Max

Private dispute resolution keeps reappearing across centuries and civilizations because the economic logic that produces it is the same logic that produces every other market. State courts exhibit every pathology economists predict from monopoly: high cost and zero accountability to the people who use them.
This post argues that merchant courts were the market default that states displaced, and that technology is now restoring them.

@Zapstore is indexing about 1 new app per second currently.

Every bill of exchange in pre-1914 London carried a death date. Ninety-one days after acceptance, the consumer's gold payment for the delivered goods extinguished the credit that had financed the entire chain from production to sale.
Modern government debt carries no such mechanism. It rolls over perpetually, compounding interest on interest, until the arithmetic forces either default or debasement.

Your code lives on GitHub and your binaries distribute through Google Play, with dependencies pulled from npm (also owned by Microsoft). Two corporations control the pipeline from source to installed application, and both have complied with government demands to remove software.
The Nostr protocol now provides a coherent set of developer tools that replaces each link in this chain with infrastructure authenticated by a single keypair you own. This post maps the practical migration path.

Big plans...
This will be epic!

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PGP's Web of Trust demanded ceremony. Keybase proved you could replace it with social proof, then died from centralization. Nostr's follow graph already contains the trust infrastructure that a challenge-response verification app can activate across any anonymous text channel.
A suggestion for anyone looking for something worth building.

Every surveillance backdoor ever mandated by law has eventually been used by the wrong people. A door built for one visitor admits every visitor. The 35 year war on open protocols has produced a clear record: the protocols survive, the developers sometimes do not. For anyone building systems designed to resist state pressure, that record contains specific architectural lessons about what survives and why.

Wen @Zapstore release for @Maple AI android?

@V E C T O R is a full fledged marmot client, nice!

E2EE or GTFO

I spent years testing mobile podcast setups on GrapheneOS and every option failed: Bluetooth earbuds have terrible mic quality, wired splitter setups are tethered and clunky, and USB-C wireless mics like the DJI Mic don't work for calls because Android won't route audio back to them.
The solution is the Yealink BH71 Bluetooth headset with its 4-mic beamforming array. Simplicity beats complexity for mobile content creation.
If you know of something better, please share!

Live now, join us
Note

Join our call in 15 minutes!
We'll demo a bunch of stuff.
Note

Marmot demo app in the browser!

https://marmot-protocol.github.io/marmot-ts/

@Gzuuus & @hzrd149 did an amazing job getting this up and running.

(Warning, it ain't pretty, but it works!)

@Amber support merged to @White Noise rust!
https://github.com/marmot-protocol/whitenoise-rs/pull/418

We finally have the tools to escape surveillance capitalism. Micropayments work at scale. Stop building ad-tech. Start trading for value directly with users who actually want to pay you.

Wen blossom server in @Citrine @greenart7c3

Economic progress springs from four sources: division of labor multiplies productivity through specialization, capital accumulation transforms present resources into future productivity, technological progress generates non-rivalrous ideas that overcome physical limits, and entrepreneurial function coordinates everything through creative destruction. State intervention systematically corrupts each source by destroying the property rights and price signals they require. Cryptographic technology now enables these sources to operate beyond political interference.

Small businesses face 41-57% rejection rates for basic trade finance while the same banks hold $192 trillion in derivatives positions. Basel III treats a letter of credit backing real goods as riskier than abstract financial instruments that produce nothing. The system works exactly as designed: extracting value from those who create it, denying credit to those who need it most.

Nice, a ride sharing app powered by nostr just hit @Zapstore by @VariableFate

https://zapstore.dev/apps/naddr1qqgkxmmd9eexjer9wd68ytnjd9jx2uszyqxr7zlpn7lc78z64tz2059k8k3g4g3uy67xq97fezga958weed7uqcyqqq8uzc254xpx

I've had my mind blown each time I read the papers regarding BitVM. It's just insane how much we can build on Bitcoin without changing consensus. Massively bullish.

For fifteen years, Bitcoin has faced a fundamental limitation: most attempts to extend its functionality required trusting custodians without unilateral exit. Exchanges hold your keys. Wrapped bitcoin protocols control the underlying assets. Early sidechains trapped funds behind federation signatures. Each custodial solution creates honeypots that attract both hackers and regulators, with users having no recourse when trust fails. Lightning improved this with unilateral exit mechanisms, yet remained limited to payment channels between specific parties. The search for trustless bridges with arbitrary computation became Bitcoin's holy grail, pursued by brilliant minds yet always remaining just out of reach.

I wasn't happy with @Npub.pro loading speed and limited customization, so I vibed my own Nostr website.

All my notes and articles sync to a local cache and build as static pages. Loads instantly and has client-side search.

Check it out: towardsliberty.com

John Vervaeke's cognitive science reveals that true agency cannot be computed, only lived through caring organisms that realize relevance. This explains why Bitcoin's thermodynamic proof-of-work and Nostr's self-sovereign identity preserve human agency while algorithmic platforms capture and destroy it. The technologies that matter are those that protect the non-computational processes from which freedom emerges, transcending raw computational speed.

Can I just say how cool it is that on my shit posting app I get notified which parts of my book people really like.
Nostr is just awesome.

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Software vendors have locked users into a consumption model for decades, distributing pre-compiled binaries that cannot be modified, forcing acceptance of unwanted features, privacy invasions, and inefficiencies. This artificial scarcity ends when artificial intelligence makes source-based installation accessible to everyone. The convergence of AI coding assistants with source-based package managers like Gentoo's Portage and BSD ports creates a new model where users shape software to their exact needs through natural language, while AI agents handle the complexity of compilation, optimization, and patch maintenance.

Murray Rothbard demonstrated that every government intervention reduces to exactly three forms: commanding your isolated action, compelling exchange with the state, or overriding your voluntary exchanges with others. His framework strips away the complexity of interventionist policy to reveal the hegemonic aggression beneath. Understanding this typology is essential for anyone who wishes to see through the state's infinite variety of justifications to its limited repertoire of coercion.

The productive class has always lived in two worlds. There is the official economy of permissions and taxes, where value flows upward to those who produce nothing, and there is the real economy of voluntary exchange, where those who create value find each other despite every obstacle. When the official system spits you out, it does you the inadvertent favor of revealing which economy actually sustains human flourishing.

My recent article on how holding Bitcoin is not a sign of low time preference ruffled some feathers. @Engineer wrote a fantastic article voicing the common critique.



I still think that this critique falls short. So here is a response that hopefully helps clarify some misconceptions. I'm curious about the next round of feedback, so let me know what you think!

My recent article on how holding Bitcoin is not a sign of low time preference ruffled some feathers. @Engineer wrote a fantastic article voicing the common critique.



I still think that this critique falls short. So here is a response that hopefully helps clarify some misconceptions. I'm curious about the next round of feedback, so let me know what you think!

Note