DEV Community: Emre YILMAZ

How the Nostr journey is going for me?

Emre YILMAZ — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:42:16 +0000

A few years ago, I discovered the Nostr protocol¹ thanks to Jack (Jack Dorsey)². I've been using it actively ever since. I already had an interest in distributed social networks for years. I tried ActivityPub³ for a while, but something just didn't click. Around that time, Jack started ATProto⁴ within Twitter, but something felt off there too. I hadn't even bothered trying the methods that came before those anyway.

It always bothered me—and many others, of course—that the internet became so centralized when the web is distributed by nature. The main reason for this was social media platforms. The trend that started with guestbooks evolved into forums, then to Friendfeed-like walls, MySpace-like platforms, and eventually Facebook and Twitter. The internet, which had a much more distributed structure with blogs prior to Facebook and Twitter, suddenly started to centralize.

Due to the maintenance costs of distributed structures and unsettled systems, humanity took the easy way out and chose centralization, as always. Facebook and Twitter grew steadily, and many other platforms alongside them transformed into centralized hubs using the exact same playbook.

One of the things people realized too late was that centralized power always possesses the ability to manipulate, a fact that eventually came to light through the Facebook and Twitter lawsuits and similar cases over time.

Moreover, there was no such thing as account ownership in any of these centralized systems; we were essentially no different from non-paying tenants (or tenants paying with our data). As time passed, we saw what happened when the landlords started evicting people. Nowadays, even just posting anti-government content can get you kicked out of these centralized platforms in an instant, and you have absolutely no ownership rights over your data or anything else.

We've actually been living in a crappy system for a long time, and this system is still going on.

From the era I caught onto, ActivityPub was the closest candidate to solving this. In fact, some people at Meta must have noticed this, as they added ActivityPub support to Threads, Instagram's text-based version. However, a segment of the Fediverse⁵ (specifically the Fediblock movement) declared Threads persona non grata, whereas Mastodon's founder Eugen Rochko and entities like the largest server mastodon.social welcomed Threads.

Even though ActivityPub and ATProto were the most ambitious protocols, they remained far too complex for a simple social network protocol; because of this, ActivityPub was already sacrificing a lot of things. For example, it even left end-to-end encryption out of the protocol. ATProto, on the other hand, hasn't fully delivered what's desired yet because it relies on complex methods.

However, a protocol called Nostr, coming from the Bitcoin community, proposed that things didn't need to be that complicated, working flawlessly over the WebSocket protocol and strictly requiring only the NIP-01⁶ rules. A protocol emerged that belongs to no one, where even a rookie developer could easily build a product.

Although most people are prejudiced against the Nostr protocol because it was heavily adopted by the Bitcoin community, I absolutely loved it. It literally fascinated me with its simplicity. At first, I joined the Nostr network by only using text-based social media tools. I still use Primal⁷. I tried Amethyst⁸ and didn't like it; I didn't like Damus⁹ because it radiated too much "iOS energy."

Over time, as I discovered how massive the protocol's potential was, I found myself wanting Nostr to support anything and everything related to social interaction. First, I verified my username with NIP-05¹⁰, then I learned how to log in by installing a browser extension, and then I tried various clients (Coracle¹¹, Primal, Ditto¹²). The more I explored, the more I loved it.

At one point, I realized I could also host my blog content on the Nostr network, and I distributed all my posts to the Nostr network using the hugo2nostr plugin. Then, I set up my own relay using nosflare¹³. And just like that, things kept escalating.

Now I don't need to write a blog and share it on social media; they are already there. So, why not connect my comment system there too? That way, my posts can be read via any Nostr client, and if someone replies to them, it shows up as a comment on my site as well as over there. Presto, my blog turned into a Nostr client.

After that, I set up nostr.emre.xyz for my Nostr content, so that not only my blog posts but also my regular content would be visible to those who aren't even on Nostr.

Of course, that wasn't enough either. I tinkered some more.

I discovered Zaps¹⁴. Lo and behold, the Lightning Network¹⁵ built on top of the Bitcoin network can work deeply integrated with the Nostr protocol. This means micro-payments can be sent and received without intermediaries. Immediately, I got a wallet via an Alby¹⁶ account, followed by an Alby Hub¹⁷ installation on the Raspberry Pi 3 at home. Now, if my social media posts or articles are liked, I can receive micro-payments, and I can send micro-payments to others as well.

But the potential is so massive that it just never ends. I won't drag this out much longer, but to list things quickly: I keep my git repos on the Nostr network with ngit¹⁸, I download and host mobile apps over the Nostr network with zap.store¹⁹, I fetch and download torrents over Nostr, I handle private messaging over Nostr, and so many other beautiful things.

During this process, I also built two nice projects like bunker.workouse.com and bridge.workouse.com. I still utilize the Nostr protocol in many other places that I forgot to mention here.

Soon, I will try to establish a community in Izmir to help spread the Nostr protocol in Turkey. You can shoot me an email to get involved.

I've rambled on for too long. My suggestion for joining the Nostr network the easiest way is to download the Primal app and use it instead of Twitter; you can search and find me at delirehberi@emre.xyz. On your computer, you can use it via ditto.io. Remember, when you create an account, you will get a password called an nsec²⁰—it's crucial to guard it with your life. You will use it to log into apps and prove your identity.

Over time, you might fall in love with it even more as you see how much beauty the protocol offers across completely different applications. Man, I even handle highlighting text while reading through this protocol! I handle everything with a single account. And all of it continues to live in a structure that cannot be blocked or deleted.

I'll be writing about Nostr more often. Stay tuned and take care.

Glossary (For Beginners)

Nostr: A censorship-resistant, open-source communication and social networking protocol that is not tied to a centralized server. ↩
Jack Dorsey: Former CEO of Twitter. Although he is not the founder of Nostr (the founder is a developer with the pseudonym "fiatjaf"), he is the protocol's biggest supporter and funder. ↩
ActivityPub: A network protocol that allows decentralized social networks like Mastodon to communicate with each other. ↩
ATProto: An open-source, alternative decentralized social networking protocol developed by Bluesky. ↩
Fediverse: A vast network of independent servers connected to each other using protocols like ActivityPub. ↩
NIP-01: (Nostr Implementation Possibilities) The set of mandatory standards that define the basic rules of the Nostr protocol. ↩
Primal: A very fast and popular Twitter-like client (app) used to connect to the Nostr network. ↩
Amethyst: A popular, feature-rich Android application developed for the Nostr network. ↩
Damus: A popular iOS/Apple client developed for the Nostr network, often referred to as a "Twitter killer." ↩
NIP-05: A standard used in the Nostr network to verify that accounts (e.g., name@domain.com) belong to real people. ↩
Coracle: An advanced web client that allows users to customize their data on the Nostr network. ↩
Ditto: An open-source, alternative social media client working with the Nostr network. ↩
nosflare: Software that allows running "relay" servers, which transmit Nostr messages, on Cloudflare at a low cost and serverless. ↩
Zap: Bitcoin / Lightning tips (micro-payments) that users send to each other instantly on the Nostr network. ↩
Lightning Network: A fast and low-fee layer-2 payment network running on top of Bitcoin. ↩
Alby: An open-source service that integrates the Bitcoin Lightning network into your browser or applications. ↩
Alby Hub: A system that allows you to run your own Lightning wallet and Bitcoin node right on your own device. ↩
ngit: A tool that allows developers to host and manage their code projects directly on the decentralized Nostr network. ↩
zap.store: A Nostr-based, permissionless/decentralized mobile app store where developers can be tipped with cryptocurrency. ↩
nsec (Nostr Secret Key): The private key of your digital identity on the Nostr network. It's like your password; if you lose it, you lose access to your account, and it should never be shared with anyone. ↩

Nix

Emre YILMAZ — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 08:15:11 +0000

Nix

Nix is a package management language that has a massive ecosystem about solving DevOps problems.

Nix, is a functional and domain-specific programming language. Nix also is a package manager for Linux and Unix based systems like aptitude and brew.

But, not just for a single system. It's an independent package manager. So you can use Nix to manage system packages or your language packages. You can install Nginx with Nix, and you can install is_array npm package, or you can install HTTPBundle for Symfony, or you can manage your Python packages. Also, you can install different versions of the same package to the same environment.

There is a ton of usage area of Nix. Also, Nix has a great ecosystem for developers. You can use NixOS if you want to manage your whole system via Nix, and you can use NixOps if you are going to build your applications to a network.

Today I will show you a simple introduction about Nix. I planned a Nixops introduction and "how you can deploy a real Symfony application via Nixops" titled article. I'll share it soon.

As I said, you can manage your system packages with Nix. Just install Nix your Linux or macOS; (You have to root access for install the nix.)

curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

That command installs the nix-env tool to your system. You can use nix like brew or apt with that command.

You can get an installable packages list with nix-env -qa command; also, you can check an online tool for searching packages.

You can install packages with nix-env -i hello command. -i argument for install

Check your package installed directory via which hello command. It will produce a result like that on Linux: /home/delirehberi/.nix-profile/bin/hello

You'll get a Hello, World! respond when you run hello command. You can also install firefox with nix-env -i firefox command.

Nix is a purely functional programming language. So you have only pure functions. And all your functions just gave a single argument. There is an example Nix function; x: x*2 is a function that gets an integer and returns the product with 2. I will not give a language lesson. You can read nix-pills for it.

You can write your build script with Nix language. Nix repository contains a lot of derivations for a ton of packages. Every time you want to install a package, a derivation will work and build that application in your system with precisely valid dependencies. You will not see dependency related errors. If an application needs thecurl library, it will install as independently.

You can read about Nix in the official web site. Also, I'll write different Nix and Nixops documents for the PHP ecosystem in this blog.

Keep yourself healthy!