Bitcoin-enabled Damus will remain on Apple’s App Store with core functionality removed

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Bitcoin-enabled social media app Damus has won a partial victory in its two-week battle to stay on tech giant Apples App Store.

Damus, a decentralized social media platform running on the Nostr protocol, was warned by Apple on June 13 that it risks being kicked out of the App Store if it persists in making it easier to accept zaps, cheats using Bitcoins Lightning Network, on content posts bypassing Apple Pay.

In order to comply with Apple’s strict in-app purchase guidelines, Damus was forced to make some concessions. While Damus users can still engage in profile-level zap transactions, enabling peer-to-peer transfers, the latest version of the app will no longer support zaps on posts, as Apple viewed this feature as selling digital content.

Were allowed to stay only after forcing me to remove a core feature from the app, Damus App founder William Casarin told Decrypt. He tweeted that he will continue to build Damus on iOS as a vanilla nostr client.

Decrypt has contacted Apple for comment and will update this story if they respond.

Apple versus Bitcoiners

Apple’s initial decision to remove the Damus app from the AppStore drew criticism from figures in the Bitcoin community, including former Twitter CEO and Jack Dorsey, who invested $5 million in developing the protocols. Damus. Why doesn’t Apple Pay support bitcoin @tim_cook?, he tweeted earlier this week.

Members of the bitcoin community have argued that Apple’s strict guidelines are a barrier to the widespread adoption of bitcoin-enabled apps in the App Store. Apple maintains that all apps fall under the same set of guidelines, with no special treatment.

Casarin told Decrypt that his biggest concern is that other value-added (v4v) bitcoin apps such as Fountain and Podcasting 2.0 are at risk of being taken down.

I don’t know how Fountain is licensed at all given that their entire app is tipping content with bitcoin, Casarin said. Now I’m back, but the app is much worse than before. We still have censorship-resistant speech I guess, hope Apple doesn’t ban it either.

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