What Nostr Did with Ben Arc

 
 

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“The model we have now which is corrupt and a bit evil, that will probably still exist, it’s just you have a choice as a user to not use that model.”
— Ben Arc

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Ben Arc is a free open-source software advocate and founder of LNbits. In this interview, we discuss a range of subjects covering poverty, politics, and technology. We talk about the value of hard work, the impact of Brexit, the potential of decentralized platforms like Nostr, privacy concerns, censorship on social media platforms, and the importance of freedom of speech.

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Ben Arc is one of the Bitcoin community's most unheralded heroes’: there are numerous occasions when LNbits, which he co-founded, has been mentioned as a vital cog in the development of new Bitcoin software and hardware across the world, particularly in Africa. Then there is Ben’s leading development in the censor-resistant social network Nostr. And, he was an OG Bitcoin progressive pushing against the dogma that Bitcoin was solely a libertarian tool.

In this great podcast, we discuss a range of subjects close to Ben’s heart that fall into the big buckets of politics and technology. Ben has a personal experience of poverty, which has shaped his political views. We talk about this and the most important political event to have affected the UK in our lifetimes, Brexit, which has dominated headlines for years and still continues to divide opinion.

We then focus on Ben’s opinions of the potential for decentralized platforms to resist censorship and government interference. Nostr was developed out of an LNbits proof of concept application for a decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace. It has morphed into a technology that's not only revolutionizing the way developers build applications but also facilitates a censorship-resistant global social network.

In an era of increasing digital censorship, alternative platforms that prioritize freedom of speech are more important than ever. With the backing of influential figures like Jack Dorsey, Nostr could become a dominant platform in the tech world that disintermediates middlemen and tackles censorship. And it shows the potential of Bitcoin to continue to revolutionize industries.

TIMESTAMPS

00:02:02: Introductions
00:08:58: Brexit
00:13:54: Left vs right bitcoiners
00:19:03: Zaps, and the genesis of Nostr
00:25:17: Bluesky, and network effects
00:31:40: Nostr's architecture
00:39:06: Surveillance capitalism, and censorship resistance
00:48:01: Using Nostr and relays
00:51:44: The problem with centralised networks
01:04:05: Censorship resistance through resilience
01:12:34: Nostr is the decentralisation of everything
01:19:33: Symbiosis of Nostr and Bitcoin
01:31:26: Creating a circular economy with Real Bedford
01:34:03: Final comments

 

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SHOW NOTES

PodcastPeter McCormack