Nostr is the internet how it was originally conceived. Open and free. Your content is yours. Your followers go with you from app to app with no friction. Even a global payments system lives inside every Nostr app. No permission required to use Nostr, not even basic ID.

Nostr is a communications internet without walled gardens like FaceBook, X or Google standing between you and your online activity. On Nostr there are no controlling forces able to unilaterally remove your content, with no right to reply. Algorithms, ads, and censorship do not come as standard either.

Nostr has turned the current concept of internet use on its head. The users dictate to the app companies how they want Nostr to work. Any app company that starts over-reaching faces the prospect of all their users “unilaterally” moving to another app that respects their privacy and meets their expectations. This dynamic of user-led works. Nostr app builders work hard to compete for users, and know that they will only retain them if their app stays user-oriented.

Try out Nostr with zero commitment and asymmetric benefits!

This is a live feed to my account.

Link to Live Feed of Trending Posts on Nostr

Getting started on Nostr

There are many “Twitter-killers” on Nostr. Try Yakihonne.com in your browser and click on Create an Account

Make up a name!

Press return!

Choose a few topics that interest you. You are the algorithm! You decide what appears in your feed. Anyone who posts unhelpful comments, you simply block or mute them.

Next up, a Lightning wallet. This is the power of Nostr –

Every app on the Nostr network can send and receive SATS, the pennies of Bitcoin. You can’t lose.

• If you post interesting content, people will “Zap you sats”. In other words you can earn for posting on social media.
• You can also sell your services on Nostr stores, or even direct from your timeline.
• There is always a payment icon under every post on every app on Nostr, from social media to stores, to podcasting apps, image galleries, chats.

Done. Your Nostr account is ready.

No name, email, or phone number needed. No bank account required.
Your wallet works instantly — and both your Nostr account and wallet are secured by maths that proves only you control them.

Go to Settings and save your public and private keys to a notepad or password manager

Public and Private/Secret keys is Nostr-speak for password and username. Your account is cryptographically secure, meaning only you can post as you.

The big difference to remember is – there is no password reset. Lose those keys and you cannot login to your account. Give your secret key to someone else and they become you!

It’s a concept built on the desire for online privacy, freedom and censorship resistance. Unless you control your two keys, you cannot enjoy any of those benefits!

If crypto keypairs is frying your brain, start simple and copy keys to a notebook. Then aim to graduate to a password manager, (basic secure online practice anyway!) and when you understand keypairs better – final nirvana, a browser-based signer.

Look around Yakihonne a great Nostr social media app. Post, follow, like, zap…

On Nostr there are dozens of apps (Nostr is an internet of communication).

It’s an open network, as in all apps are built on the same protocol. There are no walled gardens, no Youtubes or FaceBooks with their own rules, passwords and methods to stop you leaving for other apps.

Your one public and private keypair allow you to enter any Nostr app.

You don’t even need to sign in to each app if you have a signer extension in your browser. If you get serious about Nostr, you should check out these sophisticated password managers.

They auto-magically sign you in to Nostr-aware apps. Welcome to a new world of convenience, privacy and security.

Secure.

There are no moderators on Nostr, so the social media element is really positive. That’s right, people tend to behave well BECAUSE there are no mods, no algorithms, no rules, no ads.

Weird, but true.

Want to be a jerk on Nostr?

The good behaviour vibe on Nostr has to do with a mature approach to social and trust issues.

If you spout nonsense or hate:

• You can force yourself into anyone’s feed at any time with an unsavoury reply, but nobody has to put up with you. Mute or Unfollow is so simple and effective.
• Users have to actively follow you to hear repeats of your nonsense.
• There’s no incentive to being a negative keyboard warrior.

Nostr community benefits

The beauty of Nostr is the community – users came for the freedom that Nostr affords its users.

To put back into the community, for my part, I post author bonus content on Nostr only. And if you buy my books from Nostr or from here using Bitcoin Sats, you pay 30% below the €3.99 Amazon price (if or when I publish on there.)

Is a lightening wallet worth having?

Nostr champions the Value-4-Value circular economy philosophy.

Users on Nostr pay each other in Sats (satoshis) for valuable posts and information and real-world goods and services. Link a lightning wallet to your Nostr account and you can send and receive Sats all day long!

Unlike funny-money tokens, Bitcoin is real money and can be used outside the Nostr eco-system. Technically it is the best money ever invented, a point you may see mentioned a few times on Nostr!

Bitcoin’s base layer moves ~$2.1-5.2 billion USD/day

Lightning enables instant micro‑payments on top, typically with fees around ~0.0029%—roughly 1,000x cheaper than card networks for small payments.

In Africa – 13-20% of population use Bitcoin daily. Adoption rate +52% YoY

Do you run a business choking on 2-3%transaction fees?

Nostr users buy and sell products from each other – from honey to music, paintings to books! All from within the Nostr social media network, using Lightning zaps and invoices!

​Censorship resistance: Instant final settlement, no charge-backs. and no third‑party “freeze” button. If you pay with Bitcoin, you must control the wallet it comes from, making many traditional card‑style fraud vectors impossible. The base layer security offered by Bitcoin also means your website payments system doesn’t need so many security checks and balances.

Global reach: Lightning works anywhere with internet. Payments are also viable offline, when the internet is down.

Bitchat Lightning‑based chat where you can make payments over Bluetooth.

Reticulum is a networking stack that can work over data radios, modems, LoRa radios, serial lines, AX.25 TNCs, amateur radio digital modes, WiFi and Ethernet devices, free-space optical links.

Numo – Accept Bitcoin with a tap on any NFC-enabled Android, online, offline.

Nostr really is the internet how it was originally conceived, and I would love to see more folks on there. It’s not going away, whereas Twitter and FB and Insta, meh, they are becoming so restrictive it’s like they want to become the next MySpace – irrelevant, olde worlde, centralised flaws exposed.