Nostr for Normies:
The status quo of most of the internet is that of full-custody, with no way to exit, or a way to participate in the system if you don’t accept its irrevocably custodial nature.
On the other hand we have nostr, which is the upmost self-sovereign system.
But lit comes with the tradeoff of extreme personal responsibility of holding one’s key in an even more challenging way than Bitcoin (you can’t spend your nostr into a new key if your old key becomes compromised)
Binary.
This work introduces a new scheme, with its own tradeoffs, but one that can fill the gap to help onboard the next cohort of nostr users without asking them to jump through too many hoops.
Learning the ropes of a new system is already challenging enough, asking new users to also learn about key management at the point of onboarding them is a very big ask with no clear benefit.
But I don’t want to become a custodian of a bunch of keys! What if we allow ANY provider to become an interoperable custodian and allow people to choose
This is akin to going from a single Wallet of Satoshi to thousands of @Fedi
In light of this aim, I’m changing the license of nsecBunker to full MIT (from MIT+CC); I want it to be easy for anyone to offer this service.
Here is a demo of a new onboarding flow for nostr applications. I started working on this after watching @rabble's keynote "Nostr for normies" at @npub1nstr...rg5l; which I highly recommend watching.
My goal here was to create a way to onboard new users without requiring them to:
* install a browser extension
* copy/paste a secret
* explain npub/nsec stuff
* without losing interoperability with other nostr applications
This flow resembles a lot an OAuth style (e.g. "Login with twitter") flow:
* You create an account in one site (e.g. Twitter)
* You can "login" to another site with that account
* You can revoke access from using your account
Behind the scenes this is using NIP-89 to find nsecBunkers that allow people to register an account in their domain.
This means that any nostr application can offer a signup/login flow on any nsecBunker domain. The application itself doesn't take custody nor ever see the generated key.
And what's cool is that any nsecBunker provider can create their own flow; they can use passwords, or not, they can require a payment or proof-of-work to create an account. They can brand their "signup/login" popup page in whatever way they want.
Here is a demo video of this new building block that is now available to nostr applications.
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