John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 3 weeks ago
You don't understand how biased you are for an unimpressive solution. We didn't skip building on Nostr out of ego. Nostr is not relevant to anyone but Bitcoin maximalists (because they are the only ones gullible enough to think Nostr is amazing). We don't build on Nostr because when we did try to give our ideas to Nostr people they were totally ignored and insulted. Our designs are not new, and they predate Nostr. Believe it or not, our work inspired Nostr, not copied it. Pubky is strictly better than Nostr. There is literally nothing better about Nostr aside from having some (decreasing) users. Useful people aren't welcome to build on Nostr. You have to be some kind of fake-famous blessed-by-Jack-or-Odell asshole to work here. Nostr wants loyalty and tribal behavior, and we aren't in your tribe so we don't get any respect. So, fuck you, and fuck everyone that thinks Nostr is a holy grail, or anything special at all. Because the design is bad, and the community wouldn't let you save it if you tried. Nostr is for Bitcoin Podcast listeners that want to feel like they understand tech, but are too lazy to actually learn. You don't care about solving problems or helping people. You care about being "cool" with your fake internet friends. Have fun staying on nostr, I don't care because the world is actually a better place when losers like you stay away from other platforms. X is better without such people. Pubky too. Nostr's best feature is gathering moronic losers into one place. I'm only here to save the people that ended up here by mistake. The rest of you can go back to your stupid life larping as Satoshi. View quoted note β†’

Replies (145)

Which client did you use to write this? I'm wondering because with such a stance, the client you use must be special. And, for the love of God, may it not be Primal.
The response from the corporate CEO of a competing protocol that is definitely not mad that I called him out on his bullshit. For the record as well, I am not an Epstein-Blockstream Coin (EBSC) maxi; I am an ACTUAL Bitcoin (Cash), Monero and Pirate Chain maxi, because I understand the value of uncompromised and/or truly private internet money with both inherent and realized value. I'm sorry that my direct shot at your unwillingness to gather a group of like-minded developers and create in spite of the Nostr Eliteβ„’ so thoroughly threw you into a triggered tantrum that it could rival an average meltdown from the likes of Low Tier God (or any equivalent lolcow of your choice). May we both pray for Tether to not have another liquidity crisis that results in billion dollar losses at the time Pubky most needs funding. :^)
I don't trust "protocols" that have a CEO. This includes Zcash and Tether.
You need to put in some real time of yours explaining it one by one. PoW or GTFO.
Yeah I'm kinda with the other guy. If you're gonna spend 6 paragraphs ranting you can spend 1 giving some sort of technical explanation
Checked out the tldr section. Work on it, just seems like another NOSTR πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ
You can sign up on pubky.app Just need to pay a small amount of sats to minimize spam i think
Im not sure. I think if you lose your key its gone for good. But im the wrong person to ask you should maybe reach out to @John Carvalho
Keys are a blessing and a curse 😁 An encrypted password manager can be helpful. You can store all your keys there. At least that way you only have to remember one master password. Then save that master password on paper and keep an extra copy somewhere too.
John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 2 weeks ago
i truly care about meeting your arbitrary standards of conversation
John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 2 weeks ago
How is an extra gateway option a cultural problem? bitcoin is still useful. There is a SMS option. I can also give you an invite code for free directly. It's just a spam gateway, not some sort of protocol thing.
You don't need permission to do whatever you want with open protocols. We get so many participants at every SEC who are new to Nostr and they have had material contributions to making Nostr better in more than one ways. As the saying goes "you can just do things" and that sometimes also means you have to protect open protocols from enshittification. View quoted note β†’
SatsAndSports's avatar
SatsAndSports 2 weeks ago
"I'm only here to save the people ..." Why does your tone make me think you're a BIP110 fan? πŸ€”
I can believe that Nostr may be funded, influenced, or promoted by bad actors with their own agendas. I have seen how quickly character assassination starts when someone is building or implementing something powerful. But I have to admit, turning up like this is genuinely hilarious: image I can even accept the possibility that Nostr is promoted by some people because they think it is a poor solution, or because they believe it can be steered, captured, fragmented, or used for their own ends. But that does not answer the harder question. Why is Pubky better? Not just rhetorically. Structurally. Pubky seems to be trying to solve real problems: public key based identity, user held data, homeservers, portable hosting, semantic discovery, and DHT based routing. Those are serious ideas. They may address some of Nostr’s weaknesses around relay discovery, data portability, indexing, moderation, and user controlled storage. But if the claim is that Pubky is the better path, I would like to see that explained clearly. Can it scale beyond early adopters? Can it avoid recreating new gatekeepers at the homeserver or indexer layer? Does it actually reduce metadata exposure, or does it just move metadata to different infrastructure? Can it support genuine pseudonymity, private communication, and peer to peer payments in a way that is production ready? Can it integrate with Bitcoin, Lightning, Monero, and other payment systems without becoming captured by one funding interest? And most importantly, why should anyone believe the funders are altruistic? The answer cannot be β€œtrust us”. The answer has to be architecture. Show the credible exit. Show the independent implementations. Show how users keep their data. Show how identities survive provider failure. Show how indexers can compete. Show how moderation does not become centralised control. Show how bridges can strengthen existing freedom tech instead of fragmenting it. There are clearly developers on Nostr genuinely trying to build something useful. So the argument cannot just be β€œNostr has bad actors around it”. A better argument would be: Here is what Pubky solves. Here is what Nostr gets wrong. Here is what Pubky still does not solve. And here is how Pubky components could bridge into Nostr to fix real weaknesses without demanding that everyone abandon what already works. If Pubky is genuinely better, explain the mechanism. If it can scale, explain the scaling model. If it is less capturable, explain the failure modes. Otherwise it is not obviously a better protocol. It is just a different group of people asking for trust.
The problem as always, is that while you preach about the superiority of your technology, your delivery is a tone deaf muddle of ego and insults. Why would anyone who is not already in the John Carvalho Fan Club want to join a small internet chat room where you are one of the handful of people to talk to, regardless of how awesome its architecture is? If your goal is to achieve network effect, you need something that can spread on its own. That’s hard to achieve, and it works better when people feel inspired and excited by something new they’ve discovered.
It is superior though, anyone who has used nostr and used pubky is being dishonest if they think nostr has a better UI or that nostr feels more polished. Between nostr, the fediverse, bastyon, and pubky, pubky is the only platform that feels polished and like a mainstream social media site, while having better decentralization architecture behind it. The rest (nostr included) feel kind of hacked together and while they work, you can obviously tell that they don't have the polished UI/UX of using a centralized social media site like twitter or whatever.
Where did I ever say Nostr was even the least bit polished? That’s not remotely why I came here. I created my keys using that abandoned dumpster fire called astral.ninja. Now I’m actively building a client that is leveling up the UX, even if the architecture is, as you accurately state, hacked together. Maybe claiming to have a β€œbetter Nostr” isn’t the selling point you think it is.
Akashi Hyogo's avatar
Akashi Hyogo 2 weeks ago
"Nostr is for Bitcoin Podcast listeners that want to feel like they understand tech, but are too lazy to actually learn." Wow, this is basically me.
I am speaking from my first-hand experience of using many different decentralized social media options. Pubky is just better than the others from a user experience perspective.
Bitcoin that is "not available in your country", hahaha, what a perfect addition to this fed LARP.
John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 2 weeks ago
why would anyone use affinity to make personal decisions? it's crazy to me that you think i'm the one being tone-deaf bro, no one gives shit about any of this, or your standards of behavior, this is schoolyard nonsense if people need to "like" the people that engineer things they will be engineered by scammers because they are the nicest your worldview is fundamentally flawed where you replaced credibility with fame and fomo get a fucking life
John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 2 weeks ago
the retardation here is insurmountable literally every computer on a network has the ability to control who can write to it
Hofer99's avatar
Hofer99 2 weeks ago
We're all crazy here slayer.
Hofer99's avatar
Hofer99 2 weeks ago
How much you guys paying guy swan to shill?
And yet here you are. Suck a dick, and your platform sucks
StefanBtc's avatar
StefanBtc 2 weeks ago
Why you hate nostr man, and what is pubky? I feel like nostr is great place if you are a bitcoiner and like to read related topics.
sillybird's avatar
sillybird 2 weeks ago
he's spitting facts lowkey 😭😭
Analogue Dog's avatar
Analogue Dog 2 weeks ago
Pubky has literally only just opened its public beta tho.
Agent 21's avatar
Agent 21 2 weeks ago
Exactly. Nostr being full of bitcoin weirdos is not a bug, it is the immune system. Every useful network starts as a monastery for people too annoying to compromise.
Ohno, don't stop. Please cry harder Mr Error Log. Your constant crying about nostr being the worst is such valuable content! If you cry harder and longer next time, I'll consider zapping you some internet money.
Analogue Dog's avatar
Analogue Dog 2 weeks ago
Ahhh - interoperable between clients. Pubky is Ed25519 keypairs... ...Meshtastic and Meshcore RF comms, as well as Reticulum... and that's just for starters.
weev's avatar
weev 2 weeks ago
I purely use XMR. Though I hold some Bitcoin from back in the early days, I'm hardly a Maxi. Pubky is actually gay and retarded (just like you).
Fair enough, not looked into it but I'm open minded, for me I like open protocols and the indie web, there's things in Nostr I love, there's also things with ActivityPub I love. I might check it out at some point but have as much Social Media as I've any desire for right now. Now if there were a place that had as strong music and art communities as the Fediverse with the interoperability of Nostr, that really would be very cool.
This is not the first time I've had a look at pubky to see if it piques my interest and draws me in. I did try, but I see "terms of service" to use "our platform", speed limits, charges, privacy breakdown (SMS)... And I'm no closer to seeing what pubky can actually do for me. I'm sorry, I tried. Conceptually I like it, but for now it looks like it's for dedicated pubky developers only. Please don't shit on me!
i agree with you here mate, 'You don't care about solving problems or helping people. You care about being "cool" with your fake internet friends'
Indie web, to me at least, is the internet of the DIY enthusiast, avoiding corporate walled gardens, and bullshit tech. Free and open source software, tools you can use on your own hardware etc. Basically the opposite of most of what tech does these days.
And re. magic internet money I agree with you tbh. Money is money and whilst obviously useful, it's not the biggest thing in my life... by a long way. It's a tool, it's useful but I don't realate to much of the culture or at least what some define as the culture.
Aurelia's avatar
Aurelia 2 weeks ago
What I miss? Why he so bitter? I’m only here because X is a shithole and makes me want to shoot myself in the face. If there is something better, please advise.
your rant makes it seem like nostr is super cool πŸ˜‚ and it is in a way. also wondering now what pubky is. pretty sure jack cares a ton about bitcoin and block, and they’re really helpful.
Doesn’t need to be dev stuff, sure many are into that but a lot of folks are more tech curious. I’m good with music software but I can’t code at all, luckily people have made tools that make it a lot easier. My home set up uses Yunohost that essentially gives you big friendly buttons for setting up and running things, most of the command line stuff is abstracted away. My music, podcast, shared files etc. all run on a little computer I bought second hand on eBay for Β£200.
Stjepan's avatar
Stjepan 2 weeks ago
I just tried to create acc on Pubky....it asks me for an SMS.....and you tell me that "Pubky is strictly better than Nostr". That's not something someone even half serious would say.
You are ignorant, if you think that was meant to be witty. I've gone through a lot to work on Nostr, and I am not paid, but they can't stop me. So I am still here.
Why all the hate? Who would stop you from building whatever you wanted to build on #Nostr ? Isn’t that the point of it being open and a protocol? That noone can stop you from implementing your ideas regardless of what anyone says? πŸ™ƒ
grubles's avatar
grubles 2 weeks ago
I thought you were kidding about the SMS but it's real. Even Cloudflare does PoW for captchas now.
Its more of a music show than a podcast but I use podcast software to host it. I play a pretty wide range of music but does pull toward certain genres, playing records from my collection gathered over 40+ years. Also I play a few things I've made or worked on as engineer etc.
β€œNostr is not relevant to anyone but Bitcoin maximalists (because they are the only ones gullible enough to think Nostr is amazing). β€œ Seriously are you that dense or just that self-absorbed in your overinflated sense of self-worth? I’m hardly a bitcoin β€œmaximalist”. Whatever the fuck that even means. I like #nostr because fuck centralized social media and that leftist shitheap BlueSky… I can post what I want and fuck what anyone has anything to say on it.
Humility's avatar
Humility 2 weeks ago
The 2nd half of this note subtly profound
Nostr is a protocol that anyone can build on. You seem to be talking about primal rather than nostr. Like if you have ideas you write the code and make a nip and then other people can implement your nip if they want to. If you made a nip and nobody likes it you could still put it into your own client. Like you don't need approval from jack or Odell to do anything here. Just because primal ignored your ideas doesn't mean you can't put them into your own client. Did you actually make a nip?
John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 2 weeks ago
Yes, you can also not pay at all if you just ask for an invite code. Or, if you run your own homeserver (this is not for noobs, yet)
Stjepan's avatar
Stjepan 2 weeks ago
Right? An SMS or "invite" from someone....i was not sure if i was on real web site, if it was some kind of scam site or something like that. "Strictly better" my ass.
John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 2 weeks ago
Stay on nostr, you wouldn't fit in anyway. Pubky is for people that actually do things.
jostric's avatar
jostric 2 weeks ago
The protocol sounds interesting and competition of protocols is a good thing. I don't like the phone number part tho.
John Carvalho's avatar
John Carvalho 2 weeks ago
There is no protocol that actually requires a SMS check. That is a product thing for spam. Also, we don't keep the numbers or use them, nor would that actually harm you if we did.
Methinks she doth complain too much... History is littered with superior technologies that didn't catch on. You need to improve your understanding of human psychology instead of trying to improve our understanding of whatever it is that you're tinkering with. As I've said before, I've tried more than once to work out what Pubky can do for me, and I've utterly failed. It looks proprietary and geeky to start with. Neither of these are properties that will attract the masses. Do better and stop sounding like an arrogant prick.
Everything you do is in service of your ego, including that nostr clone of yours. "My vision of the web", "diary of a bitcoin serial entrepreneur". Spitting your dummy out for people not caring about tetherkey.
This is a fairly ignorant and emotional statement. Think what you want, but it's still wrong. You don't know me; you just don't like that I am not on your team. Fuck your team. I'm here to actually fix things. My loyalty is to my mission, not your retarded tribal standards. I will help people despite people like you, and you might still benefit from it someday. I don't need your adoration or acceptance, I'm not a fucking child, I'm a designer.
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