jb55 on Nostr: Few understand this ...

Few understand this

quoting note1cwz…wqwu

I am still coming to term with #nostr having a radically different architecture that requires a radically different thinking mode on how you build apps.

The latest radical insight is that the network becomes the database. Any database record you generate can be a #nostr event that is signed, relayed, but most importantly encrypted by you (NIP44).

This approach breaks the back on commercial platform capture and lock-in.

To date, commercial platforms have always had the play of providing free services to get you into their closed databases with database records about you. Then over time, those records (not controlled by you) lead to, in the words of Cory Doctorow, “enshittification” of everything about the service and the relationship with you. Also, massive breaches are just an event waiting to happen.

With #nostr, the traditional model is flipped on its head. Instead of feeding a commercial service to generate database records about you, you can generate and sign events that can be stored on any relay, or in the network as a whole.

So just like your nostr npub is no longer beholden to a commercial provider, your nostr events (database records) need no longer to be beholden as well.

I am not discounting the existing commercial platforms. I’m just saying there is now a whole other approach. New commercial models will be discovered eventually, but right now the imperative is to experiment with this radically new approach.

Special thanks to PABLOF7z (npub1l2v…ajft) who got me thinking this way.