Nostr Community Zine 10/26

Created by the Nostr community Produced by No Good Kid

Dear New Nostrich

by nostr:npub1hz5alqscpp8yjrvgsdp2n4ygkl8slvstrgvmjca7e45w6644ew7sewtysa

Dear new Nostrich,

Maybe you just arrived: no npub tattoo yet, still not sure whether this is really different from everything else you know. I was there too. Here's what nobody told me when I started:

Nostr isn't a product you use. It's a space you help build.

There's no company deciding whether your voice counts: just real people, actually listening, not because an algorithm forced them to, but because they chose to.

Through Nostr, I found my voice.

My advice: don't go looking for Nostr online. Go outside: to a meetup, a lounge, a zine like this one. The energy you're searching for doesn't live just in the feed. It lives also in rooms where real people dare to be real.

Welcome. This space is yours too.

—Tanja

by nostr:npub1f5kc2agn63ecv2ua4909z9ahgmr2x9263na36jh6r908ql0926jq3nvk2u

The Person Three Tables Away

by nostr:npub1k33k7jj2yky56x37kq2z5zg2wsc2d2jntpyf3huq4j9aqxqf5tss2w4taa

It usually goes like this: you spend a whole day at an event surrounded by interesting people, talk to whoever happens to be standing near the coffee, and only later discover that the person you really should have met was three tables away.

Nostrautica gives organizers a way to help their people find each other, not just gather in the same place. It now supports communities as well as events, and it’s free to use, including for events you organize yourself.

Introduce yourself with a few written lines, audio, or a short video. Nostrautica connects it with your public Nostr activity and points you towards people you may actually have something to talk about with, along with a simple explanation of why.

Sometimes that one conversation is the whole reason for being there.

Check it out: nostrautica.cypherpunk.today

—Nostrautica

"You were tired of playing a losing game, it's 4D chess and now you've called Checkmate"

by nostr:npub19r9qrxmckj2vyk5a5ttyt966s5qu06vmzyczuh97wj8wtyluktxqymeukr

I'm Joe Martin,

a 21st century troubadour telling my story through song and looking at ways technology can work for artists instead of against them. On my quest I discovered bitcoin and the concept of value for value, releasing your content on open protocols such as RSS and nostr and asking listeners to send value back in the form of sats. I think this is the purest and most direct way to monetise your work and creates an instant connection between artist and audience.

I think most artists are tired of the old way of doing things and it hasn't worked for the vast majority of us. So let's take a leap into this brave new world and own our own content and money with this new, empowering technology of bitcoin and nostr. When the implications of this new way of doing things is realised by the masses, it's game over, checkmate for the old system.

To take a line from a song off my new album Alone In Valentine;

"You were tired of playing a losing game, it's 4D chess and now you've called Checkmate"

—Joe

What Creation Asks of Us

by nostr:npub12ca2xp6m2ljha277snztrruyge5ewjcvu8tr3570xtmpr9wt9ycsdmlnhu

Recent events have left many in the Bitcoin community grieving. A Coldcard firmware bug weakened seed generation. Thousands of addresses were drained. Those who lost funds did nothing wrong. They trusted a respected tool and met a vulnerability they could not anticipate.

This grief is not only about stolen bitcoin. These are moments that cut deeper than code. They remind us how human every creation is. Every creation carries its creator. Creation asks presence of us: care, attention, and the courage to let other eyes complete what we began.

At Bitcoiner Talent, this clarified my work: gathering people whose character becomes part of what they create.

We were never meant to walk this alone. Let’s build with warmth… let’s meet on Nostr where you can continue reading on my profile.

—Elizabeth

rust

by nostr:npub1xff8z42r7mjrhcyxgegjnvps637hdnuvat28nrjgsezk8seh2zpseqt6y0

the damage spreads slowly, invisibly strong and solid becomes feeble and weak

the damage is easy to fix but the tools are all wrong

the damage just needs a moment of focus but distractions and worries mean the focus never comes

the damage takes hold and breaks this in two because a letter is missing

—AJ

by nostr:npub13cdawr6h8c750jpmsx7l0hgr6utd8sfudhhrdm06m6ylaus2zs4s2xptf8 & nostr:npub16k903v3yr7wx3w4ylkmkg68hkkkarrn7eaf295q55e2tz63e7jvss58n63

It’s bigger than I am, and it’s uncertain. But I’m here for it.

by nostr:npub1995y964wmxl94crx3ksfley24szjr390skdd237ex9z7ttp5c9lqld8vtf

Hey, my name is Franny!

I grew up on a farm in a peaceful village in Germany. While everything seems to go higher, faster and wider, I crave so little to thrive. And yet, so much of my time and energy goes into keeping up with a huge system that seems to demand more and more.

What I actually care about is...

...time, for myself and for the environment that counts
on me.

...connection to the things I have on my plate and where
I put my energy in.

...freedom to be and to care for each other.

I am mad at the fact that I need to take care of this huge system while I am needed here, in my local area. By the ecosystem and the people around me. But so much of the system we depend on is not made for the locals anymore.
I always felt deeply connected to the earth and its beings. And maybe that’s also why I am drawn to things that give us a little more agency over the systems we depend on.

So I am really glad about the following two things: There is Bitcoin and there is Nostr. Bitcoin gives me hope that money can exist by rules that are transparent and measurable, instead of rules that can simply be changed by those in power. Nostr is much more experimental, still. But there lies so much potential. It’s a decentralized identity protocol. To me, it means that my identity online doesn’t have to belong to a platform. It is based on a key that I can take with me across different apps and places on Nostr.
No single company needs to own the space in which
I connect with other people.

But why do we need to be online, anyway? I can only answer that for myself. I am online because I am looking for other people who also want to strengthen their local communities and ecosystems. I am part of a group that organizes meetups in and around Germany, to bring people together.
People who feel a similar tension about the systems we depend on, and who want to figure out a different way of doing things.

And I like photography, so I share what I see through my lens. Plus deep thoughts and shitposts.

I have shared stuff like this specifically with this weirdly hopeful corner of the internet for three and a half years now. I made friends along the way. People I eventually met in real life. We cooked meals together and shared life stories. It’s meaningful, because we see so much hope in each other. At first, it might seem a little backwards to spend time supporting an online community in order to strengthen local communities. But for me, it’s not. This community inspires me in so many ways. It gives me intellectual and emotional strength to put energy into the place where I actually live.

People who might have never found each other otherwise, suddenly realize how much they have in common. Ideas get shared, people help each other, we just figure out and use these tools that give power back to the people. Maybe that’s what I find so interesting about Nostr.

It doesn’t have to become another place that keeps us online. Maybe it can be infrastructure that helps us connect each other, without needing a central platform to organize our relationships for us. I hope I can do my part to strengthen the people. Maybe from that, over time, we can build more local and circular economies, meaningful crafts, stronger communities and lives that feel a little more connected to what actually matters.

It’s bigger than I am, and it’s uncertain. But I’m here for it. And I am thankful to form it along the way.

—Franny

A need is identified

by nostr:npub1q0e0dchxzm8ff5e3ww68s5m339jeccuprfhespsykrqres499sws9aspsx

A need is identified A promise is made. The community comes together. Bitcoin turns that promise into action.

Then comes the impact: a child helped, a smile restored, a life touched.

And we don’t stop there. We come back, we share the results, we learn, we update and we keep building hope.

Observe. Promise. Collect. Act. Impact. Recap. Repeat.

This is how nostr:npub10vsdn82fps4vwjaqxcpwj0nyync0cfrp2f5qlayrljh6d549gx5s0y9eap works.

—Audel TK

None of this is clever

by nostr:npub1frdmtech5c3p6e8azwapy72tc289qeavr4mr9m55xl2nxae82r0sach4dd & nostr:npub1yay8e9sqk94jfgdlkpgeelj2t5ddsj2eu0xwt4kh4xw5ses2rauqnstrdv

Seven field-tested habits for building on bitcoin and nostr, from a freedom-tech dev shop.

1. The network is the documentation

There's a trap that catches so many outsiders: assuming you need a merged NIP before you can use a kind number. You don't — the specs describe what the network already does; they don't decide what it's allowed to do. Curious which kinds are actually alive? Watch the relays. A working kind nobody documented beats an unused documented kind, every time.

2. Ship before you're done

Don't try to build everything nostr can do into your first release — it can do everything, and that's another trap. Get a working product out the door and improve it in public. Your users forgive missing features; they don't wait around for perfect ones. Perfectionism is centralised thinking — a habit of waiting for permission, and you can drop it. Shipping is permissionless.

3. Fixed price is rarely a good deal

If you're commissioning software, be wary of a fixed quote. Hourly keeps everyone honest: you participate in the build, pay for what actually gets built, and the money goes into working software — not padding estimates or cutting corners to stay inside one.

4. No spyware in the workshop

Host your own tools. Then steal our one hard rule — it does more work than any manifesto: no phone numbers, no fiat. If a tool demands either, find another tool. Yes, including Signal and Telegram — phone numbers are the account system of everything you left behind, or are about to. And when you pay sats, there is no payment data — nothing for your bank to log and sell.

5. Bitcoin is the alignment test

You can't hire for nostr off a CV — devs with years of nostr experience barely exist, because nostr hasn't had years to give. If you're building a team, pay in bitcoin. People who take it have already done the thinking about money, time, and why any of this gets built. Skills can be developed. Alignment can't be bought — and nothing matters more.

6. Nobody here clicks ads

You cannot advertise your way into this community: nostr users installed an ad blocker over the whole internet and kept walking. So how do you reach anyone? The same way everyone here did — ship in public, genuinely live on nostr, make zaps, show up. Collect nostr addresses instead of business cards. Assume the venue wifi is hostile. It usually is.

7. Relays are not archives. Deletes are not deletes.

A free relay stores your notes out of courtesy, not duty — it can vanish tomorrow, and your posts with it. And on nostr, deletion is a request, not an act: you can ask every relay to forget a note, but anyone who copied it first keeps it forever. Self-sovereignty means you design for both facts from day one — run or fund the relays you depend on, and never sign what you can't live with being copied.

If one of these habits stung, that's the one to start with. None of this is clever. All of it works.

See you on the relays.

—Nostr devs

by nostr:npub1gwa27rpgum8mr9d30msg8cv7kwj2lhav2nvmdwh3wqnsa5vnudxqlta2sz

Print the zine!

Print the zines and give them away at your meetup!

Print data (A3 format): https://nogoodkid.com/nostrzine1026.pdf

Enjoy!

NGK