Most nerds I know wouldn't see obstacles to try out either Mastodon nor NOSTR because they'd be naturally curious about them.
Mastodon works as intended and grows reasonably well. NOSTR is quite frankly one of the most relevant innovations on open source forum/communities from the past two decades.
Both serve similar purposes (build online communities) but the while Mastodon uses a traditional server with a federation on top, NOSTR uses the concept of relay.
In essence, your texts never belong to the owner of a server, you send them to any of a thousand volunteer maintained relays and your audience reads them from there. Your identity remains the same, anyone can verify the authenticity of your texts and this is quite a feature on a time that digital censorship increases.
This comment single handedly caused me to sink 4 hours yesterday into exploring nostr and getting lost in it. I agree with your two decade sentiment, great technology.
Mastodon works as intended and grows reasonably well. NOSTR is quite frankly one of the most relevant innovations on open source forum/communities from the past two decades.
Both serve similar purposes (build online communities) but the while Mastodon uses a traditional server with a federation on top, NOSTR uses the concept of relay.
In essence, your texts never belong to the owner of a server, you send them to any of a thousand volunteer maintained relays and your audience reads them from there. Your identity remains the same, anyone can verify the authenticity of your texts and this is quite a feature on a time that digital censorship increases.