So funny enough, nostr:nprofile1qqsypwwgtll74lqu4huvxzjwtjyxvrlkujt35rw8y026ke6ttesmg5gpzdmhxue69uhhwmm59ehx7um5wghxuet5qyvhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgunrdpjkx6ewd4js8anlf3 was actually a key player in forming the nostr:nprofile1qqsyda3mvuruue6fvl3nq2p39d8espqee26zppfs7u3sx8jd7ccrayqpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtcpr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctv9uzg7kst group 😬. Though he’s moved on to other projects now, he wrote the first draft of the de-commerce spec.
Anyway, I agree with the concern that formalizing Nostr development risks centralization in and of itself. But I don’t think a top-down structure is being proposed here. We could actually agree on some basic ground rules in a decentralized / bottoms up way by going along with simple ideas like dual layer spec, formatting and attribution. This issue is: who approves what’s “core” and what’s “outer layer”? The answer should really be: *nobody*… but then how do we know as development teams what efforts are experimental and what are essential?
Right now there’s a kind of Nostr “shadow governance”. A sort of *cool kids club* that decides, without much public discourse, what is in and what is out. When you’re developing something today, you’re already playing politics with this group either directly or indirectly. Luckily, this group contains (for now) excellent people who all seem to care deeply about decentralization, freedom of speech, etc. But people are fallible, and the status quo is unsustainable: the *cool kids club* only has so much bandwidth, so naturally they focus on people and projects they already know, and people who enter the space from the outside either:
1) get frustrated by the lack of attention and leave
Or
2) start playing the game, politiking to the *cool kids club*
(Or maybe 3: form your own equally *cool* club like Gamma Markets and try to make allies with the current *cool kids club*)
In the absence of a declared structure, we already have a bit of a governance problem. This is natural and not necessarily bad… sometimes I think maybe it’s the way it needs to be like you alluded to in your post. But overall I tend to agree with nostr:nprofile1qqsypwwgtll74lqu4huvxzjwtjyxvrlkujt35rw8y026ke6ttesmg5gpzdmhxue69uhhwmm59ehx7um5wghxuet5qyvhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgunrdpjkx6ewd4js8anlf3 on this issue in some ways: SOMETHING is probably better than the current “nothing” (which is actually not nothing and a form of crony governance formed in a structureless vacuum).
I don’t think he’s proposing a top down structure. Maybe I’d add that there’s something missing from his suggestions: a way for us to decide in a decentralized way what is “core” and what is “experimental”. Because without that, then yes I agree we’d be appealing to a centralized authority again (like we basically are already with the *club*). I don’t know what this might look like. Maybe a set of criteria that can be evaluated by multiple “watching” parties, like open publications, that don’t all agree on the exact set of “core” implementations but allows the observer/reader to see some convergence.
Anyway, I’ve arrived at my destination so I’ll shut up now. Thanks for tagging me and giving me a bit of morning mind exercise. Cheers.