66: William Casarin ON: The Future of Decentralized Social Media

William Casarin is the creator of Damus, an app that interfaces with the NOSTR protocol to decentralize social media.

In this episode, you're going to learn what NOSTR is and how it decentralizes social media compared to traditional platforms, the potential for using Lightning payments with social networks, why algorithms on NOSTR are user-driven and flexible, how NOSTR's open data layer allows apps to interconnect seamlessly, and the challenges and future of building decentralized applications in a centralized app ecosystem.



William Casarin is the founder of the iOS NOSTR client, Damus. NOSTR is a decentralized, censorship-resistant, open-source protocol that aims to change social media as we know it today. It also integrates Bitcoin through a system called “zaps” which Casarin invented. He’s been in Bitcoin since 2010 when he started mining his own and then moved on to contributing to Bitcoin core and lightning. He is passionate about the future of Bitcoin and decentralized protocols, with the aim of completing a desktop and Android version of Damus in 2025. 

Timestamps:

[03:40] What is NOSTR?

[05:10] How NOSTR decentralizes social media

[07:15] Difference between NOSTR and traditional platforms

[09:45] Using multiple servers for reliability

[11:30] Why censorship is a problem on social media

[14:20] How NOSTR notes work

[16:05] Integrating lightning payments into NOSTR

[18:40] What are zaps and what is their purpose?

[21:10] Challenges with Apple’s App Store

[23:50] Why algorithms on NOSTR are flexible

[26:35] How NOSTR apps interact with the protocol

[29:20] Building a universal storefront with NOSTR

[32:10] Onboarding challenges for new users

[35:00] Why network effects matter for NOSTR

[37:30] Lightning network usage on NOSTR

Learn more about and sign up for Damus, the social network YOU control.

If you want to connect with William, you can email him at jb55@jb55.com

Resources Mentioned:

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff | Book or Audiobook or Video

Matt Taibbi’s Thread on The Twitter Files | X Thread

Bari Weiss’s Thread on The Twitter Files | X Thread

Coinos | Website

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