Our Jack Dorsey-backed appears as Bitcoin’s social layer at the Riga Conference

The third edition of NostrWorld’s unconference series took place last week in the picturesque city of Riga, Latvia, bringing together supporters and developers of the Nostr protocol. Led by Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, NostrWorld’s free gatherings are a platform for open source enthusiasts to exchange ideas, foster collaboration, and ignite initiatives aimed at creating a freer and more decentralized internet.

Bitcoin Magazine was on the ground in Riga to explore how the evolution of the Nostr protocol could influence the trajectory of Bitcoin. While Nostr’s burgeoning community attracted prominent Bitcoin supporters, Nostriga—as this third NostrWorld conference was dubbed—offered a fresh lens on the growing synergies between these two technologies. Conversations with attendees and observations throughout the two-day event revealed a clear trend: Bitcoin’s path seems increasingly likely to intertwine with Nostr’s promising social network technology.

What is Ours?

Ours is an open-source protocol designed to create a decentralized, censorship-resistant social network. Unlike traditional platforms that rely on centralized servers, Nostr operates on a network of relays where users can post and receive messages. Nostr is quickly gaining traction as a social layer for Bitcoin, enabling features like micropayments and digital identity management. Beyond social networks, Nostr offers an opportunity to build a new Internet architecture that frees users from dependence on centralized platforms. This approach empowers individuals by eliminating the need for middlemen who typically own user data, monetize attention, and control or censor access.

Fit micropayment marketplace

A standout moment of the conference came when Strike CEO Jack Mallers shared a personal story about an acquaintance he had been trying to convince of Bitcoin’s potential for years. It wasn’t until she boarded Nostr and got Zaps in her account that the power of technology finally clicked for her.

Zaps are small Bitcoin payments, often sent as tips or rewards on Nostr, allowing users to support content creators directly through the Lightning Network. This micro-payment feature has become a popular way to demonstrate the utility and value of Bitcoin in a social context

The concept of micropayments even predates Bitcoin, but Nostr’s backers believe Zaps represents the first successful large-scale implementation of the idea. In a panel alongside Primal CEO Miljan Braticevic, Jack Mallers highlighted the importance of this achievement:

“I think it’s very underappreciated. Something that’s been wanted on the web for decades. From anonymous cypherpunks to the most powerful people in the world, everyone has wanted this use case, and it looks like we’ve nailed it.”

Micropayments through Nostr introduce a new bootstrapping mechanism that could reshape the traditional Bitcoin onboarding process. People who might not be swayed by Bitcoin’s economic or political narrative might appreciate its unique value once they were exposed to casual internet tips and microtransactions. This change opens up Bitcoin to a wider audience, making it accessible in everyday social interactions already familiar to internet users.

Setting the stage for the Ecash economy

Ecash, one of Bitcoin’s emerging technologies, was a recurring theme throughout the event. Cashu protocol developer CalleBTC made a passionate case for the central role Nostr can play in a cash-based economy.

Proposed as a private, scalable payment system using blind signatures, ecash allows users to transact anonymously, preserving financial privacy. However, this privacy comes with a trade-off: ecash introduces trusted entities known as mints, which hold users’ Bitcoin deposits in exchange for tokens, often called notes. For cash to work effectively, a robust coin market is needed to provide users with choices they can trust. As the concept gains traction, this reliance on multiple mints introduces various coordination and discovery challenges—challenges that developers feel are ideally suited to be addressed by Nostr’s social features.

Examples of this are bitcoinmints.com and cashumints.space, two Nostr-based websites that provide Yelp-like interfaces for users to discover new mint providers and for mints to advertise their services and build a reputation. Although the initial implementations are fairly simple, the potential integration of the Nostr social graph could allow users to make informed decisions about which mentions to trust. By leveraging their network connections and trusted reviews from friends, users could more confidently choose mentees based on the relationships and shared experiences of those they know. Eventually, similar Nostr-based services are expected to be integrated directly into Bitcoin ecash wallets, providing users with a seamless onboarding experience that avoids imposing trust defaults.

Similarly, the Nostr infrastructure provides various methods to increase the resilience of ecash coins, allowing future implementations to function independently of the Internet’s centralized DNS services. This would allow users to establish direct connections with mints, reducing their exposure to third-party interventions and increasing the overall security and decentralization of the cash system.

Another fascinating concept that emerged from the convergence of the ecash and Nostr communities is the idea known as the “nutsack”. Introduced by Nostr developer PabloF7z, Nutsack or NIP-60 allows users to store cash notes on Nostr relays, effectively distributing them across the network and tying them to the user’s identity. In fact, the scheme allows universal access to a user’s cash balance through any Nostr client that supports the feature. This means that in the future, users can log into any website or online service and have their cash balance follow them seamlessly, enabling effortless spending across multiple platforms.

Communities and the Web-Of-Trust

One of the biggest opportunities – and perhaps the most significant challenge – for Nostr is its ability to reach new internet communities beyond the Bitcoin-centric groups that currently dominate the platform. Announcements like developer Alex Gleason’s Ditto made last week have the potential to expand Nostr’s reach into the wider landscape of existing internet communities like Mastodon, paving the way for wider adoption.

“With Ditto, people find websites they want to join because of a community, and then discover Nostr as a side effect, which gives them the opportunity to learn what it is and why it matters,” Gleason explained in his presentation .

This amplification of Nostr’s network effect could have significant implications for Bitcoin adoption. With features like Zaps, Nostr offers a unique opportunity to introduce non-technical users to the power of a native Internet currency, making Bitcoin more accessible and identifiable in everyday digital interactions.

“Bitcoin is revolutionary and I think it’s the key to our success, but social media needs communities.”

Looking ahead, the formation of communities and the adoption of Nostr as an identity system could pave the way for digital economies rooted in the web-of-trust concept. By building social graphs based on cryptographically signed messages, users can transport their reputation across the Internet, laying the foundation for secure, decentralized commerce that operates independently of traditional laws, contracts, and enforcement mechanisms—with Bitcoin at the center of it all.