Nostr relays are in essence extremely dumb websocket servers. The most popular relay software is nostr-rs-relay a single binary written in rust that automatically spins up an SQLite database.
Bitcoin discussion yes, but mostly because bitcoiners are avid self hosters. Cryptocurrency not much. The “crypto” people created their own thing if I’m not mistaken.
Nostr was spun out as a truly censorship resistant protocol so it’s a given people who distrusts both centralized services and island style moderation are there don’t you think?
dergigi once described Nostr with an analogy to a gay bar. The place is nice, the furniture is fancy, the drinks pleasant and the people who frequent it are mostly nice but if you are not gay you won’t stick for so long.
Nothing keeps you from creating a moderated relay or curate your feeds though.
One of the coolest things about Nostr IMO is how extendable the protocol is and how easy you can develop crazy stuff for it.
Ah and for some reason there are some Japanese users.
Nostr is super flexible too since its a protocol. I see reddit-style and hacker news style sites, documentation sites, blog sites...and yes twitter/x style sites as well.
Hell there's even a streaming platform on nostr too. The common criticism is that its all bitcoiners, that's mainly because it uses Lightning Network for zaps and that's how people get paid in nostr. So naturally its a lot of bitcoiners in the nostr communities.
That sounds really interesting. I haven’t really kept up with nostr. Would you mind linking some examples of the types of sites you mentioned?