Apple, not asking themselves “How would Steve Jobs have viewed #Nostr and #Lightning?”
We’ve been writing about Nostr a lot (see our announcement regarding the release of easyNostr-NIP05).
The decentralized social messaging protocol that has been spreading like wildfire is also on iOS devices with the popular Damus app.
Until later this month, that is, which the date in which Damus will be removed from the Apple Store because the protocol level Nostr feature called “Zaps”, defined in NIP-57, which describes sending satoshis (fractions of a Bitcoin) to authors of notes. It’s like an upvote, but with a small amount of value.
Zaps and Lightning over Nostr open the pathway to what has been the Holy Grail of the Internet since the mid-90’s: micropayments.
That’s never been accomplished so long as all the major payment gateways were a centralized peloton of groupthink, censorship and minimum payment fees that were larger than the actual micropayments themselves.
All that stands to change with Lightning, Nostr and the rapidly emerging Zap culture, so of course, Big Tech will seek to quash it wherever they can.
What would Steve Jobs have thought of Nostr and Zaps, one wonders?