gregwhite on Nostr: This week’s report covers closed communities, nosta, and funding nostr development. ...

This week’s report covers closed communities, nosta, and funding nostr development.

Let me know what you think!

https://habla.news/nostreport/Nostr-Tech-Weekly-2023-11-12

quoting note1ynm…zd2s

Happy Sunday #Nostr !

Here’s your #NostrTechWeekly newsletter brought to you by NostReport (npub19md…6vzk) written by gregwhite (npub1r3f…7ex2)

The #NostrTechWeekly is a weekly newsletter focused on the more technical happenings in the nostr-verse.

Let’s dive in!

## Recent Upgrades to Nostr (AKA [NIPs](https://nostr.com/the-protocol/nips))
#### 1) Updates to [NIP 90: Encryption of DVM Data](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/860/files?short_path=bfe16b0#diff-bfe16b0870d00e01e75c39bf05d6a60009204d107f779d566892d3120c29f6b3)
Data Vending Machines are a way for people to pay for bots to do tasks for them, and for the provider of bots to make income from making those bots available. The marketplace for such is young, but has immense potential.

This proposal adds even more capabilities by outlining a way for users to optionally encrypt the inputs and outputs of tasks facilitated by DVMs. As privacy and freedom oriented people on Nostr, we can’t say no to encryption by default! Thanks PABLOF7z (npub10dz…f20x) !

#### 2) (Proposed) [NIP 86: Shared Keys](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/876/files?short_path=6df89a8#diff-6df89a8c8dc7ad989fbd00dc1ffdcca6b14fc654a41a124e64c80ff7fe5a2985)
This proposal introduces a mechanism for sharing keys within Nostr communities, specifically those managed by an admin.

The process involves distributing a 'kind 24' rumor created by the admin’s key and encrypted with a shared key and individually addressed to each member. Possession of the shared key allows users to decrypt content encrypted by the shared key, creating private content for users in possession.

Keys can be rotated as needed and are facilitated by the admin key publishing new 'kind 24' rumors, ensuring continuous security.

This NIP is critical for the functionality of Closed Communities, as it underpins their secure communication framework

Author: [hodlbod](https://github.com/staab) [earonesty](https://github.com/earonesty) [vitorpamplona](https://github.com/vitorpamplona) [water783](https://github.com/water783)

#### 3) (Proposed) [NIP 87: Closed Communities](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/875/files?short_path=ed261ea#diff-ed261eac15a3dc7dbd825342a3e89dc960824a52afd2dd032f30876fbfb25698)
The second, and related, proposal is for Closed Communities. This proposal aims to provide a degree of privacy in Nostr's inherently public architecture. It builds upon the existing ability to define communities in Nostr, the “member lists” mechanism, as well as the proposed key sharing mechanism (NIP #86) to create private group communication within communities on Nostr.

This NIP outlines a community structure using the existing 'kind 34550' event for identification and administration, managed by a dedicated admin key, while a shared key is used for communication within the group.

Possession of their admin or shared keys creates access to the community, so managers of these communities will have to take care to keep the community private by strictly controlling access to the keys.

I’m glad there’s experimentation in this space. We can always use SimpleX but if we can get something truly private and technically elegant on Nostr, we will all benefit.

Author: [hodlbod](https://github.com/staab) [earonesty](https://github.com/earonesty) [vitorpamplona](https://github.com/vitorpamplona) [water783](https://github.com/water783)

#### 4) (Proposed) [NIP 100: Android Signer Application](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/868/files?short_path=b651796#diff-b6517966f62629eb3ed4955f1a3107b772d3c07985ff8d51344c7f93daf7c593)
On phones, it’s not quite as easy to use a Nostr browser extension to authorize clients as it is on a desktop.

This proposal outlines the concept of a “signer” app that contains the user’s nsec, and all other apps on the phone can request event signing from the signer app as needed. Just like the browser extension! It’s elegant and allows users to minimize the exposure of their private keys. 🔒

I don’t know if apps are allowed to do the same thing on iOS, so this may something uniquely available to Android users.

Author: [greenart7c3](https://github.com/greenart7c3)

## Notable Projects
#### Calendar and events on [Nosta](https://nosta.me/) 📅
Nosta is a profile-first client that makes every profile look its best. Nosta also helps users discover all kinds of content published by each profile instead of just their kind 1 notes (tweets). Super helpful and a nice take on a general purpose Nostr client 💪

Nosta [recently announced](https://w3.do/L-SeW9bO) updates that they now support calendars managed by Nostr users. Looks great 🙌

Author: GBKS (npub1kuc…0eyw) [Nosta Github](https://github.com/gbks/nosta-me)

#### Recent improvements to [NostrNet.Work](https://nostrnet.work) 🌐
NostrNet.Work is organically growing into a browser for Nostr. It can serve as a homepage/dashboard for your Nostr life, and you can move into any realm of Nostr easily without remembering or bookmarking a bunch of urls.

Recently iefan 🕊️ (npub1cmm…lr6f)
introduced [better notes](https://w3.do/i6JlIOKR) so that you can draft notes, save them while you’re offline if they’re private. Or you can even publish them later if you like.

Additionally iefan 🕊️ (npub1cmm…lr6f) shipped [better navigation](https://w3.do/wlmSNbjD) and seems to be leaning in to becoming a browser and may introduce tabs soon. So you can navigate the nostr-verse without leaving NostrNet.Work.

## Latest conversations: Funding Nostr Projects

[In a recent article](naddr1qq…da4u), Semisol highlighted a crucial issue for Nostr: the severe underfunding of its development and infrastructure, which threatens the protocol's sustainability.

Semi delves into all the options currently available for funding development and infrastructure, outlining the risks posed by current funding models and the potential for Nostr's degradation without proper financial support.

#### Onboarding an economy
Nostr can’t rely on hobbyists and good will forever. We need profitable companies to be building on top of Nostr, so we naturally we need to convince some group of buyers and sellers that using something built on Nostr is better than their current setup.

If we can onboard a whole existing economy wholesale, we can build a core of profitability which keeps the engine of Nostr development churning.

#### Focusing on Content Creators
At this point, I believe that the best options would be content creators. Content creators — be they musicians, YouTubers, streamers, or writers — are currently being screwed over by their platforms (Spotify, record labels, youtube, twitch, substack, patreon, etc). These platform take exorbitant fees and they threaten to deplatform creators if they step out of line.

If Nostr could offer a seamless way for content creators (especially those aggrieved by malicious platforms) to migrate their content monetization to a Nostr-based solution, all would benefit.

#### Starting with Patreon
Bitcoin and Lightning can offer a much lower fee version of Patreon with little additional development from the work that’s been done so far. Patreon takes ~8%, if someone put the pieces together and created a Patreon, it wouldn’t be crazy that that product could profitably charge 1% or 2% instead.

Migrating would a no-brainer because most content creators don’t primary publish via Patreon, they merely use Patreon to manage the monthly financial support of their most loyal supporters. This severely reduces the amount of features needed to start pulling creators away from Patreon.

On top of that, content creators can keep their main content publishing up, and even their existing Patreon account, and slowly cut people over to the Nostr-based alternative so there’s very little risk to them.

#### Substack next?
Many writers out there use Substack or have paid subscriptions for their “premium” blog. Substack charges 10% plus the 3% for payment processing on top of that.

Nostr already provides most of the features of Substack, with some development integrating Lightning payments to unlock specific content, we can start offering a better deal for creators. The Nostr protocol and Lightning are already doing most of the work!

#### Waiting to do the hard content
Video and audio hosting is more expensive to run. Live-streaming even more so. Don’t even get me started on building an advertiser network.

The reason Patreon and Substack would be relatively easy is because they’re just managing membership and passing around text. Lightning and the Nostr protocol have already done most of the heavy lifting with this kind of content.

If we can make an amazing product that frees a subset of content creators, we can earn the right to solve audio, video and live streaming (and the profit necessary to invest in). We can survive (and thrive) long enough to keep taking steps forward.

#### Bitcoin as the payment rail, cash out in fiat
Many content creators aren’t ready to operate in Bitcoin, but there are many Bitcoin wallets (Strike, CashApp, etc) that are great bridges to fiat. This would allow content creators to get the best of the cheaper payment rails but still have the choice to pay rent in their local currency.

We’ll be able to orange pill them over time, but thanks to the work of companies like Block and Strike there’s little downside for content creators if we go this direction.

#### Purple-pilling
Once supporters of content creators migrate from Patreon and Substack, we’ll be able to show them the broader horizons that come with a Nostr-based solution. They may have signed up for the Patreon-like client, but they can be taught that their identity and their followers are portable. Not to mention all the amazing things that are only possible on Nostr.

It becomes much more feasible to convince folks to explore the rest of what Nostr has to offer once we offer that killer feature that makes them want to join in the first place.

## Until next time 🫡
If you want to see something highlighted, if we missed anything, or if you’re building something we didn’t post about, let us know. DMs welcome at NostReport (npub19md…6vzk)

Stay Classy, Nostr.