A Prescription for Privacy | The Confab 30: Vik Sharɱa In this Confab, Max sits down with Vik Sharɱa, founder and CEO of Cake Wallet, for a candid journey from his early hacking days on the Apple II, through decades in the steel industry, to discovering Bitcoin in 2013 and Monero in 2016. Vik shares the eye‑opening moment Coinbase shut his account for a small darknet market purchase of antibiotics—an incident that catalysed his deep dive into privacy and ultimately inspired Cake Wallet’s creation. Max and Vik explore why privacy should be a default, how Monero’s out‑of‑the‑box protections compare with Bitcoin’s more complex privacy tooling, and why a multi‑coin world empowers users rather than divides them. Max and Vik also dig into the rapid rise of AI: how it’s reshaping software development, enabling non‑coders to build real tools, and what it might mean for self‑custody and user experience in the months ahead. Vik reflects on the growing global demand for financial privacy and access—especially via stablecoins as on‑ramps—while emphasising real‑world utility as the backbone of value. He recounts Cake’s experimental culture (silent payments, PayJoin v2, Lightning via Spark) and the team’s willingness to learn in public. Max and Vik wrap on why decentralised money and local/secure AI can help people everywhere earn, spend, and build without permission, and why he’s more optimistic today than he was a few years ago about privacy tech gaining mainstream traction. HELP GET SAMOURAI A PARDON SIGN THE PETITION ---->

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Substr progress update: better media posts, smoother sharing, and cleaner mobile UX Wanted to share another Substr update after a new round of polishing and fixes. This pass was mostly focused on making the app feel better on mobile, cleaning up media posts, and smoothing out a few rough edges in sharing and feed behavior. Here’s what changed recently: - Improved media posts so images, videos, link previews, and polls now feel much better inside cards, especially on mobile. - Media can now stretch edge-to-edge inside post cards on mobile instead of feeling boxed in. - Portrait images now stay fully visible instead of being awkwardly cropped. - Clicking an image now opens a proper lightbox viewer with a cleaner fullscreen preview. - The image viewer now locks the background, adds blur, and feels much more intentional. - Share previews inside the share modal are more reliable now and no longer show a broken image when a post has no media. - Media-post text handling is cleaner now, with better previews for longer captions and a nicer expand/collapse flow. - Fixed duplicate post rendering issues in some community feeds. - Relay publishing was also improved a bit by tightening how publish success is tracked and expanding relay coverage. A lot of this was again less about flashy new features and more about making the experience feel more solid, readable, and less janky in daily use. Thanks again to everyone who keeps testing Substr, sharing bugs, and pointing out rough spots. That feedback keeps helping a lot and directly shapes what gets fixed next. If anyone has more ideas, feedback, or things that feel off, always happy to hear it.

GM everyone 🤘

Substr progress update: faster navigation, cleaner loading states, better signer UX I wanted to share a quick Substr update after a pretty busy round of polishing and fixes over the past week. A lot of time has gone into improving how the app feels in day-to-day use, especially around speed, loading states, and account/signing UX. Here’s what changed recently: • Navigation between community pages and thread pages is now much smoother, so moving between /s/ and /p/ feels faster and less jarring. • Loading skeletons were improved across key views to make data loading feel more intentional and less abrupt. • Engagement loading was cleaned up, so replies, likes, and zaps no longer flash misleading 0 values before the real data arrives. • Unnecessary duplicate fetching was reduced on important routes like thread and community pages. • Discovery and joined feed loading behavior was improved. • Several mobile UX issues were fixed across sheets, modals, and manage views. • Parts of the signer flow were reworked, especially around browser extensions, remembered accounts, bunker/Amber support, and reconnect states. • Remembered account handling was improved to make account switching feel more consistent, though switching between accounts still needs to get better overall. • Share preview handling and fallback OG behavior for posts were improved. • Moderation flow was continued with softer and more transparent removal behavior. A lot of this work was not about flashy new features, but about making Substr feel more stable, faster, and less confusing to use. Also, thanks to everyone who has been trying it, reporting bugs, and sharing honest feedback. That kind of feedback has been genuinely helpful and has directly shaped a lot of these improvements. There’s still a lot to do, but it’s steadily getting more solid with each pass. More ideas, feedback, and rough edges are always welcome.

How Substr Polls Work Across Nostr Clients We built polls as Nostr-native events, not as a closed backend feature.The poll itself is a normal Nostr post with extra tags like poll_option, poll_results, and poll_closes_at. Votes are separate Nostr events that reference the poll and include a poll_vote tag. That means other clients can still receive and store the poll and vote data through relays. The only difference is rendering: clients that support these poll tags can show a real poll UI, while others will just show them as regular posts.

I’ve been busy tightening up Substr after some recent feedback, and today we shipped a solid round of improvements. We cleaned up loading states across the app so pages feel more consistent and less jarring, especially on community and thread views. We also fixed a frustrating issue where thread pages could sometimes open at an offset instead of loading cleanly from the top. One of the biggest improvements is how engagement data now loads. Posts no longer show misleading 0 counts for replies, likes, or zaps before relay data arrives. Instead, the post loads first and the real engagement numbers fill in once they’re actually available, which makes the whole experience feel a lot more honest and polished. We also made some under-the-hood improvements to reduce unnecessary duplicate fetching on thread and community pages, helping Substr feel cleaner and more efficient as we keep building. More polish is on the way. Appreciate the feedback, it’s helping shape the product in all the right ways.

Is spam a technical problem or a social one? How would you approach it on an open network like Nostr?

Next goals for Substr - Create Substr relays - Add data host for images & videos - Host upgrade for better performance Substr is still early, but it is no longer just an idea. The community layer, posting system, personal utility, theming, moderation flow, and mobile experience are all being actively shaped into something people can actually use.

Substr

Substr gives communities and creators a place to stay in context instead of getting buried in endless feeds. Make the internet feel open again.

After many discussions about dark mode vs light mode, accent colors, and different styles, I decided to make everything customizable to your own preferences. You can use presets or fine-tune everything independently, including things like border radius.

The soft launch went reasonably well. The main feedback so far is that usernames and profile pictures don’t always load correctly. I’m hoping to get more input, ideas and suggestions are very welcome, especially since only a handful of people have checked it out so far.

Soft launch. Still building. Substr. Trying something new with communities. substr.network

What makes a community actually worth coming back to? Content? People? Structure? Features? Or something else?

Substr

Substr gives communities and creators a place to stay in context instead of getting buried in endless feeds. Make the internet feel open again.

There are already a lot of great Nostr-based social apps out there. Most of them focus on quick thoughts, short posts, and real-time expression — and there’s nothing wrong with that. Substr isn’t trying to compete in that space. We’re trying to build something different: more structured, more content-driven, and easier to explore over time.