Series Introduction:
Recently, I have been looking into the decentralized protocol Nostr and found that there is no comprehensive Chinese article available online. Therefore, I am planning to write a series about Nostr, focusing on its development history, basic principles, related applications, and basic usage. I hope to let more people who are interested in this protocol or decentralized social networking (decentralized culture) learn about Nostr and start using it.
Introduction: Decentralization and the Background of Nostr#
Looking back at history, people started from small groups and tribes during the hunting era. With the development of agriculture and commerce, self-organized tribes gradually disappeared in many parts of the continent, and large empires brought all the people within their territories under control. Ordinary individuals existed only as population numbers of the vast country, and their rights and expressions as independent individuals were submerged in the underlying environment of their lives, such as in the market, workplace, and fields.
The emergence of computer technology in the 1960s and 1970s allowed some computer experts to see an opportunity to liberate the rights of ordinary individuals. They proposed the idea of constructing a networked world:
Create a place where like-minded people can communicate on various topics globally, where anyone can discover useful information about different subjects without being polluted by abuse and false information. At the same time, it can promote greater competition and innovation on the Internet, give end users more control over their own data, and prevent large companies from having too much data on any specific user.
What a wonderful idea, to let everyone be a person, to respect individual rights and protect privacy. However, we all know what happened later - large companies monopolized the market, and the existence of the internet made their monopolies more complete than any emperor in history. At the same time, idealistic technology geeks and scholars were also thinking about how to liberate individual rights from the hands of giant companies, and one of the ideas was decentralization.
In terms of finance, Bitcoin, invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, as a decentralized financial tool, has surpassed finance and profoundly influenced many fields such as humanities, politics, and economics in the past decade.
In terms of social networking, freedom of speech has always been a difficult right to achieve. Big governments and big companies control social opinions and the right to speak, and ordinary people have no right to speak. Even their WeChat and Weibo accounts do not belong to them (individuals only have the right to use the accounts, ownership belongs to technology companies). Big companies and governments can delete your speech and ban your account at will, making individual rights a joke.
Achieving Freedom of Speech through Protocols#
In August 2019, MIKE MASNICK published a paper titled "Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech." At the end of the article, he wrote:
Turning to protocols, rather than platforms, is one approach to free speech in the 21st century. Rather than relying on a "marketplace of ideas" within a single platform (which can be hijacked by malicious actors), protocols may lead to an ideal marketplace where competition occurs to provide better services, minimizing the impact of malicious users without completely cutting off their ability to speak.
Yes, developing more fundamental protocols will be a very effective means of decentralization. Protocols are like electricity, while applications/apps are like machines plugged into the power lines. Our accounts and information are controlled by individual applications, but if we can protect our individual rights at a more fundamental level, it seems possible to protect human rights.
Coincidentally, in November 2019, @fiatjaf started developing the Nostr protocol. It is a simple, open, globally supported, decentralized, and censorship-resistant social protocol. I don't know if fiatjaf has read Mike's paper, but I believe they are both people with a strong concern for humanity. They are using their power and methods to change the world (not the entire world, but the present moment of each person's life, the present community, the present cultural circle, the present surroundings), to respect and protect the rights of every individual, and to let people be people.
(ps: jaf has a recommended book list on his personal website, and hundreds of books are about sociology and philosophy. It surprised me that a technical expert recommended a book list without a single technical book, but upon careful consideration, only people like him would think about doing something to change the world. Book list link🔗
https://fiatjaf.com/livros-olavo.html
Alright, this episode discussed decentralization and the background of Nostr. The next episode will be a tutorial on how to get started. Goodbye.