All right, Franco, long time no see.
Long time no see.
What have you been up to?
Hard to summarize, two years.
Maybe let's start at the beginning.
So, when did we first meet?
We met, well, as I was saying, two years ago
in the island of Madeira
with a crazy experiment that you guys were running.
First cohort.
First cohort of the sovereign engineering.
And actually, I think it was...
It was kind of the worst one, by the way.
Like, people almost drowned.
People collapsed on hikes.
Like, we were still figuring a shit out.
We saved people's lives.
Yeah, we did.
We won't name names, but...
We won't name names, no.
I think it was probably the last one to join, I believe.
Because I sent the application a bit late.
Yeah.
And I had an interview with Martin.
I think the group was already kind of close
because you were aiming for 21 people.
Yeah, we made an exception.
You made an exception?
I'm glad we did.
I was so excited.
Because at the time, I was working on another project.
It's called Zap Clads.
Yeah, I know.
I know it.
Yeah.
Because my perfectionist side was...
First of all, hitting Disqus.
Do you remember the commenting?
Yeah, yeah, Disqus.
Yeah.
Disqus.
Yeah.
So, the idea is basically, you add a little widget at the end of your website or if your blog posts.
Exactly.
And anyone can comment.
And, like, the Web 2.0 version of this is discussed with a queue, right?
Yeah.
And Zap Threads was the same idea, but you use your Nostar identity to log in and comment.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, PHF had built something similar.
Yeah.
For some reason, I don't like it.
This should be this way.
This should be this other way.
That's how I think.
I mean, PHF writes very opinionated software, so there's no surprise.
And I think me too, but that's why, like, it has good and bad sides to be, like, very opinionated.
I wanted to see things in a certain way.
Yeah.
And so, that's why, you know, that's my take.
And I was super lucky to come across Abla the News.
Yeah, Abla the News.
Yeah, yeah.
First long post client, basically.
Or one of the first ones.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I started working on that and they integrated Zap Threads.
I was super happy.
I was wanting to get into freedom tech in some way.
I was kind of seeing the light of how, you know, I could get in.
Yeah.
Because I had, I was planning to leave the fiat mines somehow.
And then, all of a sudden, I got frustrated with the App Store situation because I've been working on mobile for a while.
And this idea had on me.
What if, you know, Noster, manifest files.
So, let me give some context.
Downloading software.
I remember, I remember in the first cohort, I think the stuff we also talked about was basically like virus scanners and malware scanners from Noster.
Which is the opposite idea of Zap Store.
Do you remember that?
Where it's like you have the binaries and all the things, and if something's really bad, you can publish an event about it.
Yeah.
And sign-in is like, okay, this thing infected my system, and so you have a malware scanner in that way.
Yeah.
Because I remember there were all of these discussions, and at least to me, in my mind, like, Zap Store came out of that.
Oh, wow, that's a sound effect that you don't get all day.
It's a reverberation, big time.
But before you maybe jump into that, what made you sign up?
What made you hear about software engineering in the first place?
Did you just saw it on Noster, or do you remember?
I saw it on Noster.
All right.
Yeah.
So, guerrilla marketing campaign was.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I was telling you, I had this interview with Martin.
And, yeah, somehow I made it there.
But I brought up Zap Store because it was, before getting into the whole development, just the spark, the initial spark, the idea, just came around those months.
And I was still working on this Zap Store thing.
And not only software engineering, but from the OpenSats side, like, you're really adamant on, please apply.
Please apply.
So, every single podcast was, like, send your ideas.
We need people.
We need developers.
Yeah.
That's how...
People are way too shy.
Yeah, yeah.
Things have changed, but, you know, for the good.
Because now, yeah, there's, like, way more interest.
But at the time, it was like, hey, this sounds perfect.
Yeah.
And anyway, all of that stuff happened, like, in the last of about four months, I'd say.
Yeah.
You know?
And at the point, at that, at that point, Zap Store was just, yeah, basically an idea.
So, it turned out perfectly to arrive, beginning of 2024, to Madeira, with some running code and with an idea.
Yeah.
And in the island, one of the first walk and talks, I think that was your concept.
Yeah.
Of, yeah.
That's what we're doing now.
Yeah.
I remember talking to you and to many other people and just kind of connecting dots, like,
my neurons were firing like crazy.
Yeah.
Putting all these things, all these concepts together, and I said, this could actually work.
And it's true what you, what you mentioned about the malware, but also I remember you writing
earlier, maybe on an Oster post, about Ninite, is it called?
Yeah, exactly.
Ninite.
If you set up a new Windows system.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's, you, you basically download this one exit file and it does all the other work
for you.
Like it has these, these, like if you're actually a power user and it has all the things that
you want kind of pre-selected and you just select them all and click download and install
and you don't have to do anything anymore.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a trust-based system, of course, but lots of people use it.
Yeah.
And that, that was an inspiration for app stacks.
Essentially, it's just a collection of apps.
Yeah.
And that also made sense.
So it was about security because we have cryptographic primitives.
It was about discovery.
It was obviously about monetization.
Yeah.
Because we had, we had these apps.
And yeah, well, that's, that's kind of how it started.
And sovereign engineering, engineering cohort was basically fuel on the fire.
Yeah.
And I can't believe I'm still doing that.
Yeah.
Tell me a little bit about your journey.
Like, like what, what did you run into?
Or what did you learn in going through the various iterations and versions?
What version are we on now?
It's like everything.
To me, it's like amazing.
Before, before I get, get, get, like, before you answer, let me just say for probably over
a year now, ZapStore has been my only app store that I use on Android.
And I have like three phones.
One just shit the bat today.
So I have two phones now.
But I, basically, I got a phone.
I install Graphene.
I install ZapStore and that's basically it.
That's basically it.
So what we discussed on the, one of the first hikes we went on, on the first walks we went
on is now reality, like only two years later.
So I, I just want to say that's amazing.
You know, like I know because you are very, like you're deep in the woods.
You're very close to all the issues and the problems.
And you know, like the 300 different things that might not be perfect yet and so on.
But I just want to mention that, that I'm, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, you know,
like there's plenty of people that just, okay, you have a new phone.
You install ZapStore.
Everything's there.
All your stuff is there.
And like, it's, it's just amazing that it works.
So thanks for building it and sticking with it.
But yeah.
Tell me, what did you learn and how did your kind of view of the general idea change over
the years?
Well, first of all, thank you for saying that because I only see the things that are missing.
Yeah, sure.
Um, you only know how the bridge can break down and like the 50 ways how it can collapse.
Oh man.
You don't see the people that use the bridge every day and walk over it and they're happy.
Yeah.
It's how it works.
Especially when you hear people like, not only online, but in real life.
I was, I was overhearing conversation and someone said, yeah, of course you just,
now you finished this and you, you put it on ZapStore and like, what the fuck, man.
Yeah, yeah.
That's awesome.
Maybe let's start with that because that's, that's kind of one of the last, uh, big pieces
you build, I think making really easy to publish to, to ZapStore for developers.
And I actually mentioned this yesterday, but there's people right now that don't have an Android
phone, don't have an emulator, nothing.
They just have agents and they build Android apps and publish it to ZapStore and other people
download them like little games and like stupid apps and so on.
Yeah.
That's insane that all that works.
To me when, when American HODL, uh, Viper, he was one of them that did it, right?
I thought if, you know, if that happened, then as far as I know, he has like zero programming,
uh, background, right?
Zero.
Uh, and it was just, just for fun.
He didn't even test it, you know?
No.
He was just like telling his agent, build all this and publish it to ZapStore.
He probably never even, no, he has, he's an iPhone guy as far as I know.
He doesn't have an Android phone.
I'm pretty sure.
That's great.
Well, we're going to get into, into curation filtering and all that.
Uh, because obviously being able to Vibe code and just publish anything is great.
It also has a downside.
Yeah.
I just probably don't want to see.
It's great responsibility.
Yeah.
Uh.
Build this virus and publish it to ZapStore.
Okay.
We opened like a million threads.
I don't know where.
I'll shut up.
You talk.
Uh, which version are we on?
I don't know, man.
To be honest, like if there's something I have a lot of experience with now is, um,
sort of getting, um, understanding of how developers version things.
And if you remember what I told you about noise, you, you clip on my crew.
You clip on my crew phones and noise will magically appear.
I've, I've never seen a skateboarder in Oslo ever.
Right.
Yeah.
That's, that's just how things go in life.
Sorry.
Demos fail.
Exactly.
Um, yeah, but versioning, like developers just use whatever random things to version.
Are you telling me that not everyone uses semantic versioning?
Is that it?
So verse like, yeah, maybe about 10% of the user.
Uh, so nothing makes sense.
Not even my own versioning.
So I think we're at one zero six.
Now.
Uh, I was courageous enough to call that a V one.
Um, cause there was a big, a big revamp from what the, the app, essentially the, the,
the, the first code base that I launched may, 20, 24, uh, which did work.
It was a bit ugly, but worked.
And there was a huge refactor.
It was basically a new app.
So that's what we call V one.
And that brought a lot of changes in terms of, let's say community or, uh, first commenting.
Zapping was also possible, but, uh, it's going like much more social, especially the ability
to like not only bookmark, but I create these app stacks and have all the people discover them.
Yeah.
So those were kind of the latest direction where we're going.
Um, what else?
I would say that something I also learned with time is that this whole thing about web of
trust, I will probably was one of the first ones to, to actually try to use it, to implement
it in a significant way, because we're talking about not just shit posts, but we're talking
about apps, you know, so you get your money stolen or you could get your identity robbed.
So it's, I guess, uh, one of the things, one of the most important things where you want
to make sure that you trust what you're, what you're doing is it's a, it's a, it's a tool.
So back then we didn't have much tooling around web of trust.
I remember building a little, uh, back in service to compute.
Uh, yeah.
Yeah.
We'll trust.
Um, that was one of the criticisms that people voiced, right?
Should we maybe just go back again and, um, and then maybe do one more round?
Because I think we'll just get into traffic otherwise.
That was really nice.
Absolutely fine.
Yeah.
We can just go up and down here until, until we're done.
So the, the web of trust computation, maybe talk a little bit more about that in, in terms
of why it is so difficult.
Like, why can't you just do it on device?
Why do you need a back, backend service in the first place?
Oh, well, that's kind of controversial because, you know, there are so many opinions about
it.
And some people would argue that it's, it, it's good enough to do it in device.
Yeah.
I thought like also that Nasser would be like much, much bigger.
And then like you thinking about three hops, you know, in your, in your social graph, but
maybe just two, two hops was enough.
And it could have been done in the, on the device itself.
But that, you know, open a whole kind of worms, uh, that maybe I didn't want to really get
into because I had all the stuff to do.
Yeah.
Um, then yeah, about a year later we started, uh, the vertex experiment with Pip.
Yeah.
And other people, other approaches to our trust and so on.
Uh, I don't think anything is like really, really defined even right now.
Yeah.
But absolutely.
I think, um, that's one of the things I really want to do.
Uh, it's somewhere in some issue there.
Yeah.
Of course.
Uh, yeah.
Just do a very basic, uh, local web of trust, you know, that you don't need necessarily to
have a backend service, but if you want more accurate up-to-date information.
I see.
Yeah.
That kind of makes sense.
Almost like, uh, almost like a caching thing where it's like, okay, here's how, what
you can compute easily.
And if you want to get the, the, the, the freshest web of trust data with like a,
a wider, casting a wider net.
Yeah.
With scores and so on.
Yeah.
Then, then you'll have to hit something that, because it's just, the, the issue is right.
It's, it's, it's computationally expensive because you very quickly have to compute the
whole graph.
That's, that's the issue.
Yeah.
So you have to look at everyone who is a Noster basically.
Um, but I mentioned that because my, my thinking has changed around that.
And again, my first vision around it was it's you, the user against the world, because it's
an open permissionist protocol where anyone can publish.
And it's up to the user to determine what to trust.
You don't need a corporation in Silicon Valley telling you what you should trust.
Yeah.
Right.
Um, however, in practice, it just kind of didn't work out exactly that way because there's,
um, there's like a huge weight, um, on, on the user to be like establishing trust for every
single application they want to install.
Yeah.
And they're lacking a lot of information as well.
Just like imagine.
Uh, that also works like that in society.
You just delegate trust.
You have different layers of trust.
And if you live in a city and every shop you go, you need to like do a background check
on the guy who's selling his stuff or you leave your clothes.
Yeah.
You use other social cues.
In the cleaner, right?
You use other social cues.
You're not going to make a huge investigation about it because that's so inefficient and
annoying.
If the place looks legit, then it's probably good enough.
Exactly.
That's how it works.
You just look at other who is coming here, right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think in, in the kind of downloading apps kind of way, uh, if you, if you go outside
of app stores on like, I don't know, GitHub releases or like any package manager in the,
in the Linux world, um, it's very similar, right?
Like, or homebrew or what have you, you know, where it's like, okay, you, you, as a similar
indicator, you have like how many stars does this GitHub repo have or something like that.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And, and, and if the release is signed that like all the, all the little ticks are green,
then that's good enough.
There's a couple of thousand stars and everything looks green.
You're probably fine.
Yeah.
You maybe have a look at the author and GitHub and see, you know, do they, do they have followers?
Is there some activity here?
Yeah.
So it's all these heuristics to, you know, roughly determine.
It also really depends on the app.
If it's a calculator that has no internet access.
Yeah.
Okay.
Whatever.
Right?
So, yeah, going back to, to that concept, long story short, ended up being that we're
kind of landing on a, on a different approach also because by the way, it got caught a long
time to, to have like relay management for some reason.
Yeah.
I know you hate me for that.
No, I don't.
It was just the main criticism that everyone, that everyone voiced.
I was like, I really want it, but anyway, it's been there for, for, for a while.
But then like the ecosystem evolved and we have other things as well.
Like, you know, blossom servers, for example.
Yeah.
Eventually, who knows?
Cashmins or web of trust providers and so on.
So there's like a bunch of things you want to parameter.
Parameter, parameterize or however you say that.
And anyway, that was another reason why we're kind of landing at the moment.
It's a, this a huge effort to land, to go towards communities.
What does that mean?
Is this place where you just trust?
Yeah.
A community, right?
Or a group or someone who established the thing we're going to use these relays.
These are our blossom servers.
This is a web of trust provider.
You don't like it.
You can just use another community.
Right?
And then, you know, the implementation doesn't matter.
That's a detail for another time.
But that, that's just kind of gives the user, I guess, more peace of mind.
That once you, once you approved a community, which is basically a catalog of apps in this case.
Yeah.
And then you can just relax.
Right?
Because you know that someone is checking for things.
It's not, it's not the user against the world as you previously phrased it.
It's like the user joins the community and the community does a lot of the heavy lifting.
And it's the community against the world.
Yeah.
And one of the most important concepts for me, and I have been having discussions about
that here, with a lot of smart people, it's the idea of credible exit.
Yeah.
I like it very much because, you know, there's a lot of shades of gray in terms of decentralization.
We all want everything to be super decentralized and have a fantastic UX and fantastic security.
But in life there are trade-offs.
No solutions.
Only trade-offs.
That's how it goes.
Yeah.
So the idea of credible exit to me means maybe we just like dial down the decentralization.
Uh, to improve, uh, I guess UX, because UX means, in my opinion, like it's so important
because it means whether people stick or they leave.
And if they leave, it doesn't matter how decentralized you are.
You just don't have the people.
You just don't have the impact.
Yeah.
And, but what's the sweet spot?
Yeah.
I think, and I, I'll give you, I'll give you my answer to that.
I think there is a time component to UX.
And the way I mean that is like my go-to example is always the university professor that has a
static HTML page and never created a Facebook page, never created a Twitter profile, never
created a LinkedIn profile, nothing.
There's a new publication.
It's one new line of HTML.
He hosts the damn thing on his toaster and it will never go down.
Amazing UX for him and for the visitors.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And, and it, it's like you, you, you can tell a call all day long that, um, you know, Facebook
has amazing UX and all those kinds of things.
But let's say you're, you're, you're a university professor in a university in Russia or something.
And then suddenly your Facebook page is gone and you, and all those kinds of things.
So I, uh, that would be my answer to like, yes.
And because when people, when, when design people, for example, you are UX designers talk
about your amazing UX, it is about the Silicon Valley understanding of UX of how can we attract
a billion users until next quarter.
And if all of them leave two years from now, no one cares.
Oh yeah.
You know, if all of them get rug pulled in like five years from now, no one cares.
Like no one cares.
That's not the metric.
Yeah.
And so there's levels to UX because it's, it's also like, have you ever tried to send,
it doesn't matter which country, it doesn't matter which banking system and international wire.
It's isn't amazing UX.
It's like you're sending a Bitcoin transaction.
It's like a hundred X easier.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Like the UX is so much better.
And so, so, you know, there's layers to UX and what people understand by UX because the banking
app looks shiny and everything is great and so on.
And, but you know, like it takes forever.
You need to, you know, like you need to KYC.
You need to, um, do like two factor identification, like seven different times.
And, and, and then you're not even sure if it goes through and you're not even sure.
And all those kinds of things, you know, like it, it literally takes people weeks or months
sometimes to send money around.
You, you're absolutely right.
Yeah.
Like that's, I mean, I definitely know about, uh, sending internet wire transfers and trying
to pay with the card.
And you, the money's there.
Um, and you, it just fails.
And it's, please contact your bank at this number and Monday to Friday.
Yeah.
I just, you call the bank and it's another case of great UX because maybe it's the weekend
and you know, you have to wait three days until some robot maybe talks to you.
It's just insane.
And that's probably the worst UX.
So yeah, it's, we have things going for us for sure.
Yeah.
I think, I think, I think UX needs a little bit of a reframing because also on the app store
side, for example, as a developer, the worst UX is, and everyone knows this who builds up
and tries to put them in the app store, getting into the app stores is like the worst UX ever.
Absolutely.
You have to wait forever.
Like you have to jump through so many hoops.
Yeah.
And if your, if your thing is actually interesting enough, you might not even be able to get onto
the app store or you're getting pulled for other reasons.
You know, like if, if you have actual enemies, if you're going up against some serious big
players, for example, and then, you know, like again, is that amazing UX?
Yeah, no, no, it's, it's, you're right, but still, because now, for example, you're talking
about developers.
Yeah.
Here we're talking about marketplace.
Yeah.
It's a two sided marketplace.
Yeah.
Where it's, it's basically connecting in a decentralized way, users and developers.
Yeah.
I'm mostly talking about users.
Yeah.
I know already for developers is amazing.
Yeah.
Yes.
App store is unbeatable from the developer experience.
I think you don't need an account.
You don't need anything.
You're, you're it's, it's, it's so agent friendly also too.
Exactly.
I think I even designed this thing to, um, the command line tool for publishing, uh, which
I eventually hope to, to make available on the web.
Uh, the fact that is, it can output Jason and like, it's so all, all of the help of the
actual, um, program is, is there.
Yeah.
It's, it's contained in the executable.
That's app store CLI, right?
Like if you want to check it out.
It's, uh, it's, uh, yeah.
It's called ZSP now.
ZSP.
Okay.
Uh, it's like a complete rewrite and it's just, just way better.
And what does it stand for?
App store publishing?
App store publisher.
All right.
Uh, not a great name, but it's good.
No, no, no.
It's your, your, your, your target demographic is developers.
Yes.
CSP is perfect.
Exactly.
So.
Yeah, I think, I think, uh, you can just throw it at your, at your agent and it will figure
out.
Uh, so definitely everything can be improved, but on that side, I'm, I'm, I'm quite happy.
And, uh, I think it's proof because a lot of people are just like people who know it are,
are uploading apps, but let's go to the user site.
Because that's why when I was talking about UX is that, um, the truth is that people already,
I mean, part of the whole experience is that people are used to things.
So people are used to, you know, the, what the back.
See, that's the microphone effect.
Just at the exact point.
Getting mauled, getting mauled in public.
At least we're not.
Yeah.
But you're talking about kind of like how something should make more or less look and feel.
It's expectation of the user.
And that's probably like, that leads us also to your decision of, um, um, pre-selecting apps,
like science by SAP store, right?
Like populating the app store from the get go.
Yeah.
Hold on.
Just want to like round that idea.
Sorry for, for messing up your train of thought.
Yeah.
We'll have to turn around again.
Otherwise we'll, we'll just be a noise again.
Hey, there's Rubble.
We'll, we'll let him pass.
We'll let him pass.
He's also, he's also making noise.
We'll, we'll have to let all the noisy people pass.
Okay.
All right.
I guess we'll just go back and forth like crazy people.
Yeah.
That's fine.
Uh, what I was saying.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I just want to finish my idea.
Yeah.
On the user side, what the users are expecting, what the users are expecting, what something
should look and feel like.
All these things are, are new.
Uh, even like, for example, because the, the, the perennial challenge, it's like signing
with Noster and I go, what are you even talking about?
Yeah.
So that, that's what I'm talking about UX.
And software in its way is, is better.
I think because it does not necessarily require, um, an account to use.
Yeah.
So that helps a lot.
I think just by the time you want to, you don't need to share something anywhere.
You just click.
Exactly.
So yeah, it's important if you want to like, again, establish a trust and all that stuff,
but it's not like, you mean like a social media client where you kind of immediately need to
sign in.
Yeah.
You need to go upfront through a mini KYC usually, right?
Like email at least.
And like a phone number at least.
Yeah.
You need to, they need to know something a little bit.
They need to like, if you're gonna, if you go to primal or whichever client they're gonna,
you kind of need to know upfront, you know, Hey, we need to generate your NSEC because like,
that's the way you interact with the whole thing.
Yeah.
But on ZapStore it's like, you can defer that.
Okay.
I see.
That's my point.
Okay.
So let's go to your question about, yeah.
But say a little more about that.
What do you mean by you can defer that?
You just generate.
Just by the fact that you can download the app and immediately get started without any accounts.
So, so, so most of the users are pure lurkers.
They don't need to even lurkers.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I see.
That makes a lot of sense.
I mean, obviously in social clients.
Yeah.
Like kind ones, you can also do that.
But for some reason, right.
When you're, when I'm just thinking of UX, when you first get there is a probably there's
a sign in button and the experience is much better when you have your own identity.
Yeah.
That's, that was what I meant with deferring.
You can, you could just use it for months and then at some point you want to share
your own app stack.
Yeah.
Or you want to use bookmarks, whatever, which we're going to even change that.
Soon.
Like you don't even need for, for, for your personal preferences.
For example, excluding certain apps from updates, which is, I'm doing that and developing
that right now.
A lot of people ask for that.
You just don't want certain apps to be checked for updates because they weren't installed
by other stores or whatever.
And then your personal bookmarks, your preferences, all that stuff that is basically encrypted.
Yeah.
Has a device key.
Yeah.
I see.
Okay.
So you don't even need to put, you even need to sign in as GG.
Yeah.
As long as you're on the same device, the settings will come back.
Then you can back up that and so you can back it up with your own.
Yeah.
Right.
I heard that concept around here as well.
Yeah.
I think it's super interesting.
So that differs it even further.
Yeah.
It's only when you want to share social signal, let's say.
Yeah.
That you need to sign in.
Yeah.
Or look at web of trust from your perspective.
Exactly.
Yeah.
But that, again, is deferred by the fact that if you're just trusting a community.
Yeah.
Because you can just see that GG trusted that community.
Yeah.
Like, again, you don't even need to sign in.
So, yeah, that's, that's, that will help a lot.
But we're still doing, now doing a lot of work on onboarding.
For, you know, for the time where also someone wants to comment.
Because that, I think that's what will push more people is you want to put a comment on an app.
Yeah.
And at that point, yes, you need to.
Yeah.
Or zap, I guess.
Same.
Yeah.
Even though you could just send an anonymous payment.
Yeah.
That works too.
I mean, you could also comment anonymously, right?
But then you'll have to do some other.
Like Amethyst, for example, has the option to leave a comment as well.
Leave a comment as a, as a name.
But it's not very useful because then you, you have to like, because you're missing web of trust.
You would probably have to add the proof of work just to mitigate spam.
All those kinds of things.
Yeah.
We, we, we are adding proof of work as well.
Okay.
Yeah.
On the, on the website, the ZapStore web, that changed a lot.
It didn't use to exist even.
Yeah.
And it's really cool now that you can also, you have very nice links for every single app.
Like if I want to share whatever, Wisp or, or with someone, I can just send them the ZapStore link.
Yeah.
So it looks nice and has a nice URL.
Yeah, exactly.
And, and there you can also comment.
Yeah.
So, uh, comments app and even just explore and discover other apps.
And we're trying to use that as, as landing pages.
Yeah.
So when people, and to try to work on, on SEO even, uh, such that when people are searched
for an app.
Okay.
They land on the ZapStore page.
Yeah.
Now you have a download button.
Yeah.
That offers you two things.
You just download the APK directly, which a lot of people love.
Or it's like, if you want to keep updates, then you just download ZapStore and you get
a QR code that you basically open the app.
Once you install ZapStore, it opens the app and then now you're on ZapStore.
Yeah.
I mean, you got, you got what you wanted, but you also get the updates and then you can
discover other apps.
So that's like, uh, this other onboarding process.
Um, and what else do we have on the, on the site?
Yeah.
We, we, we have some more developer tools like analytics, which is really, it's a bit rough,
but it just kind of shows that the amount of downloads and impressions for, for a certain
app, which a lot of developers were, uh, wanted, wanted to see.
Yeah.
It's another, it's another kind of, uh, UX expectation, right?
Like it's another thing that people just expect.
Yeah.
Because if you like, uh, all the other app stores and all the other things have that.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's, um, it's something also is difficult to, um, not difficult, but we need, we need
to take into account the fact that privacy is really valued by myself, but also by, by users
and, and, and developers as well.
Right.
Like depending on the apps.
Yeah.
So it was no go to, to make any changes to the client itself.
So we're just running stuff where we, what we learn, like obviously zero, we don't have
any personal information anyway.
Yeah.
Um, but just, um, deriving from the stats we get on the server.
Yeah.
I'm just using that.
Yeah.
I see.
Yeah.
On the analytics side, you mean there's, it's all, uh, anonymized by default, basically
more or less by default.
Yeah.
And then obviously there's tons of ideas, you know, tour and, uh, uh, some magic cryptography
to like, not even know, uh, which updates you requested.
Yeah.
Is that, in my, that's like, uh, I'd say like a thorn.
Yeah.
It would be like a honeypot almost, you know, like where it's just like, if you, if you could
figure that out.
With intelligence.
Like if, if, if, if you would apply like, uh, running on, on, you know, you could so easily
correlate.
If, if you look at my phone and see the apps that I have installed, you know, and those
kind of things that, that tells you a lot about me and what I do and who I am and so
on.
So, so you can profile people just by, by that basically.
Yeah.
And, and put them on the list.
100%.
That's what usually happens.
Yeah.
I want to come back to one of the, the things we touched on before.
Uh, namely the, the pre-population.
How are we doing on time?
You're the time master.
Ah, good.
We still have 25 minutes.
Yeah.
Um, the pre-population of SAP store, which I personally really liked.
Uh, I know it wasn't universally liked, but it was really cool to just, um, go to SAP
store and see basically all the apps we as a community more or less care about.
I mean, you selected them, I guess, talk me, talk me through like, what made you do that?
And how did you decide and where did you source?
Like all the awesome apps?
Because those are awesome apps.
Like I, sometimes when I, you know, other people just do Netflix and chill.
I did like browse SAP store and chill.
I was just on the couch and going through SAP store and like, what are some awesome open
source apps that I don't know about?
And actually the voice recorder we're using right now.
That's how I discovered it.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
That's a Fossify voice recorder.
I fell in love with the Fossify tools.
Yeah.
I love those tools.
There's a really simple.
Super, super simple.
Yeah.
It's so good.
So, so tell me how, like what, first of all, what made you land on this decision?
Yeah.
And, and the process of kind of like doing all that, because you, you signed as SAP
store, you signed and published, I don't know how many apps you have to tell me, but hundreds.
Uh, this over 3000.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
Uh, so what does this pipeline look like and all this stuff?
Like that's quite involved.
You didn't do it by hand, I guess.
I started by hand.
Yeah.
Okay.
As you, as you do.
Uh, it's funny because back at, uh, the first cohort, uh, in Madeira, uh, some of my
buddies from back then were like telling me what their, their thoughts were about me at the
moment, because I was the guy who's not building anything.
I was just talking and doing presentations, right?
We outlawed presentations now, by the way.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Hard rule.
We shot on site.
Uh, huge discovery of how do you design this thing?
What's the potential?
And I guess how you, how you approach building a marketplace, which is, I knew from before,
it's super hard to build a marketplace.
Yeah.
Like two side, even one sided, right?
Like, uh, let's say like white noise where you have like all the users are the same.
You don't have the two types of users.
Yeah.
Uh, but super hard because it's, it's a chicken and egg problem.
Yeah.
And so what I figured is that you have demand and supply.
And in this case, demand is like the users who come to look for apps and supplies the, the,
the developers that put stuff on there.
Yeah.
But we like, there was a way to like break that cycle of the chicken and egg, which was, uh,
kind of let's say quote unquote growth hacking.
The thing is like hacking the supply.
Yeah.
It's like you can offer a lot of supply.
So even though it's not like the ideal way, because the ideal thing would be like each developer
is signing their own apps.
Yeah.
But that doesn't happen.
We get kind of like, you say, okay, it's a proxy or it's a, you know, selection by this
other pub key, which is like what it's only this absolute puppy.
Yeah.
Do that.
And in this, in this way, we're attracting, not only we attract the users because there,
there are apps.
And once there are, there are more users now developers are interested because there are
more eyeballs.
And also most of the users are probably developers in some way.
Yeah.
Like a large part of them.
That's, that's true as well.
So for me, it was super important to get adoption of, of the project.
And, um, I think, yeah, it would have been a very different story.
If we just did like, just basically any other, or not your client.
It's like, you know, I give you the tool and I don't know, you just figure it out.
Like whoever posts here, you, that's the content you will see.
Yeah.
Uh, uh, actually it was a lot of work, man, because a lot, there are a lot of issues around
that.
Things break all the time.
Uh, cause there's like all the edge cases, right?
It's like, when you, when you look at it, it's like, Oh, it looks easy.
Yeah.
But then you got all the, you know, you got, you get the forks, you get like people, um,
uh, all of a sudden, for example, publishing, they were publishing a release and all of a
sudden they changed to a pre-release.
Yeah.
So now should you index pre-releases or not?
Yeah.
Because sometimes the previous will just screw everything up.
Yeah.
As it happened with a term term, uh, to a lot of people.
Well, you're not supposed to use it because pre-release means that you need to be careful,
but now signal started pushing pre-releases for actual reasons.
So they don't show up and then people complain because it's not there.
Yeah.
And, um, I see you're still, you're still traumatized by the experience.
It's kind of traumatic.
It's a full-time job, man.
Um, so, but, but I'm, I don't, I don't, but where are some other edge cases?
Like what if, what if, what if, uh, um, did you, well, uh, check the signing as well?
And like, did people rotate the keys, stuff like that or change where they publish their
things like if someone moves from GitHub to GitLab or something?
Yeah.
That too.
Yeah.
Migrations, uh, key rotations as well, because then you're going to get a certificate mismatch.
And so that's, um, then you get an actual error.
That's a red error.
And people are, it's like, Hey, this is malware.
Not going to the developer because they did the key rotation.
They come to me.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
And honestly, a lot of the, um, the, a lot of the time is, it's just, uh, doing user
support because people ask things and I'm glad because the people are using it.
But it's also tiring because there's a lot of questions and what happened here?
And this guy, this doesn't work.
So it was a good signal.
It was a good signal that people are actually using it.
Yeah.
You know, customer support is obviously hell.
Yeah.
So it would be way easier if there were like 50 apps or actually right now, I think there
are about, what?
150 Nostra signed apps.
Awesome.
That would have been one of my questions.
What's the kind of the ratio now?
And because I, I noticed that myself that, um, like, I think Vitor from Amethyst was one
of the first people starting to, uh, publish on SAP store.
There were a couple of first movers, right?
And, and, um, now a lot of the apps that I use are signed by the actual developers.
So there was, for me, I saw this as a user that, oh, wow.
Suddenly like that doesn't actually say signed by SAP store.
It's actually signed by the guy who built it and so on.
And so that's really cool.
So, so what's the, what's your feeling in terms of adoption and did this coincide with
the tools you pushed out like, um, CSP and so on?
Yeah.
I think, I think that made it even easier, um, to, you know, the point we were talking
about earlier, uh, that, that it's just ways.
And also the, the tools to build apps are easier.
So then this one, the, the, the bar has lowered for, for doing that.
Yeah.
Now people just instruct their agents basically.
Yeah.
And so there's like, honestly, I've been surprised for the kind of quality apps.
Obviously there's a bit of everything, but, uh, there's some apps that are really nice.
And actually some people that were not on Nostar that came, you know, they, they, they open
their, their, they, they generate the keys and they're more active on socials.
They have their, their profile, their Nostar profile.
And then they publish an app.
Yeah.
So that's really nice to see that they were coming from other places and because they wanted
to be on SAP store.
So people from outside our bubble.
Absolutely.
They figured out how to get into SAP store and that's how they landed on Nostar basically.
Yeah.
And that was always like my hope as well.
Yeah.
I think, and since you don't need necessarily to know about Nostar to use it, that, that brings
people from, from outside more easily.
Yeah.
Um, and obviously that I always thought about it as a bit of a little Trojan horse.
Yeah.
Again, a theme that was talking about, like, don't, you know, don't push Nostar and Bitcoin.
Yeah.
I mean, the Bitcoins and all this, right?
Yeah.
The B word.
Talk about Bitcoin without talking about Bitcoin.
Money.
Just money.
And then I think on Nostar, everyone's learning the same thing is like, basically no one cares.
And the good thing that Nostar is going for it is like, it doesn't have a negative connotation
like Bitcoin does.
Hmm.
Like you don't immediately think about, I don't know, you know, like dark markets or, you
know, like rich tech bros, uh, when you hear Nostar.
Yeah.
Um, for Bitcoin, that's very much the case.
Exactly.
No, no, absolutely.
But I think, I think it's a good strategy to just basically, I mean, it's salesman one-on-one,
right?
Like it's the, no one cares.
No one cares about what this thing can do.
It, everyone cares like what it enables to do.
Like there's, I think there, uh, there used to be one poster where like, how did all the
MP3 players market themselves?
And it was like, you know, 200 gigabytes, blah, here and there, 512 megabytes, whatever it
was back in the day.
Yeah.
And, um, I think the iPad came around and it was just like, you know, uh, 2,000 songs in
your pocket or something like that.
You know?
Yeah.
Like something else entirely.
Like no technical specs, nothing.
Yeah.
But something that people actually care about.
Yeah.
Oh, I can have 2,000 songs in my pocket.
Like I'm going to buy the thing.
And I think that's what a lot of the NOSTA people are discovering now that, that, that
technicalities of, you know, you're in control of your keys and you know, like you can run
your own relay and so on, are less important than what it actually enables you to do.
And I think you mentioned some of the things like as a user, you can just download an app
and be relatively sure that it's what you want to have and that it isn't problematic.
And as a developer without going through any KYC hoops and sign up hoops and without, you
know, like, I mean, for Apple, for example, you have to get a developer account and actually
pay money and all those kinds of things.
Yeah.
You can just publish an app.
Yeah.
So publish without friction, basically.
Yeah.
On the developer side.
And now it's, it's getting, it's going to get a bit strange in the Android world because
maybe you're aware that Google now, yeah, was tightening, tightening the screws.
Right?
Well, maybe that's why, because when you're on graphene, it's like, okay, life is great here.
So, but when you have users that are on stock Android, then Google is going to enforce registration
for, for developers, which, which basically includes KYC.
Yeah.
And probably a fee too.
Uh, just to be able to even sideload.
That's the way they say.
That's the technical term they use.
Yeah.
To, um, to install apps from like just other sources than the play store.
Yeah.
And that's, that's going to require you to, to go through that, which a lot of developers
obviously don't want to, don't want to do for many reasons and also friction.
And I don't know.
That's going to be a bit of a challenge for, for Zapsar adoption, to be honest.
Uh, some, some apps will just like go, will install just straight.
Others maybe will get, you know, get refused by the operating system.
What's your take on the whole situation?
And what do you think will actually happen in the next, I don't know, year or two or how
far out is all this?
Yes.
And what's your, like the, the one headline I read is the Motorola graphene partnership,
right?
Mm-hmm.
So talk me through that kind of from your perspective.
What do you think is likely to happen and what might be a way out of the Google KYC mess?
Oh man, it's, uh, it's going to be hard.
Uh, but I see, I see galvanization.
Like there's a point in what, in which the grays are, are, are ending and it's like kind
of black or white.
All right.
You kind of go to the gulag.
No.
Yeah.
No more gray area.
I see.
No more.
Yeah.
It's like, oh yeah, well I just stock Android and use app store on it and it's just fine.
You're, you're, you're either fully KYC the user or developer or you're a terrorist.
Uh, exactly.
That's basically what we're looking at.
That's basically what they're pushing us to.
Yeah.
So I don't know, man, like it's, uh, I think usage will, so this will, as I was saying,
this will galvanize people and this will make more users seek a graphene OS and alternative
stores.
Uh, the ability of like freedom of expression and freedom of reach for tools.
Yeah.
Right.
Because that's kind of a prerequisite to be able to communicate.
Yeah.
You need the tools to be able to do that.
Yeah.
It doesn't matter if we are all hyped about bit chat and, and champion it and all those
kind of things.
If you can't even install it on your device.
Yeah.
So there, uh, certain features even that I'd love to have, but it's just all about like
trying to manage, uh, priorities and managing resources.
Um, for example, uh, the idea that was introduced by, by bitch at, I think I'm not wrong that
you can send a copy of bitch at over Bluetooth or something.
Right.
So that doesn't seem to be an urgency at the moment, but we had the ability to do it and we,
it should be possible.
It should be possible.
So I think this is really cool.
Like, I mean, not only send the, that's, that's kind of industrial idea, right?
Like the source shouldn't matter which server you downloaded from shouldn't matter.
Yeah.
It's just the signature matters.
And so you can sign the app and, and just send it around with how you get it, whether
it's USB stick or carry a pigeon or Bluetooth or whatever.
So we shouldn't have the R in Nostra then.
Yeah.
I mean, lots of people share this opinion.
There's lots of people that want to do peer to peer, pure peer to peer stuff on Nostra.
Yeah.
Um, but you know, like that has its own issues.
Would you look at that?
That's so cute.
Yeah.
That's a, that's an interesting blockade.
Like let's not get attacked by wild animals.
Yeah.
It's a, this is a, this is a bathroom area essentially.
Everyone is stopped in their tracks.
They're just putting mines on the road.
Very, very cute.
Very cute and fluffy.
We're just looking at cute ducks.
Yeah.
A bunch of ducklings blocking the street.
So.
So you think things have to get worse before they get better, kind of?
Like remove the gray area?
Things will get that way.
It's not that short or whatever.
Like they will get that way.
Yeah.
No, but I mean, I think people are still fine with using the fully permissioned systems,
developers and users.
Right.
And, and I think any, any kind of move that makes the permissioned ecosystem harder to use
or more, more cumbersome to use is eventually good for the permissionless system.
Yeah.
Let me make, let me make a completely different example out of left field.
It's like Netflix was great when there was just Netflix.
Yeah.
Like, like Netflix killed Pirate Bay, right?
Basically.
Yeah.
And then it got everything like fast forward 10 years, everything got more cumbersome because
you want to watch a movie or a TV series.
We've all these exclusives now.
And so you basically need not one Netflix subscription, but you need Netflix and Hulu and Disney Plus and like 17 others.
We're back at square one.
And now people like, Pirate Bay usage is up again, you know, like that's kind of my point.
Like people go back to the, to the permissionless frictionless system.
Yeah.
And I think it's a similar dynamic at play here where, um, where kind of the more cumbersome
it gets to, as a developer, for example, publish, get your app in the app stores.
The more people will discover SAP store and find ways around.
Yeah.
Again, it all, it all has to do with, with the people using it.
That's what's so important to have a lot of people using it is because that is what it will attract developers.
If you know that sure, it's super easy to publish, but five people are looking at it.
Yeah.
Like why even bother?
Yeah.
And that, that just disincentivize developers.
Uh, so that's why I'm so obsessed with, with that part, you know, of we need, we need users, a lot of them.
Yeah.
Is there, uh, that might, I already regret asking the question.
Oh dear.
But what about iOS?
Oh man.
Oh really?
There's no chance in hell to make anything like it on iOS work.
So, okay.
I did explore the, the idea.
There's a few angles.
Um, I don't know if you're aware of alt store on iOS.
I know the, yeah.
I know the stores that exist.
Yeah.
Kind of.
It's, it's actually really interesting because, uh, they, we kind of, they predate sub store
by, by quite a lot.
Yeah.
I'm not sure they're aware of us.
And when I came up with this whole thing, I was not really aware of alt store.
So we have these two parts.
Yeah.
And when I came up with this whole thing, I was not really aware of alt store.
So we have these two parallel paths basically.
Yeah.
And when I came up with this whole thing, I was not really aware of alt store.
So we have these two parallel paths basically.
And now I listened recently to a podcast because they, you know, they want like the VC route
and raise money and also, um, are really into a social things, but they're like Fediverse,
right?
There's like the Fediverse people.
And, um, for money, I don't know, I guess it's just Fiat, uh, PayPal.
Yeah.
So it's PayPal, Fediverse and iOS basically.
Uh, and we're like more Android, Bitcoin and Oster, right?
Yeah.
But that said, it's like a similar, a very similar concept.
And, uh, they started out by building a kind of hacky way to load apps on an iPhone by self-signing.
Mm-hmm.
So you just, once you get the IPA, which is like the, the package format of an iPhone app, like equivalent to the APK.
You could just pretend it was you who developed it and you're just testing it on your device.
Yeah.
And that's how it basically, uh, was working.
That said, there are a lot of issues on the way because you need an Apple account.
Yeah.
I don't think, I don't think.
You need Xcode, right?
I don't think, uh, yeah.
Or the Xcode developer tools.
You need the developer tools.
I think for that, there's like two tiers, let's say.
For that one, you don't need, uh, an Apple developer account, I think.
Mm-hmm.
Which is like, uh, 99 USD a year.
Yeah.
But for the second tier, uh, yes, you need a developer account.
However, you can install any amount of apps.
Mm-hmm.
Whereas with the first one, I think it's about six.
Okay.
And you need to refresh every three days.
Because how many, how many things can you develop and test?
Yeah.
That's, uh, that's, uh, rationale for that limit.
Yeah.
If you have like, let's say you have a 200 agents running.
Yeah.
Uh, producing apps.
Like that, that limit, that limit was created before in a different time.
It's super cake, even the whole process.
Like you can develop an app in an hour.
Yeah.
Sorry.
How are we doing on time?
Five minutes.
We'll do, we'll do, we'll do one more, one more bridge.
Oh man.
Yeah.
So there would be a way to do it.
There would be a way to do it on the iOS.
It's essentially, that's what I was trying to, to go after.
Like, can we, by requiring a developer account, being able to, because you got like kind of unlimited
apps and also it requires a refresh every year, I believe.
Okay.
So that's much more usable.
And like, like if that prerequisite, like if people agree with that prerequisite, like,
uh, have a developer account and somehow, don't ask me how, trusted us with the credentials
that we can maybe place on a secure enclave or something like that.
Uh, we could be signing apps and delivering over the wire, over the air, uh, updates.
Yeah.
On the apps.
So that would work.
And that's like more the technical approach, but then you could have the more like legal,
let's say, for example, in the EU, you could have legally an alternative marketplace, uh,
uh, on Apple, which is also what ad store is doing that right now.
So honestly, it's very tricky.
Uh, it will require having probably a, a bunch of extra devs on, on Zapster to do that.
Yeah.
But yeah, I don't want to kill myself in the process.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm, I'm, I'm glad you're still alive by the way, because I know that building it, building
such a thing out is anything but easy.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, if we're talking mass adoption and so on, then I, I, I'm kind of, I'm a little
bit allergic, getting more allergic by the, by the minute, uh, when it comes to the mass
adoption idea, I have to say.
Yeah.
Because I, I do think that both Bitcoin and Noster are, it's mostly for people at the end.
Yeah.
Like people that got the bank, people that lived through hyperinflation, then like, I don't
need to explain Bitcoin to you.
And on like on the Zap store side, for example, like if, if, if, if your app is controversial
enough and you have trouble getting into app stores or also like if you are from a region
where it's really hard to get a credit card and stuff like that, then those things are a
godsend and you don't have to go through the official routes that don't let you through
because you don't have a passport or you don't, can't get a credit card and those kinds of
things.
Yeah.
And so I think by the, by definition, this stuff is kind of like built for people on the edges
in some sense.
Uh, I don't want to discourage you to bring as many users as possible.
It's just kind of like my, my general take right now.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's actually like when we say these words, they don't really like, um, users,
a lot, a lot of users, what does that even mean?
Do you want to talk about numbers?
Because I could say a lot of users could be, I don't know, like 20,000.
Yeah.
30,000.
Yeah.
Which if you compare with the amount of, uh, Android users in the world.
Yeah.
Which by the way are way more than I was using 4 billion.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Half of the world uses, has, it has, uses Android, let's say daily or something.
That's nothing.
Yeah.
Sure.
So that's not mass adoption as you would put it.
Yeah.
It's like the, as the, as the, as the VCs or, or, or no, no.
That's not what I mean.
Yeah.
But yes.
Yes.
I mean, I don't want to have a hundred users.
Yeah.
Like that doesn't incentivize people to actually, you know, use it.
Yeah.
And come and publish there.
Yeah.
And I don't mean this in a, in a, like, I don't know that don't get me wrong.
I, I, I like for as many users to use Bitcoin and also properly.
It's just getting people to use those things properly.
Yeah.
Has traditionally been very, very hard.
Like, uh, I, I made this joke before.
It's like, I'm, I'm the biggest believer in wrecked education.
I don't think there is another way.
It's like people have to get wrecked and then they'll learn.
There is no, like as someone who did Bitcoin education for over a decade, that's my conclusion.
You know, I used to say 2% of people are curious enough to like dig deeper and actually learn
it.
Yeah.
But I think it's closer to 0.2%.
And I think what do you want to get?
Linux is actually a great example.
Like who got attracted by Linux?
Like Linux conquered the world, right?
But they didn't conquer the world by trying to appeal to the masses.
They appeal to the neckbeards and one over time, but slowly, slowly, you know, and, and I think
that's, I'd rather, I'd rather go down that road than kind of cater to, uh, the confused
mob basically, you know, and, and just ruin the thing in the process, which is what would
have happened to, to Linux.
Absolutely.
Like, you know, you, if you, if you just build out the things that everyone wants to see just
because it's trendy right now, like you ruin the thing.
It took a, it's ready for Linux.
It took such a long time.
Right.
And now you have very, very usable distributions.
Yeah.
Uh, that just like regular people like to use.
And also everything else around it.
And they'd be popularized by YouTubers and so on.
Yeah.
And, and everything else around it implodes.
I mean, PewDiePie is a Linux guy now.
Exactly.
Because just, just Windows shit the bat so hard.
Even like DHH, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
He hated on, on, on Linux all the time.
He was the Mac power user number one.
And now he built his own distro, you know?
So in a way that makes me bullish, right?
I agree with what you're saying.
The fact that things are getting crazier.
Yeah.
We were talking about Android specifically, but with age verification, that's coming to.
Oh yeah.
I mean, you have to scan a passport to display Minecraft.
Yeah.
Right now the same by voluntarily, I guess, sharing your age.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
But that's, there's some Linux distros that already said, we're not doing this.
Or you, you know, it doesn't apply to us, whatever.
Uh, that's also going to get galvanized.
You have the Linux distros that are going to be KYC and all that stuff.
Yeah.
And you'll have to decide then.
Sure.
Yeah.
No, that's, that's how it's going to go.
It's like, I remain bullish because it's also on the Bitcoin side, for example.
Um, a while ago, there was a lot of talk about outlawing, you know, mining, outlawing, running
notes, outlawing Bitcoin.
I was always like, let's go.
Like, especially in Germany or so.
Like, you know, outlaw running notes, please do it.
Let's push everything underground because then like everything will be tore by default.
You know, everything like people will not stop running notes.
You know, it's, it's just, it's just, uh, that will harden the whole ecosystem.
So I think, I think there is a, there's something to be said about that.
But yeah, I mean, for me, it feels like definitely on the user side, but, but I actually, I care
more about the developers and the developer side of things.
People are not radicalized enough yet.
And so I hope more people will be radicalized by all the stupidity that's currently happening
because that will actually bring real solutions.
And I mean radical in a good way.
I mean, you know, uh, like Richard Stallman is a radical, you know?
Yeah.
Linus Torvald is a radical.
Like those are radical people, like uncompromising people.
And there was a thing that radicalized them.
And I hope that we'll, we'll have, you know, like, again, with all the stupidity coming
down the line with, um, you know, you're not allowed to sideload apps, which means you're
not allowed to install software that you wrote yourself.
You're not allowed to install software that a friend of yours wrote.
It's like, you don't even own the device and so on.
And with all the age verification laws and all those kinds of things like that's, that's just
pick your stupidity, you know?
Like there's a whole bag of stupidity and it's being thrown at us.
And I hope that it will radicalize some people.
So that's my, my silver lining of the whole situation.
You'll learn nothing and be happy.
Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's going to be the goal.
That's going to be the goal, unfortunately.
But, um, yeah, I mean, I remain optimistic to me again, like to, to, to maybe end on a
positive note.
To me, it's amazing that something like snap store exists.
And again, like it, it, for over a year now, it has been my only app store.
It's like, I, I flash graphene, I install snap store.
I'm done.
I don't need anything else.
I'm, of course I'm a special case.
I realize that I'm, I'm a, you know, like I'm, I don't want to compare myself to whatever
my mom or even my wife or whatever to, to like, I use these things in a very peculiar
way, but it works for me.
And that's amazing.
And it's, it's like, I love it.
So, so we've come a long way already.
And, um, yeah, I hope that anything that won't kill us will make us stronger kind of thing,
you know, like with, with all the changes that are coming.
Yeah.
But to, to your point, you're maybe not for your wife, for your mom, but like, if things
get really bad, eventually you'll be able to teach them.
It will be obvious to them that that's.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm trying my, my wife's laptop is running Arch Linux.
She hates it.
It's not her choice.
But you know, it's like, it works well enough.
It works well enough for the little things that she needs to do.
Yeah.
And that's just, you know, the, the good thing about, I think graphene and zap store combo
is it's not disgusting.
It's like pretty good, actually.
It is very, very good.
And it's, it's getting better all the time.
So maybe last, last two minutes.
What, uh, what's, what's coming down the pipeline?
What are we working on right now?
Next couple of weeks, next couple of months.
Yeah.
So a lot of around, um, like finally doing the separation to communities.
And like the idea will be, uh, offering by default two communities.
Yeah.
One will be, um, the zap store community, which is where devs, uh, self publish.
Yeah.
And then there will be like the, whatever indexer community, which is the apps we bring from elsewhere.
So people who don't like that part can just switch it off immediately.
Okay.
And then we want to encourage people to, to run their own communities of apps.
Which can be.
Run their own indexers basically.
Not only indexers.
It could be, but, uh, you could have your own, like, I don't, community, community for kids.
Let's say.
Yeah.
That's for, that's an easier way to group apps or have a collection of apps.
Yeah.
But if you want, let's say, uh, give the device to your, to your kid.
Yeah.
Well, then a community, um, where all apps are, are kid safe.
Yeah.
Right.
So whether that's paid or not, whatever, like it's something that you could use on a device for, for a minor, let's say.
Uh, so that, that kind of things also, uh, yeah, exploring the, the, the part of adding, I think this is super important, uh, is adding like malware, malware checks.
Yeah.
And, uh, privacy analysis.
Yeah.
Things like that.
Reproducibility.
So I'd love to have all that.
Okay.
I see.
Roughly that's the direction.
How can, how can people help your project best?
Someone listens to this.
How can they help ZapStore?
Uh, first, obviously become downloaded and become a user.
ZapStore.dev, download.
That's it.
You, your option, you can verify, you know, uh, that the agent works.
Uh, that the APK is, uh, signed by us.
That's right here.
Maybe.
Otherwise we'll run it.
Best way would be go to the, to ZapStore Noster page and just check that, you know, people
that you trust are, are following it.
And then the, on the bio, uh, there's the description.
There's the links to download and to, if you want to verify it.
Uh, but just do that.
And then if you want to send a fat zaps, uh, super encouraged, uh, even on chain.
How dare you?
I'll cut that part out.
The only part of the whole part.
And on the developer side.
Uh, yeah, just get signing.
And by the way, I'll end with a, with a, with something that we will be developing.
It would be super important.
It's, uh, I'm very challenging.
It's the migration from, let's say we have Phoenix wallet that we index.
What happens if Phoenix wallet shows up tomorrow and wants to self publish?
Ah, that is quite, that's kind of a key rotation issue.
Yeah.
Um, not in the sense of the Android because that will work, but, um, yes, in terms of how, you know, the indexing needs to stop.
Yeah.
Checking that.
But what happens if the developer stops publishing?
Yeah.
Then we need to, uh, like carry on ourselves.
Yeah.
Pick it up again.
That's very, very challenging.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I know I said last question before.
I have another one.
Uh, if you know what you know now, would you do it again?
No.
Great answer.
That was very quick.
All right.
We'll always end on a hug.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for indulging me.
I, I completely sprang that on you.
Yeah.
Basically five minutes before we, before we started recording.
An alien landed.
And yeah, I, um, no, I think that was great.
And I, I, yeah, I wish you all the success in the world and hope that everyone's going to just use this stuff and we'll get through it.
And we'll be all labeled terrorists.
This is how it's going to be.
This is a brave new world.
I appreciate it, man.
All right.