Recently realized that the same tools underpinning Nostr could be used to underpin a decentralized accreditation system for businesses and professionals. All an accreditation system really is is a reputation tracker. Is business A engaging in their business in a manner compliant with proper business practices? Is the person who is claiming to be a PHD of Physics actually a PHD of physics? Does this psychologist I'm looking to hire for my own treatment have a history of abusing patients? These kind of questions. So, let's say someone wants to be accredited, I'm going to use Brett Weinstein as an example. He creates a private key (let's say asec and apub, 'a' for 'accrediting'), and sends a message that says simply "I am 'Brett Weinstein' ", adds his professional photo, signs it, and posts it to a bunch of relays as an identity statement. He reaches out to his professional collegues who have similarly put out an identity statement, and they put out signed recognition statements: "I approved Brett's thesis paper for his doctorate in (year)." "I taught alongside Brett between (year) and (year)" "I co-authored (research paper) in (year) with Brett" "I was in a class Brett taught in (year), he is evil incarnate and I'm woke" etc. Then whenever anyone is wondering whether or not to hire Brett for some position, or whether or not to hire him, they can just check his apub to see what his record is. Relays could consolidate the overall scope of recognition statments they receive, generating what is essentially a score for a person, and by crawling along this web of reputational history a person can be properly recognized for who they are and what their qualifications are. The relays could stay afloat by charging a fee of a few sats for every post they receive and every call for data they get. It's at least as good a system as the current centralized one and it could be implemented at any time, with minimal development effort.

Curious how common this is: I first bought bitcoin, about a year after really starting to learn about it, in December of 2021. I started buying seriously, with constant DCA, in March of 2022. I have LOST net purchasing power buying bitcoin. The only time I've ever sold any of it is because the good I was buying didn't take bitcoin. I'm all in. Anyone else got a similar experience?

Have you used #Loop? Whenever discussions about bitcoin and kyc come up, I'll often see comments about Coinjoins with Whirlpool, or more about just not using kyc. These are great of course, but I rarely see comments on my favorite way to deal with kyc bitcoin, that being Loop. Step 1: Have a lightning node. Great idea generally. Step 2: Get on-chain bitcoin. Preferably above 0.01 BTC. Let's assume it's tainted with kyc. Step 3: Make a lightning channel with a well connected node. ACINQ, Wallet of Satoshi, breezy, someone with very high connectivity. Step 4: Loop out all of the funds from that channel to cold storage, except the channel reserve and active funds you're gonna use for zapping people/buying goods. Congratulations you just broke all on-chain trace of where the hell your money has gone. And that's not all. You can come along and loop-in -> loop-out more kyc funds later, and those are even better off because they aren't indicated to be part of a channel with any connection to you. As for fees, I haven't done a direct side-by-side comparison against whirlpool in a while, but it averages 0.35% for each side, or about 0.7% to loop in and then loop funds out. Hope you find it useful.

#[0] Could clients be set to filter out all events from non-NIP5 verified accounts on public relays, while allowing for paid relay events to display normally?