Horribly vibe-coded like most of the Nostr projects out there. There is no sign of quality or technical interest in this project. There is also this tendency to build black boxes that do not show the innards of the protocol for reasons of "user-friendliness". The project does exactly this, to its detriment. Just like Mastodon and Matrix, most people will be centralized on the few Nostr relays set by default.
I thought it was masterfully vibe coded. As for centralization, you know you can change the relays that your community uses. You can even run your own.
I signed up, I very much enjoy this. Similar enough to discord that you can just pick it up, but with improvements. The trick will be getting people to switch I think.
Coincidentally I am looking for self-hosted alternatives to Discord for a local community where I live. I have been considering Matrix (one of the Rust implementations) + Element, so I wonder what makes this a better or worse alternative, but there seems to exist no comparison table/chart.
Honestly I'll take pretty much anything over Matrix. I've tried to get it set up but it just feels unfocused. Too many server variations; none of which are at parity with the complex default stack, and too many clients; none of which I particularly liked. To me Matrix is kinda like Wayland in that early design decisions have made it awkward for how people want to use it in the modern day (in Wayland's example, the absolute shitshow of getting push-to-talk to work in apps running within it).
I'll have to try out Armada to see how it compares, as I'm always suspicious of the claims of decentralised software as they often end up having some unique downsides.
This is a great tool, really deserves more recognition that currently has.
Discord tries to fool with the concept of "servers" which really aren't, Armada is indeed giving full control where data goes and even on public NOSTR servers is kept safe/private beyond doubt.
Very nice. You should consider rotating the label of a community periodically, not just triggered by rekey events. Makes it impossible or at least very hard for relay operators to delete the entire community by label.
> - how do you solve the 3 body problem? you need people and their people and their people on the platform to use the platform
> - how do you go about getting the 1st 1000 people for something like this?
I am definitely not an expert, but I did see on their site:
Discord bridge & server import
Mirror a channel both ways, or import your whole server. Nobody has to move all at once.
And I think that helps answer some of your last 2 questions. If it works seamlessly with existing discord users then it seems like a good first step. The server-runner gets autonomy and users get the ecosystem they're habituated to.
"Chat apps belong to whoever runs the servers. Armada is spread across free public servers." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429833
Horribly vibe-coded like most of the Nostr projects out there. There is no sign of quality or technical interest in this project. There is also this tendency to build black boxes that do not show the innards of the protocol for reasons of "user-friendliness". The project does exactly this, to its detriment. Just like Mastodon and Matrix, most people will be centralized on the few Nostr relays set by default.
Look at the underlying Concord Protocol: https://concordprotocol.org/ There is definitely engineering. This part by hand.
I thought it was masterfully vibe coded. As for centralization, you know you can change the relays that your community uses. You can even run your own.
I signed up, I very much enjoy this. Similar enough to discord that you can just pick it up, but with improvements. The trick will be getting people to switch I think.
avoid Zulip for a properly secure Discord replacement, givin its lack of (and roadmap refusal for) e2e; https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/6096
Coincidentally I am looking for self-hosted alternatives to Discord for a local community where I live. I have been considering Matrix (one of the Rust implementations) + Element, so I wonder what makes this a better or worse alternative, but there seems to exist no comparison table/chart.
Honestly I'll take pretty much anything over Matrix. I've tried to get it set up but it just feels unfocused. Too many server variations; none of which are at parity with the complex default stack, and too many clients; none of which I particularly liked. To me Matrix is kinda like Wayland in that early design decisions have made it awkward for how people want to use it in the modern day (in Wayland's example, the absolute shitshow of getting push-to-talk to work in apps running within it).
I'll have to try out Armada to see how it compares, as I'm always suspicious of the claims of decentralised software as they often end up having some unique downsides.
This is a great tool, really deserves more recognition that currently has.
Discord tries to fool with the concept of "servers" which really aren't, Armada is indeed giving full control where data goes and even on public NOSTR servers is kept safe/private beyond doubt.
Very nice. You should consider rotating the label of a community periodically, not just triggered by rekey events. Makes it impossible or at least very hard for relay operators to delete the entire community by label.
- big question to the experts out there reading this
- obviously anyone can code a discord clone, instagram clone or whatever
- how do you solve the 3 body problem? you need people and their people and their people on the platform to use the platform
- how do you go about getting the 1st 1000 people for something like this?
> - how do you solve the 3 body problem? you need people and their people and their people on the platform to use the platform
> - how do you go about getting the 1st 1000 people for something like this?
I am definitely not an expert, but I did see on their site:
Discord bridge & server import
Mirror a channel both ways, or import your whole server. Nobody has to move all at once.
And I think that helps answer some of your last 2 questions. If it works seamlessly with existing discord users then it seems like a good first step. The server-runner gets autonomy and users get the ecosystem they're habituated to.