home, by themselves. Disconnected from the internet. It's just three guys screaming
into the screen. You discuss all the things local first. Maybe you meet at the late point. Um,
but, but it's very interesting because they, they arrive to many of the same problems. But as you say,
they identify the right problem and they arrive to a completely wrong solution. One of them, um,
is working on identity. How do you solve identity? Local first. Not, not just local first,
but within the, the realm of you own your data because your data is stored locally and you can
always access it and no one can take it from you because it's literally sitting on your hard drive.
Um, how can you go around the different applications and do the login with Google or login with Facebook
and using your local identity. So using your local identity and it, it is the right, uh,
is it is the right, uh, problem to, it's the right question. It's the right question.
A hundred percent. The solution is, well, posky. Okay. Let's just use, let's just have,
so they arrive at the solution of, well, we need public private key cryptography,
so we'll go in this direction. Perfect. Awesome. Yes. But if posky is what's giving your, your identity,
your, your public key. Yeah. First, you cannot actually access the private key. Yeah. Uh,
you cannot take your, your private key, um, with you to a different, uh, to a different system. It's,
it's Apple, you know, so it's constrained to the Apple ecosystem or to the Google ecosystem or to
whatever. So you are still downstream from the Google. Yes. It's beautiful. You just put your touch,
your, your, your, your finger, it scans your touch ID and it's just, boom, it just works.
But what's the trade off? Like the trade off to me is unacceptable. Yeah. Um, where, where Apple can
just de-platform you from your local first software. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's all the right.
It's all the right, uh, questions, all the wrong answers. And, and I keep thinking these people,
they, they, they, they have a very, uh, like the, the local first community, as most communities,
they hate Bitcoin. Oh, everyone hates Bitcoin. That's fine. That's just, that's the default.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, it's so inefficient. Oh sure. Yeah. But, but, but, but give it, uh, within the,
um, the, it's so inefficient. Look how trivial the problem looks from the outside that the HTTP spec
people thought, oh, let's just put like a 402 error. We'll figure it out next week. We'll figure out
the payments next week. Yeah. It's, it's such a, it's, it looks like such a simple problem. Yeah.
And it's so hard. Yeah. It's so hard. It is a simple problem. It is a very simple problem.
But simple problems don't always have simple solutions. That's the issue. Yeah. It requires
building like this mining site and this whole infrastructure in the world that has a, a very
significant, uh, cost. Yeah. But it is the only way. It's the only way. And from the outside,
it might look like, oh, why don't you just use Pasky? It's an API call. It's just there. Yeah.
Why are you building all these weird apps and all this stuff? Like just use Pasky.
It's so simple. But I really liked the local first idea. I had no idea that. Oh, it's phenomenal.
Oh, no, no. It's great. But they also arrive at the same problems of, okay. And how do you sync the
data? Okay. But what if, what if you are on device A? What if you have like three different devices?
Yeah. Okay. Well, let's put a server. Oh, but what if the server goes down? It's an actually a really
hard problem. It is a hard problem. Yeah. And it's impossible to solve without conflicts.
Everyone who ever worked with Git knows this. It's like, it's, it's, you know, if you actually,
let's say you have three or four devices and you travel around and you forgot to switch your phone,
like back, like deactivate the flight mode again, and then you sit down on your computer,
I run into this problem all the time because I actually use systems like this and in my note
taking apps and so on. And I will have conflicts that I need to resolve. Oh, of course.
Because I updated it on the other machine and I updated another thing on the other machine. Both
of them were offline. What's the state? And then what's the state? There is no global state.
There is like, that can't be. Not even within your own. Not even within me. Like it doesn't work.
But, but that's, I think that's the right way. Like, um, Rebel tried to came up with a list of criteria
for like what makes a social network protocol open and so on. I think we need something like that for
Nostra stuff. And it's like, if that's one criteria, it has to work in flight mode. Yeah.
If it works, if it doesn't work in flight mode, if it doesn't work, if, if, if it does, I have a relay
on my phone and I should be able to switch it to flight mode and everything just kind of still works.
And I say, just kinda, you know, like not absolutely everything can work, but still it has to,
a lot can work, a lot can work way more than you would think. Yeah.
A lot can work. And I think it's the right approach. I think it's, it's, it's a fantastic.
I really, I love the local first thing. So see, I learned something, man, that's fantastic.
It's already working. See, see what can happen in like a, in a conversation, in a dialogue.
You usually learn things and you figure stuff out along the way. So that's the idea. No,
but, but I, I, again, it's the local first, because I, I, in my head, I already tried to,
to kind of make this list. And I think, uh, uh, HODLBOT gave it a try as well, right?
Like doing a list of what makes a Nostarab and Nostarab and Nostarab. What is a Nostarab anyway?
Those kinds of things. And, and, and I, I mean, I think we obviously still suck at all those things,
but I hope that in a year from now we'll have something where we can actually take a quick
look at something and immediately go, yeah, that's, that's wrong. That's like, you know,
that's within this category of error. Yeah. And I think that would be super useful,
because again, I think like everyone who worked on Nostar so far, we figured out a couple of things.
And I think we have to get a little bit better at passing that on and explaining it to
just regular developers. I don't, I don't even care about the users that much, so to speak,
because it's like the users, this stuff will be figured out. The developer side is, I think,
harder to figure out because I don't want, I'm still worried that if we,
there's still a chance that Nostar kind of goes bad in some sense, I think.
Yeah, I, I, I tend to agree. I think we're in better footing than we were.
Oh yeah. You were insanely stressed out a year ago.
Oh, yes. I very much was.
I agree. I agree. I think, I think we are.
Should we turn around?
Yeah, let's do, but we can also, we can, we can, we can go through the pain once more.
It's not an issue, but let's do, let's do one ring around the Rosie and then let's see where we're at.
That might, that it's probably very confusing for people as well.
Like we're sometimes talking about the Nostar things. We're mostly talking about Bitcoin,
but then we're also talking about how to best keep walking without running into things,
running into too many other people. But yeah, that's kind of my hope for the whole
project and having these conversations and so on, that hopefully we land on some, on some things
where we not only, not only figure out these criteria, but also refine the message.
Why, why is it important? Like, why should you care about it? Why do you want to build on it,
for example? And, and I, I think it has to be, it has to be wound up with the money and the money
making. Oh yeah. It's like, it's, it's because that's, it's such a novel thing as well that you
can, you can, you will receive sets. Like if you do your thing right, you will receive sets from the
get go. It's not going to be a lot, but still having the possibility of having money flowing in
and flowing through the system from second one, basically. I mean, we pushed out this in a, in a,
like the first conversation that we had and also even the teaser, the teaser made money.
It was like a hundred sets or something. I don't know, but, but it's not nothing,
you know, and we, we, we put very little effort into marketing or CK. Well, we didn't market like
at all. CK would say that's more than generational wealth. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. If you disagree,
you're not bullish enough. But yeah, I don't know. I, I hope, I hope that we can figure this out
because I really think Nostra is one of the... I'm absolutely sure that, that we will.
I'm surprised that not more developers are flocking to it because I think, I think, I think it's one
of the most exciting things that's happening right now in the kind of internet development space. Yeah.
And most people are completely unaware. I think it's mostly because our own fault,
because everyone hates Bitcoiners and it's just... That is very likely the case. Also, I mean,
one of the things that keeps coming up is people join Nostra and they get 20 different people say,
I tried to stop you. I couldn't stop you. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Download this thing. And it's like,
okay, I was here for like a minute and now I have... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have like six hours worth,
you know, to watch this video and you need to sell these things. No, that's true. Yeah. But you
know, Nostra fixes this, so... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They won't be able to really spend it except for,
you know, pass it on. You, you, you can, you can pay late lightning invoices. So you could go to the
mythical coffee shop and buy a coffee. Oh yeah, yeah. But again, regular users.
But that's the thing. So the reason I started working on the Nostra stuff is that I was looking
very hard at how Substack works, how they do onboarding. And within the onboarding flow of an
author trying to write something on Substack and make some money, the moment you say that you
want to get paid, they take you in a very beautiful design, they take you to this KYC process with
Stripe. So they hand you off to Stripe and Stripe is doing the KYC for them and then you have to link
it and whatnot. The UX is as good as it can get when you bake in the assumption of KYC-ing the person.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once you have to scan your face and take a picture of your proof of address and
your passport and whatnot. Yeah. You can't have like a really good UX because it fucking sucks.
Yeah. And it's still very, very raw. It's still very early stages. But the fact that you can go
and have a Substack equivalent or have a whatever equivalent and not have to go through that, you
can go to Shopster and sell shit without having to KYC you with with Stripe. That is a massive deal.
Oh, absolutely. That is a massive, massive deal. Absolutely.
And I think developers might not, yeah, developers might not understand the identity piece and why
like all these parts are. So why is all this shit required? Why do we have to find a nonce on Bitcoin?
Yeah. Why is the mining? They won't have to understand those things.
Yeah, yeah. No, no, not at all. But the sales pitch of you can have your users
selling their shit immediately. Yeah. That is a very easy narrative to understand.
Yeah. No. And that's what I also mean. Like in the end, like give them enough improvements
and all those kinds of things. It will be better and easier. Just like Bitcoin is better and easier
than the legacy fiat banking system. Like try to do an international wire with any bank. It's like,
it's hell. It's you're in the fifth circle of hell. Like it doesn't matter how you cut it.
And also when it comes to the bigger platforms, um, if you do account creation, for example,
that's already so cumbersome. And not sure. It's a click. Yeah. It's one click and you have an
account. And, and if we do our verification, nothing, nothing. And you don't have to,
because on many things that I use, like, like they want to know everything about you. Like,
and I, I'm always going like, why, why do you need to know this? Why do you need my first name and my
middle name and my last name and my birth date and my, you know, like my blood type and my,
my, my country and my location and like all those kinds of things. And why, why, why? I mean,
I know why, but it's still, it's still very much stupid. It's like, it's, it's, it,
I just wanted to try out like a to do note making app. It's like, please don't, don't,
just, just let me try the thing. Just like, let me in. I promise. I'm not a terrorist. I promise.
I don't know. And so, so I was, I was getting, uh, a few months ago, I was getting KYC'd by this,
uh, company. They, and one of the questions that, that they asked me, I bailed. One of the questions
that they asked me is, how much money do you have? It's like, fuck you. I don't know.
How is that? Imagine, imagine if you download Sparrow and Craig says, okay, how much money do you have?
I need to report it. I need to know. Otherwise you can't use my software. No,
I think that's what, that's where we can really shine. I think that's where, where Nostar can
really shine. Like literally everything can be one click. And I think this, it's still,
it's still very much underutilized because, and I, and I think because we are so wedded to the old way
of doing things, like every single Nostar client should have a one click onboarding thing where you're
just like create a new account to try it out. It's like, why not? It's like, the NSACs are free.
There's, there's like, there's infinity of them. Just let me, like, I don't even want to have to do
it myself. Just like, bam, do it. I don't care about losing it. Like, who cares? You know,
all those kinds of things. There's nothing in there. Why wouldn't I? Yeah, exactly.
To me, when, when I installed a Bitcoin, a Bitcoin wallet and it sells you, it forces you to verify
the token. There's literally zero money because I haven't been able to use the fucking app. Like,
why are you making, but again, trade-offs, trade-offs. It's like, it's so many people lost Bitcoin.
So, so, okay, fine. But still, I, I, I, that's one of the things I, we, we, we haven't tried all these
things out enough. Like most people that are currently on Nostar, what, what, what would,
what would be your guess? How, how many percent of people using Nostar know that you can paste
an NPUP into pretty much any client and see the Nostar verse through the eyes of, I don't know,
you know, like Pablo or Jack or what have you. How many people know that you can do that?
I, I, I would think it's gotta be half. Wow. Oh man, you're, you're, you're, I would have said less
than one percent. Such a bubble, right? Less than one percent. Really? Yeah. No one knows this. Most
clients don't advertise this or show this or whatever. Show me a couple of profiles. When I
open the thing and I want to click on it and I want to see it, I want to use your NPUP to log in
or whatever, to just check it out. We, we, we, we don't do those kinds of things and it's all possible
because it was all impossible in the old system. Right. Yeah. It was completely impossible to do stuff
like that in the old system. And we're still so wedded to the old way of thinking at the old
system. And, and also in the old system, the old system has your private, your private data
unencrypted. Sure. So in the old system, log in with someone else's account. Would be very weird.
It, it, not only could it be very weird from, from an, from a developer perspective, you gotta be
fucking sure you're not leaking the DMs because you, you can. Yeah. You can. Yeah. In Nostar,
you don't have the private key, so you cannot decrypt. You can only see the public data.
The stuff that's public anyway, but it looks and feels as if you were doing the thing,
you can't interact, but you can, it feels like I'm looking over your shoulder basically. That's
what I can do in some sense. It's, but, but I, I don't know. I feel like we're in a new paradigm
and we haven't even done the new paradigm things yet enough. And I think it is because people don't
really understand it well enough yet in some sense. I don't know. It should be the default. Having,
having an NSEC for just like a day or something, it should be the default.
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's very few clients that, that implemented this. I think Amethyst
did as like replying as a NIM basically where you just, you spin up a new NPUB just for this reply.
That's fantastic. Yeah. Stuff like that is fantastic. Like we should, we should have way more of, of,
of these kinds of, you know, experimentations and, and really leaning into the new paradigm. But, but then,
first of all, we'll have to understand what is the new paradigm basically. And I think again,
like local first is part of this, like it's a new paradigm that your thing works, whether you're
online or not. It's a completely new paradigm. That's unheard of in like a client server architecture,
like old way of thinking. Yeah. In, in the, uh, based on the, the, the way the local first community
people speak, I, I wrote the documentation, uh, a local first documentation for NDK. And it's a guide
on building local first apps within, within NDK because I, to me, like the idea of I click the,
whatever, a reaction or make a comment or something. And it just works. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't,
because the data is already signed. Yes. So I know it works. The device goes online and it will.
Yeah. The device goes online. So whether it published to the relays or it didn't yet,
it's kind of secondary. Yeah. So it should be reflected in the app immediately. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. No, it's the right way of, of thinking about it. So let's end with an echo and
be done with it. And someone yelling in the tunnel. We'll see. We'll, we'll,
well, oh, that was just a, just a sound chest, sound, sound check by some random guy.
Yeah. I feel like my brain is fried again anyway, so I'll have to,
oh, I don't, I don't have anything insightful to say anymore. Not, not that I said a lot of useful
things, but no, I really liked that. The, the, the combination of there being no global,
and building stuff in a way that it works in an offline mode, that it works local first,
that's already, you know, like, everyone should
know that this is how things work in another world, basically. And I feel like we're not there yet.
No, no, no, not at all. Most people still try to make a global view work,
and most people have never tested their own app in flight mode, for example.
Yeah. And the, and the, the idea of building this global view is one,
like I've seen many people, we, we've seen many, many, many people attempt that. And it's, it's such an,
an endless pursuit. Um, and the complete, the complexity just explodes. And it will never stop
exploding either. No, the, the, the deeper you dig into the problem, the worse it gets.
It's, I, that's, that's what I have to feeling with a lot of the, still in the,
the shit kind of world and the proof of stake people and so, and so on. They don't even know
how hard it is, how hard the problem is that they're trying to solve. They don't know. Yeah.
They try and they try and they try and all their attempts are misguided. And they don't even
understand how they don't even understand the impossibility of the problem that they're trying
to solve. And I've seen this so many times now where new people come in and they want to build
something and they want to make a global view happen. And, and I think that's something where
we just have to get better at explaining to people that you have to be okay with there being no global.
So let's, let's try to identify with more or narrow down the problem. Let's stop walking
before I completely lose my breath. Because we've seen many people just personally
working on this type of assurances and this type of views and not real realizing, not feeling,
even though we've yelled so many times, literally yelled so many times. What, what do you think is the,
um, is the holdup? What, why, why are these people that are smart and capable? Why do you think
we are not getting through? I think it's incredibly hard and also painful to deprogram yourself.
And it's like, you, you, you grew up with this stuff and it always worked like this. And you always
had a server that told you, told you the truth and nothing but the truth and the whole truth.
And if you don't, if you don't have that, then you, it's very hard to accept it, that you don't have
that. I think, I think that's the, that's the main issue to pick another example, um, that we ran into
often. It's like the main way of, of making money, um, online basically, or building out such apps and
systems and so on is, um, to, um, either capture your users, which, or introduce yourself as a
middleman and capturing your users is just like, you are the middleman, you are the thing and so on.
And so people default to those kinds of things. Most developers that are new to NOS and, and, and
want to do something and, and potentially eventually also make money. They, they really try hard to capture
their users in some way. And because that's what they learned. That's what they know. That's what
everyone taught them up to now. And in, in sense of adding yourself as a middleman, it's the same
thing. Like they try to, to insert themselves. Like it only works if you use this client. It only works
if you do it like this. And then they take like a, whatever percentage cut and so on. And that's, that,
I think that's the old business model. I think there is a, there is another way of doing things
and a more honest way of doing things and things, a more long lived way of doing things. I think
RoboSats is, it's the first innovation that I saw in, in that sort of monetizing open source
software in a, I think very honest way. It's where they, the coordinators can decide to give back
parts of their profit to RoboSats open source development. And they advertise that and they advertise
that and it's part of their, um, like they have a reputation, they have various ratings and all
those kinds of things. They, they advertise the liquidity and all those kinds of things.
And, and that's part of that. And so I personally, I'm not going to choose a coordinator that has this
put to 0%. I want to support the whole system and the whole thing. And so, and I think most people
are not assholes actually. I think most people are a meaningful percentage of people will choose
to select someone that actually gives back to the whole system and gives back
to open source development makes the whole thing work and so on. And, and, and that's a,
that's a very new idea, I think. And you can do it in a way like you, you can do it in a way
so that it's automated and transparent and verifiable and all those kinds of things.
And we can do that now. We can, and I feel the whole, this whole space is very unexplored yet.
Most people haven't tried something like that. Most people are still stuck in the old paradigm,
which is like, I'm going to be the middleman and I'm going to facilitate the things I'm going to take
like a 4% cut or whatever. I don't know. I don't have a better answer.
To me, the, the, the question about the, the money and the becoming the, the central point
so you can take your cut, that, that is a much clearer reason why you want to be there.
Because there is a fulfilled motive. There is an incentive to be there
because you want to take your, you want to take the money. The, the global view people
that I have a harder. How should we call them? Globalists?
The Websters. Oh, you're a globalist. I understand. I don't need to talk to you anymore.
If you're a globalist, I'm not interested.
Yeah. The global, the globalist perspective, I, I have a harder time understanding because
you're not going to make money because you are trying to solve the data assurance of all the data
I'm not sure or naming. I mean, it, it, in their defense, it kind of stuff kind of feels like
there is a global truth, right? Like if you, your everyday experience and all those kinds of things
tells you that there is a global shared view of things. And there is a global truth. And there's
like one truth, like how many beans are in the jar? Like there is a, there's a definitive answer.
Hmm. And I don't know what happened in your house this morning. I cannot have a view of what happened
in Tokyo an hour ago. Yeah, sure. But I, I think people have a hard time wrapping their head around
the fact that, um, in, in a global system, which by default is a distributed system,
like YouTube is a distributed system. Let's stick with YouTube because everyone kind of knows YouTube,
knows how it works, knows how the interface looks like. And so the like count is a complete lie.
And it has to be, and you can also tell if, if, if a YouTube video ever goes viral,
the like count will stop at like 137 or something, because that's when they start to actually start
counting the likes and they have to reconcile between the different geographically distributed
servers that they have. And so there is not one server that has the number. It can't have it because
the YouTube video in Germany is going to be served from a German server. If someone else in Japan looks
at it, it's going to be a Japanese server and so on, and they have to reconcile. And while they are
reconciling and that's just speed of light physics stuff, like a million other people have seen the
video again. So, so, so it's not off by a little, it's like if a video really goes viral, it's, it's
not off by a little, it's not off by two or three views. It's off by thousands and millions of views.
It's like, it's insane how, how hard this problem is also, you know, like what counts for a view and
all those kinds of things. And so, so, so I, I think people, most of the globalists just haven't
talked about or thought about, I love it already. They, they haven't thought about, uh, the problem
at the end deeply enough, I think they never thought about it. It's just like, oh, that's the like count.
And again, the server says that's the like count. So that's like, they never considered
that this could be a lie. It has to be a lie. It has to be a lie. Basically, you know,
like what's the global state of the internet? And everyone knows like what Google has indexed is
not the global state of the internet. It's not, it's, it's a very small sliver of the internet.
You cannot have a global state of the internet. You can't, you literally can't. It's physically
impossible. And so, so I don't know. I think it comes from a place of
both ignorance and also trying to have a nice and easy solution.
because actually not having a global state, like, like real, the realization that global is a lie.
It's a hard realization. It makes, it's harder to build stuff that way. It's like you, you,
you have to just be okay with it. And, and I think it's hard to confront that and build stuff accordingly.
Yeah. I think it, it, it's hard to accept. It's a good, uh, it's a good explanation
because it forces you to just accept the discomfort of not having a perfect answer and that there can't be.
Yeah. Having a global would be very comforting and very simple and very easy. And that's it.
And that's the source of truth. And that's what I'm going to work with and so on. And so I think, I think,
yeah, I, I think that's it. I think most people would love to have it. And so they kind of
force themselves to think that it exists in some way.
Yeah. I don't know, but we'll, we'll get there. Well, I mean, it also, not everyone has to
understand this stuff. I think, uh, critical percentage of people has to understand the
things. And if we, if we have a couple of hundred devs that are really good, that deeply understand
this stuff, I'm happy. I don't need, you know, my mom to understand this stuff. It's like, it's fine.
Yeah. I think the, uh, the eternal September of Noster is going to be people coming in and building,
uh, an A, a rest API that gives you the, what building rest APIs to give you global feeds.
Yes. That's going to be our eternal September. Yeah. Let's prepare for it accordingly.
Any last words, anything else you want to touch on? I need to get out of the sun.
No, I'm good. All good. Yeah. All right. Then see you next week. See you next week.
Bye.