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Comment by monk_cactus | Hacker News Reader

As far as I understand, a blockchain is only needed to achieve consensus on the network state. Why does social media require this?

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Adding to the parent question, why do I need a wallet to join Nostr?

I registered, and while the registration was delightfully painless, it autocreated a wallet for me at legend.lnbits.com.

That’s probably related to the client you used, it’s not necessary for you to have a wallet. That being said, it’s useful to have a lightning address because you can link that to your pubkey and people can send you sats if they like what you have to say

Oh. I assumed all clients would do that since Nostr.com did it when I registered there.

You don't. OOTB you just need keys. But NOSTR is unfortunately crypto adjacent and is being co-opted by crypto bros.

Somethings a blockchain gives you - timestamp + cost per transaction + completeness. Not required, but Nostr has to find an alternative solution to all these issues.

Hmm yea ok.

What do you mean by completeness?

Timestamping seems like the most difficult of those to solve

Completeness in the sense that you know if you are missing any messages that have already been sent. If all messages are logged on the blockchain, then you can see which ones you never received.

Verifying completeness requires a blockchain of one type or another, where new transactions/messages reference a hash of past transactions/messages in some way.

Nostr doesn’t use a blockchain

Yes, and as a result Nostr timestamps can be forged, and messages can be surreptitiously removed from the network.

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