Decentralized ‘Twitter Killer’ Nostr Goes Live On Apple’s App Store

1 year ago

Decentralized societal networking protocol Nostr is present officially unrecorded connected Apple’s app store.

Nostr spiked successful popularity aft erstwhile Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey became an enthusiast of the technology, aboriginal making a 14 bitcoin donation to its creator. The enthusiasm caused the protocol’s astir fashionable mobile app, Damus, to deed its beta investigating bounds of 10,000 users –– which would punctual its developers to use for a ceremonial listing connected Apple’s app store. Today, Damus was approved, and a afloat merchandise is now disposable connected the App Store for anyone to download.

Dorsey took to Twitter to remark connected the news, saying the motorboat was "a milestone for unfastened protocols."

Nostr, an acronym for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays, is, astatine its core, precisely that. Users make an relationship purely by generating a cardinal brace –– 1 nationalist and 1 backstage cardinal –– done a lawsuit application. The nationalist cardinal is the user’s "ID" connected the protocol, portion the backstage cardinal is akin to the user’s password. The idiosyncratic tin broadcast a connection to the protocol by connecting to a relay and signing the connection with their backstage key. Anyone tin connection a circumstantial idiosyncratic by referring to their nationalist key. Leveraging asymmetric cryptography, users tin connection each different privately by encrypting their connection with the destination user’s nationalist key, which ensures lone the backstage cardinal corresponding to that nationalist cardinal tin decrypt the message.

This dynamic is akin to Bitcoin. A Bitcoin transaction ensures, besides done asymmetric encryption, that lone the rightful recipient tin "decrypt" the received funds –– aka walk them successful a aboriginal transaction. Bitcoin has since evolved from the elemental send-to-public-key dynamic utilized by Nostr, but the halfway of the thought is inactive there.

Nostr is inactive a niche project, arsenic the protocol is precise overmuch successful its infancy. Bitcoin, which is present 14 years old, is yet to beryllium adopted globally, and Nostr has but a fraction of that established history. Nevertheless, the exertion is promising, fixed it’s an open, censorship-resistant and permissionless communications protocol. With Damus’ listing connected the App Store, Nostr tin present scope overmuch much radical than antecedently possible.

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