Nostr is Not for Social Media

Why the Utility of the Protocol Relies on Social-last Applications

Nostr is dead. Or rather, should be dead, at least in the way that most people think about it.

I've been building on Nostr for almost 4 years now, and the biggest thing I've experienced amongst the products being built on top of the protocol is a stasis of ideas. Nostr is stuck in a landscape of "social".

Yes, the social media aspect has been key in bootstrapping the network and activating awareness, but social media has already been won. No matter how much we speak about "freedom of speech," "deplatforming," "censorship," and the like, people (1) don't really care and (2) aren't looking for that from social media in the first place.

Social media is an information substrate that thrives off of network effects (often requiring gatekeeping to keep subjects in states of friction) and reach. The number one thing that people use social media for is to maximize eyeballs to whatever it is they are putting out there.

Attention and metrics are the name of the game.

Optimizing retention, building a group of followers/fans, and overall finding a diversity of people that will engage with your content. It is breadth over depth, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. People want to reach as many other people as possible that can be interested in their creation (whether it be videos, articles, products, what have you), past, present, and future. Social is a very useful tool for finding your niche and your people (even your bots!). Not every connection has to be optimized for depth, nor are we capable as human beings of doing so across every relationship we have. Broad social networks also expose you to many areas of interest and thought, leading you out of echo chambers. Sure, you can argue (and I largely agree) that the algorithms used to feed you content are built to drain you and incentivize toxic, divisive behavior, but that's also largely up to your mind and what you choose to engage with and linger on yourself. Algorithms are, by their nature, driven by your very actions, and can be consciously altered with active tailoring and effort. The point here is that social media isn't broken; it's doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Nostr first and foremost is a protocol. Not a social media alternative. Not a free speech platform. A protocol. And with protocols, the primary purpose they serve is to facilitate intercommunication between systems and applications. Nostr itself isn't an app, and should stop being advertised as such.

"Join Nostr" is a harmful framing. We should instead be saying "Join Primal," "Join Damus," "Join Amethyst," etc. This flips the script from people blaming Nostr for faults in the applications built on top of it. Bitcoin frankly faces the same issues, which is why I largely believe new wallet apps should stop being funded or founded, but that's for another time.

By leading with the apps instead of the protocol itself, we stop conflating the application use-cases with the utility and versatility of Nostr. Sure, the largest use case of Nostr is social media currently, so one could argue that is what Nostr is for. But it does the broader ecosystem a disservice to make "join Nostr" the default tag when we onboard people to social clients, or any client for that matter.

Nostr should be marketed towards developers, builders, and founders, not users/consumers. It is not a consumer product. It is a technical product that provides technical solutions. Nearly free (if not entirely free) startup costs to test and store live data. Redundancy for data storage. Simple docs and AI-native data structures for rapid iteration and testing. Resilient and modular backend for hobby hackers, black hats, and corporations alike.

This is why Nostr seems "broken" or "complicated" for most users and normies. We throw out all the freedom and technical jargon that puts people against a wall they can't work themselves up and over. If instead we promoted apps and their solutions to specific demographics, meeting their needs and sharing how it actively improves their experiences, we can slide freedom in as a foundation without them even needing to know. ESPECIALLY in apps outside of social.

E-commerce, compute, authentication, cloud storage, comms, you name it. Building experiences that truly stand out against incumbent systems to provide cheaper prices, better customer service, agentic integrations, seamless data transfers, and the like are all essential to grow and spread the use of the technology.

Technology is a means to an end, not the end itself. Solving meaningful problems for others and improving our collective wellbeing are the reason we exist. Build solutions that matter. Start with the problems. That is how we move the needle for Nostr, Bitcoin, and the greater ecosystem as a whole.