PCR113 - V4V Hybrid Theory with Oscar Merry & Dovydas

QW & Avi roast the top zapper, discuss the new Fountain premium, upcoming features, Value 4 Value, RSS Blue migration, UK V4V event and much more with Oscar Merry and Dovydas.

Fountain FM : https://fountain.fm/

Bitcoin Golf Championship / Kick Off Party 5/26/25 : https://bitcoingolfchampionship.com/

Nos Vegas : Bitcoin 2025 Side Event Website 5/28/25 : https://pay.zaprite.com/pl_D12cQ9rAmK

Avi Burra's Book 24 : https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr11?crid=27RW9P8JQ4YMV&keywords=avi+burra+24&qid=1700327391&sprefix=avi+burra+24%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1

Plebchain Radio Shirt - Black and Yellow -https://lightning.store/product/plebchain-radio-black-t-shirt/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Pleb Chain Radio, a live show brought to you by Plebs for Plebs, which focuses

(00:08):
on the intersection of NOSTER and Bitcoin protocols.
Join QW and Avi as they run down the weekly news and developments, breaking down the current
thing and the future frontier with the foundation of decentralization, the builders, thinkers,
doers, and plebs.

(00:30):
All right, we are live.

(01:00):
SAS Blue are here to join us with a major announcement that is going to shake the world
of podcasting to its core in a good way. And a reminder, folks, while we're on the topic,
if you are listening to this show on Apple or Spotify, first of all, thank you for listening.
But I would urge you to hit pause and switch over to the Fountain Podcasting app,

(01:24):
where you can earn some stats and support the value for value revolution as you listen.
This show is streamed live on zap.stream
and any other Noster client that supports streaming
such as Amethyst and Noster.
And QW, I'm going to keep saying this,

(01:44):
there is no second best Bitcoin conference.
We are in conference season,
but there is no second best because BTC Prague is the best
and it is taking place from June the 19th to the 21st.
So that's less than a month away.
And you can save some sats if you use discount code NOSTR, N-O-S-T-R, 15% if you're paying in sats and 10% off if you're paying in dirty old fiat.

(02:16):
And QW...
Avi, I need to ask about that event.
Is it going to be similar to getting into the Nakamoto stage next week?
Which event, QW?
The promo, your event, the BTC Prague.
I was laughing because the Nakamoto stage, if you want to go see J.D. Vance, he talks at 9 a.m.

(02:43):
And you're supposed to get there two hours before because you're going through basically a TSA checkpoint to see him talk.
I'm just picturing all these Bitcoiners falling in line.
And it's so contradictory, but it is what it is when you have the vice president, right?

(03:05):
No, it certainly is.
Well, we'll see, QW.
Maybe the lines will be that long.
But I have to say...
Maybe the orange man will go to BGC.
Dear God, I hope not.
But this is a proud week for me, QW, because at the Bitcoin Film Festival that is underway in Warsaw, over the weekend, my show, the pilot of my show, Finding Home, my humble attempt at paying homage to Anthony Baudain with the food and travel show about Bitcoin or with Bitcoin in the background is going to be premiering over there.

(03:44):
I think it's over the weekend.
So a lot of work went into it.
Parker Worthington was the director.
And it's really gratifying that people are going to be seeing it for the first time.
Now, it's not going to be released to the public just yet, but it is getting its premiere there.
So, yeah, proud moment for me.

(04:07):
Well, and let me stop you there because we had the show.
and Tomek, I think, brought it up that, you know,
you're short or your pilot was going to be running.
But he didn't say that.
He said just, Avi, you have something you submitted.
And I was like, I listened to the show again.

(04:28):
I'm like, is Avi submitting videos that I don't even know about?
And when you said Finding Home and you talked about the Bourdain
kind of influence there. I remember our conversation in the past, but I didn't hear
anything about it until really that show. So as a co-host, you know, I feel like you're cheating

(04:50):
on me sometimes. And I just want to let you know that it's okay. We have a fluid relationship.
This is a video show. It's a 30-odd minute pilot. I mean, one of the reasons I've kept it
under apps is, largely under apps,
is, you know, we wanted
to make sure we built,

(05:10):
we made the, you know, really
a work of art, right? That was the goal.
It wasn't to make a Bitcoin video, it was to make
a work of art and
see if we can get a season
funded,
and we'll see. We'll see what happens
when it premieres in
Warsaw.
With that said...

(05:31):
Good luck, buddy. Good luck.
Thank you, my friend. Oops.
I lost the meme, QW.
But the meme, I had it right in front of me, but now it's gone.
But I'll do it from memory.
The meme readout today is renaming slices to whole pizza.
Yesterday, as we know, QW was Bitcoin Pizza Day.

(05:53):
And in honor of Bitcoin Pizza Day, our dear friend Condelorian has proposed a PIP, a pizza improvement protocol.
it's numbered 177
and the idea is
we will call
the smallest unit of a pizza
a slice, we'll call it
a whole pizza because

(06:13):
why not, that way people
when they eat a slice, they're no longer
eating a slice, they will eat
a whole pizza, I think this whole slice thing
was introducing
unit bias, QW
so it's good, we're removing it
and we're making pizza
great again
uh that said qw you've been paying attention to bitcoin and nostril culture in the last uh week or

(06:37):
so what are you seeing uh first of all speaking of pizza i think that both sailor and strategy
probably had the worst marketing uh of any pizza day out there um it was really emphasizing you
using the dollar to buy pizza. And I am just so confused. It's like they didn't read the room

(07:02):
that the whole reason pizza day is a thing is because someone purchased Bitcoin or a pizza
with Bitcoin, using it as a form of money, the electronic cash system. So I don't know what's
going on there. But that was, any thoughts on that, Avi? I think we've talked about this a few times

(07:27):
on the show. The narrative shift, especially since the Trump election, if I have to be honest,
which is, you know, when was that? Early November of 2024, has been very interesting. You see
Bitcoin treasury companies becoming all the rage. Bitcoin is now a pet rock. It is digital gold. It

(07:50):
is cyber Manhattan. It is now mainstream. We did a whole sermon on this. We are now the counterculture.
I mean, we've been on this the whole time because I think we certainly emphasize money first.
You don't make war unaffordable with digital real estate, in my opinion. You got to use it in

(08:11):
loo of the dollar. But yeah, so that was one of the culture items, obviously pizza.
One big thing that's happening today, and I'm sure we'll talk about this during the show.
When I say today, it looks like it's in about less than two hours is when it streams to me,

(08:34):
but well to all of us but yeah that would be the first UK value for value gig streaming on Fountain
so anybody with their Fountain app value for value you're going to have Longy you're going to have
Nathan Abbott and Joe Martin obviously we love Joe friend of the show he's been on before good man

(08:57):
so that's that's going to be going on that's today that that kind of I just found out about
that a few days ago. So there wasn't a lot in front of it. Maybe it was, can we do this? And
then we decided we could do it. So we just announced it a couple of days before. Vegas,
obviously, we got the Vegas Nostrid side quests. I will be at the Bitcoin Golf Championship 26th.

(09:21):
I'll be on stage. We're going to be doing a live show with Heather Larson with Radio Detox.
You'll see Jim Costello with Phantom Power and then Abel James.
Then you're going to have the music playing.
So, you know, people like Sarah Evans, Sarah Jade, sorry, not Sarah Evans, Sarah Jade with her guitar.

(09:46):
But that's from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
If you're golfing, it starts at 8 a.m.
But we will be streaming.
This is the important part because, you know, if you're not going to make it, if you don't want to pay $20,000 for a beer in Vegas, streaming live, Toonster, and I believe Fountain 2 will confirm today.
NAS Vegas, that would be the Wednesday, the 28th, We All Scream.

(10:11):
That's from 7 p.m. to 1 p.m.
Also, that Saturize the System, which is about 300 steps away.
That starts at 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.
So if you want to hit both of those, by all means, satirize the system.
The Bugle, our friends of the show, Bugle News, you can do that and then walk over to

(10:32):
Las Vegas.
So you can do literally both in one night.
Nostrebama, we'll talk about that as we get closer.
But Avi, I mentioned Jim Costello.
I'll be on stage and Ainsley is actually going to be playing at that event as well.
but she happened to be our top zapper this week Avi. Yeah how about that QW?

(10:57):
It's a little bit poetic because we do have a pretty dense value for value show here so Ainsley
Costello our top zapper this week in musical powerhouse who makes us middle-aged podcast hosts
feel like we're trying to figure out how to burn cds you remember that Avi burning cds that was fun
while we were busy complaining about kids these days,

(11:20):
you went ahead and proved that talent doesn't need a few decades to marinate.
And then you zapped us into the stratosphere.
You're out here creating music with the confidence of someone
who's never rewound a cassette tape.
And you're supporting the show like a true value for value champion.
Thank you for showing us the future of music Thank you for showing showing us that future of music is in very capable hands now if you can just teach us how tiktok tiktok works that be great so thank

(11:51):
you ainsley um we appreciate you uh you you were on our early shows um when we were really starting
the value for value live streaming uh so you are etched in our history and we appreciate you and we
We very much look forward to working with you in the future.
Indeed.

(12:12):
Thank you for your support and generosity.
And QW...
Just a young gun, right?
She's a young gun.
Certainly.
Most decidedly.
I normally don't feel old until, you know,
these high-energy younger people come around me.
Maybe I am getting old.
I don't know.
And before we jump into our guest segment today, QW, we have a sermon.

(12:37):
And I come not to praise Valley for Value, but sadly to bury its remains.
My dear gentle plebs of the lightning-laced airwaves,
imagine Valley for Value as a pristine snowflake floating down the time chain.

(12:58):
Perfect, symmetrical, and doomed.
the instant anyone touches it.
The second a human hand reaches out,
here come the inspectors who say,
ah-ah, that flake melted on a custodial palm.
Impure.
Or, wait, you thanked someone for catching that?

(13:22):
Commercial contamination.
Or, you're storing it in a freezer for an extra day?
Technocratic elitism
The purity test zooms infinitely inward
A mandelbrot of moral math
Where every zoom level discovers a new micro-sin

(13:43):
Bitrate snobbery
Microphone privilege
And the forbidden phrase
Support the show
Keep zooming
And eventually the only flawless practitioner
Is a battery-powered hermit
broadcasting thoughts via Morse code blinked at the moon,

(14:03):
and even he probably shilled a VPN once.
We announced Plep Chain Radio Premium last week,
and predictably, the snowflake of value-for-value evaporated
in a firestorm of shrill gatekeeper cries.
Funny thing, though, the same critics streamed our free feed

(14:26):
over ISP infrastructure
paid for by someone's
fiat paycheck on a phone
assembled in a factory
that definitely didn't run
on gratitude alone.
Purity is a hall
of mirrors. Every
pain reflects a cost
we prefer to ignore.

(14:46):
So I've concluded.
Somewhere between the invoices
for hosting and the existential
dread of production schedules
that value for value
is like absolute zero, a useful limit we can approach but never reach. If the concept were
truly pure, it would float beyond audit, immune to every ledger. Instead, it keeps falling apart

(15:12):
in our warm, messy hands. And somehow, that imperfection keeps the microphones humming,
the sats flowing,
and the jokes and memes writing themselves,
which, if you squint at it sideways,
might be the most valuable value after all.

(15:34):
And with that, QW,
I think it's time to welcome our guests,
Oscar and Davidas.
Welcome back to Plep Chain Radio.
Hello.
Hey, Avi. How's it going?
Hey, QW.
I feel like I just got read a children's book, a value for value children's book, Avi.

(15:57):
I appreciate that.
A dark and nihilistic children's book, but yes.
There are some narrations and some different, it felt like different characters in there.
Your voices, very well done.
We are but performance artists, QW.
So Oscar, I'll direct this to you, our burning question before we start our show.

(16:19):
We'll see if Dorbitas wants to take a stab at it as well after you do.
So here's the question.
You finally, Oscar, acknowledge the memo that you've received
from our influencer overlords that you've been ignoring all this while.
The memo that says Bitcoin is a pet rock, that it is Cyber Manhattan,

(16:42):
and as we all know, no one uses a fraction of Cyber Manhattan as money.
in the throes of this new this newfound existential dread oscar you're faced with a choice
what do you tell your loyal fountain users who have been clearly and i dare say gratuitously

(17:05):
flouting and disobey disobeying this imperative for years by supporting value for value
um good question um i'm not exactly sure how to answer that yeah um i don't know
but bitcoin is digital gold is all the rage these days that is the that is the

(17:32):
new mainstream narrative and here are people these rebels listening to their 40 hours of
podcast week on fountain and boosting and zapping merrily right right yeah i think i think what the
internet needs is micro payments and what it also needs is interoperability between different apps

(17:57):
and that's what the lightning network does for um podcasting 2.0 apps like fountain
NOSTA clients and I'm sure many many more media services on the internet so I think it's a totally
different use case for Bitcoin and the Lightning Network and for people that haven't experienced

(18:20):
that maybe the digital gold narrative is fine for them but I would just encourage people to
to test this stuff out and also if they disagree with um spending their bitcoin to suggest an
alternative interoperable um micropayment system that we could use for some of the features

(18:43):
in fountain and these other these other apps well well played there roscoe what is the alternative
Have you found an answer?
I haven't, no, I haven't.
I'm not really looking for one, to be honest,
because I think other than the onboarding challenges,

(19:04):
which I feel like I'm always harking on about,
and I'm sure we'll talk more about today,
but other than the onboarding challenges,
Lightning works incredibly well
as a micropayment layer for the internet.
So I don't think we need an alternative.
I think it exists.
We just need to make it easier for people to experience it for the first time.

(19:31):
Yep. Indeed.
So, Oscar and Davidas, you have a major announcement to make.
Huge announcement, Abi. Huge.
We do, yeah.
I think like since we have a bit of time on over the next hour, maybe I'll start by just kind of reflecting on, you know, Fountain's journey over the past couple of years and everything that we've been trying to do in terms of pushing podcasting forward through podcasting 2.0, using the Bitcoin Lightning Network for micropayments and to help creators get paid.

(20:12):
but also to signal what content is valuable and is worth listening to.
I think over the years, we've seen amazing success within the Fountain app
in terms of podcasters getting paid directly from their audience,

(20:32):
bypassing the advertising model.
And on top of the earnings that podcasters have made through the app,
I think the discovery mechanic of boosts being surfaced in the feed and on the episode page is really interesting.
And it's something new that doesn't really exist currently in terms of money being a signal for discovery of content.

(21:00):
I think the biggest challenge that we've seen is onboarding, especially onboarding podcasters and their audience that don't have a familiarity with Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.
it's still today incredibly intimidating to download an app and be presented with

(21:29):
a new payment system that you've never heard of before presented with these things
called satoshis that you can send around but in order to get started you need to go and buy these
things somewhere else and then transfer them into this new app via an invoice and you have to go

(21:53):
through that entire you know mental journey in order to to have your first moment of success
and you know ourselves and Dovidas we're both based here in the UK in London and especially
over the past I'd say year and a half we've worked so closely together on a number of different I

(22:18):
guess projects the majority of which have been the live music shows that we've done
in mostly in the US as well so it's often been me and Dovidas you know at 3am making sure that
the tech is running smoothly and that everything is working together and these artists are actually
able to get paid from anywhere in the world which is really cool um another reflection is

(22:45):
the onboarding of content creators and the way that we have up until today helped podcasters
start using bitcoin um in this way is is through this claim process within the fountain mobile app
that again is a bit of a challenge.

(23:07):
It's a bit difficult and it's kind of outside of the normal
workflow of most podcasters.
So yeah, the onboarding challenge
for both listeners that are new to Bitcoin but also your average mainstream podcaster that doesn know anything about Bitcoin and doesn really want to change their workflow too much in

(23:35):
terms of the way that they publish content by RSS. These two things were a big challenge.
and at the same time, you know, Fountain and RSS Blue
were both trying to solve this onboarding problem.
Many of the RSS Blue hosting customers would also onboard to Fountain

(23:58):
to get access to our wallet because in order to join Podcasting 2.0,
in order to join NOSTA, you need a wallet to receive SATs.
um so for the past year um myself dovidas and nick have been you know talking all of this through
and trying to come up with an answer to the question of how do we make this easier for

(24:22):
content creators for podcasters and also for their audience so that the benefits that we see
in terms of micropayments, open content, open social, open payments can be realized
and it's just easier to get started with.

(24:43):
And about six months ago, we made the decision to actually join forces
as Fountain and RSS Blue to combine and offer a dedicated podcast hosting solution
that makes the onboarding, but also the, I guess, success much more easy and kind of integrated into

(25:13):
the content publishing workflow. What this means for podcasters is that they can do everything
in one place. They can manage the content uploads, the metadata, the publishing, the distribution,
the audience analytics, the download analytics. But importantly, and this is what Fountain has

(25:38):
kind of developed over the past few years, but the monetization analytics and the social element
that NOSTA brings as well.
So the new Fountain hosting product,
which is a combination of, as I say,
Fountain's expertise in payments and social

(25:59):
and then RSS Blue's expertise
in terms of distribution and RSS feed generation.
This new podcast hosting product from Fountain
brings that all together.
And our goal is really to onboard mainstream podcasting to the Bitcoin Lightning Network, but also NOSTA, because we believe that these two technologies are kind of the missing pieces in open podcasting to compete with the big centralized platforms like YouTube and Spotify.

(26:34):
And it's funny, we were actually just at a podcast conference yesterday. And all of the companies that exist within open podcasting, the existing podcast hosting companies, the other apps that are not the big two in Apple and Spotify, are all worried about YouTube and Spotify taking over open podcasting and kind of like sucking everything in.

(27:04):
into their walled gardens.
And so open podcasting is looking for features
and technologies that can up-level the way open podcasting works
in comparison to these centralized platforms,
which obviously have an easier job in terms of doing things

(27:25):
like comments and payments.
So, yeah, I know I've kind of taken a long-winded answer there,
But I think it's useful to set the backstory to this.
And we think that by combining forces, we can really bring open payments and open social to the wider podcasting industry.

(27:46):
And so that's why, yeah, Fountain and RSS Blue have joined forces.
This is kind of a big deal, Oscar.
Fountain and RSS Blue are coming together to create this cohesive hosting and listening experience, right?

(28:09):
So not only do you cater to the podcasters themselves, end-to-end, right?
The end-to-end workflow for the most part for podcasters, you also cater to the listeners themselves.
Is there, maybe David will ask you this,
Are you aware of any other product that's this integrated, essentially vertically integrated across the board?

(28:33):
So the fact that Fountain has both hosting and app helps us a lot in experimenting with stuff, especially when it comes to payments.
But I want to make it 100% clear that we do want to have these two products as separate things.

(28:54):
On the hosting side, Fountain is a hosting company that produces your RSS feed and publishes that in an open way.
And that RSS feed is available to absolutely everyone, whether that would be legacy apps like Spotify or Apple or modern podcasting 2.0 apps or even any other, let's say, Nostra clients who would want to ingest other forms of content like RSS feeds.

(29:24):
On the other hand, having the app side helps us so much to test all of these new ideas in terms of monetization of content, seeing what works and what doesn't, and helping us iterate very quickly based on that feedback, which is real-world users.

(29:48):
just to reiterate some of the points that Oscar made previously
when RSS Blue started as a hosting company my role has been to help podcasters publish their
podcast in the open podcasting ecosystem that means you need to have a nice user interface

(30:13):
You have to have an ability to upload files, store them, and serve them to all of the users.
But over time, I want to adapt all of these new amazing features like value blocks, which allow podcasters to get paid, chapters, transcripts, and so on.
And each of these features require additional infrastructure for all of this.

(30:39):
And it's especially true for payments, especially in the last six months, I would say.
One of the greatest struggles at RSS Blue has been the onboarding process.
Firstly, due to the fact that up until this point, and that is changing, only a certain

(31:01):
subset of lighting walls have been allowed to be entered into the RSS feeds.
those that support the KeySend protocol.
Now, that is changing, and that will allow us to offer many more options for podcasters
in terms of what kind of wallets they could use.

(31:22):
But before that, there were very few and limited options in terms of what they could use.
We had Albi, we had Fountain, and we had a lot of people hosting their own Lightning nodes.
but with the recent changes at albi we for many of the podcasters that was not an option
because many of them were not willing to pay for that service every month so

(31:48):
what i have been doing is for those podcasters that are more technically proficient and have
experiment with bitcoin before having a lightning node is an option but it's a very advanced option
And for many other podcasters, the only choice has been Fountain.

(32:09):
So it has been a very natural relationship in terms of how I've been onboarding many of the podcasters into the value-for-value ecosystem.
Now it is much easier for those podcasters who choose Fountain for Podcasters to get the value directly from the listeners.

(32:32):
whether that would be on the Fountain app or anywhere else.
And moving forward, it's going to get even easier
once we adapt the lighting address wallets in the RSS feeds.
People could even use their Cash App wallet to receive sats
on their own podcast with splits included.

(32:52):
So I think that is so, so exciting.
And having RSS Blue and Fountain being this one platform
Fountain for Podcasters helps us push many of these changes much faster.

(33:12):
Does that mean, Davidas, that RSS Blue will remain as a standalone option?
Or is the only way to use RSS Blue is through the Fountain integration?
so ours as blue uh in the next few months will be retired as a service there will only be fountain

(33:35):
for podcasters for now it's still alive just to help the existing customers both podcasters and
music artists to either be on board at the fountain for podcasters or choose another service based on
what their preferences and requirements are.
But yes, moving forward,

(33:56):
it is going to be a fountain for podcasters.
Interesting.
Yeah, and Avi, I just want to say that both,
I mean, Oscar has been a visionary
throughout this, through our talks with him.
I mean, the last convo was making podcasting social

(34:17):
and it was, to me, a tremendous success.
Dovidas was instrumental in helping us and has been a huge help to the Value for Value community, all these live stream events, everything.
I mean, I feel like, you know, at the very least, if you have doubts about, you know, RSS Blue basically not going to be a service anymore standalone, you really got to be interested in Fountain Premium or Fountain in general.

(34:52):
So I trust the future, and I think we made the right choice, Avi.
And we'll see how it goes.
But it something that I really looking forward to more features and everything that you know the track record speaks for itself in many ways Is there any new features maybe rolling out that maybe you can still talk about here

(35:20):
I know that you had live streaming prior and that kind of went away.
And I don't know if that was just in a testing phase, but that's something that, you know, we would love to see, you know, Zap.Stream stream to there.
And I know it's possible, being that we have a show in less than, well, almost an hour and change launching from the UK.

(35:43):
So maybe talk about the possibility of features, maybe things that you would love to see, some of that visionary mind that you seem to carry, Oscar.
Yeah, so it's a great question.
And there's so much that we have planned in terms of the roadmap for Fountain hosting.
um in to give like a general answer what we want to do is help podcasters um you know make money

(36:15):
for their content without having to go down the advertising model up until now obviously in the
fountain app we've had the ability to send boosts which is a one-off payment with a message and also
to stream stats for every minute that you listen to an episode. The kind of headline new payments

(36:36):
feature that we have launched with Fountain Hosting is subscriptions. So if you are hosted
with Fountain, you can set up a paid subscription. And this can be a purely value for value
subscription where people can just pay you monthly because they love your content or as a

(37:01):
podcaster you can also do things like bonus episodes, ad-free versions if you do have ads
and early access. The goal of these new payment features is kind of twofold. Number one we've seen
from speaking to existing users of Fountain that, you know, sometimes people do just want to pay

(37:23):
on a monthly basis, because as much as you love a show, and you listen to every episode,
you might just forget to boost or, you know, you can't think of anything to say in your boost
message that month. And so we've heard from a lot of users and also a lot of podcasters that
subscriptions would be a great kind of additional layer to the value for value stack.

(37:46):
The other reason that we launched the subscription product is because we can see this working so well on platforms like Patreon,
but just with a lot worse of a user experience and another example of a walled garden where the content only exists in one place and you can never get access to it.

(38:09):
you know probably a lot of people listening to this um you know either have themselves or know
someone that you know pays monthly for a podcast on patreon and most people do that not for anything
in return it is kind of a value for value model uh they just you know pay because they love the

(38:31):
content so what we're trying to do is essentially recreate some of those features that patreon has
but add in the open payment mechanism and also the open content and open social via NOSTA because
the way that Patreon works is they have this kind of internal commenting and posting mechanism where

(38:56):
you know if I go and subscribe to a creator on Patreon I can go and you know write a message
in the Patreon, inside of the Patreon platform,
but that doesn't go anywhere
and it doesn't really kind of flow out
to provide discovery anywhere else.
Obviously, what we've done with our NOSTA integration

(39:19):
is we allow any of the content that's generated
within Fountain to flow out into the wider NOSTA ecosystem
and be surfaced, be liked, be reposted,
you know, go trending, any of these things.
And I think that's where we're going to see the additional value compared to what Patreon does.

(39:41):
And our goal with this is to help podcasters that already have a subscription to join a more open ecosystem of payments and of social.
And we think this is going to be a great way for content creators to increase the revenue that those subscriptions provide, but also not have to, you know, suffer the consequences of hindering their discovery by, you know, having all of the praise about that show or about an episode be locked into, you know, a walled garden like Patreon.

(40:23):
so yeah the subscriptions are a really important feature for us and um yeah we're excited to
to see how people use them and then to your point about live streams um there is so much exciting
stuff that we can do combining the power of rss nosda and lightning um we we launched a kind of

(40:52):
beta version of Nostra live streams in the fountain app a few months ago and they still
actually exist in the fountain app it's just that we haven't kind of turned them on by default
because you know we saw a few issues with zap stream and we just weren't 100% confident that
they were kind of ready to be a full feature but the gig that's happening today down in Essex is

(41:20):
going to be live streamed through the NOSTA live stream service within the fountain app so anyone
that's interested in listening to that you can jump into the fountain app it will be there on
the home screen we've got video we've got you know live chat powered by NOSTA we've got zaps
we've got you know the total amounts there so live streams is is one thing and then I think

(41:45):
there's a lot more we can do um as well with things like music you know i think the power
of combining music with podcasts is something that is so exciting it enables so many cool things that
you weren't able to do before in terms of having you know artists or anyone really combine spoken

(42:11):
word with music but still have that money go towards the artist i also think it um is really
exciting as we build in more nostre features to have interoperability um in terms of things like
things like playlists um so yeah there's there's so much we want to do i think for the next you know

(42:31):
few weeks we're going to be really focused on just nailing the hosting experience and making sure we
are up to par on not only the distribution features that podcast hosting companies provide
but also the monetization features that platforms like patreon and memberful provide because
fountain hosting does both of these things it distributes your podcast everywhere it gives you

(42:57):
analytics on you know how many people are listening across which different apps and regions
but it also delivers a subscription product value for value boost streams social activity around that
you know who your top supporters what what are their NOSTA profiles so there's a lot going on
in the hosting product and we want to nail that so we can show you know all of these incredible

(43:24):
podcasters out there in the world who are using patreon who are using member for but don't really
understand that their content because of those decisions they are locking their content in a
walled garden and and their discovery is capped and we think that if we can offer the same experience
that patreon do but in an open way show them the power of NOSTA whereby if somebody you know

(43:50):
subscribes to their show or sends a boost that can travel anywhere in any NOSTA client and be seen by
that person's followers we think we can really bring people into Nostra and bring people into
Lightning which is really exciting so it's going to be a balance over the next few weeks and months

(44:11):
between doing what I just spoke about and and some of the newer things like like live streams
but yeah we we've got a really exciting roadmap ahead and I can't wait to to release some of the
newer stuff that we're working on so to recap there oscar the main new thing that's coming is

(44:31):
obviously from the podcaster's perspective hosting and all the ancillary important but ancillary
benefits that come from that such as dashboards analytics and what have you and then the
subscription offering itself which presents itself to the listeners in the form of either early access

(44:53):
to an episode or exclusive access to bonus episodes.
And in the case where there's an ad version,
they get the ad-free version potentially.
Was that a good summary
or is there more from a core feature standpoint?
Yeah, that's correct.
You nailed it in terms of summarizing it.

(45:15):
And the important thing with the subscription
is some podcasters will do it purely value for value.
So you won't actually get anything
for paying the subscription.
other podcasters will do things like early access ad-free versions and bonus episodes um so yeah
let's talk about uh the early access version so that let's say a podcaster

(45:37):
creates the early access for subscribers with so meaning if you're a non-subscriber you get the
episode on a 24-hour delay what happens if as a non-subscriber uh you go to fountain so actually
two cases here right you go to fountain and you can click on play within that early access period

(45:57):
what happens there or what happens to someone who goes to apple or spotify within that early access
period and tries to play the podcast yeah this is a great question and there's a lot of like nuances
in terms of how this works, especially on the other apps.
In Fountain, if a podcaster releases an early access or bonus episode,

(46:20):
you can just see it right there in your library
if you're subscribed to that show, and you can see it on the show page.
It just looks like any other episode.
In order to play that episode, though,
or get the ad-free version or get the bonus version,
you will need to either pay for the monthly subscription
or you can also just purchase the episode on a one-off basis.

(46:46):
And what's cool about this is you can pay with your fountain wallet
in sats but you can also just pay with a bank card so we have multiple currency options and
this is part of the strategy of helping mainstream podcasting slowly dip their toes in the water in

(47:06):
terms of using the lightning network because that's kind of what we're hearing from them
so you can pay for the subscription or you can purchase the one-time product what's really really
cool about this though is as Dovadas said the hosting product and the Fountain app are totally

(47:29):
separate there's no actual platform integration everything goes through the RSS feed and we're
actually using a combination of some of the new podcasting 2.0 tags like the alternate enclosure
but also the L402 protocol and NosterAuth to allow any app or Noster client to surface these

(47:57):
premium options and also allow their users to purchase the content so again what's cool about
this is as a podcaster you can create a subscription you can offer bonus content and have any app that
chooses to consume the freely available metadata in the RSS feed surface those products and allow

(48:21):
people to pay and I think that you know one thing we've heard is there's some people out there that
don't like this right there's some people that are I would say value for value purists they believe
that you know no content should ever be paywalled and you know that's the kind of thing that they're

(48:43):
going to never change their minds about. My view is that it should be up to the content creator,
how they monetize their content. And we as a platform offering a service and a product should
not mandate that to podcasters. Some of the best podcast content I have ever listened to

(49:06):
was payboard. I've probably mentioned this on some of the last chats that we had, but
Dan Carlin Hardcore History is one of my favorite podcasts it's incredible content
the episodes are like six hours long and he only releases new episodes you know sometimes he goes

(49:27):
an entire year without releasing new episodes and he he sells those episodes as paywalled content
and I've purchased them and it's totally worth it and you know that's that's his decision that's his
prerogative. And for us to achieve our goal of bringing mainstream open podcasting into, you know,

(49:51):
NOSTA, into the Bitcoin Lightning Network, we need to cater for what they want, not what we believe
ideologically. And so that's why we have these premium offerings as well.
well we we certainly faced uh quite a lot of pushback when we announced this
last week which is why we wrote a whole sermon um obviously i should make it clear that was a

(50:18):
satirical sermon from earlier in the show saying that there is no such thing as value for value
because as you pointed out oscar a lot of the purity tests in value for value tend to be
incredibly reductive and you end up in this no true Scotsman type scenario, right?
Well, if I may add something.

(50:41):
Yeah, please, please, Zoe Daz.
I think we have to, and me admittedly, with RSS Blue, I can admit that the whole time that RSS
Blue was developed, my focus has been pure value for value. But I can also acknowledge that there
have been many challenges in people trying to use exclusively value for value content

(51:08):
to make a living. And it's not the only issue. Value for value is not the only issue where
this attempt to stick to the ideal principles doesn't always work.
One other example would be this idea of direct payments. From the start, the appeal of value for value payments, especially in RSS feeds with value tags where you can have multiple splits, has been incredibly appealing because you don't have to have middlemen.

(51:47):
if there are two co-hosts on a show each of them can have a split and the listeners pay directly to
the hosts but there have been challenges with that too if there is say a live event and people want
to boost that event and all the artists are that are performing and all the staff the existing

(52:12):
Lightning wallets don't have the capability to essentially pay multiple people at once.
There's usually one QR code with a Lightning address, and it goes to a single wallet.
And one of the things I've done for bans at Bitcoin event last July in Nashville was to think,

(52:33):
how could we actually have a nice compromise where people with regular Lightning wallets
can pay the artists, but we also split the payments to both the performing artists,
staff, event organizers, and so on. And one of the things I came up with was this essentially
this QR code that you would see on a screen, you would send the SATs to a single wallet,

(52:59):
and only then would they be forwarded to all the individual recipients.
Is that a pure implementation of direct payments? No. But it did achieve its purpose in getting the sats from the listeners to the artists and staff in seconds.

(53:20):
So I think there is a lot of room for evolution of many of these ideas.
I find value for value incredibly appealing, but I also think that when it comes to monetization, we should have the choice on the creator's side in terms of how they want to earn a living.

(53:44):
and let me go back to um my early days of fountain uh you know i i go back to and i've said this
before when my phone was overheating and uh it was and i could tell you know they kept uh you know
you guys kept rolling out uh new updates and uh it would appear to fix it and then it might come

(54:06):
back but these are early times a lot of uh a lot of uh trying things out was going on and and and
maybe bug squashing. But ever since then, I had the option to pay for the monthly subscription,
and it was $2.99. And I had no exposure to value for value at the time. So I'm just a
gentle pleb that saw an app that was focused. It appeared, I mean, obviously, the early adopters,

(54:34):
but very much Bitcoin podcasts. Bitcoin was a native wallet within it. I saw that this is where
I want to put my money. I want to support. It had nothing to do with the features. You know,
granted, clipping was cool. But it was something that even the clipping didn't work at the time,

(54:55):
it would have bugs here and there. So there were some rollouts that were going on. But
I knew that I wanted to support the roadmap of Fountain. And, you know, in my mind, you know,
without knowing anything about value for value, it really was value for value. I wanted to support
a greater mission and, you know, to truly get it off, you know, get Fountain, you know, launch or

(55:22):
get the development it needed, whatever it is, I knew my $2.99, although small,
was something that would help in this greater mission. And, you know, I think that's if we're
truly going to get to value for value scale, because we know it works, but we need the scale,
We need people with micropayments. We need a lot of people listening. We need a lot of people interacting. All these things, it's a flywheel effect. And there's no reason in my mind that Value for Value can't have just your standard legacy rails too.

(55:56):
And it's tough to kind of decipher for me what true value for value is when to me that was value.
I knew what the mission was and I was putting my fiat at work.
So it's only until recently I'm learning about the Puritans and how maybe I'm not truly doing it.

(56:19):
But in my mind, in my heart, I feel like I am.
yeah and i remember those days oscar yeah yeah i i remember those days with a grimace
with a grimace on my face i can only imagine the back room there yeah i mean you know i think i
mentioned this um you know maybe the first time we spoke but you know fountain started as a side

(56:46):
project i built the app myself and had never built a mobile app before so yeah it was it was rusty
as hell when we first launched and you know the people that supported us from the beginning gave
us the confidence to continue pushing forward and yeah those 2.99 subscriptions that people

(57:11):
you know pay for are incredibly helpful to us that that's what keeps us going and i think that
if you look at the fountain app today it really is you know it's come so far since then i think
you know the more people that are coming from you know the legacy mainstream podcasting apps

(57:31):
like apple and spotify with the recent design refresh that we rolled out just a month ago
you know people whereas before they might say oh I'm not so sure about this or you know this
feature's missing compared to Spotify now we've got a really solid foundation with the app and
and we wouldn't have been able to get here without people supporting us through the premium

(57:54):
subscription and I think you know subscriptions are just easy people are used to subscriptions and
You've got to remember that whether you are, you know, an app developer trying to make money from your app or you're a podcaster putting out content and you want to earn a living from your content, it's the same thing.

(58:18):
And you're going to have a range in your audience.
Some people, they want to support you.
They want to pay you.
But they just, you know, they have a busy life.
They not able to spend all of that time and do all of that research And everybody who has a phone knows how to buy a subscription via Apple Pay

(58:42):
Everybody's done it.
So by offering a subscription product for podcasters,
we hope to help them make more money and bring people into the future
that we want to see, which is open content via RSS, open payments via Lightning, and open social

(59:03):
via NOSTA. And I think that this is so important for NOSTA as well, because I believe that NOSTA
is not going to, you know, achieve the scale that we want it to, unless we bridge into existing
communities existing technologies and meet people where they are and solve real problems for them

(59:32):
and i think within podcasting nosta can do that you know we are um you know it was it was painful
to switch the way the social features work in fountain over to nosta but it still blows my
mind when I'm you know browsing through the damas or primal feed and I see a boost that was sent from

(59:56):
fountain I see the amount I see the episode I can click on that episode or I'm looking at the
fountain NOSTA feed and I see a a post about an episode that was created you know 48 hours ago
which I would have totally missed in one of the kind of primary NOSTA client feeds.

(01:00:18):
This is the kind of thing that open podcasting needs.
And so, but it's totally new and it's intimidating to, you know,
people that are already running quickly with their existing either podcast businesses or shows.
And we need to meet them where they are.

(01:00:40):
And that's why, you know, these familiar payment options like subscriptions, like the ability to pay with a bank card are so important so that we can, you know, give a little in order to almost like bring the Trojan horse into the industry, which is NOSTA and Lightning.

(01:01:02):
QW is there?
Can I go ahead, Alvi?
i was just going to just tell you one of the first things we discovered right after the
nostre the social layer of fountain became nostre was our old episodes had all sorts of comments
and engagement we which we'd completely missed yeah yeah the discoverability goes both ways both

(01:01:28):
from the creator to the uh the listener or yeah it's just social in general and what what's so
cool about this is and I speak to a lot of podcasters so does David S like we're speaking
to podcasters all the time and you know you don't even need to say the word NOSTA to explain

(01:01:49):
how big of a deal this is because what you can just describe is what happens on existing social
media platforms so the two examples that I always use are number one if I am watching a YouTube video
YouTube is one of the biggest podcast apps if not the biggest because a lot of people you know

(01:02:15):
watch podcasts or even don't they don't watch they just listen via the audio on YouTube wouldn't it
be cool if you could while when you're looking at a YouTube video see the comments from the people
that you follow on you know twitter or x or instagram or facebook that would be incredibly

(01:02:35):
valuable in terms of um helping you make a decision about whether to watch the content
or just you know seeing some additional context from someone that you respect the second one
is like seeing posts specifically about podcasts in your main social media feed

(01:02:56):
and when I explain these two things to podcasters that know nothing about NOSTA they don't care about
open standards they don't care about interoperability you know that they're not really
in it for an ideological reason or they care about the technology they understand these problems and
and how powerful it would be if you could solve them and if you could make the kind of the flow

(01:03:22):
of social data more open.
So that's how we explain NOSTA
to kind of the existing podcast industry.
And I think it has a real chance
of playing a major part within open podcasting.
But we need to meet the industry where it's at

(01:03:44):
in order to kind of have the chance of that happening.
So, talking about boosts versus apps, because that's always been a big one.
Are we starting to see, now, has boosts, have they developed, the boost side, is there now LNURL options?

(01:04:12):
Or are they going to be functionally indistinguishable at one point?
Yeah, so this is what Dovidas was mentioning earlier.
Over the past six months, we've been working hard to try and change the podcasting 2.0 value spec, basically the part of the RSS feed specification that deals with the Lightning network.

(01:04:35):
We've been pushing to change the spec from Keysend to LNURL and Bolt 11.
The reason being that there's more and more companies every day that are integrating Lightning.
they're all integrating Bolt 11 and LNURL,
but none of them are integrating or supporting Keysend.

(01:04:56):
I think we're like almost there.
You know, Fountain is kind of already supporting
these new Bolt 11 Lightning address splits
within the RSS feed.
And I think at some point in the next,
let's say two or three months,
we'll completely switch over.
And so what that will mean is all podcasting 2.0 apps and hosting companies that support the spec will use lightning address splits as opposed to key send splits.

(01:05:29):
The benefit of this, of course, is if you are, you know, let's say you interview someone in a particular episode and you say, hey, what's your lightning address?
I'll put you in the splits. That is a million times easier than saying, hey, what's your
keysend node pub key? And how do I find that? And it's just a mess. And oh, do I have the right

(01:05:54):
Lightning address that supports that? So I think that's going to go a long way. And as Doradas
mentioned, if you can just say, essentially, send me your cash app username, and I'll put you in the
splits and the money just starts rolling in by lightning that's incredibly cool um so yeah we're
excited for that uh migration to happen and going back to the question of boosts and zaps i think

(01:06:18):
like our perspective is the naming will evolve over time naturally we don't have a particular
um you know hard preference on what it ends up being i think the one thing i will say though
is currently a boost within the podcasting 2.0 world is like a broadcast payment so you are

(01:06:42):
sending a payment with a message and you're also sharing that message with everybody whereas a zap
is kind of like a reaction level uh thing and these things merge together like on zap.stream
the way zaps work is they do appear in the chat feed so it's a little bit more like a boost
ultimately it doesn't matter it's just about sending money to the content creators that you

(01:07:08):
love in a fun way and i'm sure we'll see a lot more like experimentation around this as we move
forward how pivotal uh was that austin value for value live show with adam curry i know right after
that event, maybe even the day after, Adam did that note on Noster. I'm convinced RSS and Noster

(01:07:32):
belong together. How pivotal was that in kind of the culture of the value for value podcasting 2.0
category and then the Bitcoin Zap Noster category?
Do you feel like that event brought people together and maybe that boost for Zap was reinvigorated to be emerged?

(01:07:59):
Yeah, definitely. I think these live events play such a huge role in demonstrating to people how this technology works.
And at the end of the day, if there's a big number on the board at the end of the night and everyone can see, wow, look how much these artists got paid.
And hopefully tonight we'll have another one of those.

(01:08:22):
Then the details of, you know, which part of the system is powered by RSS, which part of the system is powered by NOSTA.
You know, is it a boost? Is it a zap? You know, how does it work?
Like that kind of all melts away.
and especially when you get people in the room together because when you're going back and forth
online it's very easy to you know uh throw your toys out of the pram and you know complain or like

(01:08:48):
be very strongly worded if you're in the same room together you know you realize that we're all just
humans who want to support artists because they are putting incredible music out into the world
And so that all kind of melts away.
So that's why these in-person events are so important.
I actually think like we need more experimentation.

(01:09:12):
We need more developers to, you know, come up with more random payment flows with different names that do it slightly differently.
Because the more experimentation we have, even if it's a bit inconsistent, I don't think that's a problem right now because it's still very early.
What we just need is experimentation. And I think it's been cool to see, especially over the past few weeks and months, you know, some of the podcasting 2.0 developer community starting to experiment with NOSTA, like I saw Stephen B, who's created Music Side Project, which is a kind of self-hosted music distribution service through RSS.

(01:09:53):
You know, he added a demo where the actual audio files were hosted on Blossom servers.
So I think these things are converging.
I think the challenge will be, you know, putting this stuff into a specification that can then be used by the wider podcasting industry, because that's what we want.

(01:10:13):
Ultimately we want an app like Overcast for example that has you know millions of users Like we want Overcast to integrate NOSTA you know and whether that will ever happen I don know
But in order for us to make it happen, we need to, one, demonstrate that it works in apps like Fountain and other podcasting 2.0 apps.

(01:10:36):
to have a like a specification that is agreed and that's where podcasting 2.0 comes in because it
gives that voice to the specification that is bigger than any one app so yeah i think we're
making uh good progress and obviously very happy that adam has uh changed his mind yeah the uh

(01:10:57):
you're talking about experimenting and uh obviously our subscription um i the subscription
option. We're going to end up with Sats versus Fiat.
And we'll see how this goes in the future.
But yeah, thanks.

(01:11:18):
I have, you know, Davidas, you made
a point earlier and the nuance was lost on me.
And it just struck me a short while back that because
RSS is a protocol, there is no need
for the backend hosting to be integrated with the Fountain app.
So it really is, in some sense, a front-end integration

(01:11:42):
to make it easier for the podcaster to look at.
Yeah, that is kind of cool because it keeps the stack more modular.
That's right.
RSS is literally just a text file.
If you look inside, you can read it.
It's not binary format. It's just plain text. If you look into an RSS feed, you're going to find a title, you're going to find description, and you're going to find a bunch of tags called items.

(01:12:12):
In the context of podcasts, that means individual episodes.
So even though Fountain might offer these new features like subscriptions with, let's say, ad-free episodes,
they will appear in the RSS feed as alternative media files.

(01:12:35):
You have the main media file, which could be the, as an example, audio with ads.
And then there is another alternative file with the audio without ads.
And integrating that in the RSS feed and defining a way for the listeners to pay for that content

(01:12:59):
allows any app, not just Fountain, but any app to create a user interface where the listener
pays for that piece of content and gets that audio within that app, which may not necessarily

(01:13:19):
be Fountain. So this interoperability has been crucial for us to get right from the start,
because we do want to keep these things separate and open.
I believe RSS is...
RSS beauty lies in its simplicity.
You know, that's why I named my company RSS Blue

(01:13:41):
because I really believe in its power.
Alternative protocols like NOSR have so many strengths
in terms of decentralization and so on.
But I feel with RSS,
the simplicity is that you can give that file to anyone and they can kind of figure out what's
happening because they can read that file and see oh this is the first episode this is the second

(01:14:03):
episode here's the audio file and everything is in there for anyone to observe and ingest in any way
they want and when you were here on a prior episode you did an excellent job david of explaining what
that file has and the different sections of that file, the namespace, and what have you.
So one of the segments in that file specifies what type of, so Oscar was making this point

(01:14:29):
about switching over to LNURL from the keysend node ID, which I've hosted a podcast on rss.com.
That's the only way to go, right?
That's how you connect to Albi using that.
So when you do switch, Davidas, in the coming weeks to LNURL and Lightning addresses, there will be folks, for instance, using rss.com or any other hosting services whose text file specification will not support this extra field.

(01:15:08):
How would it work in that scenario?
that would be fine in this particular scenario because a company like rsus.com is a hosting
company so if they want to they can still continue requiring people to use keys and
enabled addresses and then it will be all on the apps to decide whether they want to support

(01:15:33):
Both protocols, one or neither one of them.
For example, Fountain supports both of these protocols at the moment.
So whether you are using the Keysend wallet and you've put that in your RSS feed,
or if you are using a lighting address, both of these options are going to work.

(01:15:57):
So I do believe it's more relevant for the app side in this particular case.
The incentive for the hosting companies to implement the lightning address implementation of the value block is that in that case, they would be able to onboard many more people into this ecosystem.

(01:16:17):
ecosystem, because then you don't necessarily need to have an Albi node running somewhere,
or even have a fountain wallet. If you have Cash App or any of the other Lightning wallets,
you could use that as a way to receive money from your podcast.
And what would RSS.com's, well, I guess you did outline their incentive, right? They can get more

(01:16:43):
users because they're giving them more options. But would they do it though, in realistically
speaking? I don't know. I think they, RSS.com and many of the other hosting companies that are in
the podcasting T.O. space, I think they've had amazingly positive impact. And, you know,
we have to acknowledge that someone like RSS.com is a large company with lots of considerations.

(01:17:10):
so I do understand that they will move slower on some of these fronts but I'm very confident that
over time they would adopt the standard because it is actually just easier if you've used RSS Blue
you still had both you had two options of how to enter your value block you could use a lighting

(01:17:34):
address, which is an email-like text field. Under the hood, we would fetch all the key sent details,
or you could manually enter those. So for me as a developer at RSS Blue, it has been a complexity
because I had to support both of these methods. But moving forward, if we agree to use lining

(01:17:57):
addresses from the developer point of view and someone developing a hosting product it is actually
much easier because not only do you have to ask customers to only enter one text value but also
you don't have to do any additional fetching to fetch all of these details this lighting address

(01:18:20):
would go directly in the RSS feed
and all the listening apps
would query the information themselves
in terms of how to perform this payment.
Yep.
Makes sense.
So, Oscar,
tell us about this very special show

(01:18:42):
that you are itching to get to.
When do you need to leave for the show, by the way?
It's about to begin.
And so this is going to be only applicable to our live listeners on zap.stream.
They still have time to catch the show.
Unfortunately, our regular listeners, it will be past showtime by the time they get their hands on this.

(01:19:05):
But yes, when do you need to leave?
And what is the show about?
yeah so i i've got a bit more time but um yeah the show starts in just over an hour at 8 30 p.m
uk time um and really um this show is called into the value verse and this is the first kind of uh

(01:19:30):
you know v4v gig powered by lightning in the uk uh we've got joe martin playing um obviously
he's been such a pioneer uh in uh bringing you know open music to rss and everything
that is happening nathan abbott and also longy so they're all playing um we are partnering with

(01:19:54):
Azteco to give vouchers to all of the people that are coming to the show live and have purchased
a ticket so that they can receive their first stats to their fountain wallet for free and they
can support the artist directly that way so it's kind of a live onboarding exercise for new people

(01:20:17):
to this space which I'm really excited about and that's why I'm heading down there in about
half an hour to stand on the door and explain this to everybody that shows up. So that'll be
very interesting. But yeah, of course, this is going to be streamed live in the Fountain app as
well. It's going to be available via RSS and via NOSTA live stream. So if you are listening to this

(01:20:40):
now and you have the Fountain app installed, just look out for that live stream, which should appear
on the home tab around about 8, 8.30.
So in about an hour, basically.
And we'll definitely share out all the links
on NOSTA once that happens.
But yeah, we're really excited.
We want to do more of these live events.

(01:21:01):
I think they're great for so many reasons.
Obviously, artists get their first experience
of value for value and get paid more
than they would have done
from just the ticket sales on the door.
But also you get people just that have come
for the music and know nothing about Bitcoin.
And it's really fun and great to see them

(01:21:21):
have their first experience with Bitcoin,
be using it to pay an artist over the Lightning Network.
That's just such a great first touch point to Bitcoin.
So yeah, we're really excited about this event.
And please do check it out in Fountain
and send some sats over if you can spare them.
We'd really appreciate that.

(01:21:41):
Why was two days ago the first time I heard about this event?
Were you sure that it was going on through Fountain?
That's a good question.
I mean I have Culture Corner every week I be happy to talk about it every week yeah i mean to be honest we we have been uh scrambling around trying to get the uh a certain lightning address qr code

(01:22:11):
scanning feature into the app uh you know it's a lot of work building not only a podcast app but
also a wallet but we finally got the new version live yesterday and so yeah all of these beautiful
flyers that we're giving out at the door will now work seamlessly with the fountain app the sats will
be deposited and then also the qr codes on the wall will you know just auto open uh essentially

(01:22:39):
like a boost modal so yeah there's a lot of work that goes into this but we learn at every event
how to do this um more seamlessly like yeah you spoke about the austin event i think that was the
first time we partnered with Azteco to use this voucher system and it really does work well there
are a few issues in Austin but we've really ironed them out for this gig tonight and we hope that this

(01:23:05):
way of doing things for live events will become a staple and any you know any venue around the
world that wants to do this can you know order some vouchers kind of do this all in a self-serve
way and just get people to download fountain or any other podcasting 2.0 app or nostal client and

(01:23:28):
do the same thing i have to ask well i'll be on this on this point um monday uh this upcoming
Monday, Sarah Jade, Ainsley, Abel James.
Am I going to be on Fountain Livestream?
Because I'm going to be on stage from 12 to 1.30.

(01:23:53):
I think so, yeah.
Are you guys going to be casting that, I guess?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are, we are.
Okay, all right, that's confirmation.
So, yeah, I mean, you're really starting to pump out value for value live streams.
And these are ephemeral, correct?
So it's not something you can go and download after the fact.

(01:24:15):
Yeah, so these are just, you know, built right on top of the Nostra live stream spec.
So the same spec that Zap.Stream uses.
And so, you know, for this particular content type within the app, we're literally just streaming the HLS stream within Fountain.
And then once it ends, it ends and you can't go back to it.

(01:24:37):
But yeah, so it's cool that we're able to support this stuff so easily using the NOSTA spec.
Oscar, you mentioned other podcasting 2.0 apps.
I'm not aware of any other than Fountain.
yeah i mean there's a bunch of different ones um you know all you know slightly different in

(01:25:01):
terms of their feature set and their focus you know there's a couple kind of podcast podcast
apps like podverse and podcast guru you know go and check those out um there's lnbeats which is a
music focused um you know i guess app that lets you listen to all of the value for value music

(01:25:23):
you know so there's a bunch of different ones and yeah I hope that there's more and more I think also
the as I mentioned right at the start of the show you know podcast apps like Overcast which
have been around for you know 10 plus years have millions of users although they're not really

(01:25:48):
integrating any of the podcasting 2.0 features some of them are starting to like we saw pocket
casts integrate the funding tag which is another of the podcasting 2.0 tags slightly different to
the value block in that it doesn't directly use lightning although we've actually come up with a

(01:26:10):
work around for that so yeah bit piece by piece bit by bit we can we can help the existing kind of
more indie podcast app developers of which when you add up all of the users that they have
between them because there's a long long tail of podcasting apps you know it runs into tens you

(01:26:34):
know if not hundreds of millions of users so yeah our goal is to not just get everybody using
fountain, but, you know, get people using independent podcast apps that want to support
these new amazing features of OpenRSS, like the Lightning Network.

(01:26:55):
Yeah, and in our analytics, Avi clearly hasn't been looking at them as far as the apps go,
but we have 20 different apps that it's pulling from people listening from all kinds of stuff.
but it's pretty wild.
90% mobile, though.
It seems like mobile is definitely the podcasting space's focus.

(01:27:18):
Well, 90% mobile and 90% fountain, in our case, QW.
We shame them.
We shame them.
If we don't see you in the comments or anything,
I mean, really, fountain should be where our listeners are.
For sure.
So we're approaching the hour and a half, Mark.

(01:27:40):
So we'll do the last couple of questions, last three questions rapid fire here, folks.
So quick question, quick answer.
And between the two of you, you decide who's going to answer this.
So question number one, rapid fire.
When Nostra Wallet connect?
Soon.
How soon?

(01:28:01):
um definitely definitely this year definitely this year you can hold me to that
so that would allow just so that folks understand it's a big one avi that is a big one that would
allow me to for instance take my primal wallet or my coinos wallet uh lightning address right

(01:28:22):
and just plug that in essentially into fountain yeah yeah and i think you know originally we had
planned and sorry for jumping the gun on the kind of quickfire but I do want to explain why this has
been slightly delayed we're massive believers in Nostra Wallet Connect it's amazing it's it makes
total sense you don't want to have a wallet in each app you want to have one wallet and connect

(01:28:44):
it to every app it's definitely the right technical solution our whole goal is to onboard new people
that have never used bitcoin before and those that group of people is going to be intimidated
by Nostra Wallet Connect.
And that's why we want to focus our roadmap
on that kind of cohort of users.

(01:29:05):
And that's why it's been slightly delayed.
But we definitely want to support it
and we're big believers in it.
And I think that will be the future way
that you bring your wallet around
to all these different apps.
And will that Nostra Wallet Connect be bidirectional,
meaning I can bring Primal or Coinos into Fountain,
but can I also take the fountain.fm lightning address

(01:29:26):
to another another yeah like darmas for instance which doesn't have at least today a native wallet
it's a good question i my like gut feeling on that is probably not because it just doesn't
make much sense to go the other direction like in the long term having your like podcast app as

(01:29:47):
your main wallet you know separate to the the hosting dashboard but i'll give you one use case
and we found ourselves in the US
in this situation.
For a brief period, I think, thankfully,
the situation's improved.
But for a brief period, the only place where,
and especially New York State,

(01:30:08):
where, I mean, New York State, Iran, and North Korea
are the three places where,
which are the most restrictions on Bitcoin and lightning.
Randomly Florida.
On occasion, Florida, too.
But there was no other place
other than fountain where i could have a lightning address uh so yeah there you go oscar there's a

(01:30:31):
use case there if you're i i was living in an authoritarian regime in new york state and i did
not have a lightning wallet i mean that just shows how early this is all this also is but you know
if if fountain is uh the only company uh able to offer lightning addresses then there's something

(01:30:52):
seriously wrong and I don't think
just
the small team we have is going to
do anything about that.
Okay, fair enough.
I will say, Avi, the Nostra Wallet
Connect is going to appease
some of the Nostra and Lightning Puritans
out there. So, you've got to appease
them all. There is no appeasing Puritans,

(01:31:12):
QW. I would
let go of that dream.
So, rapid fire
number two.
thoughts on open sourcing the stack
um we definitely want to especially on the mobile app side um we just like need to figure out

(01:31:36):
like a few things in terms of like which direction we want to go um with the app and and how that's
all been a work so yeah nothing to share yet but like i do want to eventually see that happen
in the interim oscar is there an opportunity to at least expose some apis and i'll give you a

(01:32:02):
very specific example i mean we're in like llm boom days and we have been in the last for the
last six months maybe even one year at this point and llms unfortunately cannot listen to podcasts
and they can't watch videos,
but they can read, quote-unquote, read transcripts.

(01:32:22):
I think it would be really cool if there was an API call, right,
and it could be paid, right, pay per token or whatever it is,
pay by a certain amount.
But pull either the transcripts or the AI summaries of podcasts
and populate the Internet with that text

(01:32:44):
so that LLMs have more discoverability,
they can build out their knowledge base,
or even personal LLMs.
If you don't want, you know, privacy is an issue.
As a podcaster, I would want a private repository
where I could have an LLM run through every single podcast,
look for certain patterns,
and, you know, constantly work on ways

(01:33:05):
in which I could tweak what I'm doing.
And right now, it's a very manual process
of having to go to Fountain
on an individual episode-by-episode basis.
getting the transcript, downloading it one by one,
and then doing that, which obviously is not going to scale.
Yeah, this is something that we have a lot of plans.
Obviously, when Fountain 1.2 was released about a month ago,

(01:33:28):
one of the new features was these AI-generated summaries
of any episode.
You can pay with SATs or you can get unlimited summaries
with the premium subscription.
There's a lot more we want to do here.
there's so much opportunity and
And I also want to have that in a private sense as well.

(01:33:51):
We don't do any play tracking or any of that in the app.
And I definitely see the benefit of having a local first cache within the app
that you can store all of this data and analyze it locally on your device
without an internet connection.
There's a lot more coming on that side of things within the Fountain app.

(01:34:14):
and it's great to see number one the cost of the transcripts go down when we first started
transcripts were costing us one dollar per hour of audio transcribed they now are costing us about
five cents per hour transcribed so the cost is dropping the speed of processing the transcript

(01:34:35):
is dropping as well and the quality of the ai models is going up so yeah there's lots more we
want to do on that. Can you tell us if you use Whisper for transcription or if not Whisper,
what else? And the AI summaries, which model you use? Or is that a secret?

(01:34:55):
Yeah, happy to share that. Yeah. I mean, one thing is we switch around providers all of the time
because the prices are constantly changing. And also for us, speed is actually more important than
accuracy because when you are in the fountain app and you want to request a transcript like well we
felt that it better to have that transcript be generated in half the time but maybe have a slightly lower word error rate So we constantly switching providers

(01:35:28):
At the moment, we're using a service called Grok for our transcripts,
and we're using the Gemini model for our summaries.
Got it.
That's G-R-O-Q, correct?
Yeah.
Not the XAI Grok, yeah.
Yeah.
Great.
qw do you have anything else for our guests not at this time avi i love when you you talk about

(01:35:58):
the ai and all the new technology kids these days i can just feel the energy the excitement right
llm i'm like llm like people know what that is a large language model uh yeah so you know you get
a little techie sometimes, Avi, but I can tell you're just excited about it. So I appreciate you.

(01:36:20):
Limited liability man, as some would say. Oscar, Davidas, any closing thoughts?
Yeah, I would just say, you know, thank you to everybody that is supporting Fountain via the
premium subscription.

(01:36:41):
QW, you mentioned it earlier in the show.
We really, really obviously appreciate it,
but also it helps sustain us as a business
and continue to work on these things.
So if you like what we're doing,
or if you slightly like what we doing and slightly don think we doing the right thing support us with the premium subscription in the app and just reach out to us because we you know listen to every piece of feedback that we receive

(01:37:09):
And we want to, our goal is to bring the Lightning Network and NOSTA to mainstream podcasting.
You know, we're very, still very early in our journey on doing that, but I think we have a really good chance.
And I think particularly with NOSTA, there's no better industry than podcasting to adopt NOSTA first.

(01:37:30):
So help us do it.
Support us with the premium subscription.
And if you know any podcasters, tell them about Fountain.
Yeah, I just want to say that I'm incredibly positive and hopeful about the future of podcasts.
because what we are experiencing right now

(01:37:51):
is that it is becoming more and more open in every way.
You know, podcasts started as these simple RSS feeds
and they still remain that.
But now we have this ability to pay the creators in an open way,
to interact with the creators in an open way.

(01:38:13):
And now with Fountain, we hope to bring these new monetization models and develop them in an open way so that every hosting company and every app can participate in this.
Well we are incredibly excited to be part of this journey with you QW it got to be said Plap Chain Radio is the first podcast to be part of this premium offering

(01:38:48):
subscription offering.
Avi, Avi, they tell that to everybody.
No, guys, you are the first.
You are the first, man.
You are the first, you are the first.
And nothing can ever change that.
That's it.
And I, Davides, I'm so happy that you joined the team there.
You got a good one there.

(01:39:08):
You've been just instrumental.
So, so helpful.
Such a beautiful person, human in the value for value podcasting 2.0 space.
You just, hard work pays off.
So I appreciate you.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.

(01:39:29):
Well, anything else, Javi?
or should we send them off?
I think we're at the end, QW.
All right.
My son just came in.
He unlocked the door and barged in.
So thank you, everyone, for tuning in on Zap.Stream
or any of the Nostra clients that stream.

(01:39:51):
We really appreciate you.
Anybody listening, I think this show goes to show.
Please listen on Fountain.
support the value for value mission, support podcasting 2.0, support Noster, Bitcoin, everything.
Let's change the world together. We'll see you next week.
Goodbye.