Primal secures $1 million seed round to power Bitcoin-infused Nostr apps

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protocol with an open social graph that everyone can rely on, as well as a monetary network attached to it in the form of zaps. I think everyone will be surprised how quickly Nostr-based products will reach and then surpass the capabilities of closed legacy platforms. – Miljan Braticevic, Founder and CEO of Primal.getty

The favorite social networking protocol of bitcoin communities, Nostr, now has millions of users worldwide and is rapidly becoming an integral part of the digital economy. Primal, an emerging player in the Nostr industry, has secured $1 million in funding from Ten31, Hivemind Ventures and others, making it the first venture-backed startup solely dedicated to app development Nostr infused with bitcoin.

This funding comes at a pivotal time, coinciding with the launch of Meta’s Threads, a social media app aimed at competing with established social apps like Twitter. Unlike that company competitor, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has offered more than $10 million in grants to Nostr open-source developers, which complement startups like Primal. The Nostr ecosystem offers a variety of players, not competitors like Threads and Twitter, due to its decentralized nature. Primal will allow users to instantly send zaps, small amounts of bitcoin, to other users and their posts anywhere in the world.

Two other user-friendly iOS Nostr apps with built-in zap functionality are ZBD and Plebstr. It should be noted that integrating zap functionality has proven difficult for some Nostr native social apps, such as Damus, due to restrictive policies imposed by ApplesAAPL App Store. Damus came from an independent developer, while ZBD came from my employer, ZEBEDEE, which raised $35 million in venture capital for a variety of bitcoin apps.

When asked about the importance of funding startups entirely focused on Nostr and integrating Bitcoin-powered zaps into the mobile app, Primal Founder and CEO Miljan Braticevic told me in an interview that with Nostr , we now have a global publishing protocol with an open social graph that anyone can rely on, as well as a monetary network attached to it in the form of zaps. I think everyone will be surprised how quickly Nostr-based products will reach and then surpass the capabilities of closed legacy platforms.

The Primals social app suite combines a Twitter-like interface with the open-source Nostr protocol, which prioritizes censorship resistance, account ownership, and decentralization. The Nostr protocol has already attracted more than 30 million users and continues to grow.

As a daily user of the Primal web app, in addition to many other Nostr apps, I am personally delighted that the company is expanding into mobile apps as well. Nostr is all about having the freedom to choose the app that works best for you, and the more apps built on top of Nostr, the more freedom users have to choose.

Amid this competitive landscape, the emergence of Meta’s Threads adds an intriguing dimension to the decentralized arena of social media. Threads, a new app integrated into Meta’s Instagram network, aims to introduce conversational elements reminiscent of Twitter. However, I found that I would rather share my thoughts on Nostr and receive real, tangible value, than share them on Threads for random likes. Likes can’t buy you anything.

Unlike Metas Threads, where the company owns all your data, Nostr apps allow users to own their identity and move seamlessly between apps, rather than having to rebuild an audience on each separate app. The ability to post to multiple Nostr apps without the need for multiple accounts gives users the flexibility to choose the app that works best for them.

Max Webster, founder of Hivemind Ventures, used a helpful analogy in the interview, saying that we have around 500,000 users with access to a Twitter-style Nostr client. Tomorrow, a new music player will be launched and each of these 500,000 users will now be able to connect to the music player instantly. And whoever new users are registered by the music player, they can now also use Twitter services.

As the competition between Twitter and Meta shines a spotlight on the importance of more diverse open protocol options like Nostr, bitcoin-focused social media startups are even better positioned to help users support creators and developers directly. friends, while reshaping the future of digital interactions.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Above all, I am a big fan of inclusive technologies. Professionally, I’m the VP of Brand at ZEBEDEE, the bitcoin/Lightning payment API provider, and ZBD, the bitcoin-based social app + Nostr. In my spare time, I’m also the main organizer of the TABConf conference and the BitDevs LA meetup. Previously, I was chief of staff at Lightning Labs and NOAH, two Bitcoin and Lightning startups. I’m the co-creator of the Snowy app, a user-friendly toolkit aimed at helping beginners navigate the world of Bitcoin and explore the decentralized communication protocol, Nostr. My unwavering excitement lies in the future of the Bitcoin economy and its transformative potential to drive financial inclusion globally.

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