I've been working on something and while it's still rough around the edges, I think it's time to share it and start building in public! 👀
Introducing Pod21 - The Decentralized 3D Printing Network
Pod21 is currently a marketplace but strives to become a permissionless network connecting people who need 3D prints with local makers who have printers, built on Nostr and Lightning!
No accounts, no passwords - just your Nostr identity. Pay with Lightning, get your parts shipped.
How it works:
1. Upload your STL or 3MF file
2. Pick your material and quality settings
3. Choose a provider from the interactive globe
4. Pay the Lightning invoice
5. Provider prints and ships directly to you
The Why:
The 3D printing community is full of people willing to help each other, but there's no good way to connect them globally with instant, borderless payments. Centralized platforms take huge cuts and require endless KYC.
I wanted something that just works - for bitcoiners, by bitcoiners.
The stack:
- Nostr for auth and messaging (NIP-07, NIP-17 DMs)
- Lightning via BTCPay Server
- No accounts, no passwords, no email required (except for customers, for now)
- Providers get paid instantly after shipping
The Slicer:
This was easily the hardest part to get working and took weeks of trial and error! For slicing the 3D-models, a dockerized, browserized version of Orcaslicer is being remotely controlled by the backend to slice files with actual real life print profiles for existing printers. This guarantees correct values and enables instant quoting, but it also means that slicing can take quite a bit of time, depending on the file size.
The slicer is currently still limited in functionality, but soon I will add options for multicolor and multipart prints as well advanced autosupports and more.
The Bot:
Follow @Pod21 and send a dm to our bot with GM or /help as the content and it should introduce itself and explain the service to you. It also helps providers by sending out order details and can mark orders shipped, send tracking info and more. The payout service via the bot is currently inactive until sufficiently hardened. It will also GM you back, always! :D
For Makers:
If you have one or more 3D printers sitting idle, you can earn sats printing for your community.Register as a provider, set your rates, and get order notifications via Nostr DMs. Current platform fee is 5%. This fee is not static and will go to zero over time based on a yet to be implemented volume dependant "halving" routine.
And of course, it's open source:
The entire codebase is now public under AGPL-3.0. You can verify exactly what's running, self-host if you want, or contribute improvements. Clients will talk to each other further down the road to really make this a decentralized platform, currently there's only one client up which you can try out here: 
GitHub: 
Nostr Bot: https://github.com/gobrrrme/Pod21-NostrBot
This project is still very early, and I'm constantly improving it on a lot of fronts, so breaking changes may occur at any time!
Feedback, support and contributions welcome - DM me or open an issue.
Let's decentralize 3D-printing, one layer at a time!
Pod21 is currently a marketplace but strives to become a permissionless network connecting people who need 3D prints with local makers who have printers, built on Nostr and Lightning!
No accounts, no passwords - just your Nostr identity. Pay with Lightning, get your parts shipped.
How it works:
1. Upload your STL or 3MF file
2. Pick your material and quality settings
3. Choose a provider from the interactive globe
4. Pay the Lightning invoice
5. Provider prints and ships directly to you
The Why:
The 3D printing community is full of people willing to help each other, but there's no good way to connect them globally with instant, borderless payments. Centralized platforms take huge cuts and require endless KYC.
I wanted something that just works - for bitcoiners, by bitcoiners.
The stack:
- Nostr for auth and messaging (NIP-07, NIP-17 DMs)
- Lightning via BTCPay Server
- No accounts, no passwords, no email required (except for customers, for now)
- Providers get paid instantly after shipping
The Slicer:
This was easily the hardest part to get working and took weeks of trial and error! For slicing the 3D-models, a dockerized, browserized version of Orcaslicer is being remotely controlled by the backend to slice files with actual real life print profiles for existing printers. This guarantees correct values and enables instant quoting, but it also means that slicing can take quite a bit of time, depending on the file size.
The slicer is currently still limited in functionality, but soon I will add options for multicolor and multipart prints as well advanced autosupports and more.
The Bot:
Follow @Pod21 and send a dm to our bot with GM or /help as the content and it should introduce itself and explain the service to you. It also helps providers by sending out order details and can mark orders shipped, send tracking info and more. The payout service via the bot is currently inactive until sufficiently hardened. It will also GM you back, always! :D
For Makers:
If you have one or more 3D printers sitting idle, you can earn sats printing for your community.Register as a provider, set your rates, and get order notifications via Nostr DMs. Current platform fee is 5%. This fee is not static and will go to zero over time based on a yet to be implemented volume dependant "halving" routine.
And of course, it's open source:
The entire codebase is now public under AGPL-3.0. You can verify exactly what's running, self-host if you want, or contribute improvements. Clients will talk to each other further down the road to really make this a decentralized platform, currently there's only one client up which you can try out here: Pod21
Pod21 - The Decentralized 3D Printing Network
Upload your 3D model, pick a local provider, pay with Bitcoin Lightning. Decentralized manufacturing powered by Nostr.
GitHub
GitHub - gobrrrme/Pod21: We're decentralizing 3D-printing!
We're decentralizing 3D-printing! Contribute to gobrrrme/Pod21 development by creating an account on GitHub.
