Web auth is still broken for a cryptographic and agentic world. We’re building sovereign systems on top of centralized identity assumptions. OAuth, OpenID, even WebAuthn — better security, same paradigm: → third parties → hardware constraints → trust models not built for key-native users Problem: Users, agents, APIs need to authenticate with keys, not accounts. While building a Nostr-based invoicing app, one question kept coming up: How do you prove a request actually comes from the pubkey that owns the data? Answer: NIP-98. Signed HTTP requests. Identity proven at the protocol layer. No passwords. No intermediaries. No “login” in the traditional sense. Your pubkey becomes your passport. This is where Bitcoin × Nostr is heading: → simpler systems → sovereign identity → cryptographic trust by default I’m working with teams exploring this stack — auth, payments, architecture. If you’re building in identity or decentralized infra, let’s connect.

TIL: to be protected against data leak particularly with email , you can create an alias email by just adding ‘+website’ after your email id. ‘samuel+amazon@domain.com’ So great hack !

USDB is interesting because it pushes a real tension in Bitcoin forward: Do we want Bitcoin-denominated UX with stable purchasing power… even if it introduces new trust assumptions? USDB offers smoother payments, unit stability, and potentially yield — powerful tools for adoption. But Bitcoin’s core value has always been sovereignty, censorship resistance, and self-custody. That tradeoff matters. The debate isn’t “USDB bad, Bitcoin good.” It’s: How much convenience should we trade for decentralization? Stablecoin layers may onboard the next billion. Sovereign Bitcoin protects why the network matters in the first place. Both forces may coexist — but they pull in different directions. UX & yield vs freedom & decentralization is becoming one of the biggest design questions in Bitcoin. What matters is being honest about the tradeoffs.

This is the kind of great intersection between AI and decentralized technology like Nostr! View quoted note →

As a business trying to accept Bitcoin in the Nostr era - You don’t just want to “accept Bitcoin”. - You want to receive value natively. You want Instant. Permissionless. No friction. So you start looking for a way to plug it into your business. And… nothing really feels right. Too many layers, too much friction. What you really want is simple. Self-custodial, decentralized and loyalty oriented. This is what I built:

bitlasso - Repeated Bitcoin payments for businesses

Create self-custodial Lightning payment checkouts, mint Bitcoin-anchored loyalty receipts, and turn one-time work into repeat revenue with programm...

It’s funny how this things evolve. Few years ago when people asked me about AI and blockchain I was really skeptical, as they were completely different world: - one is completely decentralized - the other one is based on centralized data Today we are facing the emergence of those two worlds from the agentic revolution. There are not anymore siloed. Decentralization and AI is moving as speed of light. Always recognize your wrong and moves ahead it is what makes human progress. So now I think AI can be a strong case to make blockchain and decentralization a growth catalyst and bring more adoption. But it goes beyond, Nostr is moving really fast to embrace that movement. Future of decentralization and AI seems to promise great things !

Everyone’s talking about “agentic AI,” but here’s a real use case for builders. Analytics is still painfully manual—whether it’s Google Analytics or Plausible. Then I tried PostHog. One command: npx -y @posthog/wizard@latest --region eu With Anthropic’s Claude, it: • Understands your code • Adds event tracking automatically • Sets everything up No manual tagging. Just useful analytics. This is what AI should be: → Understand your product → Integrate itself → Deliver real value Not hype—actual leverage.

BitLasso is live !!! When I founded HexQuarter, I wanted to build something beyond a engineering firm. 
I wanted a circular economy with the clients I work with. The idea was simple: every payment becomes a receipt minted as a token. 
That token has real value — it can be redeemed for discounts on future projects. 
The more a client works with HexQuarter, the more tokens they accumulate, the better their discount, the more incentive to keep building together. 

A retention loop grounded in actual work done. The scarcity of the token isn't arbitrary. I
It's backed by a Proof of Work — a real project completed, a real payment made. 
Value derived from work accomplished, not speculation. But to make this work, I needed to accept Bitcoin. And every option was broken. Custodial processors took a cut and held my funds. 
Self-hosted nodes meant managing rates and invoicing manually. 

There was no middle ground that was both sovereign and operational. So I built it myself. BitLasso started as a product for my own needs. 
Then I realized the gap was bigger: there's no cheap, simple way for businesses to accept Bitcoin without giving up custody or paying % fees on every transaction. So I made it ~$1. Under the hood: → Payments settled over Spark/Lightning/Bitcoin L1 — non-custodial → Nostr , is the anchoring layer, with no database we control, completly decentralized → Loyalty credits are tied to your wallet (Spark BTKN tokens), not an account that can be deleted This is what Bitcoin-native commerce looks like. 
Not a crypto wrapper on the same old stack. If you're a business done trusting intermediaries — or a developer curious about what building on Bitcoin actually looks like — come take a look. -> bitlasso.xyz View quoted note →

Nostr is a powerful engineering tool for modern decentralized apps. I’ve been exploring this technology to create apps that last—reducing the need for backend servers, whether for persistence, communication, or synchronization layers. This is underestimated. It’s too often framed as just a social network, but it goes far beyond that. There is so much potential. For example, we often have to deal with authentication. With Nostr, you can replace that with public key authentication—no more JWT, OAuth, etc. What about settings and customization across systems or apps? You can build that with Nostr as well. It’s as simple as publishing events—completely under your control and decentralized. Need a notification system? No more SMTP to configure, push services to maintain, or other infrastructure. Just push messages to a user’s Nostr profile—directly to their mailbox and without censorship. Want to reduce your storage dependencies and improve persistence fault tolerance? Write your data to Nostr relays and benefit from strong redundancy, auditable authorship, and cryptographic trails. Let users bring their own feed into your app. Let them tip other users with Bitcoin over Lightning. As you can see, many aspects of modern apps can be addressed through strong and efficient decentralization—without necessarily relying on full Web3 or blockchain protocols. But when you combine Nostr with those technologies, it becomes a nuclear power source for your apps. Let me know if this is of interest to you. I’m dedicating a major branch of HexQuarter to Nostr’s decentralized capabilities, and I would love to hear your feedback. Go beyond traditional ideas and disrupt your industry.

Expert Take: 10 Years in the Bitcoin Ecosystem A decade in this industry sharpens your lens. Crypto developers are fleeing to AI. The numbers don’t lie: -8 points of active blockchain devs in 2025, GitHub commits down ~75%, and over $270B in VC flowing toward AI versus $49.75B for crypto. LinkedIn’s fastest-growing roles? All AI. I’ve watched this pattern before. A wave of developers drawn by opportunity — then gone just as fast. This exodus isn’t a mystery. It’s the reflection of a short-termist approach, dictated by trends rather than conviction. But for those who are deeply aligned with the values of freedom, transparency, fairness, censorship resistance, and sound money — there is no better sector to build a lasting legacy in. They say it takes 10 years to truly master a domain. The “snake” strategy — slithering from trend to trend — can generate quick wins. But it builds nothing solid. I chose the long game. Human and societal values. The conviction that technology can genuinely liberate the individual — during our brief time on this earth. Not the trend. Not the opportunity of the moment. Proud of these 10 years. Proud to keep building.

Nostr is a powerful engineering tool for modern decentralized apps. I’ve been exploring that tech to create apps that last. Reducing the need of backend servers either for persistence or communication layers. This is underestimated, and too often framed as social network but there is so much potential!

While many people are focusing a lot on AI, I decided to focus mainly on Bitcoin… It seems the right choice today. Don’t you think ?

Lessons from a Decade building on Bitcoin & Decentralized Protocols 1️⃣ Self‑custody isn’t an afterthought – it’s the core security model - Design every component assuming the user holds the private keys. - Eliminate hidden custodial layers; expose clear key‑management flows and recovery paths. 2️⃣ Unilateral exit must be baked in, not bolted on - On‑chain settlements and Lightning withdrawals should be executable by a single party without third‑party approval. - Expose an immediate on‑chain close or Lightning force‑close, preserving funds even if the service disappears. 3️⃣ UX = abstraction of complexity, not removal of it - Hide protocol jargon behind intuitive actions while keeping the underlying guarantees visible in the UI for power users. - Provide progressive disclosure: basic flow first, advanced settings on demand. 4️⃣ Security is non‑negotiable - Threat‑model from day 0: key leakage, replay attacks, fee‑sniping, and network partitioning. - Adopt formal verification where feasible (e.g., script validation, channel state machines). - Run continuous fuzzing and audit pipelines; treat every new dependency as a potential attack surface. 5️⃣ Assume the network will fail – design for fault tolerance - Graceful degradation: fallback to on‑chain paths when Lightning nodes are unreachable. - Stateless services where possible; store only immutable transaction data. - Redundant routing and multi‑path payments mitigate temporary topology failures. Bottom line: Build for self‑custody, unilateral exit, and inevitable network disruptions. Simplicity in the UI masks the rigorous, fault‑tolerant architecture underneath—because security and resilience are the only things that survive the long run.

Agreed. Discovered that world. It is crazy how it is expensive either to participate or to share something. Everything it is turned for marketing over disruption.

Today I just replaced my website blog post system by coding a simple Nostr client. Awesome how slick and powerful it is.

With the rise of AI on social media , one day we will pay human to create content… and Nostr is already building the rails

I’ve spent a long time in this space, and one thing is clear to me: Bitcoin didn’t “fix money.” It fixed something more specific — the need to ask permission to settle value. Every system before it broke at the same point: someone had the final say. And final say always turns into leverage. Bitcoin changed the incentives. Control became fragile. Censorship became costly. But that’s just one layer. Governance, credit, RWAs, stablecoins — those still need serious engineering. The next decade won’t be about BTC vs fiat. It’ll be about permissioned systems vs protocol-native ones. That’s where the real work is.

Love that kind of initiative to project Bitcoin usage beyond just payment and resolving a painful subject for investor while supporting disruptive project. I do appreciate the Bitcoin only as it is anchoring more into the ecosystem.