0:03

We have the opportunity to rebuild the entire internet on top of Noster.

0:08

The goal is to have the entire podcasting industry adopt Noster.

0:14

Eventually I'm confident that everything will move over to Noster.

0:17

There's far more use cases than we could conceive of.

0:21

You invent something, my shit gets better. I invent something, your shit gets better.

0:25

That is insane. The addressable market is basically the whole world.

0:30

This is the thing that we're going to use to take down big tech and

0:34

decentralized institutions. This is it.

0:37

Noster is rising. For those who haven't listened to Bitcoin.review before, I'm NVK.

0:42

I run CoinKite, where we've been making Bitcoin security products and fun

0:46

devices since the very early days of Bitcoin.

0:49

Noster is a new protocol, and like any new technology, it's very hard for

0:54

people to understand the why, the what, and the how.

0:57

We are going to be talking to the people who actually build the things and try

1:01

to explain to people what and why we're doing this.

1:06

The show is not sponsored. We are supported by your Zaps and my company CoinKite.

1:11

You can follow all the Noster Rising episodes on NosterRising.com.

1:16

Thank you so much for the support. Hello and welcome back to the Bitcoin.review Noster Rising series.

1:26

This is going to be a fun one. It's Zap the Planet and Noster Money.

1:31

Is Noster the money? The money in the Noster?

1:34

You know, is the Noster the ideas to send the money?

1:36

Well, we're going to chat about it. Today with me, I have Mr. Cali, Mr. Nuts.

1:43

Yo, what's up? Thanks for having me.

1:46

Pablo, nice to see you again, sir. Nice to be back.

1:50

Thanks for having me. And Milian.

1:53

Hey guys, good to see you all. So guys, it's happening.

1:58

We have a way to like with money.

2:02

You know, it's happening, right?

2:05

It's happening. It's happening. I don't know, man.

2:07

Things are progressing and the Zaps seem to be finding some footing.

2:11

And I was a bear, a Zaps bear.

2:14

I didn't want to mix those things, but you know, I'm taking my words back.

2:18

It's just kind of fun. So, Cali, what's happening with the Zaps and the Nuts?

2:25

Well, I mean, I remember like before I start talking about the Nuts, I want to

2:31

go back memory lane for a bit because I remember the day when Zaps were

2:35

introduced on Nostr and I was working on Telegram bots that many, many, many

2:42

people used back then. And I remember the good old days where this little Telegram bot was, I don't

2:49

know, like half of the volume or a third of the volume happening on Nostr

2:55

because there were only like three services that could do Zaps in the

2:58

beginning. So I've been there using Zaps from the very first days.

3:04

And I also remember like all the issues that I had implementing it.

3:08

I mean, we'll probably touch on that Zaps, how they work.

3:12

Do you want to explain Zaps to people? Maybe some folks here won't know what Zaps are.

3:17

Yeah, so I'll try. Let's see if I remember everything correctly.

3:20

Essentially, when you say you Zap someone on Nostr, that means you're kind of

3:25

pressing a button which sends a little bit of Bitcoin to that person.

3:29

And the way that we're doing that is that everyone can put a LNURL Lightning

3:35

address in their profile. And when I want to Zap you, what my Nostr client does is it gets this

3:41

Lightning address from you. And from that Lightning address, it can generate an invoice using the server

3:48

that you ping. And after paying that invoice, you also submit an event.

3:54

Now, hopefully, I'm getting it right. So please correct me if I do something wrong here.

3:58

But at least that part might have been wrong.

4:00

But at least there's the end of the entire Zap thing is that the server that

4:04

got Zapped, so the receiver's Lightning node or Zapped host basically, needs to

4:11

post a receipt on to Nostr, basically indicating that the Zap was received.

4:16

And it's a lot of back and forth.

4:19

There's a lot of handshaking, getting the invoice, paying the invoice, making

4:22

sure that you paid it, and then giving back the receipt and so on.

4:25

So many things can go wrong in between.

4:29

Often they don't. But it's a lot of back and forth.

4:31

And another thing that tricky listeners might have noticed already is that you

4:36

can fake it till you make it, basically, with Zap.

4:39

So since there is no cryptographic link between the payment and the Nostr keys

4:45

or whatever, you're using to authenticate, it basically means that you kind of

4:50

trust the bro, that they received money, and they could just make up amounts

4:55

that weren't Zapped and just lie about everything.

4:59

But to be honest, I was a bit pessimistic about this fact of Zaps, that

5:05

everything is not really verifiable.

5:08

But I must admit, de facto, it really isn't an issue.

5:13

Zaps work quite well.

5:16

They are signals. So all the noise that could have been generated through this non-verifiability

5:21

didn't happen. And they fulfilled their purpose quite well.

5:27

Yeah. So I know Pablo would love to correct the technical...

5:32

Please, I was hoping. But before we go there, Milian, you're doing Zaps for normies.

5:38

So do you want to explain Zaps for the people who just want to understand

5:43

conceptually what's going on? Sure.

5:46

I mean, it's all cool. Zaps are working for us techies, those of us who are kind of building this

5:51

tech. That's how it started. We started Zapping each other.

5:56

And then people who are Bitcoiners, who have external wallets and already are

6:03

kind of competent in handling their Lightning nodes or even custodial Lightning

6:08

wallets and so forth, were able to jump in and participate in this.

6:13

So kind of that's the next level up.

6:16

And then at Primal, we tried to get to the point where any normie, after a

6:21

few clicks, is able to participate in this.

6:24

So we built in a custodial Lightning wallet into Primal, which is powered by

6:30

Strike. And then it's not just our techies and hardcore Bitcoiners who are

6:34

participating in this, but just anybody can, after a few clicks, get involved.

6:41

And I think it's pretty mind-blowing to see that unfold.

6:45

You've witnessed it yourself in Costa Rica, NVK.

6:50

You ran into somebody, like there was a girl who just downloaded Primal a few

6:55

days earlier, posted something, got a bunch of Zaps and bought a meal with it

7:01

from the same app. Yeah, it was pretty weird.

7:04

That girl just saw my t-shirt. She's like, hey, I'm using that.

7:08

I just bought lunch with that thing. Like complete, like no idea.

7:12

It was the weirdest interaction ever.

7:14

We made a video. It's crazy.

7:17

And the crazy part is that we had launched the whole feature five minutes

7:22

earlier, right? Yeah. It's all happening so fast.

7:27

So, you know, like the interesting thing that seems to be happening here is,

7:32

you know, Bitcoin is sort of like the money, right?

7:36

Like we have the money problem kind of solved.

7:39

You know, sure, there's some kinks. Sure, people want to think that Bitcoin can do everything or whatever, right?

7:45

Like, I mean, we can get into the weeds there, but we won't. Bitcoin is perfect.

7:48

It works. And, you know, and then we have these other technologies on top of that, right?

7:54

So like the second layers, as we call them. So you have Lightning, which is a way of sending smaller amounts of Bitcoin in

8:00

a much faster way, right? It has kinks as well, but it kind of works.

8:05

And then we have the e-cash stuff, especially Cashew, right?

8:09

Layer three. Which is, yeah, it's kind of like L2 plus.

8:14

2.5? Yes. No, no, plus, like the rainbow flag.

8:20

Gotcha. It's just like, it's unidentifiable, extra layer.

8:24

And it is remarkable, right? Because like Cashews make a completely opposite set of trade-offs.

8:29

And then like, essentially you can set a better instrument with full privacy,

8:35

right? Like, and the mix of the three change everything, right?

8:40

But then we still had a problem, which is like, how do I find people to

8:43

send the shit to? It's like, who?

8:47

You know, like, I don't have like a, you know, remember when they tried to do

8:51

SSL certs for Bitcoin through Electrum and things like that?

8:55

Like how to find people and how to make sure that they're the people you're

8:58

sending the money to, and Nostr really fixes that with some privacy trade-off

9:03

problems, which still to be solved and I'm sure will be solved.

9:06

But like, just like, as like some of the VC people like to put it, like

9:11

Nostr is like a demo for paying people with...

9:15

That's so stupid. But yeah, I know.

9:17

But it's like, but like you have to use their, you know, using their framework,

9:21

right? Like it's this fascinating thing.

9:24

It's like you have a way now to find the people you want to pay to

9:27

and make sure that they are the ones getting the money, right?

9:30

And you can do this all decentrally.

9:33

By the way, I just remembered something really fun.

9:36

Maybe you guys also know this. It was Albie back then.

9:39

Do you guys remember when people were putting the emoji, the lightning emoji in

9:43

their Twitter profile bio? Yeah.

9:46

Yes. And there was an extension that would detect the emoji and parse the lightning

9:51

address from the Twitter bio.

9:53

So you could just zap people on Twitter.

9:56

It was, I mean, what a dirty and like, what a dirty hack.

10:02

We're trying to achieve the similar thing.

10:04

Here's an extension you can see all my browser use.

10:09

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, most extensions can do that apart from the privacy implication.

10:15

But it points towards like the issue that we were facing already in the very

10:20

early beginnings of adding social layers on top of lightning or making people

10:26

connect to each other. And Preston told me this story just recently about his dinner that he went to.

10:33

And there was a guy who paid for the entire dinner and then said, you know,

10:36

you guys can just give me cash if you'd like to pay back.

10:40

And he didn't have cash. So what he did, he went on to Noster, found the guy, found his lightning

10:45

address and just zapped them immediately on the dinner table without having to

10:49

ask him for an address or an invoice and so on.

10:53

So it really achieved this. And there is like, as the VC people would say, there's product market fit that

11:00

is materializing in front of our eyes and no one is really pushing it even.

11:03

Like we actually need this stuff.

11:06

There is this concept, right? Like when technology is like 10 to 100x better, right?

11:11

People just naturally adopt it. Like you don't have to sell it.

11:15

It's just like, you know, it's kind of like when the iPhone came out.

11:18

Like if you guys ever had the original iPhone, like it was like awful.

11:22

It was really bad. The battery lasted like a few hours.

11:27

There was no app store. But man, it was like, holy shit.

11:32

Like I have like, you know, I can touch the screen.

11:35

People forget that they invented touch. And the whole browser is there, like with enough room for me to see the stuff,

11:43

right? So even though it's not like, it still like has like years to still be improved

11:49

and there's a lot to be done, like, but it's not really that sort of 10x,

11:53

right? So, and we're seeing like, there is this natural wave now of users coming into

11:59

Noster without an advertising budget, right?

12:01

Like it's very Bitcoin-like behavior.

12:04

This whole progression kind of is very much like, you know, assembling your own

12:09

computer. Like it's step one, going back much earlier than iPhone one, right?

12:15

And all the way going to, you know, any normie can use it.

12:19

It's just the Noster, it's happening like in 18 months.

12:23

We've kind of gone through this whole kind of span in 18 months.

12:26

Not to suggest that we're by any means done, but it's like, we're moving really

12:31

fast. I mean, and, you know, like the barrier of entry for Noster is a lot lower

12:37

than it was for Bitcoin, right? Like in the first two, three years of Bitcoin, there was no wallet except for

12:43

blockchain.info that you download and like, it just works.

12:46

And like, where do you get the money, right? You had to meet the dude at Starbucks, right?

12:50

And you were both looking at the IRC price list and you're like, okay, now

12:56

exchange the cash, right?

12:58

Like with Noster, like you don't have to get anything, right?

13:01

Like you get one of these clients, right?

13:03

And you start like following out of band.

13:06

Maybe you find some friends, you know, and you start following and creating

13:10

your graph, right? So like people are still struggling with that.

13:12

We addressed some of that on the last recording, but what's cool is for the

13:17

payment part, which is the topic here, we have kind of like enough to really

13:23

make a massive sort of revolution of payments.

13:27

So we have an identity layer that is actually like connecting your puppy with

13:33

your identity. I can always find you without having to ask you.

13:38

And we have a data availability or medium between us.

13:42

So we can use the thing itself that gives me your identity to also send

13:46

messages to each other that are authenticated and unforgeable.

13:51

So those things together enable all sorts of super interesting things because

13:57

the identity or the public key layer was available before, but it wasn't really

14:04

used much. I mean, PGP, for example, is an example that was there for a long time, but

14:09

only a small number of people are interested in that.

14:12

Yeah. The feds made it not happen, but that's a different story.

14:16

Yes. So with Noster, we get both of the two worlds.

14:19

Worlds basically, I can find you and I can send you a message immediately on

14:23

the same platform or protocol.

14:26

Yeah. So, Pablo, maybe you can start addressing, and then there's this other

14:31

revolution. It's like the wallet doesn't have to be in the thing.

14:35

It doesn't have to be part of the client.

14:38

And you can actually connect through Noster to access your Lightning or your

14:43

Nuts to then send people. Like it's such like a mind shift, right?

14:49

Like on how to architect these things. Yeah.

14:53

So shortly after we started using SAPs, there was this idea of using Noster to

14:59

talk to your wallet. So you could have a single wallet and use that same wallet from a bunch of

15:06

different clients without having to integrate specifically with that wallet,

15:10

which was a huge unlock. Most people basically used it to talk to wallets of Satoshi or Strike or some

15:19

of these wallets. And it's called Noster Wallet Connect.

15:22

It's just like an RPC-based communication protocol that runs on top of Noster.

15:27

I think there's a lot of really cool things when you build a protocol on top

15:31

of Noster, which means that you are not connecting to a single API.

15:36

You are just publishing a message and then something happens.

15:39

So I think Noster Wallet Connect was a huge unlock.

15:42

But you are still talking to a single wallet.

15:44

Your money is still in this single place.

15:47

One single place is offline.

15:49

How does it work? How does Noster Wallet Connect work?

15:53

So your client publishes an event, an ephemeral event.

15:56

So an event that will only last on the relays between five seconds and five

16:00

minutes. And the wallet is listening for these messages.

16:05

It's quite convoluted how it actually works, because there is a pairing secret

16:11

that needs to be exchanged between the client and the wallet.

16:15

But I'm going to like... Conceptually.

16:17

Yeah. Conceptually, the client is just publishing a message with a special private

16:22

key, and then the wallet sees that message.

16:25

And based on the permissions that have been assigned to the private key, it

16:29

decides to either pay an invoice or get a balance for the whole wallet or lease

16:36

the transaction, stuff like that. So basically, it's RPC.

16:39

You publish a request, the wallet does something, and it tells you, okay, I did

16:44

it, I paid, or here's the balance that you want, something like that.

16:48

So, yeah, I think it was a huge outlook.

16:51

And it's seen product market fit very, very rapidly, because it's something

16:56

super interesting, like the fact that you can create a client and you don't

17:00

have to build in a wallet inside the client.

17:04

It's huge, because it lowers the barrier to be able to interact with subs a

17:10

whole lot. And then a few months ago, I came up with the idea of doing a similar

17:17

thing, conceptually, a similar thing, but with Cashew.

17:21

But there is no RPC. There is no one single wallet, because the thing is that Cashew is...

17:28

Those are their tokens. If you have access to the token, you have access to the money.

17:32

So it feels, as a user, it might feel similar.

17:36

But conceptually, it's very different, because instead of asking someone,

17:39

please go and do this, you have the money right there.

17:43

And you can go in and you can spend it, you can melt it, or you

17:46

can receive money. So I'm not super bullish on the development of...

17:50

You know, on the beginning of Lightning, we tried to start sticking things in

17:58

Lightning, like Lightning messages, like Lightning node control and all those

18:03

things. And it was kind of like not wanting it to happen, right?

18:08

Like Lightning messages break, Lightning...

18:11

Like all these things were not quite there.

18:14

The concept was interesting, right?

18:16

Like it's very cool. It's like, you know, you get that in routing, all that stuff.

18:19

But it was not quite there.

18:21

It was trying to like, you know, shove like a square peg into a circle hole,

18:26

right? Or whatever is the saying. But with Nostr now, like Nostr is this very interesting, like broadcast sort of

18:35

public protocol for just communication, right?

18:39

Like it's a lot easier. The messages want to be in it as opposed to this payment network.

18:44

So it really feels like the Nostr wallet connect, the zaps, the boosts for

18:50

podcast 2.0 and like all these things that require a pipe, right?

18:56

They really want to be in Nostr. There are privacy consequences, right?

19:00

Like, and I think maybe like if anybody wants to like talk a little bit about

19:04

the privacy trade-offs, so people understand a little bit, like, you know, what

19:08

are we letting go so that we can have this?

19:12

So the privacy trade-offs are, I think they're overblown because a sub is by

19:19

definition is a public thing that you're doing.

19:21

So if you don't want to make it public, you do a lightning payment, right?

19:24

So which is, it's like a private sub, like a very private sub.

19:30

There is no, it's a communication with the lightning node.

19:34

So I don't see the public aspect of a sub as such a problematic issue.

19:41

Having the money as the, like having the receipt of the sub can be kind of

19:46

interesting from the perspective of commerce, where there could be a case where

19:52

you want to have a receipt without broadcasting to the network that you've

19:55

engaged in that commerce. So we have staff to make the sub only known to the parties that were involved

20:03

in the sub, so the sender and the recipients. But yeah, again, I don't think it's such a problematic thing, especially when

20:10

you start from the point of view that things on Nostr are kind of meant to

20:15

be public. It's not a protocol for privacy.

20:18

It's not, I mean, it's cool to have like privacy options, but you are swimming

20:23

against the current. Would you say like Nostr is like the perfect place for Rendezvous?

20:28

Like it's like, this is where you find the actor, the message, the bid, the

20:35

offer, you find the thing, right?

20:38

That's where you coordinate. And then you move on to a different comms, a different place.

20:44

That is actually what we're doing with Zaps, right?

20:47

If you think of it that way, Zaps is that, because Nostr is perfect for

20:51

Rendezvous. I really, really like it. And there are many protocols that can use Nostr to make two people meet.

20:57

And then you upgrade to another protocol on top.

20:59

And when you think of standard Zap, that is actually what's happening.

21:03

You use Nostr to find an HTTP endpoints.

21:06

You upgrade from Nostr to HTTP. From HTTP, you then upgrade to Lightning, basically.

21:11

There are a couple of layers in between until you make that payment.

21:14

HTTP is in there because of LNURL.

21:17

Yeah, I wanted to get back to Nostr Wallet Connect.

21:21

I really like Nostr Wallet Connect, and it's fucking amazing that you're able

21:25

to connect the same wallet to multiple clients.

21:28

That's what I love the most about Nostr Wallet Connect.

21:31

I can have my cashier wallet with Nostr Wallet Connect listening on Nostr for

21:37

commands. And I have a computer, I have a Nostr client on my phone, and I have

21:44

another Nostr client on that other machine. All of them connect to the same wallet and can spend from the same wallet.

21:51

That makes my life much easier because I need to maintain only a single wallet.

21:55

What's required with Nostr Wallet Connect, though, is that that wallet that is

21:59

supposed to pay, it needs to be online all the time.

22:02

So as I just said in the example, my cashier wallet on my phone is what's

22:08

listening to these Nostr Wallet Connect commands. I need to keep my phone on.

22:12

When I scroll on my computer, it needs to sit on my desk and be listening

22:16

to the commands. And that's not completely ideal.

22:19

And that's why I'm super excited about what Pablo explained, like how you can

22:25

take this to the next step with an e-cash balance that lives inside the relay

22:30

itself. Because you now have multiple clients that can access the same balance, but now

22:39

you don't require an additional software being online and waiting for commands

22:44

anymore because the balance is the money.

22:47

You know, the data is the money and you can just start sending it immediately

22:50

from the client you're accessing it. I think it's important people understand that Lightning also has a cost.

22:58

Like Bitcoin base layer transactions are very expensive for small amounts of

23:02

transactions when the network is busy.

23:06

And then Lightning also has a cost on top of that.

23:09

It's like you can transact more, easier, cheaper, but still quite expensive,

23:15

especially if you're dealing with non-custodial nodes.

23:19

And then Cashew feels sort of like this third thing where it's like Cashew is

23:24

the pocket money for you to buy coffee, for you to talk to somebody, for you

23:28

to send some cents to the guy who's playing the busker, right?

23:31

And that's kind of how it feels. So what's cool is that the privacy trade-off aligns, right?

23:38

So like Bitcoin, very poor privacy, right?

23:41

Like, you know, it's pseudonymity, but like poor privacy, right?

23:45

And then Lightning, you get much better privacy depending on how you're using

23:49

it. But then like you're now paying more for those transactions.

23:53

It's sort of like this middle ground where all the trade-offs are middle

23:56

ground, right? But you get some speed and now with Bolt12 you don't need to coordinate, you

24:00

can just send. And then like above that, right?

24:04

Like now you have Cashew where it's like there's no security like of the funds

24:08

sort of like claims, right? Like, I mean, this is custodial to a certain extent.

24:13

You know, it could be a million mints. We can talk about that later.

24:15

So you can de-risk it, but it's still custodial risk.

24:20

However, that trade-off gives you now like a wallet in your pocket that you can

24:25

just spend without any network confirmation.

24:28

It's a bare instrument, right? It's like a bunch of open dimes in your pocket, but you also get like full

24:33

privacy. It's amazing, right?

24:36

Which is what do you kind of want? Like when you're sending somebody some change, right?

24:40

Like on like a zap or a busker for his performance which kind of a lot

24:45

of times is a zap, right?

24:47

Like where maybe you're buying a coffee. Like, you know, you don't want to inform them of your other hotel or anything

24:52

else, right? So it is a very interesting pyramid.

24:56

Like the privacy goes up and, you know, like but in the cost like changes too.

25:02

It's a very interesting sort of three-layer approach and I'm sure more layers

25:05

will show up. I think this is the case because we're lucky actually.

25:09

I don't think there is a kind of a natural law that dictates that things have

25:12

to go this way because, you know, what is kind of a natural law or at

25:17

least the fact of the case is that these small payments that you make they are

25:21

the most interesting to advertisers and to surveillance.

25:26

So it is much more interesting where you drink your coffee and what articles

25:32

you read and which websites you visit where you spend, let's say, just 50 cents

25:37

or a couple bucks for these interactions per interaction.

25:41

So low amount transactions actually hurt your privacy the most.

25:46

So we got kind of lucky in a sense that the technologies that we can use

25:51

for extremely low amount payments like E-cash have this excellent privacy

25:55

properties. So one of the biggest issues of small payments which is privacy and another

26:00

one, you know, and also solving issues on the Bitcoin access in that way that

26:06

you can make these small transactions incredibly fast and cheap.

26:10

I was going to touch briefly on the custodial part because when I started

26:15

working on the Nutshack implementation in NIP60 a lot of people came out with,

26:21

oh my God, but this is custodial and blah, blah, blah.

26:24

So there is a trade-off, but when you go to the facts the usage of

26:28

Lightning within Nuster for subs is almost exclusively custodial.

26:34

Because that's the only way Lightning works. I mean, let's be honest.

26:37

And especially with subs because with subs it's not only that you need a

26:41

Lightning node you also need a subper so you need to configure the Lightning

26:45

node to publish the 9735, the sub-received events.

26:50

So it's even more complex and even most technical people are not writing their

26:57

own subpers or they are just using a custodial wallet.

27:01

So when you go to the facts usage of Lightning within Nuster is almost

27:06

exclusively custodial. And with that mindset, cashew-based wallets, it's a better trade-off because

27:14

instead of being lots of Satoshi with who knows how many Bitcoins they custody

27:20

for a bunch of people or instead of just a single custodian you can have 10,

27:25

20, 50 different mints with very small amounts on each individual mint.

27:32

So if one of the mint runs you don't really lose much, right?

27:38

If one of Satoshi is down you can't sub at all.

27:42

You can't receive, you can't send. With this, if one of the mints is down you can for whatever, for an hour,

27:47

for a day you can still use the other mints that you already have.

27:51

So within the trade-off of custodial I think that the cashew-based custody is

27:58

much, much, much better. Not only that, but it reduces some friction too.

28:04

Like we discussed the Nuster Wallet Connect and yes, you can reuse the same

28:08

wallet with a bunch of different apps and that's all very cool.

28:11

But there is friction in setting that connection up for each of the apps.

28:17

And it's all easy for us and maybe some Bitcoiners but I think the friction is

28:23

kind of significant for the normies.

28:25

Whereas with Nutsack, there isn't any of that friction.

28:29

So you're kind of solving both of the problems.

28:32

You're solving the wallet having to be online all the time and you're reducing

28:37

the friction because you have the wallet right away.

28:40

Maybe Pablo, you should explain how Nutsack works.

28:43

I don't think we covered that. Yeah, so basically Nutsack, so it's two separate NIPs.

28:49

It's NIP60 and NIP61. NIP60 is having the money in the relays so you can send payments.

28:57

And the cool thing is that you can send cashier payments but because cashier

29:00

uses Lightning, you can also just zap someone via a regular Lightning zap from

29:06

your cashier balance. Because basically you instruct the mint, go and pay this invoice.

29:13

So that's one side is the balance is literally just the cashier tokens stored

29:21

on relays encrypted with your own private key.

29:25

So that's insane. That in retrospect seems so obvious.

29:30

That's the thing. For me, this is so obvious.

29:34

We are used to you going to a new client and all your notes are there.

29:39

Your profile is there. Your contacts are there.

29:42

But your money's not. Which is the complete anti-pattern of Bitcoin.

29:49

Exactly. Like Bitcoin is literally that, right?

29:52

It's so weird. And the huge outlook most Bitcoiners get is I put my Xpub on a wallet and

30:00

I can see my transaction. And I go to a different wallet and I put my Xpub on the output script

30:05

and everything is there. But not for Nuster.

30:07

Like to me, it's so weird that we didn't do this earlier.

30:12

I think it's because we inherited the pattern from Lightning, right?

30:15

Like Lightning, it's very tricky.

30:19

It's true, 100%. It's a very complicated pattern to begin with.

30:23

We thought Lightning first instead of eCash first.

30:26

The moment we started thinking eCash, especially cash through, it's so simple,

30:31

right? Like these things became available to us.

30:35

It's just, yeah, I mean, and with Bitcoin, I mean, I've bugged Kali before

30:39

about having on-chain mints that work with Cashew and I'm sure you guys are

30:43

working on it. It's the perfect fallback.

30:47

But the thing is like Cashew without Lightning sucks too because it's too slow.

30:51

Yeah, yeah. Lightning is absolutely required to make all this work.

30:56

Lightning is the glue, you know, but it shouldn't be for users.

31:03

So the other side of Nutsack is Nib61, which is the sending of money.

31:08

And it's quite simple as well.

31:11

Basically, if I want to say I want to pay a million, I want to send

31:14

a thousand sats to a million, I just go and see which mint million said that

31:21

he likes to use and I choose one of them.

31:25

Ideally, I will find one that I also use because that means it's an intra-mint

31:31

payment, which is super fast.

31:33

Cheaper. Yeah, it's cheaper because you're not going through Lightning and it's like

31:39

nothing, milliseconds. It's an IOU.

31:42

I mean, it's all IOUs, right? And I just lock to the Cashew.

31:49

I lock it to millions pubkey, to a pubkey that million says lock it to this

31:53

pubkey. So it's pay-to-key. Yeah, it's pay-to-key.

31:56

And then I publish the Cashew itself publicly.

32:01

So anyone, if I want it, anyone can verify that the payment is true.

32:08

They can see that million trusts this mint, that the mint signed this lock of

32:13

the payment. And yeah, you can get more creative after that.

32:17

You could have like a redeem script or like a refund script or something like

32:21

that, but we don't have to open that door. But it's so much faster because me publishing the first event, me publishing

32:29

the Cashew token, that is the site.

32:32

There is no, okay, I'm paying this invoice and then I'm waiting for the Zapper

32:36

to publish the event. Like there is what Kali said before with this back and forth, these handshakes.

32:44

They're not there. It's literally I publish the event and that's it, I'm done.

32:48

Yeah, I think that the revolution is sort of like building up, right?

32:52

We started with this, just like the Basker model on Zaps, on posts.

32:57

But as we move into what DVMs can do, digital vending machines, gift wraps, and

33:03

maybe MLS with like private groups and private DMs, things really aligning to

33:10

like, it's just massive snowball that like you can't compete to Nostr, right?

33:15

Yeah, a hundred percent. So like, why don't we touch a little bit conceptually on DVMs?

33:22

Okay. Conceptually. Conceptually, okay.

33:25

So data vending machines is an artifact of, well, basically Nostr works with

33:32

kinds. Whenever you publish something, you say this is kind one, meaning a short note.

33:38

This is kind 2000, something else.

33:41

This is kind three, my contact list. So everything in Nostr is different kinds.

33:46

The kinds express the meaning of what the event means, right?

33:50

So a kind five can be, a kind seven can be a reaction.

33:54

I like this post. Kind nine can be, I want to delete this post.

33:59

So DVMs are this idea of, I'm going to publish a kind.

34:05

And kind of like Bitcoin, it has inputs and outputs.

34:09

The input can be whatever, can be like a URL, for example, can be a link

34:14

to an MP3 file. And the kind expresses, I want some DVM to grab this MP3 file and create a

34:23

transcription of the audio of this file.

34:26

So the input is an MP3, some DVM grabs the MP3 and it publishes the

34:33

transcription as a response to the event that I published.

34:37

Now, when I publish the event, I can say I want this specific DVM to do

34:42

it or all the DVMs that can do that type of job can come back and

34:48

say, hey, I can do it for like five cents. I can do it for free.

34:52

Or if you have a subscription, I'll do it for free.

34:55

And you can just, they can give you a lightning invoice and you can pay it.

35:00

Or you can even pay with cashew.

35:02

When you publish the request, you can lock it to the pub key of one of

35:07

the DVMs that you want to use.

35:09

And the DVM sees, I have the input, I have the payment.

35:13

Now I process it and give you the output.

35:15

Yeah, the cool thing here is that like without payments, right?

35:18

Like you can't really have anything too interesting because there is proof of

35:22

work, right? Somebody paid for a cycle in some server to do something.

35:27

So the incentive kind of breaks down. It's like the way I see DVMs is DVMs is essentially the remake of 402, right?

35:33

Error 402 is payment required, right?

35:35

DVM is essentially that, right? Like it's like you do a thing, there is a toll, and you can choose how

35:42

that works. Like you can pay after, you can pay before, you can pay partially.

35:46

This is all very flexible because we're going really down to the pipes, right?

35:50

Like Nostra is all the way to the pipes, 100%.

35:53

And this links in very much to what you were saying before about the

35:55

rendezvous. This is, I don't know who can do this type of job.

35:59

I will just publish it and profit-motivated DVMs will come in and say, hey, I

36:06

can serve you. I can do this for you. And I require 100 sites or I require...

36:11

Like there are some DVMs that request like a really large payment because they

36:17

are really good. So there's a DVM that does voiceovers.

36:21

No, not the voiceovers. They read a text into audio.

36:24

So text-to-audio with Guy Swann's voice.

36:28

And it's really fucking good. It's really good.

36:32

That is so funny. It's insane. So you can go to a client that supports DVM.

36:37

So Nostril, for example, you can go to Nostril, click the expand, like the

36:41

options and say text-to-speech.

36:44

And it will grab the short note and it will read it in Guy Swann's voice.

36:50

Now, DVM is quite expensive. It's like maybe, I don't know, 2,000 sats per audio.

36:56

And there are some DVMs that do it for 100 sats.

37:00

But you can choose. It's a fucking market.

37:03

And that's the beauty. It creates a very natural marketplace where anyone can come in and create these

37:10

algorithms that do any kind of job.

37:13

In Prague, I was having dinner with the author, the developer behind Nostril.

37:20

And during the dinner, someone published a DVM, a new DVM.

37:25

So his product became better while he was at dinner without touching a single

37:30

line of code. No one asked him for permission.

37:34

There was no integration. It just happened. He was, when we finished dinner, his product was better.

37:39

And to me, that is so fucking mind-blowing.

37:42

It just goes back to this new dynamic. It just wasn't possible.

37:47

This is why Nostril wins. It's the openness of it all that makes us win in the end.

37:54

We just played this out. It's just, you know, the beginning of the internet, it was a lot more like

38:00

this, right? Like you put a website, people can just rip the data off of it or do

38:04

whatever. And there was a lot less permission, right?

38:07

Who you connect to, where do you get information from?

38:09

You know, there were BBSs and all this stuff. And Usenet.

38:12

And then we had the API revolution.

38:17

Every service out there made their API available, right?

38:21

And then they put authentication because things kind of got a little bit out of

38:24

control. But the reason why Facebook happened and Yahoo happened and Google Mail

38:32

happened is because they were able to suck contacts from other big entities

38:37

because the user owned their contacts in those platforms, their social graphs.

38:42

And they allowed, those platforms still allowed them to let other companies go

38:47

and tap into that, right? So we had this massive web 2.0 explosion because of the APIs.

38:53

But then like, you know, all these companies are sort of competing with each

38:56

other, their own protocols, and they're sort of like, they're like, no, stop

38:59

this because you're taking all my users. It's like Friendster, die.

39:02

You know, it was, remember, it was like this extremely intense Darwinian thing.

39:08

It's like the next one and the next one and the next one.

39:10

So like Friendster, Orkut, you know, like, and this is happening because you

39:15

could take the contacts and give nothing back. But then like people kind of forgot that like you're supposed to own your data

39:23

as the user. Like you're supposed to, this is mine.

39:26

It's not yours, right? Like, and now they're sort of like bringing this back.

39:30

It's like, you know, none of your clients, relays, services, DVMs own the data,

39:37

right? The data is just there, you know?

39:39

And the users may choose it to make it private, but that just means it's

39:42

private data, right? Like the part that we're monetizing here is the proof of work, right?

39:48

And the proof of quality. It's like, you know, my client is amazing because I have the most beautiful

39:54

user experience, but the network graph is the same, right?

39:57

Like, and the payments just work.

40:00

Why? Because there is no, you can't corner the market on this, right?

40:05

Like you can't just corner it, it's better. Yeah, and if you zoom in on the API component, so what Facebook and Twitter and

40:13

all these other did, instead of just, here's the data, do whatever you want, is

40:18

it was much more an RPC. If you want to interface and build something using Facebook, you use the

40:25

Facebook API. You don't get access to the data and you can do whatever we said.

40:29

You need to build with Facebook, which also buys all the products that are

40:35

subservient to Facebook. Facebook can do whatever the hell it wants with those products.

40:41

Even if they're benevolent though, like the problem is like you still bound by

40:46

like the amount of PHP they can write.

40:49

You know what I mean? You also need to go into a relationship with them.

40:54

It's not like you can just build without asking them.

40:57

This is the crazy thing about DVMs. Like people, it will take some time until

41:01

everyone realizes how it changes the landscape of really pushing data around.

41:06

Because as you said, usually these systems are closed.

41:11

You have to go and knock on their door and say, please, could I use your

41:14

API? You just register or you go into a business contract with them.

41:19

We don't have anything where, you know, marketplace where everyone can say,

41:22

hey, look, I can do this. And everyone can say, I can do this.

41:26

And me as a user, I can choose who I want to use.

41:30

So this is, it's a true marketplace for the customer and for the service

41:35

provider. So, I mean, there are API marketplaces out there where you have four very

41:40

specific tasks. You can provide your hardware, for example, for some GPU work, for deep

41:47

learning or whatever, for example. But then you have kind of the opposite problem.

41:52

The marketplace is a closed place, right? So it invites everyone to join, but the marketplace itself is closed.

41:58

With Nostra, we're just opening it up every, like the entire thing is open.

42:03

The DVM might be closed source and the user might not want to share the data

42:07

that they're submitting. You can go, you know, you can protect what you're doing and how you're doing

42:14

it, obviously. But the field is completely open.

42:18

You can just throw out a request out there and wait who gives you the best

42:21

offer in fulfilling that request.

42:24

And I think that is insane. It's very hard to see, like the VC model of the 2000s, right?

42:31

Like it really sort of like, it's the invention of like parking on an invention

42:36

on the internet, right? Like it's like, it's all about monopoly.

42:40

It's like, how can you build a monopoly, right? Because if you build a monopoly, you can kill your competitors, right?

42:45

Like, and that debate through legislation, cheap credit and everything.

42:49

It's a very anti-capitalist behavior, right?

42:52

It's a very anti-freedom behavior. And, you know, with Nostra, we sort of like, we're removing the capacity of you

42:59

just sitting on an invention, right? If you're tapping to Nostra, Nostra taps into you.

43:05

It's like the matrix virus thing. Like, you know, you touch it.

43:10

It is also the network effect, as Pablo said, like the Nostrudel guy was

43:13

sitting at dinner and his product got better. This is only achievable through cooperation that is facilitated by the protocol

43:19

itself. You invent something, my shit gets better.

43:22

I invent something, your shit gets better. This is like, this is the best case that we could have dreamt of in terms

43:29

of innovation. Yeah, like Fiat Jeff said something in the last episode we were recording where

43:34

he said many things. But like, this one thing was interesting.

43:39

It's like, you know, like we were talking about like relays and scalability and

43:43

stuff. It's like, you know, you don't have access to all the replies where all the

43:47

replies. And so, for example, on Facebook, you don't see your Twitter replies, right?

43:51

So, you know, you can almost see like, Twitter is just a gigantic relay and

43:56

Facebook is another gigantic relay and the stuff is just not connected, right?

43:59

So, you don't have a full picture of the network.

44:02

Nobody has the full public square, right?

44:05

And like, when you bring this to us, it's like all of a sudden, you know,

44:08

you have access to everything that wants to have access to it, right?

44:14

So, it's like, I want my stuff to be available. But if I make my stuff available, now, you know, it's like this very symbiotic

44:23

relationship, right? Like, it's much harder to be a leech.

44:27

Yeah, it also, this incentivizes being a leech because there are some products

44:33

that are kind of tapping into Noster a little bit, but they are still coming

44:38

from the perspective of, I want to own my users' data.

44:42

So, they read from Noster, but they don't write to Noster.

44:46

But they still bring people, you know, they're exposing people.

44:50

But to me, that is such a short-sighted approach to building this kind of

44:54

thing, because, great, now, yeah, you've expanded the amount of available data

45:00

within your product, which is a great thing. But now the people that are within your product are not interacting with the

45:06

rest of the network. If I publish something in one of these applications, then I cannot respond from

45:11

Nostrudel or from Primal. I cannot respond to that event.

45:15

I cannot see it. I cannot interact with it. See, the user cannot get paid from the network.

45:20

That sorts itself over time, I think. Yeah, 100%.

45:23

Because, like, let's say there's a music client or whatever, like, that has

45:26

implemented its product this way, and they're not publishing Noster events.

45:32

There's going to come another music client that will publish their content as

45:36

Noster events, and their stuff will be more interoperable with everyone else.

45:41

So, just over time, it will kind of crowd out and make the first one more

45:46

obsolete. There really is that vibe of, you know, if you're not moving, you're not

45:50

living. Yes. You know, like, if you're not, like, constantly, like, top of your game, you

45:58

know, like, building the best thing that there is, you know, somebody else will

46:02

just come and take it. Like, which is a great thing.

46:04

Like, that's how nature works, right? Like, you can't just, like, park on your fire invention.

46:11

I think that's the case more in Noster than any other tech I've been a part

46:16

of. Yeah, you know, we had that with Bitcoin, right?

46:18

You know, it was this really amazing thing where, you know, because there's no

46:24

longer a monopoly on the money, anyone can build the money, and people are

46:27

going to build better things, right? I mean, it is remarkable.

46:30

It works. And then, like, with the Noster thing, you're doing that with the pipes, right?

46:35

And, you know, people are sort of, like, very stuck with the Twitter public

46:41

square use case, right? Because that's the biggest use case.

46:44

It's also the edge case. Everything else is easier.

46:47

Nobody's building it yet. I mean, people are starting to build it.

46:50

Like, everything else is much easier than building the public square.

46:53

The public square is the most, it's like the biggest graph, right?

46:57

Like, and handling graphs is a hard thing.

47:00

There comes, many problems come out of that, right? Like, scaling is a hard thing.

47:03

But it's being dealt with, it's working. But, like, you know, as we see, like, you know, markets and things happening

47:10

and people inventing new ways of doing markets because now the money is in it,

47:14

right? Like, I think the world changes. Guys, this was a spectacular conversation.

47:19

I really appreciate for all the time you guys are giving and for the multiple

47:22

appearances and for Kalle's commitment to being on a cashew panel.

47:28

Yes, sir. And, listen, I mean, what do you guys want to leave the people with regarding

47:35

this topic, today's topic of this series?

47:38

Milian, like, what's your final thoughts here in regards to this?

47:43

Final thoughts. Okay, well, Zaps are public payments, which is kind of, you mentioned that

47:50

earlier, somebody mentioned it earlier in the conversation, and I think we kind

47:53

of just glossed over it, but that's kind of like a big deal.

47:56

The notion of a public payment artifact is like, we haven't had that before.

48:02

And the notion of a public payment that kind of produces all the signaling for

48:07

the rest of the network. And then you can kind of go into your, you have like a wallet feed of

48:13

public payments kind of going in and out. You can browse content that way.

48:17

That's kind of like a big deal. And just to back up, I think Zaps are going to orange pill the world.

48:24

We already have enough evidence in real life to know that this is going to be

48:29

the case. Every app is going to be Bitcoin enabled.

48:34

And I think, yeah, this is going to be massive when it comes to expanding the

48:41

Bitcoin user base and basically turn everyone into a Bitcoiner without them

48:46

even knowing it. So those are kind of my high level, closing thoughts.

48:51

I mean, people without permission could be sending money to us right now,

48:55

listening to this episode as a boost.

48:58

You know, you can even do a hate boost. You suck, you suck.

49:03

And make it a one sack, one sack. It's amazing.

49:06

It's like, you know, it's an unconsensual receive.

49:10

It sounds like you're talking from experience, NBK.

49:13

Oh, it happens all the time. I love it.

49:16

For anyone out there who wants to hate Zap, NBK, make sure it's a one sack

49:20

and include the appropriate message. He loves those one sack Zaps.

49:24

Oh no, those I ignore. I have now a little script that ignores those.

49:27

If you're going to hate me on a Zap, you're going to have to pay.

49:31

There's very few things as satisfying as getting paid by a hater.

49:36

Pablo, any final thoughts?

49:39

Yeah, so I think we, like people in general, we tend to have this perception

49:45

that we got right to the end of history.

49:48

We got right to the end of innovation and Zaps or not Zaps or whatever is

49:53

the end of it. I see these things as building blocks that unlock more use cases and more

49:59

building blocks. And I think we've maybe have done, 0.1% of the innovation that Zaps, and

50:08

I'm very bullish on that Zaps, on Casio-based Zaps because they're verifiable

50:12

and faster. But I think we need 0.1% of the innovation that these building blocks unlock.

50:20

There is still an incredibly big, probably infinite design space that can

50:26

leverage these building blocks. So I encourage anyone with creativity, which is everybody, to dig in and see

50:34

what can you build because almost everything still needs to be created.

50:39

I mean, you can even do it in JavaScript. Well, I mean, JavaScript is a science, so.

50:46

It's like inventing fire and assuming that like, oh, that's it, we're done.

50:52

Let's not even get to making steel out of it.

50:56

It's just, we haven't started and it's never done.

51:00

By the time we're done, other people are going to invent something else that's

51:03

a lot better than Nostra and Bitcoin. Like, you know, it's just, it never ends.

51:09

Kali, any final thoughts, sir? Yeah, so I want to say, so this is beautiful for me because I remember

51:16

everything starting. Nostra protocol and the Casio protocol were born in a very, you know, very

51:22

close to each other in time.

51:25

So I remember watching both of them grow for a while.

51:31

And then, you know, when we started making use of Nostra for the first time in

51:36

the Casio protocol, it was the trope that many people will repeat to you.

51:40

And it is the truth because it's true, which is with Nostra, the first thing

51:45

that everyone realizes is that importing, including it to your application

51:51

means that your application gets a social graph.

51:53

This was something that many people will point out.

51:56

And it's true. And it's insanely useful because, you know, when I make a Casio wallet, I would

52:03

have never achieved the level of social UX in the wallets if there wasn't

52:09

Nostra. It is ridiculously simple to import your social graph into any application that

52:14

you want. So this is already something magical.

52:17

But when I was thinking like, how can we use more Nostra stuff with Casio and

52:23

what would be beneficial for Casio, my thoughts were more in the direction of,

52:27

you know, I have a Casio wallet here and another Casio wallet there.

52:30

I want to synchronize them somehow. Then I could use Nostra for that.

52:34

Or another thought was, like, I want to pay you while you're offline.

52:37

So I could use Nostra, something like an inbox for you.

52:41

So I can just throw money at you while you're offline.

52:43

And, you know, I wasn't going the full way.

52:45

You can, you know, from these examples, you can see that I was kind of maybe

52:50

seeing what Pablo has come up with in the horizon, but I wasn't dedicated

52:55

enough to really go all in. Now, a crazy person like Pablo comes in, and I'm so happy that he did it

53:02

and not someone like me, is and takes this idea to the next level, basically

53:07

runs with it, now putting the money itself into the relay.

53:12

And what this will enable us, like we're coming back to the beginning of my

53:16

speech here, is Nostra, in the beginning, allowed you to import the social

53:20

graph into your app with NotSaps, with the e-cash inside the relays.

53:24

We will have the same with your Bitcoin balance.

53:28

It will be custodial, but it will allow you to enter your NSEC into an

53:33

unrelated application. And this application will have your friends and your social graph, and it will

53:39

also have your money in the application.

53:41

You'll be able to spend it inside the application.

53:44

And, you know, we're just at the beginning.

53:46

I know that NIP60, NIP61 has gained a lot of attention.

53:50

I know that there are probably like three or four wallets that put that as a

53:54

basis for managing the e-cash itself.

53:57

But I'm predicting that soon we will see the opposite.

54:00

We will see other applications that say like, hey, I want to have access to

54:04

that cool feature. It's not a wallet, but it's maybe a streaming service or whatever it is.

54:08

And we will see the exact same as we're seeing with Nostra on a social level.

54:12

We'll also see it on a money level. Very much looking forward to that.

54:16

You know, this breaks another point of control, right?

54:20

Like the state can make sure that clients don't have wallets by making their

54:26

life very difficult to have wallets. And this breaks away that point of control, right?

54:31

Now, I mean, good luck, you know, trying to regulate which wallet connects to

54:36

what. It's JavaScript. It's JavaScript, right?

54:38

Like, and nobody can control JavaScript, even JavaScript itself, right?

54:43

Exactly. I mean, so, man, this is so bullish.

54:47

This is so, so bullish. I, you know, like I'm sure it's a trope.

54:52

Out there, whenever a new technology comes around, they're like, you know,

54:54

everything feels like a revolution. You know what?

54:57

Because it fucking is. You know, like when new technologies come around and then the people working on

55:03

them, the people building on them, it is a revolution.

55:05

Sometimes it's a mini revolution, sometimes a big one.

55:08

And I think we have a big one in our hands, guys.

55:12

100%. Listen, thank you so much for all you build and all you give.

55:17

And, you know, this is, couldn't be wanting to talk about any other things but

55:22

this. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us, Enrique.

55:25

You got it. Thank you, Enrique. It was great.