In December 2022, Dorsey made a case for a decentralized alternative to Twitter. The former executive of the social media platform underlined Twitter’s censorship issues and then went on to talk about the importance of a “free and open protocol” for social media.
A couple of days later, Dorsey donated around 14 BTC, worth about $245k at that time, to enhance the development of Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays).
The application is an open protocol that intends to create an anti-censorship global social network. The protocol does not depend on a trusted central server. In the contrast, all its users run a client. Users publish content by writing a post and signing it with their private key. On the other hand, to share content or distribute messages, relays are used.
In a victory for decentralization enthusiasts, the aforementioned social networking protocol went live on Apple’s app store.
Jack Dorsey’s involvement with the project triggered the protocol’s most popular mobile app, Damus, to achieve its beta testing limit of 10,000 users. Doing so instigated developers to apply for an official listing on Apple’s app store. Earlier today, Damus was approved. The full release is now at one’s disposal on the App Store to download.
Acknowledging the same, Dorsey tweeted that the launch was “a milestone for open protocols.” Interestingly, the app has built-in payments via the Bitcoin Lightning network.
Also Read: Block Inc CEO Jack Dorsey Proposes Decentralized ‘Twitter’
Community reactions
People from the space have already started welcoming the platform with open arms. For instance, Edward Snowden recently tweeted,
“One of the cool things about Nostr (“Notes and other stuff transmitted by relays”, a new decentralized protocol that replaces things like Twitter and Instagram)—beyond censorship resistance—is that you aren’t limited to 280 characters.”
Trying and testing out Nostr has also been going on parallelly.
However, not everyone is familiar with what it is still. Albeit, the ones who know about it are leaving no stone unturned in deciphering and spreading the word.
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