“What is Nostr?” is an expected somewhat obvious question, especially when you set out to explain Nostr to the world at large. The question seems simple enough, but the short answer is deceptively useless.

“What is the Internet?” Do you expect an answer to that question that will inform you much on anything? The internet is a network of connected computers. It does not tell you that we started using that network of connected computers to do almost everything. From being in contact with family and friends, but also do your shopping, banking, food orders. This, and a whole bunch of other organizing, all happens over our “internet”.

The internet is a protocol that, together with a bunch of other protocols, allows these connected computers to function among each other. Nostr, in turn, is also a protocol, on top of this internet, and it allows you to publish things and maintain social networks. It gives you the ability to create a digital identity all by yourself, as many as you want. Then with that new claimed identity you can publish notes, and other stuff. What stuff? Whatever-it-is-we-have-been-doing-on-this-internet type stuff; being in contact with friends and family, orders for things or food, etc.

Currently, we do all those things via what we call platforms, also known by the more juicy name “Big Tech”. These platforms also function on top of our beloved Internet, but are not protocols. They are just particular places that the vast majority tend to gather to do particular things: YouTube for videos, Instagram for pictures and so forth. The reason most people tend to go where most people tend to go, is because most people are there. You want to see things, so you go to the place where most can be seen, in order to increase the odds of finding what you are looking for. This phenomenon is referred to as the network effect and it started to form inside a handful of websites and apps.

The reason for Nostr’s existence is the issues that exist with our platform-facilitated-doing-stuff-on-the-internet-world. The point is the relationship that you have with that platform in context of the broader ecosystem; regardless of how nice or un-nice the platform is that you are using, do you have alternatives? It is because of these network effects that, despite alternatives probably existing, you don’t have a viable alternative. If most people are in one place, then those remaining people are scattered among the hundred alternative places. If for example you have a business and it relies on these platforms, an act of censorship, perhaps even by mistake, stops your business. As a user you run a censorship risk and you have no recourse. Nostr solves this.

With Nostr, the network effect is captured by the protocol, and not by any of the many platforms that function on that protocol. On Nostr you are your own created identity first and from there you decide what and where you publish and who you follow. Your apps are not services, but tools. Tools that allow you to create whatever experience you want, possibly constructed out of stuff from many different platforms. The platforms are reduced to mere relays transmitting all the notes and other stuff. The network effect is not the result of everyone going to the same place, on a platform, but comes from the fact that everyone can just interact with each other’s notes and other stuff wherever it happens to be.

The relays still are in charge of what content they accept, or are willing to provide when asked. This means all the censorship risks, as such, remain. The difference is that despite the fact one particular relay can censor whoever it wants for whatever reason, using other relays allow publications to be found just the same. It might exclude you from certain discourses, but all that boils down to is freedom of association. We are no longer bound to the platforms, however big or small, enjoying the network effects, having recourse in case of censorship. By the same token, platforms are now liberated from any burden imposed by notions of “public good” because the world does not depend on them in particular anymore.

So what is Nostr? Simply put it is a different way to use the internet. A way where the network effects don’t accrue inside the closed-off platforms, robbing ourselves from practical alternatives. Instead we separate identity, location and suggestion algorithm. The network effect does not result from the fact that we are in the same place, but from the fact that we use the same protocol. The most important result being that we can start building solutions to the myriad of problems that the internet introduces, without begging a handful of companies to do it for us.