"Don't rub it off, we don't want your shitcoins", Nostr Assets Protocol was slapped in the face for donating to Damus

By Loopy, Odaily

This evening, a post from Damus’ official X once again sparked community attention on the name Nostr, and the battle for Nostr’s brand name intensified.

Decentralization social app Damus, built on top of the Nostr network, believes that the Nostr Assets Protocol’s donation is a scam. “It’s a scam and we don’t accept that,” they wrote. [The other party] is trying to legitimize itself by using Nostr’s name in order to deceive people. We are currently looking for grant funding, but not through Token scams. Please send your shitcoins elsewhere. 」

This morning, Nostr Assets Protocol announced that it has donated approximately $200,000 worth of NOSTR Tokens to the Damus team.

What is the complicated love-hate relationship between Nostr Assets Protocol and Nostr, and what entanglements and quarrels have arisen between the two?

Nostr: Jack Dorsey’s social protocol

As early as February this year, the Lighting Network-based Nostr protocol once exploded the entire crypto world. Jack Dorsey’s platform made this application layer innovation quickly become a star project in the crypto world. Previously, Odaily also wrote an article about this ecology.

On Jack Dorsey’s X profile, Jack’s Nostr Address is still prominently displayed.

At that time, although the Nostr protocol also belonged to the BTC ecosystem, this term had not yet been associated with any Token, and had nothing to do with financial use cases such as Decentralized Finance, but was a purely social protocol.

Nostr stands for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”, which literally translates to “notes and other content transmitted by relays”. According to the Github code change log, the project was launched in November 2020. The protocol aims to create the simplest open protocol for a global Social Web that resists censorship.

Nostr serves as the protocol layer for social applications, and the protocol is fully decentralization, allowing any App to access freely. As a result, Nostr doesn’t even provide users with a C-side product that can be directly manipulated, but instead focuses on the necessary infrastructure to implement social networking at the protocol layer. The ability to productize is provided by third-party apps. And the social behavior of users across different apps is interoperable.

On top of the Nostr protocol, the most well-known and active app is Damus, the initiator of today’s debate.

To put it simply, Damus is a Decentralization X (formerly Twitter). And the only place related to “coin” is probably only one point - support for Bitcoin tipping based on the Lighting Network.

Access to the Lighting Network payment is Jack Dorsey’s long-standing idea, by building the Lighting Network into the social protocol, people can use Crypto Assets to express their likes more directly, in order to replace the more common “Like” button, and the low rate of the Lighting Network also makes the network cost of tipping almost negligible.

Nostr Assets Protocol: Innovation or Ghost?

Back to the other protagonist of this controversy, Nostr Assets Protocol. Nostr Assets Protocol is a new Open Source protocol that aims to bring Taproot assets and native Bitcoin payments to the Nostr ecosystem.

The Nostr Assets Protocol allows users to use a Nostr account as a Wallet whose Public Key becomes a WalletAddress Private Key has access to manage content events and monetary events. The protocol allows interaction with other payment protocols, such as the Lighting Network and Taproot assets.

GitHub shows that the first code commit for this protocol came in July of this year.

Judging by the time, there is no doubt that its creation date is far behind the birth of the Nostr social protocol. Even in February, Nostr’s “meteoric crypto world” is still about half a year behind.

It’s interesting to note that while the code has only been created since July, the project was launched on GitHub in February this year.

In December of this year, Nostr Assets Protocol announced its first Fair Mint (NOSTR). With the popularity of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Nostr Assets Protocol has also achieved good data.

On December 18th, Nostr Assets Protocol’s first Fair Mint draw officially began. With the first dozens of draws, participating users found that there were individual lottery pools with extremely high “luck”, and only about 3,000 raffle tokens (Treat and Trick, hereinafter referred to as Double T) could get the jackpot of 2160 NOSTR. At present, the OTC price of NOSTR has reached more than 4 U/piece, which is close to a cost-free profit of $10,000.

What the hell are the two sides arguing about?

I believe that anyone with a discerning eye has seen that there is no connection between the social protocol Nostr and the Nostr Assets Protocol, except that the name is spelled the same. In this case, the core of this debate is obvious - is Nostr Assets Protocol maliciously “touching porcelain”?

This is not the first time that a bickering has erupted. As early as the beginning of this month, there was a standoff between the two sides.

On the evening of December 3, Fiatjaf (@fiatjaf), the founder of the Nostr Protocol, published a Chinese on the X platform, saying, "Nostr Assets Protocol is a fully managed service in the name of Nostr, which is a related fraud. 」

To this day, this statement is still at the top of Fiatjaf’s X platform.

At that time, Nostr Assets Protocol responded, saying that their main goal was to “enable builders to create business use cases on the Lighting Network and Nostr.” As for the issue of escrow, it is said that Nostr Assets Protocol is a “custody solution” and should not be misconstrued as fraud. "Many wallets provide users with custodial wallets to use the Lighting Network, and they are essential to provide users with superior UI/UX. 」

Although Nostr Assets Protocol is not connected to Nostr’s development team, Nostr Assets Protocol “leverages Nostr, Taproot Assets, and Lightning in its build to make it relevant to Nostr.” 」

Since this quarrel, Nostr Assets Protocol has been trying to establish a partnership with the Nostr team. “Nostr is a Decentralization, Open Source, and Censorship-Resistant Relay Network that anyone can build on,” they publicly stated on the X platform. We want to connect with the Nostr development team to improve collaboration and foster a better Nostr ecosystem. 」

And the new round of quarrels that broke out today is just a continuation of the previous contradictions.

Earlier today, Nostr Assets Protocol announced that it has donated approximately $200,000 worth of NOSTR Tokens to the Damus team.

They wrote, "As part of our commitment to the Nostr ecosystem, donations are intended to promote growth and development within the Nostr ecosystem. And posted a screenshot of his transfer, 50,000 NOSTR Tokens have been transferred to the Address of the CEO of Damus.

According to Nostr Assets Protocol, “Damus embodies innovation and community spirit. Today we learned that Damus funds are drying up. We sincerely want to do what we can to help them in our mission. Damus is the app that brought us into the world of Nostr and we are very grateful to the Damus team for their innovation and leadership. Damus has played a vital role in the growth of the Nostr ecosystem, driving the rapid growth of DAU to 500, 000 for the first time. This donation is intended to provide Damus with the resources it needs to continue pushing boundaries and reach greater heights in the Nostr ecosystem!”

And the response to this donation is very interesting. "It’s a scam. Please send your shitcoins elsewhere. 」

Needless to say, the Damus team believes that Nostr Assets Protocol is an affinity scam that exploits the Nostr name and is designed to mislead and deceive people.

As the Bitcoin ecosystem becomes more and more popular, the ecological niche of the old protocol Nostr is gradually becoming awkward - this highly sentimental protocol product that can improve the application layer and bring us use cases is actually coinless.

And this unique situation also makes his voice and image more likely to be overshadowed by the skyrocketing crypto products with “coins”.

This controversy is not just a brand battle of “touching porcelain”. This has sparked extensive discussions about brand ownership, protocol legitimacy, and responsibility and transparency for Decentralization products in the Crypto Assets and Blockchain space. At the same time, it also reflects the persistence and prudent attitude of the crypto community to the concept of decentralization.

The controversy sheds light on a complex set of vesting challenges in the emerging crypto community. Many community members have expressed support for Damus’ position, while others have questioned the intent and approach of the Nostr Assets Protocol. And you, as a reader, which side of this debate are you on?