March 10th Noster’s Zaps have changed the social media game Posted by admin in Education at 13:50 pm
Nostr is a new decentralized social media protocol that has taken the bitcoin world by storm by providing a decentralized and censorship-resistant social media experience. Many Nostr clients now have native Lightning Network micropayments, colloquially called Zaps. Let’s find out what all the excitement is about.
Zaps Are Nostr’s Lightning Network Powered Micropayments
Bitcoiners are flocking to Nostr, eager to abandon Twitter for new decentralized social media alternatives being built on top of the Nostr decentralized social media protocol. Development is moving at breakneck speed as many developers are releasing Nostra clients for mobile and PC.
A flurry of new Nostra-based social media apps, which provide a similar and familiar experience to established centralized social media platforms like Twitter, Twitter Spaces, Medium, and Reddit, are popping up everywhere. Nostra’s user experience includes Zaps, the ability to tip another user or send a small micropayment in satoshis using bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
Some Noster users have reported earning more in SAT by posting memes than they earn from routing fees on their Lightning Network nodes. Zaps in Nostr were made possible thanks to Nostr Improvement Proposal (NIP) 57. Nostr uses NIPs that are similar to BIPs in Bitcoin, where developers can propose new features or changes, which can be voted on by the developer community for inclusion. Etiquette.
Zaps have quickly come to be seen as fun and cool, and add a new addictive quality to Nostr that combines sending and receiving real money as well as the standard fare dopamine hit that social media users typically relish. , receive from share and comments.
The result is a highly enjoyable social media experience that feels more organic than centralized counterparts, because there are no algorithms shaping the content you receive in your timeline, no ads, and a host of interesting people and colorful personalities. to converse with.
Nostr users are on a zapping frenzy sending each other satoshis for funny bitcoin memes, insightful or helpful posts, witty replies or hilarious comments. There are even bots that randomly shock users, although they are a bit annoyed by the constant notifications.
Zaps have also been a great way to bring micropayments to Lightning to new users, drive Nostr adoption, and add a layer of gamification to a new type of decentralized social media experience.
Nostr client and bitcoin wallet supporting Zaps and NIP-57
Not all Nostr clients have Zaps integrated yet, although several popular clients already have Zaps. In turn, not all bitcoin wallets have implemented NIP-57 support yet, but there are some that already have.
Nostr Client is an app that lets you browse Nostr posts, create your own posts and interact with other users on an open and decentralized network. Your Bitcoin Lightning Network wallet can be connected to your client app, so you can send Zaps from within the client by clicking on the lightning symbol at the bottom of a post.
NIP-57 Compatible Lightning Network Wallet
A Nostr user named Hex posted this useful list on Nostr to help users choose a NIP-57 compatible wallet so they can start boosting as easily and quickly as possible.
Popular Nostr clients
There are a lot of different Nostr clients, they are all very new and many are still under development, so some clients are more sophisticated and feature rich than others. The different clients include web apps, mobile apps on iOS and Android, and desktop apps for your computer. Below, we’ll list some of the more popular clients, in no particular order.
WTF is a Nostra?
The cryptic name of Nostra is actually an acronym that stands for “Notes and Other Materials Transmitted by Relay”. It is a simple protocol for decentralized social media that is versatile and has seen explosive growth and hype in bitcoin land over the past few months.
Nostr is a decentralized social media protocol designed to facilitate free speech and censorship-resistance, allowing users to create crypto wallets and accounts based on public/private key encryption similar to PGP, allowing many Bitfinex users are already familiar.
Public/private key encryption is what allows a user to have a “private key” that allows only the key holder to be able to decrypt the message. The holder of a private key can freely give his “public key” to receive encrypted messages from any other user, and only the holder of the private key can decrypt these messages, and obtain information.
In crypto, these messages would be receive or spend transactions, but in nostra they are communications, direct messages, or posts. In Nostr it is central to the way the public/private key encryption protocol works.
In essence, users sign messages with their private keys and receive them from others with their public keys and broadcast them to each other using relay servers to broadcast the messages over the wider Nostr network.
Relay servers make these messages available to Nostr clients, and in turn to users who are using said clients. By using this public/private key pair, users can be sure that they own their own data and can take it with them if they choose to switch platforms. The key pair also makes it so users can sign messages to prove they are themselves, without any forgery, impersonation, or fraud.
The nostra github says it best:
“Everyone runs a client. It can be a native client, a web client, etc. To publish something, you write a post, sign it with your key and send it to a number of relays (someone else or yourself) Servers hosted by the Internet). To get updates from other people, you query multiple relays if you know anything about these other people. Anyone can run a relay. A relay is very simple And is dumb. It does nothing but accept posts from some people and forward them to others. No need to rely on relays. Signatures are verified on the client side.
While Nostr is just a protocol for passing messages using encryption, it is simple and elegantly designed, making it extremely easy to implement and add it to a wide range of social networking apps.
Developers have taken Nostra’s simplicity and run with it, creating a vast amount of new social media apps that all use Nostra’s messaging protocol on the back end. Nostr users can use their same keypair to log in to all the different Nostr platforms, and their data can be automatically imported, and they can prove their identity in a way that prevents counterfeiting. Cannot be done.
Nostra also lets users choose which relays they want to follow, and even use their own relays that they host themselves. Depending on the relay you are using, you may see different content hosted on these relays. There are even paid relays that reduce spam posts, and make it easier for users to avoid them, and curate their feed with the content they want, some paid relays even target specific niches. are focused on.
To get started with Nostra, learn more about it.
