PCR120 - Attestations All the Way Down with Nathan Day

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, QW and Avi discuss Bitcoin & Nostr developments with guest Nathan Day, creator of BTC Map, focusing on merchant adoption, attestations, BTC Map Updates, Proof of Anything NIP and more.

BTC Maps : https://btcmap.org/

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.
All right, we are live.

(00:30):
Welcome, gentle plebs, to the lightning-laced airwaves.
Today is Friday the 11th of July, and this is episode 120 of Pleb Chain Radio.
It is 3.04 p.m. on the east coast of the United States at the time of recording.
We have a fun show ahead of you.

(00:51):
Nathan Day, creator of BTC Map, returns to Pleb Chain Radio to talk about what's new on the map
and how attestations on NOSTA change everything.
And just a reminder, folks,
if you are listening to this show on Apple or Spotify,
first of all, thank you for listening.

(01:11):
But I would urge you to hit pause
and switch over to the Fountain Podcasting app
and support the Value for Value revolution.
And while you're there,
if you could subscribe to our show,
we would genuinely appreciate your support
and it will give you access to exclusive bonus episodes.

(01:31):
This show is streamed live on Zap.Stream
and any other Noster client that supports streaming
such as Amethyst and Noster.
And QW, you have been paying attention
to Bitcoin and Noster culture in the last week.
What have you witnessed?
Well, let's talk about for a moment, Avi,

(01:52):
the indie series that you're passionate about
and you're starting to progress on in the PCR premium content.
What led you to the idea?
What's kind of the context of it and kind of your general vision?
Well, yeah, this is a topic I've been interested in,

(02:14):
Bitcoin adoption in India,
given that it is the largest population.
There is a natural affinity to gold, historical affinity to gold.
and somehow Bitcoin adoption has lagged.
So I didn't have the time before I quit my fiat job.
Now I do.

(02:35):
So I've decided to launch the series
as part of our bonus content
to talk to different builders, policy folks,
lawyers, designers, developers
who are building on Bitcoin and on Noster.
So that really is the idea, just to see what's happening in India.

(02:59):
That's interesting.
The affinity to, they have affection for gold.
That's something that, and I think of like a Ganesh gold sculpture or something like that.
Oh, yeah.
Is there going to be a digital Bitcoin Ganesh sculpture?
That will be interesting.
We'll find out.

(03:19):
I have not listened to the first episode, and I want to, of that series.
So it's something in my queue.
Another thing that happened this week, and I think it was our looking forward to next year show we did,
the acute case of Dunning-Kruger, two dudes with an acute case of Dunning-Kruger.

(03:40):
I've been waiting for this white noise, Jeff G's client, white noise for some time.
I've been looking for a suitable telegram, telegram replacement, signal, whatever it is, some sort of a group chat.
OX chat's okay.
I'd like to see maybe I need to use it more.

(04:02):
But it seems like this white noise, the bones are there as far as a replacement for both signal and telegram.
Avi, you and I have, I mean, the test flight just dropped.
It was finally approved this morning, so anybody on the iOS side of things, you are free to go.

(04:23):
APK, the Android, that's been going on for 24 hours now.
So I would love to see how this is developing.
I know this is one of those projects that took a long time, and it seemed like it was very well-crafted and maybe tough to do.
So I'm happy that it's finally hitting the shelves, something where we can play with.

(04:47):
But I love Jeff G as a developer, and I'm not sure who else was in the team there for building this.
But I know he was the main person I knew.
So do you know anybody, Avi?
Max Hillebrand is essentially acting as the product lead for this.
I think he took that role.

(05:07):
The man that single-handedly almost drove you off the road.
Almost killed me. And for folks who haven't caught the reference, I had a long drive and I was listening to Max's narration of a lodging of wayfaring men. And he has this beautiful, soothing voice, which almost put me to sleep when I was driving at 70 miles an hour on the interstate.

(05:33):
But Kirabi, just going back to white noise, I think, yeah, the initial use, you know, it's been great.
But what will make or break it in my view, and this remains to be seen, is how seamlessly it gets integrated into the Darmus's, the primals, and the Nostas, and the others.

(05:57):
Because it's truly the solution to private DMs?
That's right.
And with a separate app for private DMs, that might work.
I have a feeling it adds to the fragmentation.
We already have Telegram, Signal,
and then we have our social apps, Primal, Darmus, Nostur.
And just one more app.

(06:18):
I don't know.
We'll have to see it.
But it just feels like an extra step, extra point of friction.
now if the nipple for
or the kind for
DMs that exist
today in most of those clients get stripped out
and replaced with
the white noise DMs
and I don't know what the technical feasibility
of that is but if that does happen

(06:40):
and then DMs become
first class citizens again
in these apps, in these Twitter
clone apps, I think it'll see a lot
more success and traction
yeah, one can hope
we'll see, huh?
so yeah it's been like 24 hours so we i'm sure there'll be people saying what the hell is this
uh you're literally in the not even 1.0 version of it essentially uh it's full-on uh beta testing

(07:05):
so uh i'm it's just something exciting um obviously nostrobama is coming up uh and and was it was i
corrected um did sergio say the 15th through the 17th uh i think he did yeah so i've been saying
the 14th it's the 15th through the 17th so we're looking at four days away you can be skydiving

(07:26):
with the bitcoin mixologist Lake Satoshi I'd like to do a show around this but I think we're going
to end up maybe doing a recap on it with our schedule but Lake Satoshi August 1st through the
3rd that's going to be an exciting time bring your camping gear Avi I know you have it handy these

(07:47):
days yeah and my indoor plumbing kit oh man how is the indoor plumbing in india i'm just curious
oh it's excellent yeah but it depends on where you are but i mean i've never had issues
yeah good it's it's one of those it's just such a big country uh then and you don't you know us

(08:09):
so far away from the across the pond just think oh india and we can just it's like saying america
But, you know, there's rednecks.
There's, you know, there's all kinds of different beings there.
So, yeah, that's pretty much it for Culture Corner.
Obviously, the vibe game is going strong.

(08:31):
Soapbox, I have not looked into it too much.
The Shakespeare drop, it just dropped, I think, last night.
So I think they did a – did they do that at Pub Key, Avi?
Yes, that was the –
Oh, well, did you want to talk about it?
It was a good event.
There was a fireside chat between Alex Gleason
and Alex Lee, I believe, from HRF,

(08:55):
where they went over the Shakespeare drop.
My understanding, I haven't used it yet,
is you can whisper, you literally whisper into the AI
and get it to build out your app.
So interesting stuff.
It was a good conversation.
And a couple of surreal things happened while I was there, completely unrelated to Shakespeare,

(09:18):
which is Adam Back randomly walked in, in the middle of the fireside chat, and he sat down.
And, of course, Adam Back does not live in New York.
So that was surprising.
And then shortly after that, I bumped into Alana Media Villa.
So Alana is the director of Dirty Coin.

(09:40):
So I bumped into her husband, who I'd met in Warsaw at the Film Fest last year.
And he was independently in New York and happened to be there at the same time.
So interesting things happen at PubKey.
Yeah, it's certainly a networking mecca, huh?

(10:01):
Yeah, it can be.
But there are days when if you go at the wrong time of day or wrong day of the week, there's not much going on.
But other days, you meet interesting characters.
If you drink there enough, Avi, there's rumors that you can become a board member of a Bitcoin treasury company.

(10:22):
Or if you don't, you can save those sats and start your own Bitcoin treasury company.
This is the way.
Oh man, that's it for Culture Corner.
Let's talk about the sermon, Avi.
Yes, indeed.
Our sermon today is Fill the Map.

(10:42):
We've sung hymns to self-custody and whispered psalms about price.
But tonight we crack open the gospel of merchant adoption.
Because here's the cosmic cheat code.
Money isn't money until it moves.
Satoshis stuffed in cold storage are inert clay.

(11:05):
Spend them at your corner taqueria and they become a living organism.
Every checkout counter that flashes a lightning invoice is a neon sign declaring monetary independence.
When the deli guy, the barber and even the bodega cat accept Bitcoin,
normies stop asking why and start asking how. UX flows follow espresso shots and

(11:34):
wallets get downloaded faster than you can say Fiat is dead So let quit waiting for Wall Street suits or nation treaties The revolution starts with a scan of a QR code at the halal food truck on 6th Avenue
Convince one shopkeeper, on board their point of sale, and you plant a flag in occupied territory.

(12:01):
One orange flame against the grey drizzle of legacy rails.
It's viral, contagious, irresistible
So New York plebs, you're on the front lines
Tourists, tastemakers, ticker tape of the world
But wherever you are, Krakow, Kampala, Kalamazoo

(12:22):
The mission is the same
Orange pill your favorite haunts
Until BTC map looks like a Jackson Pollock of orange pins
Grab a sticker pack, load up your zapping wallet, and go preach with payments.
Together, we fill the map.
Hashtag fill the map.

(12:46):
Are you starting a movement, Avi?
Is it hashtag fill the map?
Hashtag fill the map.
It is the call to action.
It's a rallying cry to plebs to fill the map.
And I think this is an excellent time.
to bring on the man who gave us a map to fill, Nathan Day.

(13:07):
The map killer himself.
The map, yes, the mapper himself, Nathan Day.
Welcome back to Plep Chain Radio.
Great to be back, and amen.
I co-signed that message, Evie.
Fill the map.
It's going to trend like Olos 365.

(13:27):
It turned into Olos 90, and then it faded.
We'll see.
I believe in Avi's movement and it's got, it's a worthy cause.
It really is.
And I need to be filling the map in Phoenix here because it's, I checked again and I haven't
seen a single other, I got work to do.

(13:48):
Avi, I know you're starting to push the envelope on doing some of that work, but I got, I got,
I don't even know where to start in my desert.
You got to start somewhere, man.
And rumor has it, by the way, folks, that August might see three, potentially four new
editions in New York City.

(14:10):
But stay tuned.
Exciting.
So, Nathan, we start with a burning question, as always.
What is the number one thing stopping BTC Map from becoming useless?
Interesting.
People spending Bitcoin is the obvious answer, but I think it comes down to merchants ultimately.

(14:37):
So as much as we want to spend Bitcoin, then there has to be merchants willing to accept it.
So I've come down to the conclusion really that we need merchant-led adoption.
and that has to come through them
demanding the best money in the world

(14:58):
rather than the fiat money
and that's going to take some time.
And I think it's okay if it takes time
because that means that any merchant adoption
is healthy and sticks
rather than just being a local phenomenon
that bubbles up and then pops.

(15:19):
it would just be a slow and steady crunch up, I believe.
So let's actually press on that a little bit, Nathan,
because I've, from my distance, come to that conclusion as well,
that merchant adoption drives user adoption.
But if we were to take a step back,

(15:40):
it does appear to be a chicken and egg problem.
Because if you talk to a merchant and say,
why aren't you accepting Bitcoin?
the likely answer is going to be, well, no one's paying in Bitcoin.
And then you ask the users, why aren't you using Bitcoin as money?
Well, no one accepts Bitcoin.
So it seems like you've come to the conclusion that, well, no, it appears to be a chicken and egg,

(16:04):
but really you hit the merchants first, and that's how you solve it.
I think that's how you get more entrenched growth that stays.
I mean, there's also an education piece and raising the visibility of it as well.
So if you're asking as a consumer, if that's Bitcoin or cash,

(16:27):
then that's also going to get people thinking about Bitcoin.
But ultimately, the merchant has to say, no, I want Bitcoin because it's better money.
I think that's how we get global scale that stays with us rather than these, you know, more sort of engineered initiatives.

(16:51):
And how do you do that? How do you, in your mind, how do you orange pill merchants?
because in New York, with the few examples that I talked about
and the three potential upcoming ones,
they happen to be Bitcoiners who've been in the background
and it took, honestly, I can't take any credit for this.

(17:12):
It's maybe Daniel or the Daniel who's done a lot of this work.
In coming up with a good approximation of a point of sale,
given New York's constraints, let's not forget, right?
New York, North Korea, and Iran have a lot of trouble accessing some of these cool Bitcoin and Lightning apps.

(17:34):
But given that he's come up with a fairly elegant solution, I would say, to work around this,
and it was just a simple matter of talking to these Bitcoiner owners and saying,
hey, why aren't you doing this? You're a Bitcoiner.
And they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, fine, I'll do it.
but in the event that the merchant is not a Bitcoiner

(17:56):
how do you, I guess, twist their arm?
Maybe that's not the right phrase.
How do you convince them?
You make them aware.
I mean, people say to me that when they're
not necessarily orange pulling the merchant
because the first step is basically
would you like additional custom?
And as long as they're not allergic to Bitcoin

(18:18):
then they can accept Bitcoin and perhaps they auto-convert out into fiat to begin with.
But what we often see is that when people start there
then after a while they then start to keep the Bitcoin and not do the auto-convert.
So I think it's a very powerful tool to say

(18:41):
there's a segment of a customer base out there
that will go over and above, out of their way
to come spend sats at merchants that accept Bitcoin.
And it's not going to be a huge amount to begin with,
but they'll see the Bitcoiners that have just travelled an hour

(19:02):
to get their hair cut in a barber because they accept Bitcoin.
And I just think we do it slowly.
The numbers of merchants are increasing day on day.
We're not seeing hockey stick growth, but we're seeing very nice linear growth right now.

(19:24):
And that's on the, let's call it native acceptance, where they're not using one of these services like Tando,
or I think there's VietQR in Vietnam, and there's the Quirco app in the Czech Republic that enable you to spend Bitcoin.

(19:46):
And sometimes the merchant doesn't even know that that's happened.
And so I think we're going to see lots of these regional or per country on ramps for merchants popping up.
And, you know, that's a good place to start for them.
And then once they realize that they actually want Bitcoin directly, then that's a decision they can make at that point.

(20:12):
so I think we're going to see more of those
and Square is a big example of that
they announced back at the Vegas conference
that they're going to be enabling all of their merchants
by default for Lightning payments
so I think that's roughly 4 million in the US

(20:33):
and perhaps, I don't know, maybe 10 million globally
4 million in the US
excluding New York
I'm sorry to say
probably
yeah
but that's at least
an order if not two orders of magnitude
more than the current
merchants we've got

(20:54):
so we've got as of today
just looking 16,801
merchants on the map
as the time of recording
so it's going to get really interesting
when that's in the millions
and that's going to happen fairly soon.
I mean, we're in discussions with the Square team.
I've got a call with them next week lined up

(21:17):
to discuss how we're going to approach this logistically.
Yeah, that'd be, that's, I mean, if you can find,
I mean, anytime you see the Square at that point,
moving forward, you'd be like,
hey, you know, you should be accepting Bitcoin
because it's such a simple transition.
I can definitely see a fill the map bull run coming up.

(21:38):
Yeah, we're going to be busy.
It's just another form of advertising for, let's say, my wife who uses Square for her hair.
She's a hairstylist, has a salon, but it would just be something on the map, another form of advertising that she can easily do.
Well, yeah, very shortly, she will be able to accept Bitcoin.

(21:59):
And she doesn't even have to opt into that.
That's going to be on by default, according to the team there.
Yeah, yeah, that's powerful.
I think everybody in their right mind has been waiting for this, right?
Because you have Jack who's heading this block and Square and all these Bitcoin ventures, Noster.

(22:22):
It seemed like the only thing holding them back was the board and the stock or something.
I don't know, the fiatness of the company.
But the fact that they're going to start accepting Bitcoin or allowing or it's integrated into Square.
I'd love to see how this works out
because it's going to be exciting times ahead

(22:44):
not to mention QW in the specific case of Square
they presumably have volume based deals
with Visa and MasterCard, the networks
and if Lightning takes off
those networks in theory get obliterated
because they're 3.5% maybe in some cases 4% fees

(23:06):
American Express is closer to 4%.
So Lightning would destroy it.
So, you know, Square, I suspect, up until this point,
had to tiptoe around that issue, and they figured out a way, I think,
of balancing those relationships and then bringing this in Yeah my personal view is I think they been sitting on this for a while because obviously they could have done it years ago

(23:34):
But something's changed that says now is the time.
Well, and I can tell you as a family business of 60-plus years,
the fiat is just getting worse and worse.
I mean, just to deposit a check, a cash.
If we have cash, let's say a customer pays us $10,000 cash.

(23:56):
We actually pay a fee to deposit that cash.
So cash is like disappearing to you.
It's disincentivized.
That is an expensive haircut, I have to say.
Yeah, well, you know.
It's a lot of hair over here.
You know, Avi.
But yeah, it seems like everything is kind of like,

(24:19):
oh, just pay this credit card, use this credit card, fees, fees, fees, and it just normalized.
And it shouldn't be like that. At the same time, customers are like, why is this so expensive?
It's like, well, everything adds up, everything. I'm curious how Square deals with transaction fees
with this convert setting. I wonder if it's going to be the same, if that was kind of that compromise

(24:44):
that they had. Okay, we'll accept it, but we're still going to make the same amount of money.
because obviously using permissionless Bitcoin,
there should be frictionless, should have very low fees.
We'll see if it's a moneymaker or a freedom maker.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting.
And then, you know, this is off the back of Steak and Shake

(25:06):
that deployed nationwide to hundreds of locations.
So we added all those to the map.
we've got the spa grocery chain in switzerland just added 14 new places today so i think they're
up to something like 13 total with 50 plus planned over the next month or two um so yeah it's hard to

(25:31):
keep up really at the moment um it's just like a ratchet we're just getting more and more and
more people and uh it's we tend to not drift backwards i i love the fact that btc maps is
is is really a global indicator on on growth uh it's such a it's it's pure signal honestly uh when

(25:53):
when you look at the growth and you look at different regions uh you can kind of see why
why it's going down why it's going up um it's just such a great indicator is that something that you
thought of when you were building it originally?
No, not at all.
But since getting into it, I always say that there's only two things that really matter,
which is the hash rate and the merchant adoption rate.

(26:16):
Everything else is noise.
So, yeah, it's great to see.
We've got a dashboard up on btcmap.org where you can see the stats on a daily basis.
And, you know, you wake up every morning.
Well, I do at least.
look at my notifications and see how many merchants got added whilst I was asleep.

(26:39):
It's a real privilege to watch those numbers roll in, really.
What has the growth rate been like, Nathan?
Have you seen an acceleration?
So, for example, if it is growing at an average of 2% or 3% a month for the last X months,
Have you suddenly seen that 2% or 3% jump up to 10% or something like that?

(27:04):
It sounds like, based on what you're saying, there's a jump in the growth rate itself.
Yeah, I'd have to go and do some analysis on that because it's a good question to ask.
So what we see is certainly bursts of activity based upon, you know, steak and shake, for example, coming online.
but that does tend to just

(27:27):
then blend into the background rate
I'd say we're looking
linear-ish
I need to plot a line of best fit on this
maybe slightly more than linear right now
but it's certainly not a power law or anything

(27:49):
Vibe it man
you Shakespeare
Shakespeare
did you see any
change in the
and you might not have
I'm just kind of going off the cuff here but
with the Trump administration
you can all play with your bitcoins

(28:09):
you're all going to have fun playing with your bitcoins
did you see
any kind of sense of
relief on the map as far
as growth?
not really I mean the US is
The US kind of sucks with BTC Maps, honestly.
It has been increasing and it has been related to the change of administration.

(28:31):
But still globally, in terms of number of merchants, it's nowhere near where it should be given the population size and the prominence of Bitcoin in the US as well.
But I think you've got the IRS to blame for that one.
So, yeah, I think we definitely have seen a change.
And I think that's what gave Steak and Shake and perhaps even Square the cover they needed to make the moves that they made recently.

(29:01):
So, yeah, it's great to see.
I mean, if we could just see some form of, even if it were just a capital gains allowance for small purchases or something like that for you guys, then I think that would really help things out in the US.
different countries in different parts of the world
have different regulations
so here in the UK for example

(29:23):
if you buy back your Bitcoin within 30 days
then there's no cap gains to pay on it
that's some other rule that's applied to
wash trading stock at the end of a tax year
but it equally applies to Bitcoin
so we've got some laws that apply here in our favour

(29:45):
So yeah, I think something like that happens in the US, then we'll start to see some more merchant growth there.
But even that said, our biggest market in terms of people accessing the website is the US.
Accessing it to look for places, right?

(30:08):
Yeah, to look for whether or not your blank map in your local town has any pen.
on it so we're the number one peekers but yeah just not not oh man that's funny that's interesting
but it will copy obviously he's been peeking at his like every day just hoping you know more than

(30:35):
that jeweler or whatever on uh in new york a jeweler and pub key or something no no there's
Popkey, there's Safari, there's Solid State Coffee.
Those are the three real places.
The rest are ATMs.
I think someone told me there's a flower shop in Brooklyn
or a wine shop, I can't remember now.
Yeah, I'm rocking tons of ATMs and a jeweler.

(30:58):
And I've even thought, you know,
maybe I need to go check out that jeweler
and just get a confirmation.
Because, you know, I did notice on the chart
that confirmed locations,
it goes up and it goes down.
it's not a it's not a up and to the right type of thing i mean maybe if i zoom out it is but uh

(31:18):
do people come and add and subtract locations often nathan um yeah it does happen for sure um
we we deem something as not recently verified if it hasn't been checked within the last 12 months
um so it doesn't mean that they don't accept bitcoin but the our confidence level is is is

(31:40):
lower so that's what you see with those recently verified dips and then the another key metric is
the average age of the last verification so I think we're sitting just over a year on average
at the moment so yeah much more verification needed that really differs on a per geography

(32:05):
basis so some communities are excellent some countries are excellent like brazil for example
but yeah we just need to have more local verifiers and and taggers so if you're thinking about what
you can do for bitcoin and you're not a coder then maintain your local btc map data

(32:29):
Avi's doing that full time now
a shadowy super tagger
yeah there you go
so Nathan you've had a recent
major lifestyle change
in the last
what is it less than a month
you want to talk about that

(32:49):
yeah so I joined you
in the great unwashed
the unemployed
So I quit my fiat mining, finally.
What led to that decision, Nathan?
Because you weren't full-time at that point, right?
You'd already sort of downscaled a little bit, but you still had a foot in the door.

(33:14):
Yeah, correct.
So, yeah, it's kind of slowly been winding down.
Used the last couple of years to basically stack as hard as I could.
which I'm grateful for at the moment, for sure.
But yeah, I ended up doing a couple of days a week
in the sort of IT consulting space.

(33:38):
And then, yeah, I just got to the point
where there was so much to do
across so many different areas,
not just BTC map.
There's loads of stuff I want to do on NOSTA as well.
And yeah, it's just that,
although it was only a couple of days a week,
there was part of my brain being occupied
in things that were deeply uninteresting.

(34:00):
And it was kind of just stopping me
from really getting creative on the Nostra side
and on the BTC map side.
So, you know, life's short.
So, yeah, that got killed and full-time freedom tech now.
You get a couple coats of wax on that Nomad van

(34:20):
that you had before?
Yeah, it's in the driveway right now.
We're just getting it ready, actually.
They were off on a trip next week for a couple of weeks.
So, yeah, just getting everything nice.
How often do you use that?
Because I know it was a lifestyle for you per our last show with COVID,
but in the COVID times.

(34:42):
But you still go back to that?
You still take it often?
Is it something that's still part of your experience?
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, it's there as the escape hatch.
So it's always fueled up and ready to go.
So it's kind of our grab bag on wheels.
But no, apart from that, it's, yeah, we holiday in it.

(35:04):
We whether that a weekend away with friends or over the summers we tend to get away for you know six weeks in it or whatever So yeah very much still used but yeah not full in it like we were
So you mentioned Noster, and I have not been following it closely enough,

(35:29):
but I believe there's a NIP that might apply to BTC map
or something you're pushing for developing.
Maybe like a proof of anything type of NIP.
You want to talk about that?
Yeah, sure.
So yeah, it's a good way of talking about it, really proof of anything.
So it's called attestations.

(35:52):
And so I've not actually submitted that as a PR onto the main repo.
I'm using the kind of custom nip format that Alex Gleason created so that's just
sitting up on Nostahub right now as a custom nip which I think is a really

(36:14):
good way of doing it because it makes nips that are coming out discoverable
and it surfaces them rather than have them buried in a git repo so particularly
I know if you're vibing stuff and creating new areas, then I think it's a really good way to
sort of define these things now. So yeah, so the backstory was is that we have a places NIP.

(36:42):
Again, that's not been merged either, but it represents a merchant and we talked about that
last time. But of course with NOSDA, anyone can claim or can publish a place event and they could
publish the same place event for a physical place in the real world,
but it's signed by two different private keys.

(37:05):
So you get into how do we prove which is the correct owner of that.
So that was a problem that I was working on,
and we talked about that last time.
And that was ultimately solved or will be solved through proof of place.
And so just recently, actually, before BTC Prague,

(37:26):
we did a test run of that.
So we were mailing out some shared secrets
to the owners of these places.
So that was mailed to their physical mailbox
that they were claiming.
And then we locked a secret effectively

(37:47):
to their private key, their NSEC.
So if they could unlock that secret,
it proved two things.
They have access to the mailbox
because they were able to open the letter
and they were able to decode the secret
and so they had access to NSAC.
So what that meant is that we could then as,

(38:07):
you know, an oracle if you like,
BTC map needed a way to signal
that we thought that that place was valid.
And so that then got me thinking about
how do we do that?
There's no real way to do that.
at the moment you might want to do it with badges
but they tend to be

(38:28):
a little bit more
let's say
jovial
they're not
they're not serious
they're not meant to be serious
they could be serious
but they didn't really
display the seriousness

(38:50):
that we were looking for
so yeah attestations is how I think we can solve that
so there is an attestations NIP
it's quite simple at the base level
you've just got attestations
which is basically like a notary or noster

(39:12):
so if you think about you go to a lawyer or whatever
wherever you are in the world
and they have to stamp something as being true or untrue
it's kind of like that but it's on NOSTA
so how I expanded this is that
you can use any NOSTA event

(39:33):
can be attested
so you just reference the, we call it the subject event
so it's the event that is subject to the attestation
and anyone can attest anything
so this is very flexible so any event of any kind
can be a subject event. So it's quite a big design space.

(39:56):
So back to the BTC map example, once
we've done our out of band verification
that's convinced ourselves that we believe
this place is legitimate, then we're able to
publish an attestation event from the BTC map
account to say we attest this is the truth.

(40:18):
so it's valid or invalid if we found that it couldn't be done.
So we talk a lot about web of trust in NOSTA
and we kind of usually think about that at the NPUB level
so the trust between the key pairs.
What attestations do in my view is take that down to the event level

(40:45):
so it's a web of trust for events
if you want to think about it like that
so I hadn't really thought how powerful that is
I was just trying to solve my own problem with BTC Map Places
but I've been since working with Tim Boomer
who's doing a lot of work on Safebox

(41:05):
and it unlocks a lot of the problems that he's grappling with
in terms of credentials and verifiable records.
And so we get to a point really where anyone can be an Oracle now,

(41:25):
so we don't need to look for trusted credential issuers
to say somebody has or has not certain capabilities.
we move to this kind of first person view of the world where we can issue ourselves the claim that

(41:46):
we want to make whether that be a place or a claim of competence in a certain area or whatever else
any other rhinoceros event type but we get to make the claim as on a first person basis
and then anyone else can attest to that or not.

(42:08):
And those can just be other plebs
or that could be a bigger node
weighted in your web of trust
that has a certain skill set
in verifying a certain kind.
So, you know, BTCMAP would have a lot of trust
verifying places perhaps,

(42:28):
but other people might want to verify software releases
from your favorite software engineer
who's verified that a build of some other piece of software
that they haven't worked on is valid or invalid.
So it just really opens up a whole raft of use cases, I think,

(42:49):
because we're not placing our trust in anyone anymore
other than those that we deem worthy of our trust.
Nathan, could you give a simple example of, because this is an intriguing concept that you bring up, the web of trust moving from the NPub level to the event level.

(43:11):
But to make it real, can you give a simple example that demonstrates how the web of trust is applicable at the event level?
Yeah, so we already covered the place one.
so if BTC map had attested that a certain place was valid
then you could weight that within your web of trust

(43:31):
and say okay well this is probably the key pair
that is linked for the key pair in cyberspace
to the physical place in meatspace
that's one example
other examples are with Zapstore for example
so talking to the guys there
where an individual release, a software release, is published

(43:54):
and then other people could attest that they have verified that
and recreated that if it's a recreatable build.
And as long as you trust those people, you say,
well, actually, now I know two or three people that I deem as capable in this area

(44:17):
have attested that this build is legitimate.
So I'm just going to go and install it because I trust those people.
You might want to make that judgment.
So yeah, those are two examples.
And then if you want to take it even further,
and I talked about the custom nips that Alex has been working on.

(44:40):
I call it the nip nip, which is a nip that defines a nip.
so we can create all of these nips now anyone can do it they don't have to be merged
you can just create a nip and if people start using it and it and it gets traction then you

(45:01):
know maybe it's legitimate right and so what we can now do using attestations is attest to
various other nips as being valid or invalid almost like an ACK-NAC on a per nip basis
and we actually then start to have an emergent NOSTA protocol that's different for everyone but

(45:26):
obviously wouldn't work unless there's a large commonality certainly for the base kinds
but we get to define what the protocol is
on an individual level
and the mechanism to do that would be attestations
going back to

(45:47):
the map
so you're talking about BTC map providing an attestation
and if I understood correctly
there is this entire workflow
of mailing out a shared secret
to the venue, correct?
Yeah, that works.
How does that scale, Nathan?

(46:08):
Because right now you're talking about 16,000 locations.
So that's 16,000 pieces of paper and ink
that you'll have to mail out, postage and whatnot.
If you're talking about millions of places on the map,
I mean, fill the map.
It's going to succeed.
You definitely wouldn't want to do that by hand.

(46:29):
Right.
So how would you scale that verification process for B2CMap?
Well, the one that we did just prior to Prague, I built a system to do it.
So I vibed meatspacester.io or X, Y, Z.
I can't remember.
I think it's .io as a tool.

(46:52):
to help me do that.
So you select the place,
it automatically, in this case,
at this stage at least,
prints out the thing you have to mail.
But there are mailing providers globally
that you can just do that via the API.
So we've done some tests on that as well.

(47:15):
So in short, it'd be fully automated.
So somebody would request it,
the workflow would start,
the thing would get mailed
and if they can get access to the secret
then they get their BTC map blue check
or purple check
Who bears the cost of the meatspace resources?

(47:39):
There's postage, there's paper, there's ink
Yeah, so that would have to be a paid service
And who would pay for that?
The place that wanted the attestation
for the merchant effectively.
Yeah.

(48:00):
Have you?
Yeah, the costs, you're probably looking at
minimum $5 cost to get that done.
Right.
And I didn't realize there's a...
I think QW, we either live in the Stone Age
or in the US, or we're just out of the loop

(48:22):
when it comes to how mailing automation works.
But I was not aware that these mailers have APIs
where you could actually build out the workflow
to automate all of this.
Yeah, it works, and I think they cover the US as well.

(48:43):
QW, have you ever used one of these mailing APIs?
uh no no no uh it's funny because the the one thing our my family business does not own uh
you know we own the property the business everything but we the only thing we don't own

(49:05):
is the uh the postage scale that uh that prints off the the postage was paid that's the closest
thing we get to mailing
APIs and whatnot.
Clearly, just
light years ahead,
behind, I suppose, and I'm okay
with that. You guys are still mailing
checks to each other.

(49:27):
Yeah.
I handwrite the LNBC
invoice when I send it to
QW. Can you believe that?
I can see you there
with your feather.
We mail the
We mailed the InPub, our insect, to our shared PubChain Radio account to each other.

(49:51):
He's also my pen pal, so there you go.
Yeah, so on the attestations front, then, that opens up a lot of stuff on these credentials.
and there's lots of talk about digital identities in various parts of the world

(50:13):
and they'll require an issuer.
The government will issue you your identity.
In fact, the government does that now in a kind of paper-based
and increasingly digital way.
So when you're born, you get your birth certificate,
you get issued a passport.
you effectively rent these off the government in exchange for good behavior and they can be removed at any point, right?

(50:44):
So what we get with this kind of first-person view of the world is that you issue your own truths as you see them
and then other people attest to those or not.
so you can imagine in the future you might have a driving license NIP

(51:07):
or a driving NIP or whatever
and you would state that here are your skill sets
and you would have others, perhaps it's the driving agency or whatever
that would then attest to that being valid or not
and so it really inverts this traditional power structure of issuing credentials versus

(51:33):
stating yourself what you believe to be true and then having others
help me think that through though nathan because all of this makes sense in a self-contained
digital ecosystem the minute you start talking about the intersection points between the digital

(51:56):
realm and meatspace.
Meatspace has its legal code, which I dare say is enforced by an authority typically at
the pointy end of a gun, in the worst case scenario, of course.
How does a self-issued credential hold any validity in front of that barrel of a gun?

(52:21):
It doesn't unless the person behind the gun recognizes it.
But we have to start somewhere.
So we have to start claiming sovereignty over all of these things
and presenting when required.
And then over time, things will change.

(52:44):
And just like every company does not last forever
and has to fail, really.
It's the same with countries and administrations
and issuers of credentials.
So for somebody to issue a credential,

(53:04):
there has to be an issuer.
And issuers, by definition, can't last forever.
So at some point, the thing that they have issued
will become worthless anyway.
So we just have to start doing it ourselves.
and we've got cryptography to do that
so we don't need an issuer anymore.
Right, and the idea being

(53:26):
you are the issuer
and then you have your network
that attests on the validity or lack thereof
and for any transactions
that involve that credential
or whatever, that artifact
as long as they accept the attestations

(53:47):
from these other folks is valid, it's good enough.
So you just carry on with life in that process, right?
Yeah, exactly that.
So you have to weigh those attestations
within your own parameters for web of trust.
And web of trust, for me, is a vector.
It's to what extent, how much,

(54:08):
what's the magnitude of the trust,
and in what direction.
So trust about what.
and so depending on
the
subject kind and
the attestor, the person making
the attestation then different
people will make different judgment calls
based upon
their own view of the world and

(54:30):
their own truths really
truth is a very local
thing, it's what you believe
it's not what other people believe
so let's just
think through this hypothetical scenario on attestations,
which is, and we'll take an extreme example,
which is a self-issued passport.

(54:52):
And it's attested by a certain number of people.
So it's a Bitcoiner, they've self-issued themselves a passport,
and they want to go to Roatan, or Prospera, rather,
the Bitcoin community in Roatan, the island of Honduras,
which is governed by international treaty
and not part of...

(55:13):
I don't fully understand...
It's a free city.
It's a free city, right.
And if the person letting you into Rochan
says, yeah, this attestation is good enough for me,
I don't need to see your passport,
then that would work.
So, I mean, yeah.
So it's up to the person making the judgment call

(55:37):
whether they recognize the base event
and weight the attestations of that appropriately.
So, yeah, I mean, we're not going to be flying into the US on these anytime soon, that's for sure.
But we have the basic building blocks now where we can issue our own credentials

(55:59):
and have other people verify those.
I think we probably need a person nip.
This is me in the real world.
you can put as much information
or as little information as possible on that
of course you don't have to do it
but if I did a person nip for Nathan Day

(56:22):
and signed that with my NSEC
then other people who knew me in meat space
might want to attest that I do have brown eyes
or whatever else
I think those types of things
like proof of place and ultimately proof of person,
to the extent that you want to do that,

(56:43):
really provide some of this connectivity
between cyberspace and meatspace,
because we all live in this meatspace.
We don't live in cyberspace.
So I'm very keen to ground ourselves in the real world.
I think proof...
I'm not entirely convinced proof of person

(57:05):
will have an immediate use case.
However, a subset of proof of person
is proof of profession.
And I think that certainly does.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I'd like the design.
Well, especially with what you've been building, Avi,

(57:26):
with the medical field.
I mean, that would be a pretty tangible one.
Yeah.
And, you know, that's sort of, Tim Boma is kind of the connective tissue here.
He was involved in the Nosfabrica challenge,
and he was working on credentials for things like prescriptions and whatnot, right,
as part of Safebox.
And then Nathan's NIP came out, and he's involved in that as well.

(57:52):
But I think there's a very, in fact, we're trying to solve the exact same problem.
Yeah, and other people have been doing it on a per use case basis and this just makes
it generic so that we can all use it for any subject event.
So yeah the work Tim been doing is basically boiled down the world into eCache and eRecords so cash and records And both of those things can be stored in a safe box that lives on relays

(58:28):
And with attestations on the record side,
that gives it basically everything he needs to build everything
for all the different use cases, including the medical ones.
Love it.

(58:50):
So let's go back to BTC Map and Solid State Coffee,
which is a coffee shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan,
71st and I believe Columbus Avenue.
So any New York plebs or plebs who are planning to visit New York,
do check it out and support that business.
They're actually thinking about doing something really cool,

(59:11):
which is doing zaps or, I guess, payment splits across their supply chain.
They haven't implemented that yet, but that's their plan.
And to make sure that the split goes all the way down to the farmers and the harvesters.
But in any event, Nathan, I was there.

(59:32):
I took a video of myself making the payment, right?
And now it's out there.
So if you go back to the BTC map verification process,
and let's say you didn't know me, right?
I was just a guy who posted something on Nasta,
or whoever the person in charge of updating the map is.

(59:56):
How much weight would something like that play in getting it on the map,
getting solid state coffee on the map?
Well beauty is in the eye of the beholder
so it's up to
users of the map at that point

(01:00:16):
because currently we've got our OSM OpenStreetMap
base view of the world and that's much more around editing
a data commons and we all kind of agree on that
as a community
so it's kind of policed really so people keep their
eye on it. Whereas as we move into a Nostra native world, then that coffee shop will publish

(01:00:43):
a place event with their own that they've signed themselves. And then if you were there
as a customer and you were fairly confident that it was them in control of their Nostra
account and it's the same guys that just gave you your uh your latte or whatever espresso please

(01:01:06):
sorry nathan sorry sorry i do apologize um he likes the little baby cups it makes him feel bigger
i yeah animal milk in in with caffeine i don't know anyway carry on
um then you could you could attest to that um and then people in new york might uh weight your

(01:01:29):
opinion on that subject highly or not. And so ultimately they would see that place upranked
if you were in their web of trust and they rated your opinion on places.

(01:01:51):
So it totally decentralizes all of that and at some point we won't have open street maps per se,
we'll just have place events that have been signed by the owner of the place.
But I think we'll take some time to get all of the merchants that we currently have on Nostra

(01:02:16):
and then going forward all of the new merchants on Nostra as well.
So we just have to make that as seamless as possible.
They don't really have to know that they're on Nostra perhaps.
we can start with almost like custodial
Nostra accounts to begin with
with the ability for them to rotate out into self-custody

(01:02:37):
so not dissimilar to the lightning setup
so yeah, lots to do
lots of complexities to hide
but not hiding them too much
so that people can and should take self-custody
when they're ready
Actually, how does that work?
a lot of people have been thinking about
how do you onboard

(01:02:58):
regular folks
non-bed corners onto Nostra
and make the UX for onboarding
seamless
something that they're used to
so custodial would be
you'd hide the keys
behind an email address
you'd have an email address mapped to the key
or something like that

(01:03:19):
spin them up a key pair
have that attached to
you know their email or something that they have control over and just make it super simple to
begin with and then start to nudge people in the direction of self-custody yeah exactly that and so

(01:03:40):
that that needs to also come sort of in parallel with key rotations because if we've you know as a
as a provider spun up a key pair.
Obviously, we delete that,
but you're in a trust me, bro, situation.
So you'd want a mechanism to rotate that key
into the new one that they have custody over.

(01:04:04):
So yeah, lots of stuff to fix,
but it's all fixable.
But the concept's powerful.
And the key rotation here
sounds like the solution,
it doesn't exist in any meaningful form today
that I'm aware of, right, Nathan?
Because if you're talking about proof of existence,
I mean, there's one big risk there today, right?

(01:04:26):
Not the future state where we have perfect key rotation.
But if you rug yourself and lose your keys,
you stop existing for all intents and purposes.
Yeah, the stakes are high.
Absolutely, especially if you've linked
meatspace attributes to that
in terms of a person and a passport and a place.

(01:04:47):
So yeah, we've got much more work to do on the key rotation side and maybe attestations help with that also in terms of social signaling of key rotations.
I think that's a powerful point about Nostra, because when stakes are high and your individual account becomes yourself or your proof of view, you really start to think about how you act on the Internet, how you communicate with the community.

(01:05:22):
I think it really progresses us into a more positive, build-forward type of mentality versus just, you know, maybe trolling.
I agree.
Because although you can still be anonymous, should you wish, and you can even build reputations around anonymous.

(01:05:42):
Nostra Identity is certainly in cyberspace
but if you're doing stuff in the real world
then yeah
it enables us to build up those networks
and really take social networking back to what it was
which is actual humans interacting with other humans

(01:06:04):
based upon expertise, skills and trust
with money
with digital money
digital gold being used
spent frictionlessly
it's an interesting
time to be alive

(01:06:25):
I wish more people would look into
Noster because
even though
I see some of the sellers
soap miner that's in the audience
he's doing great
I mean, he's got an awesome product.
We are a place, we're a niche in the internet, the world out there,
where people actually look at Bitcoin as money versus, let's say, just some investment strategy.

(01:06:51):
So it's something where a lot of, it's the chicken and the egg.
Once again, Avi, if more people would just come here, you know, more people would benefit as a whole.
More merchants could come, you know, and you get enough people locally.
I know for me, in the 22nd, we're doing a local Noster, but it's only like 10 of us.

(01:07:13):
If we can just get 100 of us, that would be a huge push to another merchant to pop up locally and actually join Noster.
So it's just kind of that early stages.
But I suppose early stages is where you build all the tools for the later stages, right?
Yeah, exactly that.
Nathan let's

(01:07:35):
I actually want to go back to something you brought up
earlier which is in theory
the entire NOSTA protocol
can be defined
by attestation
so and I want
to make sure I spell this out so that
folks understand how powerful
this idea is
which is you
you can release a NIP

(01:07:57):
a custom NIP that
doesn't have to be
merged into the main NIP
street pool, which by the way is a bit of a
actually, before we move further
ahead, I'd love to hear your thoughts on
that, Nathan, which is
at that point, you're talking about
NOSTA being permissionless
but if you're looking for your NIP
that you're proposing to be

(01:08:19):
merged by someone, you're asking for someone's
permission there, aren't you?
Well, I'm not because
I've not published it
to be merged.
I mean,
Yeah, that's what usually happens, yes.
Right.
And so what you're saying is you've put your NIP out, a custom NIP out.

(01:08:41):
You're not even going to look to get it merged into the main NIPs repo.
And if enough people attest to your NIP being a valid NIP for their use case, presumably,
and if other use cases that are looking for something like what you've built they trust these

(01:09:02):
at a stores then they accept it and so you can then extend that to any nip uh exactly that so
i think the the type kind the kind and number that alex did was uh 30817 which is this it's
It's called custom NIP or community NIP, but I just like to call it the NIP NIP because

(01:09:25):
custom or community I think downplays what it is.
It's just a NIP.
It just something that has been published as a NIP and it doesn require anyone to accept that It doesn require anyone to merge it All it does require really is people to use it

(01:09:48):
And that's all it really does require.
And that's where NOSTA started with people implementing things.
So that's a base level.
and then the second level to that is by using attestations themselves,

(01:10:09):
you can almost like in a pick-and-mix way define the nips that you believe NOSTA is to you.
And so my version of NOSTA might be 95% overlap with what your version of NOSTA is.
And of course, if we all had wildly different versions,

(01:10:30):
then nothing would work
because we'd all be on separate protocols.
But we've effectively got this,
you can think about it like a swarm moving forward
of different combinations of NIPs
and over time people will coalesce around

(01:10:50):
the ones that are most valuable to them and to others.
Well, there is a nice forcing function here
which is if you want to benefit from the interoperability
and the network effect that exists in other apps,
then you don't want to diverge too far from the existing NIP standard.
Yeah, exactly.
So you get ossification, I guess, in areas,

(01:11:14):
but you also get creativity and exploration in other areas.
And I think that's the key thing behind what Alex was doing with this,
which is linked back to all the soapbox stuff,
is people are creating new apps that need new nips,
and we need a way to do that
that doesn't involve six months of arguing in a nip repo,

(01:11:37):
which is currently what happens.
And so, yeah, we're just free to create now.
And through attestations, I think we're also free
to define the protocol from here,
looking backwards as well so I'd like to see each of the merged nips or even the draft nips

(01:12:02):
being published as as nip nips I think they should all be published we don't have to worry about nip
numbers anymore everyone's got its unique um n address because it's just a Nostal note itself
so maybe we need a nip zero which is um the nip nip

(01:12:24):
right and you said we need a nip zero just candidly uh who decides because i think we've
had this conversation before avi obviously there's a nip repo but is there a hierarchy there is there
Is there a council that says this is beneficial?

(01:12:46):
And then there's some general consensus?
How does it kind of work?
It sounds like you might have looked into this before.
Nathan, I think that one's for you.
No, it's fine.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Well, I've not looked into it deeply, but there is a process.
There are a number of individuals that got merge rights on the repo.

(01:13:12):
So, you know, it's not dissimilar to Bitcoin in that sense and Bitcoin Core.
And so, yeah, we have a number of high priests, effectively, that have merge rights.
So I'm not saying that they're bad actors in any way.
Far from it.

(01:13:32):
There's lots of people I call friends and respect who are a part of that group of people.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
Maybe it had to be that way to start with getting some of the basics done,
but I think we can use Nostra itself now to define what Nostra is.

(01:13:55):
I think, yeah, well, you mentioned Soapbox.
People are going to start building these little mini apps,
and they'll want their own nips, and then they'll run.
I mean, these are maybe a little less experienced or hardened devs, I should say.
So there's going to be a little bit of friction, I would say.
You know, why isn't my NIP this?

(01:14:17):
Why isn't my NIP that?
You know, I can just kind of see how that might be a friction point moving forward.
But maybe I'm wrong.
Yeah, and I think, you know, the market will have to decide, really.
So bad NIPs will die and good NIPs will thrive.
This begs a bigger question than Nathan.

(01:14:39):
Can we do this with Bitcoin?
I'd love to. Imagine that. We need a BIP NIP. When BIP NIP?
Right.
I don't know. I mean, Bitcoin is defined by the software, whereas NOSTA is defined by the protocol specification.

(01:15:02):
whether it's in
GIT or whether it's in
as Nostra notes
Bitcoin is a bit different isn't it
because it doesn't really have that
it is the code, it is Bitcoin Core effectively
and although we do have the BIPs

(01:15:23):
there's also other configurations
that are made that define what Bitcoin is
that are outside of that too
So, I mean, I'd love it.
Wouldn't it be great if you could define what Bitcoin was to you by attesting to a subset of BIP nips?

(01:15:44):
And then you could have a client that, you know, was vibe coded based upon your view of Bitcoin.
and so we'd each have our own implementation
of our Bitcoin nodes
in accordance to those BIPs
that we deemed as being what Bitcoin was
I mean that'd be great in theory

(01:16:05):
but it'd probably lead to a couple of hard forks perhaps
Right, for sure, right?
Yeah
Too much freedom, you know
Too much freedom of choice
So, yeah, maybe let's put that in the maybe camp.
It's quite difficult, perhaps.

(01:16:28):
Like going out with the buddies on a Friday night,
and I feel like I maybe had a little too much freedom Saturday morning.
Well, I mean, even if you weren't implementing the client on that basis,
right now, if you want to signal what type of Bitcoin are you,

(01:16:48):
from the Civil War movie meme,
you only really have two choices.
You either say, I'm running core or I'm running knots.
They're your binary choice right now.
We could, through attestations and BitNip,
at least bring some nuance to that argument

(01:17:09):
to say, well, this is what I think Bitcoin is.
Now, it doesn't mean that that's exactly
the Bitcoin node I'm running,
but at least you can bring some nuance into what is quite a diverse, divisive discourse right now.

(01:17:29):
It's a bit like the two-party state in most regions of the world in terms of politics.
It'd be nice to not have a, you know, are you red or are you blue?
Yeah, we're seeing it in the mining pools now too, obviously,
Whether it's public pool, solo mining, BIDX, craze, or ocean now almost, I think, 1%.

(01:17:53):
I think they had like 22 blocks in the last week.
You're starting to see kind of people voting with their miners too, not just necessarily voting with their hash.
So it's cool to see kind of those votes, I call them.
You're voting your own faction, I suppose.
And, you know, more factions might not be a bad thing.

(01:18:17):
It's more about the customization and awareness of what's actually going on.
And you pick your decentralized team, I suppose.
Yeah, and I think, you know, if we were to have bit nips and attestations on those,
then we could just have, I think, a bit more sensible discussion around some of these more sensitive areas that we've had recently.

(01:18:41):
right and we get past this nonsense
stuff that happens on github and people fighting in the
comment section yeah and closing down commentary
and all that kind of stuff yeah because back to this
idea of you know first person
truth so you know people can

(01:19:03):
you don't need permission to attest valid or invalid
to a BIPNIP, which is a much better voting mechanism.
Now, of course, you'd get back into Web of Trust immediately on that
because that can be spammed and anyone can spin up a key pair.
But if you have proof of work in this area,

(01:19:27):
then your attestations will be weighted accordingly
by people viewing those.
what i i saw a post um or a note a few weeks ago from btc map uh you were moving away from the

(01:19:50):
google play store uh i believe it's google play store um something about the kyc uh the google
play option due to their excessive kyc requirements have they been ratcheting up or what's changed
Yeah, so they have been ratched in.
So BTC Map is not incorporated.
We're just a collection of individuals with some Git repos effectively.

(01:20:16):
And so when we publish to app stores,
it's normally the lead developer that does that
because there is no BTC Map account on the app stores.
so with Google
they increased the KYC requirements there
so they needed home address

(01:20:37):
and other information
and I think we got away with it for a while
I think we put Stalin's mausoleum
as our home address
and then
that's great
But they finally caught up with us and was requiring proof of address and things.

(01:21:02):
So the lead developer for Android said I not willing to do that Is anyone else in the team And we all said well no let make a stand really
And we had people after that tweet saying, you know, I'm already really doxxed.
Happy to put my name on it if you want to get back in the Play Store.

(01:21:25):
And we just said, no, this is a point of principle.
It shouldn't be required.
and therefore we're out.
So because there's other places you can get on Android anyway,
so you can either go to GitHub and download the APK direct
or we've got Zap Store, of course, on Noster,

(01:21:46):
where we actually sign the release ourselves using the BTC map NSEC.
So you actually have, you know, you're trusting us,
but we have signed that, whereas with Google, they sign it.
So they could put any APK out there and sign it,
and we wouldn't know.

(01:22:07):
So, yeah, it's time.
App stores need to die.
Yeah.
That was, yeah, well done on that, Nathan,
for standing on principle there.
So on the map itself,
the last time I think we chatted,

(01:22:28):
Madeira was the front runner for growth.
Have you seen any new contenders,
any new geographies that have popped up?
So on, yeah, I'm just looking at the dashboard at the moment.
So Madeira is still third place.

(01:22:50):
So yeah, still great.
Vancouver's come up really strong recently.
So they're up to 188 merchants there.
So a lot of work there done by the strong community
and also Coinos that operate out of Vancouver.
So they're doing really well.
I mean, maybe a year or so ago,

(01:23:11):
there might have been 20 locations.
So they've done really well and have everything up to date.
So their average age of verification in Vancouver is 138 days.
So that's pretty clean.
And then the Brazilian one, so Bitcoin EA Key is still number one with 217 locations there.

(01:23:40):
We've seen Dominican Republic, so there's Bitcoin Dominica.
They've got up to 100 recently with an average verification age there of just 72 days.
so doing really well
and then a couple of
those communities down in

(01:24:01):
South Africa so Bitcoin
up to 92 now
so yeah we're seeing
it used to be two or three
communities dominating
and they kind of switch places
occasionally
but now if you look at the top 10
there's a great spread between those now

(01:24:22):
so I think we're getting a lot more
breadth and depth
I'd love to see that
QW is working on Phoenix
when Phoenix
I think I'm just giving it my wife
might actually be a lighthouse

(01:24:45):
there locally
at the very least we need a Phoenix community
and it's okay for there to be zero merchants in there
so yeah what we got we've got
555
communities
at the moment
globally
so we need
when Phoenix community

(01:25:06):
that's definitely my call to action
for sure so challenge
accepted okay we'll fill out the form
we'll get you ready man
so Nathan what's
next man
a lot of
vibe coding
we've got a lot of stuff to build
so there's the Nostra native

(01:25:29):
BTC map
so a few of us started working
on that
then there's the
attestation
work so I'm building
attester.xyz
which will be an attestation
marketplace
where people can request attestations

(01:25:52):
and view attestations of various different types.
So if you've got a specialism in a particular kind,
then you can list yourself as being a tester
with that particular experience or expertise.

(01:26:13):
So just to start to surface some of these attestation-related events,
because obviously they're not baked into the main clients yet.
Wait, Nathan.
Sorry, that just brings up a thought.
Who attests the attestors?
Well, it's attestations all the way down.

(01:26:34):
Yes.
So, yeah, we have an attestation event.
The Noster High Priest attests the attestors.
Yeah, we have to go back to Git for that.
No, so we have the attestation events as well,
but in addition to that, we've got attestation requests

(01:26:57):
and attestor recommendations,
and we have attestor proficiency declarations.
So as attestor, you can say,
here are the things I'm good at on a per-kind basis.
But yeah, it's self-referential,
so other people can attest that a given attestor

(01:27:20):
is proficient or not in the things that they say.
So, yeah, it's crazy.
Once you start to...
I just see NOSRA as a huge Lego set,
and I think attestations really just unlock
a lot of that building capability
so you can start to use different kinds

(01:27:41):
in relation to each other.
and Nathan I think you might have given us our show title as well
attestations all the way down
there we go
yeah so the core attestation event is
actually it's of type 31871

(01:28:03):
and 1871 is the
bit 39 word for truth so there's a little bit
So a little bit of a nod to truthfulness there.
Love it.
But we shy away from using true or false in the actual nip.
It's a bit too emotive.
So we use valid or invalid, which is a little less emotive.

(01:28:29):
But there's a truthy link in the type, in the kind type.
That's great.
any call to action
Nathan for plebs listening
go and maintain your local
data on BTC map
you can go to our website

(01:28:51):
and you can find out how to do that
and we've got a friendly group of
shadowy super taggers that can show you the ropes
it's really
therapeutic, it's quite mindful
and you're doing a good thing
for your local community so
get onto that please
and then just if I may
just a quick shill at the end

(01:29:13):
I run the
Manchester meetup in the UK here
and
come November
21st through 23rd
we'll be running
BitFest
Manchester which will
hopefully become an annual Bitcoin
conference
and the first day of which

(01:29:34):
is Nostra Shire
so on November 21st we're going to run
a full day Nostra event
and we've already got people
like Marty Marmi
Ben Aarck, Oscar Mary
Derek Ross
Short Fiat
who does the
podcast stuff

(01:29:56):
Fanfair
and Avi's threatening to come as well
so we'll see about that
so yeah if you want to check that out
it's bitfest.uk is the website
tickets are available now
this is pleb funded
not for profit
no sponsors so yeah come support us
Nostasher

(01:30:17):
Avi do you even have time to go there?
do you have spare time to go there?
apparently time is all I have
when I was working
when I was in my fiat job
I had money but I didn't have the time
and now I have the time
so we'll see what happens
with the money.
Well, all time eyes now,

(01:30:38):
have you? We're good.
That is true.
Hi!
And we have a
new guest for the end of the show.
Yeah, yeah, a little
man broke through, so
he's sitting on my lap, listening
with the earpiece in.
You know what?
The show's for him. We're building

(01:31:00):
his tomorrow, and that's
the most important part of our mission.
indeed
well Nathan
appreciate you taking the time
coming back to the show
and talking about
all the exciting things
that you're working on
QWD
much more high level

(01:31:21):
much more high level
we got into the
attestations and all the
details of the nips
it's much different than our first show
so I'm going to have to listen back
and kind of take some notes on this one
because it's some big ideas, right?
It's been a ride, that's for sure.

(01:31:42):
Well, thank you once again for coming on.
Avi, if there's nothing else?
No, nothing else other than to say
I'm glad to have yet another ally
in the world of unemployment.
Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that.
I meant Bitcoin and Nostra building.
yeah it was nice to be in the trenches homelessness obvi you need to get a van down by the river

(01:32:07):
well thank you everyone for tuning in to pleb chain radio if you appreciate us as much as we
appreciate you listen on the fountain app and consider hitting the subscribe button
until next week gentle plebs good goodbye

(01:32:30):
Thank you.