So basically in my last blog I randomly started a blog without the idea of what Nostr was and what it can do. After publishing the first item, I saw my post ending up on multiple platforms somehow.
I didn't understand why because I posted it on habla.news. Also there were some differences it the comments. Where habla had (at the time of writing this item) 2 comments, blogstack only had one, but also the comments on that article were shown in my Snort and Damus app. What's going on! How is that possible?
A little bee(?) called Alby
Let's take a small step back and explain to new comers what Alby is. Alby has a browser extension that makes it easy for you to interact with Nostr and Bitcoin. Once you download and install the extension, you can setup your account and use the extension to login on websites that support Alby. I can fully describe how to do this, but I'm lazy so please check their blog.
Relays, what are those?
After seeing my content appearing on multiple websites my mind went like 'Is this the Nostr protocol?', 'Is something wrong, did I put it on the wrong site?', 'Is someone copying my content?', 'Is there a doppelgänger???'. After a small session talking to myself I soon figured out that this is probably the protocol. With a search-term on a (pretty big) search engine I figured out there is something called a Nostr NIP. A NIP stands for Nostr Implementation Possibility. More about that later.
A small side note, is there a decentralized search engine yet?
Okay, so the protocol guarantees that my content is send to those websites?? This doesn't make sense to me, so maybe something in between is making sure that these NIP's are being followed. Let's figure out.
So if I go to the habla.news page I can see my profile picture on the upper right corner and if I click on it I can see 'Relays'. Again never heard of it, but let's check this out.
You can see list of Relays with different descriptions and tags.
- Snort Relay accepts Blog, Markets and Delete and is free to use
- Damus.io accepts Markets and Delete and is free to use
- Nos.lol accepts Blog, Chat and Delete and is free to use
- Nostr.wine accepts Blog, Markets, Chat and Delete, but is paid to use
Interesting, now let's check on blogstack. You can find relays under the settings when you click on your profile.
- wss://relay.damus.io
- wss://nostr-pub.wellorder.net
- wss://nos.lol/
- wss://relay.snort.social
- wss://nostr.wine/
Mostly the same relays right? So they must share the same information sent by the same relays. But how do they operate and function? Can you just send information to it and they will accept it? It turns out not all of them. Some of the relays are paid and some of them are not. I am not ready yet to go full down under into relays for now, but I think I'm starting to get where we are going. I will figure it out later on.
Hungry?
In the meantime while I was figuring out what relays are, I was getting hungry and needed to eat (duh), so scrolling through my Damus app, I saw a note from someone mentioning nostr.cooking. Seriously? You can share the recipes through the relays as well!? That's awesome! Immediately I started cooking and wrote down my recipe for broccoli soup. Shared it through nostr.cooking and voila, another naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzpxg3lrv5rqwp4vl9cy6akks7sf7qunf5sdaccvera6kvf7rdkmp5qprxvctnwskz6umfd4cxcefdv9hxgttyv4kxjcmfda6hxttzwfhkxcm0d35j7cm9d3jhy6tpvvkhxmm4wqkhw6t5dqkhwmmjvdjhxar9wgkhxct4vdjskdw2pa. Again it showed up to my hable.news blog post. Ah, so the nostr.cooking is kind of a very nice wrapper for a blog I think!?. Awesome job! I will definitely post more cooking's :-).
NIPs
I mentioned earlier about NIPs in this blog, but what are they? NIPs are fundamental to how relays show and accept content. In the picture above you can see that the snort relay accepts blogs, but Damus.io does not. After a small research I stumbled upon the NIPs github with all current NIPs explained. Sooooooo that's a big list to explore. Let me check for the blog, which is NIP-23 Long-Form Content. This makes sense, it is a JSON format containing a "kind" key 30023 for the actual post and 30024 for a draft. Some extra metadata like an image and a summary can be added as well. Fantastic, so I learned that NIPs are just JSON formatted posts with a different "kind" to differentiate what NIP you need. Check!
I haven't scratched the service yet, but I'm starting to get it!? Still not sure how the relays actually work, but that's for later.
Zaps and sats
When I started with Nostr I didn't realize that you can earn money by adding value to the community. I thought you can just hodl some Bitcoin and spent it when you want to buy something. Until I received Sats from Zapple Pay and Yakihonne and Seth for adding content. Thanks big time, I appreciate it! My main cause of being here is to learn about Nostr and eventually help building with it. Just for the record, Sats are tiny amounts of Bitcoin, for the readers that don't know what they are. Sending Sats through Nostr are called Zaps and are also implemented into NIPs (NIP 57) with kind 9734 and 9735.
At the time of writing it is not possible to send Zaps through Damus, which is a pity, but you can easily do it when you set up your Alby account and use Zaps with Snort and Habla. Just press the Zap button and send Sats. It's that easy.
Enough for now, but my interest is growing, so looking forward to dive a little deeper into the material. Again if you missed my last blog, I am writing this as a personal journey getting into Nostr. If you have any tips and ideas, please do not hesitate to comment.
See you in the next one!