Oscar Merry, founder of Fountain, shares insights on revolutionizing podcasting by integrating Bitcoin and decentralized protocols. They explore how open social protocols can enhance content discovery beyond a single platform, emphasizing user experience over developer convenience. The discussion dives into technical challenges, like key management and search functionalities, and highlights the importance of community engagement. Merry also addresses the potential of Bitcoin payments for content creators, aiming to simplify interactions and monetize content effectively.
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insights INSIGHT
Social Graph Improves Podcast Discovery
Fountain uses Nostr to import a user's follower graph so discovery travels with the user across apps.
Linking search results to your social graph adds personalized signal that improves episode relevance.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Start With Open Likes
Add a lightweight like feature first because it requires minimal engineering and lowers user friction.
Use open identifiers (podcast GUIDs) so likes apply to any episode without requiring the show to exist on Nostr.
insights INSIGHT
Reference Episodes With NIP-73
Fountain references external content via NIP-73 tags so Nostr events can point to RSS GUIDs.
This lets any Nostr client read likes/comments tied to global identifiers without hosting episode content on Nostr.
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"Obviously we're trying to make fountain the best possible listening experience and the best possible app for discovering great audio content. But more broadly than that, we don't want to turn into, you know, another version of Spotify where things only work in fountain. We want to, enable discovery and the signal around valuable content to come from anywhere and be consumed anywhere. That's going to make fountain a lot better." ~ Guy Swann
I sat down with Oscar Merry, founder of Fountain, to explore how Bitcoin, Nostr, and podcasting intersect in ways most people haven’t yet imagined. How can an open social protocol transform podcast discovery? What happens when “likes” work across every app, not just one platform? We dig into the technical hurdles — from key management and onboarding to building a better search for audio — and the surprising design decisions that make or break adoption. The good, the bad and the messy realities, of building tools that actually work for people, not just developers.
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