Nostr is essentially a compromise between p2p and traditional web architectures. It cuts with the grain of the internet by using web servers, while reducing the dependence users have on servers by using keys for identity and digital signatures for authenticating data.

The effect is that users have "credible exit" (among other things), which has been discussed for years. This doesn't really create any new "use cases", which is why the use case is often described as "whatever, it's the new internet".

What it does do is introduce a very different set of trade-offs which favor user control over platform control (with the attendant UX trade-offs (or at least a different set of UX idioms)).

The reason the focus is on social is because that represents the majority of applications that do exist, the original motivation for building the protocol, and a value proposition (censorship resistance) that lots of people can relate to.

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Wilduck 5 days ago | parent [-]

I don't want to be mean, but this post has exactly the problem the person you're replying to was complaining about. The person you're replying to, I think, would like an explanation that reads more like "It's like Twitter, but not tied to a mega-corp, just for you and your pals". I don't know if that description actually fits Nostr though because, like the person you're replying to, I have a pretty hard time understanding what Nostr actually _is_.

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jonstaab 5 days ago | parent [-]

My point is that question is sort of a category error. It's like asking what type of business the internet is for, or what the use case of smart phones is.

Here are a few things built on nostr, with specific use cases:

primal.net is a twitter-like client with bitcoin micropayments and long-form articles (also see coracle.social, nosotros.app, jumble.social, Amethyst, Damus, yakihonne.com and many others); zap.stream is a twitch-like client for live streaming; flotilla.social and chachi.chat are group chat clients; dtan.xyz is a client for torrenting on nostr; satlantis.io is sort of a travel ratings thing; zap.cooking is a recipe website; yakbak.app is for voice messages; nutstash.app is a cashu wallet built on nostr; cashumints.space lists cashu mints that advertise themselves on nostr.

What's neat is that all these clients can do things the way they want to, but remain interoperable, which means that new developers can create an app and immediately have access to all existing nostr users and their social graph.

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lxe 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

"nostr is a simple distributed protocol to build internet applications for social networking, communication and media.

It requires lightweight relay servers, as opposed to large federated servers like in mastodon or email, or fully p2p like scuttlebutt.

It can be used to some extent via a browser using web clients, but it's best used alongside extensions for authentication and key management"

That is what I'm looking for. I'm not sure it's a good description, but I wish something like this was front and center

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jonstaab 5 days ago | parent [-]

Going back to the site, I see what you mean. Very fair criticism. The site appeals to a bunch of implicit ideals without defining its terms.

	▲	lxe 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> appeals to a bunch of implicit ideals without defining its terms. That's such a good way to summarize it!

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bmicraft 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The question isnt a category error and deserves a direct answer.

If I follow what you're saying the answer could have been: "it's a framework/set of protocols for building a Twitter that can show all the stuff on other compatible Google+/Facebooks"

	▲	nout 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you have a preference for this style of definition, then we could say that Nostr is a protocol that's well suited for creating decentralized applications that need publicly verifiable identity, censorship resistance and event based communication. For example, https://zapstore.dev/app is an Android AppStore that uses nostr to provide a decentralized way to verify the developers and remove "fake" apps.