Last year I posted about the n3xB project - a proposal for an open protocol to facilitate Bitcoin exchanging across a globally shared order book, hosted using Nostr. A year later today, I got the idea a lot more fleshed out - including a Rust library implementing the protocol, along with a demo iOS/macOS application and demo videos showcasing how this can work. Hoping to get more interest and feedback on the idea. The hope is to make this an open standard for the decentralized exchanging of Bitcoin, similar to how Nostr itself is an open standard for decentralized social media applications. Checkout the revamped portal for the project at n3xB project at

n3xB

n3xB - naive nostr nym exchange for Bitcoin

Nostr based Layer 2 Protocol for Bitcoin / Fiat Exchange

Things might have gotten a bit over-complicated. Let me try to untangle this once more: - n3xB is an in-development open protocol for creating P2P Bitcoin exchanges & order book on top of the Nostr network. Think n3xB is to Coinbase, as Nostr is to Twitter. - Fatcrab is a fictional sh!t coin simulating fiat, with a website simulating an online bank. This is created only for the purpose of this demo. - Fatcrab trade engine is built with Rust on top of the n3xB protocol library to facilitate trading between Fatcrab and testnet/signet Bitcoin. - OceanSea is an App built with Swift and compiled so far for macOS to provide a demo UX for using the Fatcrab trade engine. The OceanSea macOS App, link to Fatcrab webbank, Video overview & demo, along with Github codebases can be found at

n3xB

n3xB - OceanSea Trading App & the Fatcrab Trade Engine

Demo implementation of the n3xB Bitcoin exchange protocol

Got a landing page for the OceanSea x Fatcrab project, including the compiled & working macOS binary for the OceanSea Trading app. Check it out

n3xB

n3xB - OceanSea Trading App & the Fatcrab Trade Engine

Demo implementation of the n3xB Bitcoin exchange protocol

Just made another video. Demonstrating how the OceanSea apps are used to make and take a Fatcrabs buy order using Signet Bitcoin. Will have the actual OceanSea macOS app binary out in a few days

Just created a video overview of the Fatcrab demonstration project. Its mean to demonstrate how the n3xB Bitcoin exchange protocol library can be used to create a mobile friendly decentralized fiat on/off ramp around a Nostr based global order book. More collaterals (including the macOS demo app itself) to come over the coming days

They are fighting you, have always been, no signs of slowing down. Chokepoints, Binance, ETFs, now Samurai. Are you going to sit there and pretend ‘we win’ is the inevitable next step? Are you going to stop LARPing and fight back? Or are you just gonna coil up and surrender? Your choice anon

Working on Bitcoin is thankless, profitless work. LARPers going to stack and leech off builders’ time. This incentive misalignment is one of the achilles heel of Bitcoin. Why so few projects around Bitcoin got big. Don’t agree with this note? Go to the App Store or any sizable search engines (whichever one you want) and search “Bitcoin Wallet”. See how many non-custodial Bitcoin-maxi projects are there. And how much centralize shitcoin scams are there instead. Don’t like this note? Stop LARPing and start building.

Haven’t been too active the past bit. But finally completed an entire revamp of the n3xB protocol write-up after various feedback and inspiration from other related projects. I consider this v0.2. Will build the n3xB order book engine next. And then proceed to build the first trade engine on top, and finally a mobile client. Have not quite decided whether Lightning is better or on-chain is better. On-chain (similar to Bisq) has much lower counterparty risk as a Lightning escrow is a custodial trusted 3rd party (RoboSats/Mostro/CivKit). Further explanations of the protocol itself, along with example implementation of trade engine and message flow can be all found in the n3xB GitHub repository. Would love to see constructive feedback!

GitHub

GitHub - nobu-maeda/n3xb: naive nostr nym exchange for Bitcoin - An open protocol for decentralized Bitcoin exchanging and a global common order book

naive nostr nym exchange for Bitcoin - An open protocol for decentralized Bitcoin exchanging and a global common order book - nobu-maeda/n3xb

Just uploaded to Github a repro demonstrating the usage of a 2 of 2 multisig to lock-up trade and bond amounts atomically funded by both the buyer and the seller. The locked amount can be payed out (more going to the buyer than the seller) by both parties signing (after buyer paid seller fiat, for example). If both parties cannot reach an agreement to unlock the locked up funds, an arbitrator can sweep the funds only after a timeout on a fixed number of blocks. This trade mechanics is basically what Bisq is doing today, except implemented with less on-chain Txs (2, instead of Bisq still using 4). Also, this exercise also demonstrates that this can relatively easily be implemented using Block/Spiral’s Bitcoin Development Kit.

GitHub

GitHub - nobu-maeda/n3xb-bdk-derisk: This is a Rust playground to learn how BDK works and derisk the necessary components needed to implement the proof of concept rusty-n3xb library

This is a Rust playground to learn how BDK works and derisk the necessary components needed to implement the proof of concept rusty-n3xb library - ...

The goal is to have a single protocol for common trade offer discovery - creating deep liquidity pool. The competition should be on trade mechanics and client user experience, not by fragmenting into silo’ed order books. The latter would be more like Mastodon and former more like Nostr itself. We need to be more like Nostr itself. The time to do it is now and there’s no time to wait, before many platforms get ossified into their own closed ecosystems. United we stand. Divided we fall.

Just shared my super naive playground of using Nostr for some of the offer discovery and trade initiation flows onto Github. The purpose is just to derisk, and not meant to reflect too much on the actual implementation for the initial PoC. Still working on my other playground that tries to construct a multi-sig across multiple BDK powered wallets. Will update the proposals once again with all my learnings once both of these are complete.

GitHub

GitHub - nobu-maeda/n3xb-nostr-derisk: This is a Rust playground to learn how Nostr works and derisk the necessary components needed to implement the proof of concept rusty-n3xb library

This is a Rust playground to learn how Nostr works and derisk the necessary components needed to implement the proof of concept rusty-n3xb library ...

It seems Nostr based P2P marketplace is all the rage these days. And people are viewing it as if these are competing solutions. My intention has always been to create a single open order-book on Nostr that no one owns. There is literally no money to be made in this. And I’m doing this anon so even repuation and glory upside is highly limited. The only reason to do this is to create ways for on-off/ramp into and out of Bitcoin. My stack gaining purchasing power is more than enough motivation for me. When I started nobody was talking about this. Now it seems to be all the rage. I am more than happy to drop n3xB completely if someone already got this vision built. The competition should not be at the protocol/order-book level. The competition should be competing clients, liquidity providers and arbitrators - NOT competing order books and protocols. If it’s the latter then we already have it in the form of Bisq and RoboSats, and would be zero reason to put this on Nostr. The only reason to put this on Nostr is to have an inter-operable, highly liquidity order-book, instead of having wall gardened orderbooks, albeit P2P, etc that we already got today. If anybody is building ‘competing protocols’ that is also meant to be an interoperable order-book, we should talk. One of us should drop. I’m more than happy not building protocols and build mobile clients and UX instead. DM me.

Some men are dangerous because they are violent, antisocial. We are more dangerous because we are not - we are far more dangerous to the establishment because we want a better world to be built.

I am going to admit up front. I’m mostly anon LARPing. Despite Tor and not using CC and VPN and anon E-mail and all that. I highly, highly doubt someone sufficiently determined is not going to be able to doxx me if wanted. I am not sure how Satoshi did it. Question if some people actually know who Satoshi is and just not telling. Good Bitcoin doesn’t care who Satoshi is, one way or another.