Transcription of speeches at Nostrasia | Nostr Funding for Devs by Ben Arc, NVK, and Rockstar

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🌟中文版: 开发者 Nostr 资助 🌟日本語: Nostr Funding for Devs 🌟Español: Financiamiento Nostr para desarrolladores

start from 04:29:16

NVK- It's just that interesting dynamic that I think it should be more reflected on, where you may be causing harm, when you are funding a project because it could be sucking the oxygen on things that could be independent.

BEN ARC- I would say the whole computer science that needs to be free open source, if they want to build a company around the project they were doing great, but morally a free open source project.

ROCKSTAR- Here is the thing like doing company like creating product, it takes a different set of skills than doing the same size open source project funded by grants, it plays a different threads, to me like, that's kind of the thinking because if i do CEO my second point will be community, but for people that thrive on open source work, these are people that have completely different set of skills, most of them are unhire-able, in a good way, but thats also, like if you are trying to make it a for profit company, like you need to be way more political and you need to have those political skills, compared to if you are a open source project where you are only evaluated on a basis of merit of your contributions.

NVK- I think that like the main issues until we had bitcoin, we never really have like a true permissionless, the internet is permissioned, everything else is permissioned, we have linux developed and then feng, facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and google, they are the biggest beneficiary of open source, they make all the money out of linux right? Mostly because the internet is permissioned right? There is a massive barrier of entry for you to sort of run your SP or do other things. Bitcoin did change everything, Nostr subsequently sort of did that too, where you have full access to protocol, so you don't need to have that skill to monetize open source, but it's really a choice to have the push of granting charity right? Sort of bootstrapping these people, so they can focus on this. We are running out of time, it feels this, the state is coming, winter is coming, like they really want us to stop talking to each other without their permission. So being able to bootstrap all these is really very important,

BEN ARC- I have the same feeling of urgency and I think, I don't know sometimes I just think with Bitcoin, you kind of like get a bit lost and okay it's fine, it works for me, do you feel that the world will need the solution ready and workable, sooner rather than later? I think that there is a natural self correcting mechanism when it comes to proprietary for profit activities and freeing up open source project, there has been some free open source project which then got off to company for profit to help support free open source project, and so often that doesn't happen so much less now, since its a great example of a failing utterly. Before they would have an enterprise version of the software which is paid, then have a community version, then you do that, then you are going to have a good version and a shit version which is in support whereas, we have examples like wordpres allen which is very like wordpress for bitcoin for your node, so we look at wordpress, its an example of having a company and also having a software programme which is very successful. Got a lot of very infused free open source developers. The trick is to not let, not corrupt or try and take control of free open source project, you are offering services on top of it, like being up to spin with wordpress, wordpress.com for example or wordpress managing the plugin in app store and then that's how, its automatically the insurance company presses a 7.5 billion dollar company, it's not a small company and it still manages to keep that very successful, infused and happy free open source development community.

NVK- I think that one thing that is very important is, i think we do a disservice to people working open source like encouraging them to find a path to monetization, like do sort of like work on the software is like a common good, like making it a full free open source, but like try to find a path to monetize it, because the free market is a much more efficient way to inform better decisions, that is what nature does, nature is the most complex things, they whale will tell the fish to go one direction, this direction, if you don't, you die, i like, i think we are seeing more of this now, where a lot of people who work in open source even finding grants, there is a mix there, they are trying to find the path forward, where it is a mixed source of funding, i think that's tremendously good.

ROCKSTAR- Listen you actually made my second point , because i was waiting to jump in with the second point which was community , like that's also what you are studying to touch on here, what i wanted to know that if it seem me fiddling with film, i am just trying involve our remote community that is also watching this stream, so if you have any questions, please post it in comment of the stream and i will run them by the guest. But the thing NVK you re saying to me is exactly about how do you get that value from the community that is using your product and thats where to me, you are such a great example of a person who built community around the product, that built that network, and it has a set of skills monetizing at the level you want to stay and scale the company, but you have found the sweet spot and you have the skills, this is where i see open Sats and other organization like that, where i invite developers that do not have that set of skill to ask for grant from organization, and when they get grant, maybe they get not just money but mentorship on developing skill set or staying at the level where i don't just want to get $30 a year from my community, i want to maybe find someone who is good at that.

NVK- You know i found out that often times, especially people who are very good at codes, there is a fear of making money, and there is this, mostly because of fear, there is this horrible sort of thing that came with the money, the money is dirty kind of thing somehow, but its not, money is freedom, like if you have more money, you have more freedom, and because of bitcoin we have more ethical money and just capacities of receiving money without permission. Now you can now be, we have seen this a lot, especially security researchers, a guy living next door, or India somewhere, making Sats, doing security, paying taxes. There is a path I want to encourage people to try to take that leap and charge for that product, people can still use your software for free, but charge for that product, there is a value add right?

ROCKSTAR- I mean it's not just like fear of charging money, from my perspective, it is like fear of losing yourself and changing your daily limit of being a developer to being more of a sales product person, to me it's more like fear of losing yourself.

BEN ARC- find a co-founder

ROCKSTAR- sure yes sure.

BEN ARC- I would say on efficiency, free open source is very efficient in the good ideas of eventually rising to the top, but whereas the free market of capital can be very efficient, like how many failed startups have we end up with and how much capital fails, but failure is the market. What i am saying is that if you can marry both of these together, so if you have a piece of software that is been developed by free open source community which is then useful because people are developing it because they want to use it, and then you can offer services, then you kind of get in both world, you have not get centralized capital, as a few people just trying to second guess what people want.

NVK- There are people actively building. There is not a single answer to every problem right? So if you are offering lightning, host solutions right? That is one thing and the answers trying to monetize that, will be different in different scales as well. You are going to have to dance around to make that happen through time as you expand or shift. Like not being stuck in thinking there is one way of skinning a cat.

ROCKSTAR- It comes down to what I was saying, raising funds, doing business operations, and it's a skill, and if you get into that game you need to win. What gets me really in bitcoin not so much in nostr, but really in bitcoin is the operating system before that, is how much free open source software technology developed and then it was just, using the value that was collected by people that don't have anything to do with development or technology.

NVK- We now have a shared commons that is monetized by definition like bitcoin, we all have bags, we are more likely to put bitcoin first and our company second, because if bitcoin fails, not just my company fails, it fails, it's a completely different incentive.

ROCKSTAR- Look at the amount of value that was captured by people that did not contribute almost nothing to bitcoin and people that were actually bad for bitcoin, like FTX, how many billions of dollars worth of bitcoin were destroyed by people that are actually bad.

NVK- It was the fiat people who lost money.

ROCKSTAR- it's not only fiat people that lost money, also people that, if it weren't for those crypto investors and whatnot, some of that money would have flown into bitcoin funds.

NVK- I used to have an account on twitter, but I am past that now, moved on, itt has already happened, bitcoin is binary, it's either going to be million dollar per coin or it's going to be zero. So if you just have enough confidence that this technology is going to win, you can then stop focusing on that and start focusing on adding value to the network, because every circle that happens, all your bitcoin savings are worth more . you don't have to focus on being a selfish actor, you can still be a selfish actor in the aspect that you want to capitalize, but contributing back to the network, it has this beautiful loop that makes you wealthier.

ROCKSTAR- I do think we need to help kick start some people way more than you are saying, I agree, but we need to help kickstart people more, because a recent example that pisses me off is with light spark doing the whole universal money protocol by just stealing. I have a huge problem with it, it is just like taking the protocol.

BEN ARC- Often we think of shitcoin as a kind of testnet for bitcoin, and i was thinking like a traditional finance see bitcoin as a testnet, and i think they probably do, because things like lightning, E cash.

NVK- Let them do, the thing they are doing is teaching the other 9 billion people in the world about bitcoin, if that is to losing money, that's another way of learning, but at the end you have no choice, even if you have been buying, you still have to buy again, so you don't feel left behind.

ROCKSTAR- I agree with you to a point, but this is a company that has raised 170 plus million, did their research in development that boiled down into taking what was developed in false, and not giving back anything to false but if they did that and donated to like a million dollars, NVK- Would you say Linux is winning?

ROCKSTAR- Yes of course,

NVK- that's the same model, you look at feng, they make 100's of millions of dollars out of linux, they don't actually contribute as much as they should. You know the technology itself is winning, the reason we don't feel it is because we don't have a shared protocol on linux. It's not like if linux. price of linux goes up. We feel it, its a little different. Bitcoin changed the dynamics because we are physically linked to each other. Even the bad people have no choice but to have bitcoin, and i feel like nostr is the same way, we are in the same network.

BEN ARC- Well we should always separate bitcoin and nostr, even though they do go together like bread and butter.

NVK- The CEO of nostr is a bitcoiner so,

ROCKSTAR- who is the CEO of nostr?

BEN ARC- We are all CEO. When we talk about values, I think if I were to pay to have that bill, to have that proprietary piece of software, there is probably like 10 million worth of software development so far. But all these stuff is, all these amazing free open source contributors are building stuffs they want to see exist, so the motivation is less so the pursuit of capital on their behalf and more so, they want something to exist , they want to experiment, be the first to build something and i think that motivation, clearly we have the free open source world and a lot of technologies stacks now rely upon, is a really driving force, and there is a corrupting element to capital, which we need to be aware of and take free open source project and to capitalize them. There are so many examples like i mentioned before i think it's a lot easier now to build capital on free open source.

ROCKSTAR- One thing that opens source projects are still under appreciated is development of the people involved in the open source project when i look at LNbit, LNbit team is phenomenal, you have coli, dni, black coffee, these are people that make the world a better place because they can spend their day focusing on building technology that is then freely available to everyone.

NVK- You know technology alone doesn't go anywhere, you need the entrepreneurs who will then prototypes things, essentially in a way, all you trying to do is find a product market fit, people are not going to come because you have a great technology , that does nothing, its amazing for us, we are all nerds, but like how do you get this to the hands of the people who will benefit from this, it is through product.

ROCKSTAR- What I am trying to say goes beyond this development. I remember jack talking about what false has done for him because he was following linux was developed , that is the thing that i think is always overlooked, there are young developers right now in these audience watching the stream, around the world that are better than any of us here but they do not have the same level of access and they need 5 years to develop so that they sprawl a new nostr, like if you look at the way nostr was developed, like ben when you added me to that telegram channel, look at fiajaf and ben just wasting time instead of developing something, and then a year two years later, look at us, look at where we are and how much value was created, and that's the thing i do want to point out, i really believe open Sats , i think that kind of organization is a missing link and beyond that,, just making sure that organizations that take that and captures value from the false software, like give back. Like light spark you are not upset, i am upset, i wouldn't be upset once they donate to non profit.

NVK- You know there is always going to be leeches right, there is a reason why torrent trackers always have the ratio, there is always going to be leeches, you cannot prevent the leeches , there are ways to handle the leeches, so they don't cause harm, that's part of humanity.

ROCKSTAR- We can fight them a little bit. Yeah we can make their life difficult, and there comes some pleasure from that but we do have awesome organization that is not just open source and there is more that i will probably just forget the name, and they are all going to have their own take and the competition from both sides is important too, and i think the are all also doing ethical work which is great, i think we are winning, this stuff is happening, people are happy and funded i don't subscribe to their is no money for people to work on, there is, you have to move your ass to go find it.

BEN ARC- And this is why i have been impress with open Sats, is like i mentioned the GG example there is an inherent danger when you have a big part of money and somebody allocating that money to projects, like you say can wasp, i think that it is very important to be mindful, half of the community group you can generate decision so that doesn't happen much.

ROCKSTAR- Corruption will slow down.

NVK- Humans do that, humans will corrupt any system. I remember in that first nostrica and we were talking with Rabel, he said one of the things in nostr is its foundation and instantly all the bitcoiners were like uh uh, but we having this amazing set of experiences of protocol being centralized and bitcoin because there is a monetary values attached and i think that's very healthy to carry those ideas into nostr.

NVK- This level of adversarial thinking on this scale has never happened before, it really is like a remarkable way, everybody is paranoid about everything in a healthy way, it's constructive, and I think this is why stage actors look at this shit and go like there's nothing you can do about this. I am not even going to try, because you are going to look stronger right? Look at what I did.

BEN ARC- We were talking about the space being infiltrated by spooks and all that the other day, blacklisting, yeah, we were like we are probably infiltrated and it's probably some wealthy spooks within bitcoin and our community is happy in cyberpunks, but the reality is not really anything they can do which is amazing in itself all they are actually doing is contribute.

NVK- There is no corruptible person or group, like bitcoin core devs, could disappear tomorrow, it's okay, we are still going to make it right. Maybe the software won't be as good, but like it's still going to go right? Yeah and that is why there is some kind of sophisticated mindset of not making changes or not adding concentration of power in anything so important because remaining uncorruptible by design is hard and it's hard to maintain it that way.

ROCKSTAR- yeah well that diversity is definitely a strength and since we are out of time, i will start closing the discussion, i wish there was Q&A, i think we are going to do a Q&A privately there, like especially tonight, there is a bitcoin meetup. I just want to close with the thought that if you are a developer with a desire to get into something false, my biggest advice is find your community, two, find the point of contact in that community, you like ndk the most?

NVK- The first thing to do is build something , then find the point of contact whether it's Ben Arc.

BEN ARC- i agree completely, i have unnoticed in the bitcoin free open source community if you have attempted to build something, even if it's terrible and you have attempted and can see you have attempted and you go on reach out to the community and say, i could need help with this thing, people are so welcoming.

ROCKSTAR- This is why I hangout with these gentlemen. They make me better. Step one is to build something and step two, find that point of contact. I will be glad to be your point of contact, that is, concludes this panel. Thank you.

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