#271—Hard Yaka at Nostrasia

What we’re building

Oct 23, 2023

Welcome to Yaka Stuff, our weekly newsletter that covers news, industry perspectives, and updates from the Hard Yaka ecosystem. Check out our last report here.

This week:

Hard Yaka at Nostrasia
A quick Nostr primer
Nostr in Asia
Building on Nostr
Elsewhere in the ecosystem: Bob Metcalfe’s keynote
Stuff happens

1. Hard Yaka at Nostrasia

At Hard Yaka, we believe that the next chapter of the internet should be built on protocols rather than proprietary platforms—much like the early days of the web.

Unlike platforms, protocols are open, decentralized and interoperable. As such, they help tip the balance of power back toward individuals, communities, and developers rather than the megacorporations that dominated this last era of web2.

Just as we have protocols for things like websites and emails, we should have protocols for messaging, money, identity, and, of course, social media.

That’s why, next week, along with a few teams from the Hard Yaka ecosystem, we’ll be attending Nostrasia (Nov. 1-3) in Tokyo, Japan. (The “unconference” will also have a footprint in Hong Kong and will be streamed online.)

2. A quick Nostr primer

Nostrasia is the second major get together for Nostr. (The first was in Costa Rica earlier this year. Read about our trip here.)

Nostr stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay. It's essentially a decentralized and censorship resistant protocol for social media.

Nostr came to prominence as a potential Twitter alternative during the height of Elon Musk’s controversial takeover of the short form platform, but the flexibility of the protocol means that you could also build alternatives to all types of social services—from Instagram to Spotify, something we referenced in last week’s newsletter.

And as a protocol, Nostr won big name backers and users in Jack Dorsey and Edward Snowden, respectively—both of whom will be speaking on day 2 of the conference.

By some metrics, Nostr has over 20 million users, with weekly active users in the tens of thousands.

3. Nostr in Asia

Nostr’s first big conference was in Costa Rica, mostly out of convenience as that’s where the headline sponsor, Jack Dorsey, lived.

The community’s choice of Asia is more strategic. Though the conference will be held live in Tokyo, a satellite gathering in Hong Kong is meant to attract Chinese users who hail from a country known for its tight grip on communications.

But Nostr is specifically designed to evade such attempts at control without the need for a VPN.

From the SCMP report:

The Damus ban in China also drove interest in the mainland, with the Damus relay, which was not blocked, being flooded with Chinese posts. Even if one relay is blocked, though, users can find another one that allows them to get through the country’s Great Firewall without a virtual private network.
“As long as you can post your note to one relay, there’s a great probability that they will help you rebroadcast to all relays,” Sherry said.

Nostr’s other killer feature is its identity-first design. Every new users is given a public-private key combo, which serves as their identity.

From the same report:

“I think the most amazing thing about Nostr is you have one identity on all platforms,” said Sherry, a programmer and data analyst from the mainland who organises Hong Kong Nostr meet-ups. She asked to go only by her English first name, which is not associated with her day job.
“Basically you can transfer [between] all platforms with one identity. That actually blew my mind,” she added. “It’s like a decentralised app store. Just this app store is not controlled by Apple; it’s controlled by all developers.”

4. Building on Nostr

Along with Hard Yaka, a few teams from the Hard Yaka ecosystem have been building on the Nostr protocol over the last year:

Countable—Relay-as-a-service, Causes
Nos.social—Nostr client with namespace and fiat currency support
UNS—Namespace for identity, credentials
Dmpling—Content monetizer

They’ll be attending the conference next week and will be demoing products and features that will users to:

Build trust and reputation on Nostr
Create and build trusted communities with just a few clicks
Transact in fiat currencies
Monetize content on a decentralized protocol without ads

If you’d like to get in contact with our teams, send us a message: inquiries@hardyaka.com

5. Elsewhere in the ecosystem: Bob Metcalfe’s keynote

OriginTrail is building a protocol for trusted data—what they call a Decentralized Knowledge Graph.

A couple weeks ago, they hosted the first ever Decentralized Knowledge Graph conference.

Check out the keynote from Ethernet founder Dr. Bob Metcalfe:

USBC

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