Max Hillebrand: Evade Censorship with Nostr

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:18]Hello and welcome. This is Gabriel, custodia of Watchman Privacy, privacy practitioner, consultant, author, and frontline fighter in the push for privacy. I know why you're here. Like the rest of us here in the resistance, you're trying to escape the technocratic apparatuses that you see enveloping you and crushing your freedoms. That's why I created all of this. All without sponsors. I hope you enjoy this show.

[00:00:40]But then when you're ready to take the next step to secure your privacy and your future, visit my website escapethetnocracy.com to start the real journey. Your support alone determines the future of the show.

[00:00:53]See you there. Editorial note here. This episode was recorded in the summer of 2025, so around a year ago. Um, yeah, I apologize to my guest for that. I sent him this episode. He said the information is still good. If there's a little technical thing in the instructions that is a little bit off, well, it's still probably pretty close and overall the information is still good here. Another thing, why don't I have a Nostra account at this point?

[00:01:23]Well, Noster is this tool, as we'll get into in this discussion. It is a social media protocol that is decentralized, that is difficult to be censored. Most of the stuff that I talk about that would be censored is on escapethenocracy.com these days. I don't do too much social media in general, so I just haven't gotten around to it. The Bitcoin community surrounding it, these are not exactly the discussions that I tend to enjoy having. So, there's a few things that have slowed me down and I just haven't gotten around to it. So, that's my reason for having a not not having a Nostra account. So, anyway, here we go on to the show, even if it is one year later. I'm very pleased to be joined by uh Max Hillbrand today. And be careful, Max. I think we just had all the all the samurai people have have turned off at this point. But ladies and gentlemen, we're not talking coin joins or samurai or wasabi today. We're going to be talking about Noster and some other interesting things pertaining to social media uh censorship resistance, social media privacy and social media and such.

[00:02:26]So Nostra is going to be our main topic.

[00:02:29]Pleased to uh be talking to him. Max Hillbrand, how are you doing today?

[00:02:33]>> Yeah, thanks Gabriel. I'm excited to be back on the show. I really love the the recent episodes that you're uploading.

[00:02:39]They're as always super exciting and yeah, I'm glad that we're now filling the feed with some Noster based content.

[00:02:47]uh because you know I think the money problem is to a large extent solved at least fundamentally right sure we can fine-tune a whole bunch there and and that's nice exciting work um but we can have something that's a bit more novel uh to work on and and so that's where Nostra comes in right a protocol for yeah publishing information very broadly speaking um and retrieving that so it's it's of course an important part of of the human existence right we talk with others privately and publicly much more than we send financial transactions to and for.

[00:03:21]So, it's high time that we get a cipher punk as [ __ ] tool in this category.

[00:03:25]There we go. Obviously, Max having listened to the show and I appreciate you listening. You realize we haven't talked about Nostra this this whole time. So, hey, it's it's time to bring it up and and who better than Max Helbrands to kind of guide us through some of the stuff and we ran into Max in RIA recently and it just reminded me that hey, let's, you know, get get him back on the show. You had suggested Nostra. So, let's get into it. Um, and I'll just say from the start here, Max, that I haven't messed around with Noster. I'll be perfectly honest. uh you know I I I know the concept played around a little bit around the edges but what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave it entirely in your hands to convince me today whether I will ever use it and this is going to be a lifetime decision based on your responses in the next 45 minutes or so.

[00:04:09]So no pressure although I hope the audience will also follow suit with me and make their decision entirely based on how convincing uh Max is in the upcoming bit of time. Maybe just before we get into that Max you're you're a very interesting guy. Maybe we could describe you as a technomad because you're one of these maybe we call you an OG person in terms of uh traveling around using freedom technology being a a digital nomad in a certain sense. We discussed these things in our first um episode. Your writings on this topic and your interviews and such have influenced a lot of people including people on my team. Um so maybe you could just you know give us an update. You know what are you up to? Anything you're proud of discovering or having solved recently?

[00:04:49]Any any revelations? like how's your life going these days? Yeah, I one of the books or or series rabbit holes that really inspired me on this journey was uh vanu uh the concept of being voluntary and not vulnerable uh by an anonymous writer called Rayo in like the 70s and he came up with this metric of success for how free is your life called the meanantime to harassment uh or how when was the last time that you were stolen from right it's a really interesting metric and the way that he improved this metric initially was to live in a truck, right, in a in a van.

[00:05:24]Um, and and and travel around, you know, the the wilderness mostly, uh, also cities. And and he realized that this was a massive increase in in his personal freedom. Um, and, you know, this van culture, van life, right, is is a common thing. So, not just cipher punks and crazy people do this, but all types of of yeah, individuals who who want to live a a cheap and um free lifestyle uh that that provides a lot of opportunities. And so I really doubled down on that um together with just going radical in uh building freedom tech uh and haven't looked back since. Um I can very much recommend living in a vehicle.

[00:06:05]Uh it it's uh it's a very affordable way to get your own space and you can carry that space with you and it's it's a temporally autonomous zone that you can place anywhere on the continent basically. Um and within a day of driving you can be almost anywhere. Uh so that really helps you um answer that question of where do you want to wake up in the morning? uh that that's something we usually don't ask ourselves. But if you have that degree of of physical locationational independence, then this is really a worthwhile question to ask and and ultimately I chose to spend it uh my time with with people who are who are building freedom tech. So what's an average day for you like Max? Just give people a little bit of a a snapshot for people are just grinding the 9 to5 in the city they were born. What's an average day like for you? Yeah, not going to the office, not stuck, not being stuck in in in traffic, which is great, right? You just have the office with you wherever you go. Um, nowadays you can get an incredible amount of done just with your phone and and with a laptop, right? Um, and yeah, uh, some physical activity, some touching grass, um, a lot of reading and, uh, helping multiple projects succeed. Uh so I'm I'm not a developer and so I don't actually sit down and and do the actual work of writing the code. Uh I I do all the other stuff. Um so that you know coordinating things, calling things, writing things. Um what whatever that day brings.

[00:07:36]>> So Max, you're originally from Germany.

[00:07:38]Get I imagine we could presume that you don't necessarily identify with a particular region anymore, but what are your thoughts on on Germany these days?

[00:07:47]because it seems to be what I would call a peak German uh bare market. What are your thoughts on that country these days?

[00:07:54]>> Yeah, I was very bearish more than a decade ago. Um and my um expectations have been uh exceeded so to say.

[00:08:05]I mean not only Germany, right? The entire world is is an economic downturn and and basically a disaster created by by fiat and and governments. Uh so the problems are real. uh the the problems are continuously getting worse and and more and more people actually recognize it and and notice it. Um but yeah, uh thankfully there there are solutions and there's ways to opt out uh which which I've done and um therefore thankfully German bure bureaucrats and politicians are no longer that much on on on my mind as with people who actually have to suffer them there physically.

[00:08:40]>> No, fair enough. and and you have the big free speech problem in Germany which maybe no will solve but we'll get into that but okay let's let's just bring up this topic I want to get into kind of the problems with traditional social media and spend a little bit of time on that but before we do that just give people a general idea not too not too many details but an overview of what Noster is before we get going here >> yeah so I'll just assume that I'm speaking to cipher punks here right because that's basically your your your podcast is all about um and so Let's let's assume we we want to coordinate with with fellow cipher punks but based on our ideals and and and uh asking for permission is not really one of them and with all traditional infrastructures or or social medias. um you have a server and a server operator and that server operator is defining identities of the user and he's granting them access right permissions um to that server the database the content on it etc. Uh and of course that trust can be violated um and uh accounts can be closed, access can be denied, information can be changed um and and forged and uh all of that comes with a huge amount of trust that we have to place into these third party providers of that infrastructure that we use to coordinate with each other.

[00:10:01]So in comes a a new protocol um based on on cryptography and and very simple web technologies uh to to define a set of standards on how to create messages and how to interpret these messages. Um, so the the basic Noster event is basically a um a a content, some message that you want to share with the world and some metadata on how to interpret this content. Is it a a short form post? Is it a a blog post? Is it a release of a software? Is it a a reaction to someone else's post, etc. And these are all different protocols, different structured JSON data. Um, and finally this is signed with a private key using the Schnore signature algorithm similar to Bitcoin. A and now this means we have a atomic unit, right? An an event, a JSON file uh that includes not just the the message that the author has sent but also how to interpret this and how to display it um in in a client interface.

[00:11:08]But finally with with that signature we authenticate that the content is from that original person who who controls the private key and has not been tampered with. And and because of the temper resistance we can now duplicate um this content not just on one server but on multiple servers. And we have a a a network of of thousands tens of thousands of relays that will receive these signed JSON events and and store them and and forward them to others. uh and it's it's very easy for you to run such a relay server. It's it's not much compute. You can even do it on a phone.

[00:11:42]And now that enables us to to share a message with people cryptograph cryptographically signed and interoperable in the software implementations such that any of us can now build a new interface, a client, an app, some piece of software that um downloads and and and analyzes and and views or displays these events um and also creates them. And so this is a a a free open protocol for for developers to engage with that data structure that was created by users cryptographically attested to with with them as their own sovereign identity uh or or authentication service um and simultaneously a sovereign relay system to ensure that we have censorship resistant delivery of these events. A >> great explanation, great highle explanation, Max. And so let's get into some of the problems of traditional social media. I'd really like to reinforce this because it's it's an alternative to something, right? And the fact is that the traditional social media is still there. It's still very powerful. It still has the supreme network effect. And so to get people off of that, um, we should discuss some of the, you know, some of the issues. So we have this traditional Twitter model of social media, right? Where it's maybe not as real world identity as something like Facebook. We can post things and people can engage and reply. We have Twitter, Noster, as you just mentioned, Blue Sky uh has cropped up recently.

[00:13:09]Things like Threads, which is a meta product, Masttodon, uh Substack is now replicating Twitter. That's where a lot of dissident are going these days onto Substack. So, I've named a few here.

[00:13:20]What has been your experience across these different platforms? Obviously, we're going to point to the fact that these are centralized services. That's the big difference that Noster is offering us. But just some of your experience across these platforms as a you know as as as a cultural or technological analyst, you know, the good, the bad, the idealistic. What are your what are your thoughts on some of the traditional Twitter style social media platforms and where maybe they've gone right or wrong or uh just your overall thoughts? Yeah, there there are a couple obvious problems, right? One is that of of censorship of of the account itself. And I mean even the president of the United States got censored uh from from Twitter. Um which is crazy to think right that that there is a person or a group of people who can simply turn off um the identity of of someone in in in the online form right that's that's actually quite ridiculous. Um, and so again, Nostra fixes this by using the individual as the authentication service, the identity service, right?

[00:14:18]You define for yourself the private key that you're going to use and and then the metadata that you associate with it like the username, the the profile picture, the bio, etc. Um, so Nostra is a great solution for this. Another problem in in in the old world is for example shadow banning, right? There is this algorithm that decides who gets to see which messages when. Um, and of course, if you can control this algorithm, then you have great power to hide information, right? To to eclipse one user to to simply not see a certain set of notes for whatever reason. Um, and and that of course comes with the benefit of, for example, not seeing spam, right? This might be so that you don't get boring content in in the app.

[00:14:57]Uh, but of course, this can be weaponized uh to to make sure that you can no longer coordinate with your friends. Um, and and that's of course a problem. and and here Noster fixes this in the sense that the the database that's on these Nostra relays and how exactly you're querying the data and how you're displaying this to the user is totally up to the developer. Um meaning you can have a simple chronological feed or choose whatever other filtering mechanism. But the beautiful thing is we no longer have a monopoly uh in in Twitter. The Twitter team is uh deciding what the algorithm is and you cannot change it, right? and and you don't even know what it is. It's not even open source. Uh in in all the Nostra applications, the the algorithm code is open source. Often it's very simple like chronological. And then if there are more complex algorithms, you can in fact choose them on a free market of of how do you want to curate uh your your content. Um which is fantastic. Um, yeah. And so there are are numerous other obvious problems with with social media and other centralized platforms uh and and cryptography and basic distributed design uh really solves a lot of them.

[00:16:09]>> You you've mentioned some of the the problems with these services. Number one, obviously they can just kick you off the platform. Number two, sometimes they can require KYC or other privacy invasive information. And number three, which seems to me to like we can understand the first two in a sense.

[00:16:25]It's like it's right in your in your face, but the what has come to be known as the shadow banning is maybe the most permiss pernicious because you know, for example, Urban and I have been just endlessly experimenting on a place like Twitter to see like, hey, what you know, what's what gets engagement? What, you know, how do how do people see our stuff? And it is so arbitrary. It's just so arbitrary what people might see this and they might not see this. Obviously, if you're following people, you're not seeing everything that they're posting.

[00:16:56]It's this really bizarre fragmented world which as you say, you don't even understand the rules behind the fragmentation and it's this uh it's kind of schizophrenic in a sense and it it rewards certain people and not other people. If you post about certain things early on, then it like those are the only things that it really uh it really amplifies later on. So, you can't just start by talking about Bitcoin and then transition to art later on. You're not going to be as rewarded for those sorts of posts. So, this kind of really the the old world of let's say traditional forums max or IRC chat where it's just hey here's everything and sure you have to sort through it, you have to, you know, skip all the garbage, but at least you see everything. It really does give you a different uh view of reality. What are your thoughts on that?

[00:17:41]>> Yeah, absolutely. And and as you said, right, that um with one one other point here is that with traditional social media networks, these are siloed, right?

[00:17:49]These are independent Walt gardens and someone who's on Instagram cannot send a message to someone who's on on Twitter, which which leads off to this siloing in into independent networks where you have to grow your social network all over again. um in in Nostra because it's an open protocol and and the the data itself, the events are are all public, you can create a new application very easily that is tailor made and focused to one specific niche, right? And and instantly with the first user, you have useful data that you can show to him because data already exists even before your application was started and your your user can talk to other people who are not even using your application. So this really puts an incentive in creating new applications that that uh yeah focus on on something more specific, right? And and now all of a sudden you can create applications that that are perfect for a really small group of individuals, right? But but still the cost of creating that app and and maintaining it with with the content is extremely reduced compared to the legacy system. One more thing before we get into Nostra Mastadon. Mastadon was supposed to be the decentralized saver.

[00:19:00]What do you think went wrong with Mastadon? Where did where did that service go wrong? And are there any lessons to be learned from Masttodon?

[00:19:07]>> Well, let's start with the positive stuff, right? Masttodon is is a a protocol and an open source implementation. Um, so that means it can be reviewed and and audited, which is great. But ultimately, I think it fails in in the design and in its architecture because here still you have a server and an administrator who is the king of the castle, who decides who gets a user account, who decides who can access which posts. And if that operator shuts down the server, then your identity is gone, right? All all of your posts are gone. All the relationships are lost.

[00:19:40]And with with Noster, the the identity again is provided by the user, not by a third party server provider. And that non-custodial aspect is incredibly important because any Nostra relay operator can shut down and you wouldn't even notice it in the application. Uh because we no longer rely on server administrators for important stuff uh like identity and authenticity. We only rely on them for delivering messages which is a much lower threshold of trust.

[00:20:08]>> Okay. Noster, how many people do you think are using Nostra these days?

[00:20:14]Obviously, you know, it's just more of a gut feeling. I don't get I don't see it get mentioned as often as maybe a year or so ago. How maybe this is a different way of saying like what do you think is the biggest thing that Nostra has done in your view so far? I well the the biggest thing probably is is to prove that a cryptographic web of trust like we tried in in back in the days with PGP is is achievable at a large scale with a friendly user interface and user experience. Um PGP key signing ceremonies were just cringe and almost never happened even among hardcore uh enthusiasts uh because they were quite complex and and difficult to do. But following someone because you liked his post is a much more intuitive natural way of of presenting to others that that you find value in a certain keys content. Um and this now means that we have actual highquality web of trust systems um for a huge amount of of cryptographic keys. Um and we are in into the the you know probably billions of private keys created for for Noster.

[00:21:24]Um I don't have the exact number. That's just a guess. Um there there is tens of thousands of relays. Again, I don't know about the exact number. Um uh but I personally run like three of them. Uh and then we have uh daily active users or something like this. People who are who are posting every day is probably in around the 50,000 100,000 something like this. So it's it's it's still quite nent in in the amount of people creating content at the moment, but there will probably be a factor of 10x or more of people who are just reading this content. And most clients are are or most users are just lurkers. They read but don't really write on the internet.

[00:22:06]Um which by the way is a great opportunity for someone to create an application that is designed for people to only read the content and not to make any public post on this. And we can now actually do this. That's another specialized niche of an application that can be not satisfied that Twitter, etc. would never do because their money depends on on content being created and and so they have a strong incentive to force everyone to do that. But if someone wants to remain more private and just read the news rather than be part of writing it, um then then Nostra is a perfect fit for them.

[00:22:39]>> So as with any technological revolution, it starts with how do I, you know, how do I get started? So, how does one get started on Noster? And a part of this question, I think, is just you have to change your understanding of social media a little bit because we're talking about a different approach that is going to require a little bit more a little bit more work on your end, a little bit more running of your own things, a little bit more self- responsibility.

[00:23:04]So, how do we get into running Nostrax?

[00:23:07]>> Yeah. So, I think the the best way to go about this is is to use your phone, right? That's what most people engage with. So, let's start with that. Of course you you all are graphino s users because that's the only secure reasonable option out there at the moment. Um so here one of the common problems with graphino is how do we even install applications right and how do we know which applications are are are cool and and good to try out. So there is an application called zap store. It is an appostster client um that that tells you all of the events that were created by developers saying that hey I have a new release of my software. Um uh and then you can verify the signature of this this software release and you can verify the the identity or the web of trust um of this developer key right so you see that hey I'm actually following this developer um who has just created a signature with that same key that that he's [ __ ] posting with um so this must be the the real application right so again massive solution to the PGP software signing problem um uh and and with this you can now install other applications again designed by the developers and and one good one to start with is Amber. Um Amber is an Android app um for managing for creating and managing your Noster private keys so that you don't have to put your Noster private key into other applications, right? It's it's a little bit like a hardware wallet um for your Noster private keys. Um, so, so you download Amber and you create yourself a new key pair. And here you can already say, hey, what's the username and and the profile picture of uh, of of this key that you're generating. So, you can set that.

[00:24:44]Um, and next, you would want to run uh, you would want to get a client to actually interfere like interface with the Nostra network. And for this on on Android, the best is Amethyst. Um, a a cool Nostra client that um, works really well and and does a lot of amazing things, right? So here you can see uh you can search for people right and and you can follow them um and and see their posts and and like them react with them.

[00:25:09]Of course you can send Bitcoin to to the people who have created these events because part of the metadata is actually your lightning address. So it's very easy for anyone to send Bitcoin to you and for you to prove to the world that you've just received Bitcoin. Um so that we have a public signal that a post was valuable because people literally sent money to the creators. Um which is awesome. uh and uh yeah so with Amethyst you can do a lot of browsing uh which is which is cool but then we we have many other applications that are that are useful um one might be fountain right fountain is a podcasting noster application where uh similar to any other podcast app you can follow RSS feeds and download events uh just like you're probably using right now to listen to this podcast um but the cool thing is it is Bitcoin and enabled so you can leave comments underneath uh any podcast and then engage with the creator of it or or you the creator can engage with your audience. Uh people can easily clip out highlights of your um of of the show and just share this specific highlight on Nuster with with other people and for example again that shows then up in Amethyst so that Amethyst users see the content that fountain users have created. Um we also have for example um you can run your own relay on your phone right so to make sure that all of the posts that you make are stored in a dedicated dedicated application um that uh cannot easily be taken down and so you have a backup of all your notes and potentially even the the notes of your friends uh just sitting there on the phone um yeah there of course we uh also have uh things like private messaging for example uh that's one of the projects I'm very excited about um that's called white noise. You can get that on zap store as well. And it's a a new Noster client dedicated and focused for private encrypted group communication, right? So a group chat um similar like signal um has similar a bit more advanced encryption. But the cool fact is that you do not need to have a phone number in order to create an account. And that is again the old legacy system in in Signal. we have an uh authentication service who defines the identity of users and this specific authentication service requires a phone number um which sucks of course uh so in the new Noster paradigm now we can actually use your own private key to attest that hey this is a a key that I'm going to use um so encrypt messages to it right so this is a way to start a group conversation without having to trust someone else to give you the the identity and to deliver your messages and and these These are really just a a couple handful few of of applications.

[00:27:49]We could talk for hours in depth about any of the hundreds of of available Nostra clients. Um, and yeah, it's a cool protocol.

[00:27:59]>> Oh, it's very cool. There there's no question that the technology is cool.

[00:28:03]Whether or not we're going to get uh 99% of the population to do all the steps you just mentioned, I think is is certainly a a much different social question. What's um I Urban and I definitely need to come up with a tutorial for Nostra at some point. Maybe we'll add that to our Bitcoin course or release it in somewhere. Obviously, there's all sorts of tutorials out there as well. And Max is walking us through the the basics right now. So, maybe people will just follow these instructions. Max, you go through these steps. What are you now responsible for as a um account owner of uh of of Noster? walk through walk people a little bit through that change of paradigm and what you are now responsible for right in terms of it's not a centralized service that you're logging into you're interacting with this social media this Twitter like replacement in a different way what are people now responsible for >> yeah exactly so there um Nostra uses similar cryptography to bitcoin um specifically for the signature part so we have a private key um whom you keep secret and a public key which you can share with others and then your private key makes signatures that others who know the public key can verify. Um, and this means that you have to keep a secret ultimately um, a password. But in in Bitcoin, the secret this private key can be used to spend your money. In in Noster, this private key can be used to publish messages, right? And and to decrypt some messages that were encrypted to to this public key. Um, so the the cost of exposing your public key, leaking your public key is much less than in Bitcoin arguably, right?

[00:29:37]There are some Nostra use cases that are quite valuable as well, but not as much as losing thousands of Bitcoin. Um, um, then uh, you should make a backup of this because if you forget your private key, you can not use your account anymore. Uh so for this uh you can similarly to to Bitcoin just write down 12 words on a piece of paper, engrave it in steel and then you have a secure backup um to log into your account again in the future. Um and here the the original way to like you know 3 years ago when we started playing around with this tech um most people just copy and pasted the private key from one application to the next application. uh and and that is good for for just trying it out quickly and moving your identity from one to the other. But the problem would be what if there's a malicious developer who's who's publishing an application that actually sends a copy of the private key to the developer. Uh and and in this case you would be compromised, right? So uh therefore we have developed these special applications or even hardware devices that are the only devices that will have your private key and it will give um some other device or client or app will send a request to your signing device saying hey I would like to create this post please review and sign it and then your own hardware sees if if that device has actually a the um authentication of the user to to sign um this this device Right. So, or this event. Um, so Nostra's security boils down to the private key. Um, make sure you don't lose it and make sure that others don't get access to it. How do we start following people, seeing what other people are doing and maybe even discovering new people who are using Nostra?

[00:31:24]>> Yeah. So, um, a a relatively new um, addition to the protocol stack is something called follower packs. meaning that anyone can create a list of people that he suggests for certain topics that people should consider following. Um, and now many clients implement the standard and for a first-time user, they, you know, have have different ways of of asking him, hey, what are your preferences? Are you interested in sports or or science or economics, whatever? um or just give the user a list of all available follower packs and then suggest uh to to hey follow these people. Um you can also just start to show um posts and naturally see which user which the user likes and interacts with etc and and therefore filter the content further. So discovery is something that originally was was not really that focused upon. Um but but by now there are numerous tools to make sure that you actually find interesting people to to engage with. Yeah. So if you were in Nostra a couple years ago playing around and you found it a little bit too clunky for you, the a lot of things have changed. So that's definitely worth coming back to the fold. Similar question, maybe this has been answered in the last couple years.

[00:32:42]When it comes to the text that we're writing, the images that we're posting, maybe videos, where does all that get hosted and what are we responsible for in all of that? Yeah. So, these are the Nostra relays that are responsible for it. Um, think of it a little bit like a Bitcoin full node um or or just a um like a a software that on request gives data that it has in its local database to the person who requested it. And these uh these applications, these servers can be run on many different types of hardware, right? You can have one on your laptop very easily installed or on your phone. Um but most often people have them in a data center somewhere with a lot of internet access and and and really fast latency. So with with this um they are very easy to run, right? They don't consume much CPU power or or memory. And no events are tiny, right? These are just really short pieces of of text. So even if you have thousands of users, you're not going to be more than a couple gigabytes of data.

[00:33:42]Um so they're actually very cheap to run. Um and uh just very boring regular server deployment. Um there's even some one-click installations in start 9 or or umbrell um for running an ostra relay.

[00:33:56]Um haven is another relay implementation that is specifically targeted for individuals to host a set of relays for their own data. And so that at least you have a backup of of your own stuff. Um, as as a beginner user, you really don't have to worry about hosting your running your own relay. You can connect to any of the thousands of relays out there.

[00:34:17]And there are even indexer relays out there that that accum that connect to all the other many relays and get as much uh events as possible into their own database. Uh, Primal for example is running such an indexer relay. Um, and that that means that data is quite frequently replicated, especially if your posts are cool and and people actually like them. Uh, they usually put your event in their own relay as well, just so that they have a backup of it.

[00:34:45]Um, but if you really want to be very sure, you can run that relay yourself.

[00:34:50]Um, yeah, these relays can either be free, but there's also paid varants, right? And so if you want to make sure that the operator, the service provider has some financial incentive to keep your data along around in the long run, you simply pay them a rather small amount of money, but it adds up for them to make sure that the servers are paid for, etc. What starts off as a pretty, let's call it, hardcore protocol requires a decent bit of user responsibility. It seems like it has become a bit more streamlined as we've gone along, which obviously attracts a wider audience. Do you think though where's the balance that we need to find Max between like the more things that we're offloading to others obviously the less censorship resistant things can become what do you think's the balance that Nostra needs to uh strike in all this does that make sense >> yeah and I think it's we don't really need balance we just need a multiplicity right because again we don't have one flagship client that has to be perfect for everyone we can afford to create tens of thousands of clients that are specialized for a small niche. So what what I just said earlier, right? Run graffino, Amber, Citroine, Amethyst, Pokey, right? All of these different apps, that's that would be a more advanced setup. And if if you want to have that simple and just works and it's only one app, then you would install something like Primal and it works on on every platform, every operating system.

[00:36:13]uh very easy to create a new account comes with an integrated Bitcoin wallet and things just work um quite well. Uh so there there are many different um applications that spec that that focus on specific clients or a specific user base and that really makes makes a difference uh because now you we don't need to build an app that works for everyone. We we build apps that are perfect uh for a couple people. Let's ask the question for the hardcore privacy enthusiasts out there. Let's use a nice example, the one I always like to use. You're in a totalitarian country.

[00:36:53]You're a journalist and you want to post articles that are critical of the regime. Okay, so that's the scenario. If you're in that kind of situation, you're willing to go to any effort. What are the privacy considerations that you should have when setting up your noster?

[00:37:09]>> Yeah, that's that's an important scenario. And and one uh important caveat is that you are directly connecting to tens or potentially hundreds or even thousands of relays to download and and upload your events. Um, so you would want to have a secure and network layer anonymity technology to make sure that those relay operators do not know the IP address of yours or the location where you're at. Uh, so a VPN is a very simple solution to this. Uh, the tour network is another great solution. It comes by the way built in to many Nostra clients including amethyst. So you can configure amemes such that all the traffic gets routed through to tour and we use different tour circuits for different um uh relays etc. Um so take care of your network level privacy and then um but uh yeah other than that um general best practices right so you consider not to do it under your government identity but rather use a a NIM. The cool thing is that Noster is again userdefined identity. So nims are are allowed right um in I don't know Facebook for example you have to sign up with your real name uh and and they will KYC you uh to make sure that that's the case uh in in duster that is simply not required right so you can create one or or multiple new accounts as as many as you like and and that might be something worth to consider um also for example timing attacks um when do you upload your messages right and and and when do you download them uh So here, yeah, consider writing a small script that randomly publishes your events um in instead of you always publishing them when you wake up, right? To obuscate where exactly you are in what time zone.

[00:38:56]>> How about running your own relay?

[00:38:58]>> Yeah, running your own relay is is interesting because it's a little bit like a buffer or or a VPN, right?

[00:39:03]Instead of your phone connecting to all those random relays to downloading the events, you have a relay that downloads all of the relevant events from from other people or from other relays and then your phone only connects to your own server that you run somewhere and it could be a laptop or or whatever. Um there are certainly benefits to that. Um yeah, then you know if if you do want to run a Nostra relay anonymously um again consider something like the the tour network for for hidden services. Um but those are difficult to actually run for a prolonged time uh privately. So running a really completely anonymously will be I guess difficult if your adversary is the ISP.

[00:39:49]>> Social question for you Max. Uh it it's occurred to me recently that technology is much less this is my opinion you might disagree with this technology is much less powerful than the narrative the branding around something and one of the narratives or the branding around Noster has been that this is for this is for Bitcoiners. How much of a a problem do you think that is? And when you get into Noster, is it mostly people interested in Bitcoin that uh are using it? Because, you know, and and look, people are wrong potentially for doing this, but you'll see the Monero people or you'll see other people say, "Oh, that's a Bitcoin thing. I'm not, you know, I'm not touching that." So, when you get into Nostra, is it currently at the moment?

[00:40:35]Obviously, it can change, right? It's it's got other benefits. It's not a Bitcoin product. Do you think that's a problem? And when you get into Nostra currently, is it a lot of Bitcoin talk?

[00:40:44]>> So I would say currently we've reached a scale where it is a quite diversified communication and you can find someone in in almost any niche. Um throughout the history certainly bit Bitcoin was a a seedling topic and and Bitcoiners were the original um bootstrapping audience of this protocol, right? for one because it simply was created by Bitcoiners um and and therefore was was in this bubble from the very beginning um and of course uses Bitcoin cryptography etc. Um and so I think actually bit Bitcoiners are a perfect initial target audience for bootstrapping such a network. Uh because how you bootstrap it is is quite important for for future um yeah life of the system. And so bootstrapping it with people who are are freedom conscious, privacy conscious and and and sound money conscious that I think gives a nice um and I guess developer entrepreneurial conscious right a lot of people in no are builders. we have more developers than users at the moment. Um, and that I think is is quite important to lay a solid foundation. And what we've seen since then is is waves of adoption where where new people come in, get introduced, get excited about it.

[00:42:00]Some people leave, right, cuz they're done with it. Um, but the the growth is is I would say quite steady um with with explosions um of of activity. Uh, and I think I would say that's that's quite natural in in terms of the scale that we're currently at. Um, so yes, there is a lot of Bitcoin talk, no question. Um, but Bitcoin is an interesting thing to talk about, so that's not so bad. Um, but there is also a huge and flourishing Monero community, for example. Um, and uh, I'm sure that there are other small niches that um, yeah, are will continue to flourish. I mean, one of my favorite is is artisan craftsman. Um, like, you know, a year ago or so, a a stained glass restorer has joined, right? So, he goes to old churches and and cleans up and refurbishes the windows and beautiful work. And so, there's hundreds of pictures from him uh presenting his work. And same with leather craftsmans or stonemasons, etc. there there there really is a a a quite broad areas covered uh in in Nostra and even if your particular niche is not there then that's a huge opportunity for you to place yourself early as an as an expert or or important person in in this area right so if if you were an early adopter to Bitcoin you placed yourself early in the creation of a new money and therefore gained a tremendous amount of value in the monetary sense simply by being early for a new network that that was adopting slowly. Uh Nostra is quite similar. If if you're in Nostra early, you're early inside the network effect that if Nostra continues to grow and reach a large amount of of people in in the next couple years, then you stay to gain substantially in the network of social relationships and and um that will open up all types of opportunities uh for people to you know be well connected with with someone else who can make something happen. Uh, so I think being early to Nostra is not as financially rewarding as being early to Bitcoin, but it will be much more socially rewarding.

[00:44:08]Speaking to the normies for a moment here, they're listening. They realize, hey, I I want some of the benefits of of Nostra. I'm willing to go through the little bit of a process to start it up.

[00:44:20]Once they do that, what is the day-to-day maintenance? What do they have to do kind of an on ongoing basis?

[00:44:27]or if they get through those initial hurdles, is it just, hey, I'll post something on Twitter, but I'm also going to post it on noster, the same sort of thing, and then I can also post it on Substack or wherever else they are. Is it more is it very straightforward once you get it going? Yeah. So, data duplication is at the heart of Noster.

[00:44:42]So, it's definitely a good idea to whatever you're posting on on Twitter, copy paste it on Noster. Um, it might even be easily doable to create a bot that does this automatically, right?

[00:44:53]Noster is very bot friendly. Um the issue might be to get the data from Twitter. Um but there there might be ways around this. Um so yeah, just do your your regular posting whatever you want to share with the world. Um and that that can be a copy that can be made custom just for Noster, right? Um uh if you have any specific questions about Nster, just make a hashtag asknostster and people will likely respond. Oh yeah, probably a good idea to introduce yourself with your first post. Uh so hashtag introductions uh is is monitored by a lot of of people who want to welcome new um users of of this protocol. Uh so this will probably get you, you know, a decent uh initial engagement. Um and then don't just create top level posts, right? Respond under other people. Um that's a cool way to to bootstrap your following. Um because uh people read the responses even if they don't follow the person who writes it. Uh so um uh engage right and of course occasionally you will have to check upon your Bitcoin wallet and and see all of the stats that you stacked uh from people who liked your content. Um, which is really funny then when when that happens. Um, you know, I I I went to a bar and and was paying for for coffee and I I get out my phone to to pay in Bitcoin and it it loads in the background all of the money that I've received on Noster since the last time I opened um the the the wallet. Uh, and it was exactly the amount that were for for drinks and and dinner uh for for me and a friend. So it it really can happen that that people buy you the food that that you eat uh just because they have appreciated some of the words you said.

[00:46:36]>> Yeah. How dependent is Nostra on lightning and do you have to be in a lightning ecosystem to be taking part in nostster?

[00:46:43]>> Uh no you do not right. So you can create basically any Nostra event without touching Bitcoin or or the blockchain entirely. Um, how these lightning payments work is that in your profile where you have your name and picture and bio etc. You can add a link to your website for example or also your lightning network address um which makes it an easy way for people to pay you right then on top of that next to your lightning node you could run a server that then attests to the public that you have received this lightning payment and that's that is what we uh call zaps right a server that says hey I just got paid by this person um and uh that is optional right you can easily run it for example in in BTC there's a plugin for that. Um and uh then you yeah for for most Nostra clients do not have a wallet integrated with which you can actually send Bitcoin. Um so usually when you click zap someone uh it it would pop up, hey with which of your installed wallet applications do you want to pay this invoice and and you select and and make the payment. That's usually how it would go. Uh but there are ways to have a more Nostra native wallet experience. Uh, one of them is called Noster Wallet Connect.

[00:48:01]Um, so let's say you have a somewhere a lightning node. Um, a wallet sitting around with money and and you would like uh on to send money from the phone, right? Uh, and so now you can authenticate your phone towards the uh to your lightning node uh via noster. Uh so you the the node has a public key, your phone has a public key and you can configure that these two are are trusted and then whenever you want to make a payment from the phone you send a Nostraster direct message to the public key of your lightning node and uh then instructing the node to send some money to a certain address. Uh and and so this is really easy to add lightning payments into an application because you don't actually have to integrate a lightning wallet. you just have to integrate a small Noster client or app that signs a a message to someone. Um so very simple process and then the third way of doing it is is with ecash uh so specifically Kashu a me and e-cash money warehouse protocol um on top of Bitcoin um basically a custodial wallet with with some cool privacy features and what uh the the way that ecash gets transferred is that you basically copy a signature and send it to someone else. Uh so this is a token um that you send over whatever communication channel and of course we can use Noster as our communication channel. So I simply put a a e-cash token inside a Nostra event and and optionally encrypt it and send it to the receiver whom I would like to pay and he can then um for example store these e-cash tokens on the Nostra relay which then means that different applications on different phones can control the same e-cash wallet because the database that they're using is actually on Noster. Obviously I haven't engaged with Noster just yet. My goal is by the time I release this to have a profile for people to uh follow and be active on Nostra. That's going to be my goal. So people can check the show notes for that. And I'll insert my uh credentials in a moment here uh postprouction when I have this set up.

[00:50:06]So I'm a little bit ignorant obviously, Max, but probably I'm speaking for a large audience who also is. Now, I did talk to somebody who played around with Nostra a couple years ago and what they remember about it is that there were things like there were a group of people they would send messages and like one in five messages wouldn't come through. Um they talked about how they thought the bandwidth was a little bit intense in terms of how much was being used. Are those still issues? Uh are there any other kind of quality of life problems that Nostra either has now or has solved? Yeah. So there are a couple issues fundamentally in its design in terms of message delivery. Right? If you're connected to relay A and I'm connected to relay B and you want to send me a message and you put it on A but I'm not connected to it, then I will not see it. And so we need to have a a smart way of connecting to the same relays. Um and of course we we put our messages on multiple relays. So eventually we'll we'll find a match. Um but there are smarter ways to do this and that's known as the outbox model. Uh the recent amethyst release actually implements this. So now Amethyst can connect to my phone is currently at over a thousand uh relays. Um so message deliveries is is much more resilient in latest editions of of the architecture.

[00:51:26]Um then uh things like bandwidth is certainly an issue simply by its decentralized nature. Um again as I just said a thousand relays connected to from the phone that that means a lot of quoteunquote wasted bandwidth for setting up these connections and maybe downloading multiple event twice. Um there's ways that you can optimize this but that is a fundamental limitation. If you want that the phone can be sure that that is that it doesn't have to trust any other server in particular for delivering the messages then you will simply have to connect to many servers.

[00:51:59]Um, if that is an issue, then you could, for example, run a trusted server uh that does the reaching out to to thousands of relays and and then your phone only has to connect to this one relay and will only get every event once. Um, there's many ways that you could run this. Again, Primal is is one good example here. They have this caching server integrated uh and and that means it's much less bandwidth intensive as something like Amethyst.

[00:52:25]Amethyst can be configured for this bandwidth saving mode as well. It's it's a bit custom work. Um so it really depends on on how developers have are are implementing this. A lot of the problems can be solved but in many Nostra clients they have not been addressed. Right? So that um is a bit of a downside of a more decentralized system that not every application is as good as as the other. Um so yeah these these are some of the issues and maybe to to that first point of of group messaging. Um specifically in the context of private messaging uh the original Nostra protocol is is very bad.

[00:53:01]Um there there was a very hacked short-term standard initially that then stayed around for for years. Um and and later there were some minor improvements to it. Um but ultimately Nostra is originally designed for public messaging and and not for private. Uh but this recently has changed uh with the introduction of the messaging layer security protocol on top of MLS uh sorry on top of Noster. Um and this allows us to create scalable encrypted group communications where we have encrypted groups with the size of a million users.

[00:53:35]Uh and it it will still work efficiently with reliable message delivery and and good authentication. Um, so the the group encrypted messaging problem is being worked on as we speak. Uh, so check out white noise if you want to experiment a bit with that. So, Noster, people can just kind of picture Twitter in in a certain sense. That's maybe the look and feel. What are some other things though that you can do or that you may soon be able to do with Nostra?

[00:54:03]What's the what's the other features and maybe future potential? Yeah, one uh one other cool aspect that we didn't speak about yet um and that goes back to our previous conversation about Bitcoin privacy um is that there are services in in Bitcoin that are are useful but it's difficult to discover new providers of this service. Right? So the the perfect use case that's implemented in Nostra is for coin join coordination or for eCash um operators. um the the operator of such a service can publish a Nostra event um with the metadata of hey I am a coordinator of the wabishabi protocol.

[00:54:40]You can reach me on this uh address and here are my fees or you know any other description. Um and now someone can build a client that looks up on the Nostra network if there are any announcements of a coordinator um available. And now you all of a sudden see that yeah there are these 10 different coordinators that you could choose from. And on top of that you can build a reputation system where people can leave comments or reviews of these service providers. Um uh so extremely powerful to discover yeah providers of of certain services and then to make sure that you're connecting to a reputable um solution. A another extremely important um aspect is for example marketplaces. Uh for for a long time we want to do commerce online and uh do so privately and and freely. Uh and in all previous attempts failed because of a centralized server that was used for creating the identity of users for storing the messages of those users um and even storing the money of those users. Right? early bitcoin marketplaces were all custodial and and so all of these three vectors of centralizations need to be um removed and we we have that uh with noster there is a a standard for creating a event that uh of you selling a product uh with certain characteristics right this is I think nip 99 uh is the standard that defines a merchant and certain offers or products of this merchant or collections thereof and Now you can um browse the catalog u of of noster merchants on again thousands of Nostra relays and you can duplicate them and make sure that they won't be censored and you can engage into a direct message with that merchant to clarify any any things about the trade and ultimately uh get uh the product delivered and and make a payment and again without any important tr server that requires trust in the middle. All that's in the middle is a dumb message passing relay that takes messages from left to the right.

[00:56:48]Um and and that is all right. We only trust relays for uptime and delivery of messages but not for authentication or or anything else that is important. Uh so yeah the the the number of Nostra applications really is is way too much uh than than to talk about. I could just give you a small glimpse here. Um there's many more. Maybe we didn't emphasize this early on enough because I think this is the most desirable aspect of Nostra is that it is censorship resistant. Let me phrase it like this, Max. Let's say that the next pandemic happens and people aren't allowed to say certain things on Twitter or whatever the case may be and people are posting on Noster. What about that? Or what would a what would somebody have to do to shut down the ability of somebody to message on Noster as a way of getting to this question of what does the censorship resistance of Nostra mean?

[00:57:40]>> Yeah. So, let let's assume we have a really powerful adversary and let's assume we we have quite a an an average user, right? Someone who just has a phone installed Primal. Um and so whenever you're you're making a post on Primal, it's actually connecting to 10 different relays or or something like this and um broadcasting your your posts, right? So um if now the government comes and says, "Hey, this user should not make any any posts anymore." It has to go to 10 different relays um to ask the the message to be removed. Now these relays could be in different jurisdictions and so all of a sudden it's an international um affair and they might be run by anonymous people who are not even able to be to be identified. Um but but still let's say they um they they do succeed or or maybe specifically they succeed with um Primal, right? That's an application built by a company in the US. Let's let's assume Primal doesn't want to provide you service anymore and and so they change their software to exclude you specifically in their client. Well, then you simply go on and and connect to another Nostra client. Um and and start using that, right? And that might be developed by some someone else in a different jurisdiction. Uh and uh that would mean it's no longer possible for any one developer to exclude one specific user of of the software. Um, and then in terms of of relays, well, you usually start out with just any public free available relay that's out there. Um, and but then if if someone starts to remove your your messages, then consider paying for it, right?

[00:59:19]There are paid services and of course if there's a financial incentive for a relay to accept your messages, they're more likely to do it than if you expect them to do it for free. Um, and if if that doesn't work either, then you can just run your own relay, right? And uh even if every other relay on this planet has um uh has decided to delete your notes, your relay will will still provide them, right? And now you just need to get your followers to connect to your own relay and they will get your messages. And then no relays do depend on domain names, right? So um relay.primal.net uh for example is the URL of of the primal relay and that can be shut down as well. Um so if uh and of course if if your the domain to your server is cut then any software provided on the server cannot be uh served to the users anymore. So what you could do then instead is is to run your servers behind an onion address. You're again a self-identified private keybased ident or addressing scheme for IP addresses um that are also much more private. So if you run this hidden service in anonymous configuration, it might even be very difficult for someone to find out which IP address the actual server of this really has. And this would make further censorship more difficult, like someone shutting down your your um VPS, like your online data center. And if that happens, you just buy an old $100 laptop and hook it up to some cellular internet or or satellite internet somewhere in the forest and and you run that on on solar power and it it will expose your relays or your nodes to whomever you would like. So Nostra is a really simple solution and foundationally it's just a websocket connection which definitely can be censored in many aspects but because we don't trust those servers anymore as much as we did in the past we can simply afford to duplicate our content to many relays and then the likelihood that all of them get compromised is exceedingly low.

[01:01:25]>> Is there anything we didn't touch on regarding Nostra that you would like to relay? Yeah, no is is really broad and it's always difficult as a presenter here to make sure that you don't forget any of of the huge um number of of apps.

[01:01:41]Um and and that is because Nostra is so incredibly developer friendly. Like literally if if you're a somewhat decent developer, you can write from scratch a Nostra client, a Nostra relay with a cool interface in in a day or a weekend, right? It's it's it's really incredible.

[01:01:57]So much so that you don't even have to be a developer anymore to create a new nost client. There's a great website called shakespeare.diy like the author and and this is a webbased vibe coding application that allows you to build nostster apps very very easily. Um so one of the recent um hypes on Nostra has has been vlogging uh because we can also upload videos not to Nostra but to Blossom. It's a related protocol we didn't talk about yet. Um but ultimately someone vibe coded in in a day for like $100 worth of compute a new Noster client where you can record a video of yourself and and upload it and and share it to your friends. and a couple people picked it up and found it really great and and started using it.

[01:02:45]Um so much so that there are now three different applications that do this both on iOS and Android. Um and it was already added to applications like Amethyst. Um so it's it's all of a sudden very easy um for you and again the guy who who started this whole thing is not even a developer, right? He he just used this website to to make a simple app where you can upload videos and that started a a new hype cycle on on Noster. Um so go to shakespeare.diy and and try out that and I tell you even if you're not a developer you will be able to create a new web a new website that interfaces with the Nostra network and it's it's quite mind-blowing when when you see something cool there. So, I'm going to certainly try to get Nostra set up in advance of the release of this episode. So, by the time this releases, you can check the show notes and connect me with me there. We'll try to have our own tutorials moving forward. Obviously, we want to participate in this ideologically aligned for sure. It's just one of those things I never got to.

[01:03:49]So, really appreciate Max Hillibbrand explaining Nostra to us in in a way that few people would be able to do. I know you don't like shilling things, Max Hillbrand, but please let people know where they can find you, follow you, and how they can uh thank you for your time.

[01:04:04]>> Yeah. Um I I like to opt out of bad things. And so I'm not on Twitter anymore, so you will only find my my posts on. Um so you can get my public key. That's max towards liberty.com because by the way, you can link your public key to a to a domain and then have something like an email address where people can find your public key.

[01:04:25]um which is pretty cool. Um and yeah, try out all or some of the apps that we talked about today. Um there there are many and more to choose from. And um yeah, I guess the the other humble plug I I can make is I wrote a book about privacy. Um the praxiology of privacy.

[01:04:43]So trying to bring the cipher punks and the e Austrian economists together and explain why why both of these systems are so awesome and so beneficial to each other and complimentary. You can get that uh on on my website towardslberty.com/pop.

[01:04:59]towardsliberty.com/pop.

[01:05:01]All right. Thank you, Max.

[01:05:03]>> Yeah, thanks, Gabriel. I'm really uh enjoying to be back here on the show. Um and hopefully we'll we'll get to chat soon about yet another amazing freedom tech uh that that we've come up in the meantime. Uh and until then, thanks for the your continued work of uh spreading the good work uh the the good word on how people can improve their their privacy and security. That's very helpful. Hey, thanks for listening. I could really use your help real quick if you could share this episode with someone. Engage with me. Leave a review anywhere. This helps me to break the technocratic shadowbanning that is happening with my brand. And of course, if you really want to escape the technocracy, go to escapethenocracy.com.

[01:05:39]Privacy tutorial series, books, newsletters, consulting, and of course, you can leave a donation. Thank you very much.

[01:05:49]Heat. Heat.

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