You know, I have a bunch of strong opinions about Nostr and more what Nostr is being used for, but Nostr's _approach_ is actually kind of interesting.
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You know, I have a bunch of strong opinions about Nostr and more what Nostr is being used for, but Nostr's _approach_ is actually kind of interesting.
A very, very simple base protocol. Then it defines everything else as an optional extension. You can pick-and-choose what you want out of that list, and it includes all of what you'd think of as the base functionality for a social network in those optional extensions.
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Hrefna (DHC)replied to Hrefna (DHC) last edited by [email protected]
Nostr also has a high emphasis on it being a _wrapper_ protocol. The base protocol is _just_ about the transit of the information.
For comparison, ActivityStreams predates ActivityPub, and AP derives from AS2. What would AP look like if it was written without AS2 in mind, without AS2 even existing, then the use of AS2 was a purely optional extension mechanism.
In what ways would that fundamentally change the protocol?
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@hrefna
I like the idea of a simple base protocol with extensions too. My main worry is fragmentation of support for extensions. This could be avoided somewhat if one can define some kind of bundle of extensions as an optional standard. Something like "foosocial.com 2.3 requires: Follows 2.0+, Likes 1.1+, Boost 3.0+, ...". Then sites could negotiate with those standards rather than trying to negotiate some common subset.Unfortunately, I think Nostr has too bad a reputation from its users.
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@wikicliff Yep, you can navigate it with a handshake. This is actually not overly dissimilar from how the XMPP protocol works as well.
Nostr itself… I have strong opinions about.
But there's some appeal in the procress.