it's nostr. or maybe

Catallax - A Protocol for Pseudonymous Contract Work Economies

Catallax is an open protocol that enables pseudonymous contract work economies. It runs over Nostr, Bitcoin and Cashu ecash for censorship-resistan...

It seems unfinished, otherwise I would ask how many people sell illegal drugs using your protocol. Also, there's a lot more factors to privacy and anonymity besides avoiding KYC and AML regulations. If this project is about infosec then when you have something broadly usable you should really consider making a tutorial for how to make a transaction without compromising one's privacy and anonymity. I'm not impressed by the assertion that "All you need is a web browser."

it is unfinished. and when it is finished I won't have the answer to that either.

Sorry to beat around the bush so much. My position is that lightning is a privacy shitcoin. All it's doing is making a poor attempt at copying already existing, working, and purpose-built privacy coins. What do you think?

I don't think you're correct.

this and many other of @Super Testnet 's notes

You should think for yourself. I respect you a lot more than @Super Testnet at this moment in time. To be honest, it feels like you are degrading your position by focusing your attention on the privacy of the protocol. Tell me, would lightning be a trash and pointless currency if Monero was a good privacy technology? To me it seems like most people like lightning for other reasons. What about you? Is privacy the only real special feature of lightning in your eyes?

with Catallax, I am primarily focusing on decentralization and an open protocol for this kind of bounty work. All the other options are centralized platforms (lightning bounties, etc.). Nostr zaps are an extremely ergonomic solution that allows this protocol to be simple while still somewhat strong on privacy and easy to implement for a wide range of users. I am attempting to author a simple, base protocol that _others_ will extend for their own purposes. If someone wants to use the Catallax event Kinds but use Monero for payment, I'm happy for them! Ideally, the protocol wouldn't bake-in lightning or any other payment approach. as long as a payment receipt can be proven in the event, that's all that's required. Once I finish the first reference implementation I will have to take a look at loosening the lightning integration (if appropriate/possible), but for now it seems like the most friction-free path forward to get something in to the world.

Fair enough. However since it seems to me that you have put a lot of genuine thought and good effort into your project, I feel obligated to tell you that I don't see the point. Darknet marketplaces and crypto invoice services already do a lot of work to enable secure and anonymous commerce, and I can't see how Nostr would enable anything better. In fact, every single Nostr project I've seen so far suffers from the same fundamental flaw. Nostr is a solution looking for a problem, and none of the people developing for Nostr actually have a problem they need Nostr to solve. It's bizarre to me. It all seems so disengenuous and artificial. I just want to understand why people are trying so hard. Is everybody here a scounrel who has been kicked out of 109 communities and they had no choice but to find one where they control their own account? The only hypothesis that makes sense to me is that they are all people trying to earn money without creating value by artificially inflating how popular and useful Bitcoin appears with a million useless little projects using it. That would explain a lot, but I think my time is better spent trying to find alternative explanations. Do you have any insight?

I appreciate that. um.... I'll have to think about your question. I don't agree with some of the core premises.

Hey, if you don't see my beliefs as changing anything for you then there's no need to thank me. Not all statements need to produce a consequence. In this case I insul- er, let's say "critiqued" your project for my own sake. I would love to hear what statements I made that you disagree with. If I can come to understand at least one of the developers on Nostr better then I will be pretty happy.

The things that I like nostr for are these: - If something can work on nostr, that means it can work on a real p2p backend too. But nostr is easier. So if I'm doing a proof of concept, or a demo, or a hackathon project, building it on top of nostr makes more sense than doing the laborious task of making it actually p2p. - Sometimes I build systems where you interact with peers, and it's not critical for you to be online *all* the time, but your messages should stick around for at least a few days if you *go* offline. E.g. an asynchronous trading platform could work like this: you list an offer, people can post a purchase order while you are offline, and then you can come back in a few days to finish up. Nostr, unlike "real" p2p system, has built in message caching. I don't consider it reliable for long term periods, but it's good enough if you post your messages to multiple relays and don't need them to last more than a week or so. For this kind of protocol, nostr seems like a *better* fit than a real p2p backend. - It has started to work well as a social media platform for me. I check it about once per say and post messages here a few times per week, and I meet people on here and make plans for work and pleasure. It's not as good as twitter for this, but nonetheless, at least for me, it has finally become useful for its original social media purposes.

the "appreciation" was for your recognition that I put genuine effort into my project. you didn't NOT change anything for me... you've promoted me to question how I might simplify the protocol such that other payment methods would be more readily supported. the question of whether or not this is even needed - and if nostr needs to provide this - is probably something I won't budge on if I am to keep working on it. if I were to become convinced of that I'll just drop it and not waste the effort. It's an option but I don't see it happening. less fun. the premises I likely disagree with is the idea that all nostr is a solution looking for a problem and/or that it just exists to advertise Bitcoin.

I think you should consider doing the project even if nobody needs it. Learning how to do new things is valuable all by itself. Isn't it? Who here has been tangibly harmed by centralization? I know that I have been hurt by centralization and that's why I'm here. But most people I see here on Nostr don't give a shit that it's decentralized. Most people I talk with say that Nostr's killer feature is that here it's slightly more convenient to give eachother Bitcoin. Sure, if developers put in the effort then I'm sure this fragile clearnet platform can be made to better facilitate selling drugs and posting child porn. But I can already do all that shit on the darknet easy-peasy! I don't want federal agencies focusing their attention on the one clearnet platform that where user accounts aren't controlled by centralized moderators! Who does that help? What is Nostr about if it isn't about Bitcoin? Is it truly about making an alternative platform that empowers people to talk with scoundrels like me?