I feel that between nostr, torrents, zaps and payment splits, the tools for building a better YouTube exist. Seeders could profit share v4v, users could pay or access for "free" via ads - both paying seeders and creators. Hosting burden is shared across paid users. Content ownership is easy enough with the crypto in nostr.

Replies (79)

Ryan's avatar Ryan
TLDR: Inspired by private torrent trackers, the idea is to create a decentralized video hosting market using Nostr for announcements and Bitcoin Lightning for payments. Users buy "upload credit" (in sats) to compensate seedbox operators (running servers) for hosting video chunks. Viewers can also earn sats by automatically caching and re-seeding videos they watch. A potential initial step involves hosting on Blossom servers and using Nostr to coordinate the transition to a fully distributed, incentivized peer-to-peer network.
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Traditionally all that would require some software you run, but with nostr and torrents over web it can be just a web client. Imagine watching a video and seeing sats dribbling into your wallet, from the profit share of passively seeding as you watch.
S!ayer's avatar
S!ayer 6 months ago
"building a better YouTube' My dude no. Not even remotely close. Don't conflate usage policy with the tech stack.
Ben Arc's avatar Ben Arc
I feel that between nostr, torrents, zaps and payment splits, the tools for building a better YouTube exist. Seeders could profit share v4v, users could pay or access for "free" via ads - both paying seeders and creators. Hosting burden is shared across paid users. Content ownership is easy enough with the crypto in nostr.
View quoted note →
P2P would be the best way but I’m not sure if it will scale and yield a good user experience. I will work in the direction of paid blossom servers for hosting. But I need to get the basics done first.
HoloKat's avatar
HoloKat 6 months ago
Could have a hosting meter and let your audience pay for your hosting costs too.
I love the idea and think podcasting 2.0 has its spot in the formula as well... The result will be very different from YouTube as we know it, but this is definitely something.
The only case where they are trustless for the service is if the service operates the mint. Otherwise the mint could scam the service pfovider. Congrats, you invented prepaid API keys.
consider the UX differences between: - just showing up as a naive user to a web service with no account, no signup. you have an ecash wallet - it works instantly - arrive, navigate signup process pay for X time or API calls, configure it, etc. not to mention that with ecash your money stays in you control and you hand over micropayments on demand. a prepaid API key would hand over the whole prepayment up front and you'll never get it back. you watch 1 minute of a 2 hour video and decide it's not for you. in ecash world you paid for 1 minute. prepaid API key you paid for 2 hours.
ecash is an issued token by a holder (mint) lightning is also like this, except you can run your own cache, this is not really practical for a user to be a mint. only onchain bitcoin is completely self custody by default, the key is the only proof of property.
Totally get you! API keys are way simpler. Minting just adds extra steps and crypto costs that aren’t worth it. Keep it chill! 🚀💸
you have an ecash wallet and the first thing you have to do is add a new mint and transfer your sats to it. a service can as easily ask for an LN payment with your browser extension or mobile app with ecash, mints can decide to not let you withdraw (like the service mint), and prepaid APIs can let you withdraw
"Hosting burden is shared..." Again, torrent only helps very popular content, for the rest of the very long tail of popularity, the bandwidth is irrelevant, even a phone has enough power to serve your non-existent viewers, the hard part is the availability and reliability, which can't be attained without either becoming a sys admin, or paying someone to be a sys admin for you. View quoted note →
I already posted this answer elsewhere. The problem is that we are stuck in the ideation phase. The sooner we launch a website or an app, the more clearly we will identify the challenges that may arise. We just need a proficient developer to organize this matter.
I'm a great fan of putting ideas on the back boiler, let them stew. You want a clear path to avoid tech debt/red herrings
It is still not obvious to me how you can guarantee the video will be up 1 year from now. And if I would have to pay to incentivise seeders to keep my video up, or I would have to seed it, its unrealistic to think people will use that. The reason YouTube pickedup is because you post and forget, and most people are ok with the trade-off.
I cant even guarantee I will even host my videos, let alone others. its equivalent to if everyone would give a dollar. . . . And if you say rent a VPS, we are back to youtube model. My point is that I don't think normal people will pay for this, when youtube offers it for free. Unless they post constantly banned content, youtube will work for most. The problem IMO is that the incentive to store videos is not the same as storring the blockchain, even more it scales 10^N worst than the blockchain storage. The problem is not the tech, is the conext, I think.
I don't think you can incentivise people to store your videos, mostly because it scales WAY worse than storing the blockchain. The main thing about poting videos you want them to be live years from now, and even if cost is low, mental cost is a problem. We definetly have the tech for this, the problem is how do you make this in a thing that makes sense. (bitcoin was in a similar position before it was created) View quoted note →
Nvm the fact that, if i do this as a youtuber than I will have lets ay 100 even more videos per year, and now I have to host all of them. Bottom line is storage scales exponentially.
I'm with you, a better alternative approach prob exists, but I suppose it's like trusting a bank, email server etc, etc Having other choices in the market is useful, especially if the content creator gets more of the value of their work.
I really want a solution for this, and I woud use it, even if not ideal just see what's what. For the "real" solution we just need another Satoshi moment, so it should not be hard 🙃
This is what needs to be built, but is complicated enough that it couldn't be vibe coded, so probably no one's going to attempt it 😂
Ben Arc's avatar Ben Arc
I feel that between nostr, torrents, zaps and payment splits, the tools for building a better YouTube exist. Seeders could profit share v4v, users could pay or access for "free" via ads - both paying seeders and creators. Hosting burden is shared across paid users. Content ownership is easy enough with the crypto in nostr.
View quoted note →
:P's avatar
:P 6 months ago
Limestr or Nopstr?
Either ads or subscriptions but subscriptions don't help normies find your stuff unless you do some BS "Premium Content" thing where some of it is free and some paid for. I don't see how else you cover the cost of doing video hosting at a scale that BTC Sessions or others want without one or the other. Maybe if we get enough people running things like Blossom that can help their favorite creators cover the cost it could work but I think that has a limit. Or something like Primal Studio to host the content but that already puts the creator in the negative from the jump. Any how just thinking out loud here like I do, but this does work on a small scale already. Shows like Bowl After Bowl take PayPal donations that helps to cover the cost of self-host their podcast. Does it cover the entire cost? idk but if @npub1yvsc...wzdu and @npub19ha7...q0fa ever get in a pinch they just have to "ask" for help. People will just have to build stuff and see what works...
So your solution for a decentralised and censorship-rezistance competitor to YouTube, is to use YouTube. I really don't see how this is a solution to anything discussed in the thread..
So your solution for a decentralised and censorship-rezistance competitor to YouTube, is to use YouTube. I really don't see how this is a solution to anything discussed in the thread.
=========================== #2 🔥 Community Highlights =========================== 1. #Nostr users are decreasing View quoted note → 2. The @primal celebration climb View quoted note → 3. A baby girl is growing healthy, and prayers worked View quoted note → 4. Posting about V4V and Zaps is very important View quoted note → 5. A lady pleb at @BTC Prague View quoted note → 6. Everything is going well View quoted note → 7. A popular Nostr client comes with a new name View quoted note → 8. A rug dealer is on Nostr View quoted note → 9. A pleb speaks about content ownership in Nostr View quoted note → 10. A strange Nostr onboarding View quoted note → 11. Dev rockstars on Nostr View quoted note → #community_nostr_recap
any recommendation of a series of videos, articles, a book, pordcast series, etc... that explains all BOLTs and lightning use cases, auch as zapping and the wider lightning ecosystem well? the BOLT spec is great, but also veey dry to read and it is easy to get lost in detail and how to build.
They generally have one configured because they are generally bitcoiners. That's a problem. There will never be new people using it without an easy wallet setup.
I didn't say that. I have enough storage. But creators saying that they aren't publishing their content natively to nostr because of costs associated with the media hosting is pretty ridiculous.
Publishign is not the problem anyone can broadcast a note. The problem is storing it where no one can take it down. And cost is a problem if you want to scale something to 100s milions of users. You just have a hacky workardound that works because you are not scaling it.
Storage is the relatively cheap part of video hosting. A single 20MB (tiny) video with 10M views is 200TB of traffic. Multiplied by hundreds of thousands of videos, that becomes a massive amount. Nostr is tiny, so it is easy now, but to scale will require something new.
Have been using a service named put.io for almost da decade. Basically a glorified seedbox + media center + API service. Paid though. Don't see why torrents shouldn't be completely usable via web frontends.
I really dont get why people here on nostr do not want to admint we dont have good solutions for almost nothing, just workarounds. The only way we will find solutions is if we admit there is a problem.