An interesting aspect of decentralised protocol design is how to avoid day-one community capture, meaning one relatively well-defined (but admittedly polarising or off-putting) community sets up shop early on, and in doing so kills off future growth. Much of the focus to date has been on how to design the tech so as not to be exclusionary. But if the day-one community is exclusionary, then it doesn’t matter so much that the tech is not. You’re just trading one exclusionary vector (central ownership) for another (community capture). The is a very hard challenge.

Raiden was designed to have the same theoretical throughput as the Lightning Network, via the same essential design. It's useful to look at Raiden's fate to understand some of the challenges facing Lightning, what's different, what's not.

"have a look at the JSON for a bit" Suggestions by devs on how normies can improve their nostr experience, leading to less churn overall. (Normie: "Who's this Jason and what is he posting?") View quoted note →