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Comment by anonkogudhyfhhf | Hacker News Reader

Crypto meaning cryptography yes it's needed. If you a referencing bitcoin like technology used for money no they don't help here. Please enough with this "crypto" ignorance

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Think of cryptos more like “incentives to rational behavior” than “money” and it starts to make sense. You can incentivize, for example, data availability with cryptos and that opens the design space for distributed systems that don’t need to be controlled by one entity (like Twitter, for example).

Nostr already has bitcoin payments for incentives. Please example one concrete example where a blockchain is needed for nostr protocol itself

Does it? If so, what do the bitcoin payments incentivize?

There are two places where a blockchain would be very useful in this context: guaranteeing completeness (allowing you to confirm whether or not you have downloaded all the posts ever created by a user), and preventing timestamp forgery.

> guaranteeing completeness

SSB has something like this but it requires a user to download another user’s entire post history before being able to see one post. Makes the experience very slow.

You wouldn't want text messages on a none scalable blockchain.

Timestamping is already possible using the bitcoin blockchain. No token scam or new blockchain needed

You sort of moved the goal posts here from "no crypto" to "doesn't need something other than bitcoin"...

Crypto movement does not relate to bitcoin. Bitcoin was about preventing money printing and crypto is about every VC having his own private money system he sells token of

I didn't say decentralised timestamping is required for a social network or any blockchain needed

That is a laughable claim. What happens if no one pays?

How do you guarantee data availability and avoid double spending without Byzantine fault tolerant consensus (that is, blockchain crypto)? If you have an answer you will be onto something huge.

What? Double spend a twitter message you sign? Please example your logic here and use of the technology

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