The Damus app uses Nostr, which uses a decentralized relay to distribute encrypted messages end-to-end, and has a strong backer in Jack Dorsey.
Damus, known as the network-based “Twitter Killer,” has been accepted into Apple’s App Store.
Team Damus confirmed the acceptance to their 11,500 Twitter followers on Jan. 31, in what they claim is at least three rejections from the Big Tech player.
Shortly after, Twitter co-founder and Nostr contributor Jack Dorsey shared the news with his 6.5 million followers, with the entrepreneur dubbing it a “milestone” moment for open source protocols:
The app calls itself a “social network you monitor”, and is a messaging service built on Nostr – a web portal that allows specialized end-to-end messages to be sent in, and other things.
It wants to be social media with uncensored content. It also has integrated payments via Bitcoin
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Layer 2 Lightning Network, according to a Jan. 27 Protos press release.
No servers are connected to the network. Instead, Nostr uses a decentralized relay to transmit messages.
Nostr developers are also focused on using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network to prevent distributed attacks from using vulnerabilities on the Damus app.
There were 44 different software developers who contributed to the code for the Damus web application, according to the team’s GitHub page.
Cool way to get bitcoin addresses: #nostr dms encrypted. pic.twitter.com/lMlnIhf3fg
— William Casarin ⚡️ (@jb55) January 29, 2023
Getting Damus on the Apple App Store didn’t come without its challenges.
Damus’ Twitter page reported that it took at least three unsuccessful attempts before he was finally accepted:
One of Nostr’s top developers, William Casarin, also expressed some frustration on his own Twitter account, stating that it would be a “shame” if Apple users couldn’t use Nostr they in the self.
Related: An Internal Review of the Ethical and Technical Considerations of Cryptographic Databases
While the exact relationship between Dorsey and Nostr is unknown, the billionaire entrepreneur sent over 14 BTC — worth about $250,000 at the time — in mid-December to fund Nostr supporting the development team.
While the news seems to have raised awareness of the software in the Bitcoin community, other prominent figures have also tested the Damus software.
These include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, former employee and US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, and crypto supporter US Senator Cynthia Lummis.
As of this writing, the Damus web application is experiencing problems. A warning message on the front page of the site reads:
“The Damus Web is activated because someone is trying to poke holes in the browser to steal private keys. I would not recommend using a web client at this time. Damus iOS is not affected.”
