Plebchain Radio

<p>In this episode, Avi talks with Stirling Forge about building a decentralized rideshare alternative on Nostr, sparked by the brutal economics of driving for Uber and Lyft today.</p> <p>Stirling shares his background: former weather forecaster turned rideshare driver who stacked sats hard when payouts were better, then watched driver take-home shrink dramatically in recent years (with platforms extracting a much bigger share).</p> <p>From there, the episode dives into his open-source project: <strong>Ridestr</strong> (rider) and <strong>Drivestr</strong> (driver), a peer-to-peer rideshare flow that uses Nostr as the communication layer, does routing and fare calculation locally on-device, and aims to keep privacy tighter (drivers share approximate location; riders avoid broadcasting location by default).</p> <p>A big chunk is the “how does this not die to network effects?” question, and Stirling’s answer is the episode’s secret sauce: <strong>Road Flare</strong>, a “bat-signal” mode for repeat rides. Riders scan a driver QR once, save them to a favorites list, and later ping their personal micro-network of trusted drivers first, reducing signup friction and sidestepping the classic chicken-and-egg problem.</p> <p><strong>Links</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://primal.net/stirling">Stirling on nostr</a></li> <li><a href="https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqs0e3ng8fxcwyxf54g5vgpadvx5r39q7ln85j8czshmxl664r4sfqcpd0phd">Ridestr Video 1</a> | <a href="https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsqgklt7gv03q5s6emmau8cmwq4wax54ja9u5ke38che8aqtupdm4gemn9dg">Ridestr Video 2</a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/variablefate/ridestr">Ridestr GitHub page</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/July-18-Avi-Burra/dp/B0G12PPTCM">Avi's New Book – July 18</a></li> <li><a href="https://indeehub.studio/film/finding-home/season/1/episode/3">Finding Home Episode 3 – Paraguay</a> [IndeeHub Code: <strong>PIONEER21</strong> ]</li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr*1*1?crid=27RW9P8JQ4YMV&keywords=avi+burra+24&qid=1700327391&sprefix=avi+burra+24%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1%5D(https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr11?crid=27RW9P8JQ4YMV&keywords=avi+burra+24&qid=1700327391&sprefix=avi+burra+24%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1">Avi's First Book – 24 (2nd Edition)</a></li> </ul>

<p>Jim Costello joins Avi for Episode 4 of Sunday Brunch. The conversation pinballs from David Lynch deep cuts and the musical fingerprints of Angelo Badalamenti into how Costello’s Phantom Power Media helps independent artists navigate the Bitcoin and podcasting music ecosystem, inspired by daughter Ainsley Costello’s breakout via Wavlake and the broader “open mic / sats flowing” live-scene energy.</p> <p>Big themes: the <em>messy-middle</em> of onboarding (don’t lead with “Bitcoin,” keep it human, meet artists where they are), the very real discovery problem (duplicate feeds, fragmented identifiers), and the rising tide of AI-generated slop and chart-gaming, with a hopeful counterspell: web-of-trust curation and simpler, more elegant one-click tooling.</p> <p>Executive Producer (top booster from last episode): <a href="https://primal.net/Tonewrecker">ToneWrecker</a></p> <p><strong>Links</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://fountain.fm/playlist/sfIUEvOHs9PKzR7CT6jO">Jim's Playlist Today</a></li> <li><a href="https://fountain.fm/playlist/sJZeBzzt4pvKCvEC6G8A">Jim's Solo Piano Works</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.phantompowermusic.io/">Phantom Power Media</a></li> </ul>

<p>In this episode of Plebchain Radio, Avi sits down with Coach Carbon for a wide-ranging conversation that treats football as a laboratory for truth: you can talk your way through many professions, but you can’t talk your way into elite performance. The pitch keeps receipts.</p> <p>They dig into the idea of “proof of workout” and why athletic consistency is the purest anti-fiat mechanism: no bailouts, no narrative dressing, no marketing varnish. Just reps, recovery, and results. From there, the discussion moves into building a culture where players and creators can be rewarded directly, without gatekeepers, ads, or permission slips, using value-for-value mechanics.</p> <p>Coach Carbon shares the story behind his clothing line: wearable statements timestamped to the chain via block heights, turning apparel into both message and breadcrumb trail. Even better, the “spotted in the wild” concept flips merch into an onboarding funnel, rewarding people in sats when they post proof they’re wearing it, making education part of the exchange.</p> <p>The conversation also sketches a near-future vision for football broadcasts where fans can stream sats to players in real time based on performance, with experiments already hinting at what’s possible: QR codes per player and live sats streaming during a match.</p> <p><strong>Links</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://coachcarbon.life/">Coach Carbon Life</a></li> <li><a href="https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqs9yjd3rhlejmxexzrqhrx4pjwyhjy84z60x3pf07hxntswj0s877cp4v7f7">Coach on nostr</a></li> <li><a href="https://x.com/JosiasCarbon">Coach on X</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/July-18-Avi-Burra/dp/B0G12PPTCM">Avi's New Book – July 18</a></li> <li><a href="https://indeehub.studio/film/finding-home/season/1/episode/3">Finding Home Episode 3 – Paraguay</a> [IndeeHub Code: <strong>PIONEER21</strong> ]</li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr*1*1?crid=27RW9P8JQ4YMV&keywords=avi+burra+24&qid=1700327391&sprefix=avi+burra+24%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1%5D(https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr11?crid=27RW9P8JQ4YMV&keywords=avi+burra+24&qid=1700327391&sprefix=avi+burra+24%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1">Avi's First Book – 24 (2nd Edition)</a></li> </ul>

<p>In Episode 2 of <strong>Say WoT?</strong>, Avi sits down with <strong>Gzuuus</strong> to “debug the intersection of AI and the Web of Trust,” tracing his build path through <strong>DVMCP</strong>, <strong>ContextVM</strong>, and his latest project, <strong>Relatr</strong>, with the goal of engineering machine intelligence that amplifies human reputation instead of harvesting it.</p> <p>Gzuuus explains why <strong>ContextVM</strong> evolved from an earlier “kitchen sink” approach into a cleaner design that lives at the <strong>transport layer</strong>, using Nostr keys for authentication/authorization, and leaning into <strong>ephemeral events</strong> plus a <strong>single kind</strong> for communications to keep things minimal and composable.</p> <p>Then the conversation drops into <strong>Relatr</strong>: a fully open-source, self-hostable Web-of-Trust service designed to run “anywhere” (even on a Raspberry Pi), with real-world performance on a cheap VPS and fast search response times. Relatr supports <strong>two complementary interfaces</strong>: ContextVM’s <strong>request/response</strong> pattern (needed for things like search) and <strong>NIP-85</strong> <strong>Trusted Assertions</strong> (a more native produce/consume model that’s easier for clients to integrate).</p> <p>On scoring, Gzuuus describes a <strong>tunable weighted formula</strong> that outputs a float from 0 to 1, anchored by <strong>social graph distance</strong> (hops) mapped through a <strong>decay function</strong>, with weights configurable by anyone running an instance. Finally, they explore practical client UX (like Amethyst consuming trusted assertions for spam mitigation) and the broader interoperability headaches haunting secure messaging, including MLS complexity and the risk of siloed implementations.</p> <p><strong>Links</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://contextvm.org">ContextVM</a></li> <li><a href="https://relatr.xyz">Relatr</a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gzuuus">Gzuus Github</a> | <a href="https://github.com/contextvm">ContextVM Github</a></li> <li><a href="https://jumble.social/notes/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqs9eep0ll6hurjkl3sc2fewgses07mjfwxsdcu3at2m8fd0xrdz3qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tcqz4k425rx0fhhqjt60g64j4jy09a8qm2r89psja8n46">Enemies of Nostr Article</a></li> </ul>

<p>Avi and guest OpenMike riff on the weird gap between “real-world popularity” and how few followers some incredible musicians have on Nostr, then use that as a springboard into what it looks like to actually <em>build</em> culture: paying creators directly, making venues more resilient, and turning community into infrastructure.</p> <p>The conversation detours into <strong>Tunestr</strong> and OpenMike’s search for a true “home base” venue, landing on <strong>Maggie Mae’s on 6th Street in Austin</strong>, right across from Rogan’s Comedy Club, as a potential flagship location to revitalize a legendary (and struggling) music corridor with Bitcoin/Nostr-native tooling.</p> <p>Near the end, they preview a <strong>Value-for-Value music fest in Belgrade</strong> (week after BTC Prague), with a floating-club venue on the Danube called <strong>Zappa</strong>, plus a mix of independent and bigger acts.</p> <p>Executive Producer (top booster from last episode): <a href="https://primal.net/rodpalmer">Rod Palmer</a></p> <p>Find today's artists on nostr:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqsrkz0zx4jn3pl56ltdhkr4gcavxpf0x7x872ehw0mjruuscr7dzcq242fz9">Doomtree (Lazerbeak)</a></li> <li><a href="https://primal.net/TheoKatzman">Theo Katzman</a></li> <li><a href="https://primal.net/means">Sam Means</a></li> <li><a href="https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqstvse8q9amp6pu9n2p4shqtjw58qnry2jx5mr6cq9enth4njc07ucrdwhhn">Henry Invisible</a></li> <li><a href="https://primal.net/soozanto">Suzanne Santo</a></li> </ul>