01/45^2: FOSS Collaboration, Medusa Relays, UX, & More
Happy new year friends, and thank you for tuning in again to our techno-adventures.
Welcome to the first perfectly square year (2025=45²) since 1936 (=44²). Funny enough, 1936 is when Alan Turing published On Computable Numbers. This is the paper that created the theoretical framework for modern computing... before any physical computer even existed! Thanks to UK copyright laws and the timing of Turing’s death, as of January 1st, 2025 this paper has entered the public domain. The foundation of computer science is now open-source. It was published on a perfect square year, and made public domain the following perfect square year. Poetic.
Here’s to hoping this year brings breakthroughs in healthy human connections with these machines.
As promised, we’ll keep things shorter this time. Onward.
Development Updates
Nostr Commerce Coordinators Whitepaper
Last month we published a paper outlining a severe limitation we found with the NIP-15 marketplace specification. We also proposed a solution, along with corresponding pull requests on Github. If you want to geek out with us you can read the full paper here.
Here’s a rough abstract:
Without a system capable of automating the process between a Customer's intent to purchase and a Merchant's acceptance, e-commerce on Nostr will not grow beyond small sales plagued with high-friction manual checkout steps. This proposal contains the groundwork for a new type of Nostr bot. A Nostr bot whose core function is handling NIP-15 checkout events automatically on behalf of a Merchant.
In plain English:
While building the functions of a real-life Nostr e-commerce store, we found a big problem causing checkout failures. This can be solved with an automated program, but we need an update to the Nostr marketplace specification to allow it to happen.
To be clear, lack of approval on our proposal doesn’t stop us from developing Conduit independently. We do feel a solution is needed for broader adoption, though.
This is the type of action we need to take to connect to the Nostr open-source development community and push important changes. So, expect more of these as we develop.
Joining Forces
Showing our work and reaching out to likeminded folks for comment didn’t take long to pay dividends. We’re now honored to be in a collaborative group with a few other teams developing Nostr-marketplace apps such as:
This is the beautiful spirit of open-source collaboration at work. We’re all taking different approaches to a similar problem with the common goal of spreading freedom tech across the world. Instead of competing, we’re growing a new ecosystem together.
Open-source incentivizes this type of industry collaboration vs. the traditional competitive model. When your tech is instantly commoditized, other value vectors like brand reputation, team and operations matter a lot more. These things get better when you work together as an industry to grow your collective market share. This is common in mature commoditized industries. For example, US construction has lots of industry groups providing shared best practices to all companies. Open-source, along with the Nostr and Bitcoin protocols, incentivizes these pro-social business behaviors.
Medusa JS x Strfry Relay Accelerator
Medusa is an open-source project we’ve had our eyes on since the beginning. They’ve already built out a ton of modular e-commerce solutions for folks like us looking to break the mold. Medusa provides all the features needed for modern e-commerce so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We’d hoped their work would provide a scaffolding for us to develop faster. Until recently, we couldn’t figure out how to tie it into a Nostr-based system without causing endless headaches.
Strfry is an efficient Nostr relay system developed by a talented Canadian programmer named Doug Hoyte. It’s currently used by most of the high traffic relays on Nostr. If you want to geek out on it, we recommend this YouTube video of Doug’s presentation on Strfry. This was the clear relay of choice for our Conduit Commerce Coordinator (the bot system we proposed in the Whitepaper mentioned above).
Last month, our tech chief Acea Spades, pulled one out of his sleeve and got these two working together behind the scenes:
He was able to update a product in Medusa, have it auto-sign a Nostr event, post it to the relay, and have the relay auto-delete the old product while keeping the new one. By doing this, he may have established the first product posting system between MedusaJS and a Nostr relay. That’s pretty cool, folks- and a huge step towards our vision of an easy to use Nostr system for merchants.
Conduit UX Sneak Peak
Last but not least, we made huge progress on our UX design through our collaboration with Santoral.
This process has been fun and informative. While we’re spending time on the backend engineering too, Conduit is taking a UX-first approach to the build of the platform. This creative process is already paying dividends. It's helping us uncover the product design needed to give users a smooth and feature-rich experience.
The social experience is the top differentiator for a Nostr-based marketplace. This topic is front and center in all our UX working sessions.
How do we show users the significance of the reputation-based content sorting system? How do we do this without taking away from a modern e-commerce experience? How can we do this in a way that’s fun and intuitive? We’re thinking about this in every working session with Santoral.
We’ll leave it there for now. Excited to share more on the UX front next month.
Upcoming Developments
Moar UX & a Landing Page
After an incredible “Phase 1” experience with Santoral, we’ve tasked them with more creative work. You can already see some of it in the screenshots above. They’re currently working on finalizing our design guidelines and applying them to the Hi-Fi wireframes. Then they'll deliver us the master Figma file for our developers to bring to life. This will include mobile screens.
We’ve got a new logo in the works, too. The fun part about our base Hamsa + Lightning logo design is we can rework it in so many ways without losing the essence:
They’re also working with us on an updated landing page that will showcase what we’re building and tell the Conduit story visually. This page will serve as a portal to bring in a community of merchants and users who are excited about what we’re building.
Stayin’ Legal
Behind UX, our second biggest spend was on legal services. We’re going to be working with a forward thinking firm who will help us navigate the choppy regulatory waters of the Bitcoin e-commerce ocean. Beyond the normal start-up stuff, we hope for them to give us input on our designs to avoid potential pitfalls.
We know that the platform we are building is just. We know that Nostr and Bitcoin are pro-humanity technologies. We believe them to be pro-democracy technologies as well. As we push forward, we’re bound to ruffle some feathers. So we need to make sure what we’re doing falls well within the established legal frameworks for us to survive (and thrive). Not everyone in this community will take this approach, and we respect that. But, this is the path Conduit is taking.
Plugging in Conduit.Coffee
Once we have the finalized design we’re going to start by launching and testing our own store, Conduit Coffee, on the platform. This one might be out a couple months, but it’s an important step to mention and one we’re really looking forward to!
In the meantime, don’t forget to stock up on your Conduit.Coffee. Our FOSS Friday sale was a success, and together we sent a solid bag of Christmas Bitcoin to OpenSats. In fact, we managed to sell out of our first coffee run! This is perfect, since we want to make sure we’re always delivering fresh roasted product to our followers. Thank you for your support.
Note: some of you have requested a “how-to” for Bitcoin/Lightning beginners for the current Conduit.Coffee site. We’ll get that to you in an interim bulletin soon! We’d be honored if your first Bitcoin commercial transaction was with us, and excited for you if it were to be the start of your freedom-tech journey.
Concluding 01/45²
When you’ve got a huge goal (like revolutionizing e-commerce or something like that), it’s tough to feel like you’ve accomplished anything. Especially at the beginning. Looking back on our recent developments has us motivated though. 2024 was a very creative and transformative year for us, with a lot built up under the surface preparing to show itself in 2025.
We’ve got an exciting year ahead. We wish you and your families health, wealth and happiness in the new year- whatever that uniquely means for each of you.
Please feel free to reach out to us and let us know your thoughts on anything we’ve shared. We’d love to hear from you.
Cheers,
Eric FJ - Caffeinated Operating Officer, Conduit Hodlings
Acea Spades - Caffeinated Tech Officer, Conduit Hodlings
Postscript: Growing the Conduit Team
We are actively seeking motivated individuals to accelerate our mission. We’re courting a few people already, but as it stands we feel there are currently roles available in the following areas:
Social Media Marketing / Community Building
Merchant Relations / Strategic Partnerships
Web Development
Please reach out to us by Nostr DM if you are inspired by our mission and interested in helping with any of the above.