Тег: Pyramids

Continuing to settle into Nostr: building a pyramid

In my previous post on this topic, I told you how I set up my own personal Nostr relay. I used strfry, which is quite popular for large relays because it is stable and performant. However, I also wanted ease of configuration so that I wouldn’t have to work magic with console commands every time. An attempt to attach a web control panel on top of the existing relay was unsuccessful. The Khatru relay suggested by Grok turned out to be a project abandoned in early 2026. But its developer is @fiatjaf, the author of Nostr itself, and he doesn’t just abandon projects. So I started looking into what he is developing as a replacement and came across Pyramid. This is a specialized relay for community management; meaning, while it can handle basic relay functions, it also helps manage various private and club-like features.

After some tinkering, I uninstalled strfry and installed pyramid. Voila — I have an engine for developing an online community, and half a day later, the first invited client of the new relay appears. We discuss the process on Nostr in the comments of my previous post, and I tag the software creator. Fiatjaf likes this comment and then comes to me on Telegram, congratulates me on installing Pyramid, and starts asking for feedback on both the relay and Nostr in general. We already had a chat history from the time when he created a popular custodial Lightning wallet in the form of a Telegram bot, and I actively promoted it (that project was wound down, and Nostr emerged to replace it).

Anyway, I gave all the feedback I was capable of, given my limited experience and competence:

  • I asked for a more convenient format for adding a new user to the relay: the user clicks to leave a request, I click to approve or deny the request — basically, the familiar Telegram method. I received a promise that this would be done soon.
  • I asked for a monitoring service for relay availability from different corners of the network, suggesting an implementation option that doesn’t require renting servers all over the world. Fiatjaf said the option was doubtful, but he would try to attach one third-party service instead.
  • I asked for a service for local key generation so that new users could be sure that the Nostr client would not have access to their private key. He replied that he had already built a whole set of such utilities — both for offline key generation and for offline event signing, so security advocates can sleep soundly.

That’s where my imagination ran out for now, but I certainly assume that readers have or will soon have their own brilliant ideas.

Anyway, for anyone interested in testing a specialized relay for community management, welcome. Leave requests in the comments, and I will send the invitation link via DM — for now, this is the not-so-convenient connection mechanism in place.

https://stuff.fiatjaf.com — a collection of various things from the author of Nostr

https://github.com/fiatjaf/pyramid — description of the Pyramid relay

https://relay.ancapchan.info — my relay, where you can observe the community participant tree growing and publications appearing from them

I hope you won’t need a special guide on how to set up a Nostr account. Since it is a very decentralized ecosystem, there are already tons of ways to enter it, as well as ways to use it. But anyway, let me recommend that you start exploring via the Nostria client. I also know the developer there, Sondre Bjellos, a participant in the Liberstad and Montelibero projects; he lives three kilometers away from me (when he doesn’t head back to his native Norway, of course) and is very actively developing his client.

Will there be some kind of protection against these very pyramids and other variants of “fuck-business” under ancap?

Recent experience with “Cashberry” shows that the institution of reputation doesn’t really work here, and people, despite obvious facts, continue to pour money into it.

anonymous question

I will refer to a classic. Sergey Mavrodi, when launching another of his contraptions, explained in detail that existing money is a financial pyramid, and that what he was doing was exactly the same kind of pyramid, only better, because it brought a higher percentage. So it cannot be said that those who invest in hyips (High Yield Investment Projects) are unaware of anything. On the contrary, there is a fairly wide circle of people who are enthusiastically engaged in all this, scouring the web for fresh pyramids to enter as early as possible and manage to jump off before the scam happens. Then, referral networks begin to form; after some time come the first joyful reviews from those who managed to recover their deposit; and after some more time, it all ends, and people look for something new.

Gambling is great; it brings people joy and a sense of fullness of life. The market always decides for gambling; it grows through the asphalt even in a situation of complete and unconditional prohibition. You simply shouldn’t get in its way; let it compete peacefully with other types of expensive leisure. All these considerations apply fully to such a variety of gambling as financial pyramids or lotteries.

Let’s return to ancap. The issuance of securities, tokens, debt obligations, lottery tickets is not regulated at all. In other words, there is complete freedom for all kinds of hyips. Those who need exactly that do not need any protection; they are already aware that this is a high risk. The question, therefore, comes down to how the situation will change under ancap, compared to the current state of affairs, for the case of “a person looking for a reliable investment tool and trying not to run into a hyip.”

You know, in terms of the tools used to differentiate one investment product from another, little will change. You will still need to carefully study every offer, use logic, research the notorious reputation, and so on. Perhaps the market will decide for the many rating agencies, including those working on order, or perhaps people won’t be willing to pay for such things, and you’ll have to gather all the information yourself.

But the loudest alarm bell telling an investor not to get involved is, of course, the referral program. If a project pays for attracting clients, the probability that it is not a pyramid is non-zero, but if you are looking for an investment project specifically, why do you need this nonsense where the main profit is expected from attracting new people rather than from the investments themselves? Tell the agitator to get lost and look for something else.