Monero is an also-ran cryptocurrency, in the same proof-of-work family as Bitcoin and Etherium.
Monero.town is a Lemmy instance whose main communities are: Monero, privacy, Monero Memes, Meta, and Monero Mining.
Enough has been written on the negative ecological effects of proof-of-work based cryptocurrency that I think it’s not controversial to say it is incompatible with the Solarpunk vision.
Pictured inciting incident is a person advertising the crypto-capitalist Lemmy competitor “Nostr” in the anarchism community.
I don’t personally mind a debate about Nostr, but like most of the content from Monero.town, it doesn’t belong here. More sales pitches from a crypto-currency hype instance are going to be tedious, and crowd out the kind of progressive politics and human interactions we’re looking to nurture here. Reddit’s /r/anarchism had to constantly repel assholes trying to pass off their edgy capitalism as anarchist, Lemmy gives us the unique opportunity to send a strong message and nip this in the bud.
Fediverse sites that have already blocked Monero.town –
reject (10): solarpunk.moe, polyglot.city, freethought.online, icosahedron.website, sunbeam.city, vtuber.house, fruef.social, cutie.city, fuckcars.social, karas.social
followers_only (3): toot.cat, orbsafe.masto.host, partyparrot.social
Image Description
[Image description: Screenshot of an exchange between user Jack@Monero.Town and Five containing the following text
Jack@Monero.Town
Yea, that’s just not how Nostr works. Take a look here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips These are implementation possibilities that the protocol enables. Every client must implement NIP-01. All of the other NIPs are optional so every client that you use (an app for example) has decided to implement different NIPs. You decide which client you use and how Nostr should feel like. Almost no client prioritizes content that received bitcoin.
Your “login mechanism” (private cryptographic key) has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. If you want to send btc to people you have to set that up yourself, manually linking a wallet to your key.
Five
I’m confused why you’re downplaying Nostr’s primary selling point - its close integration with Bitcoin. It’s clearly a cryptocurrency capitalist con job.
Almost no client prioritizes content that received bitcoin.
That’s not what I was saying, but I’m fascinated that you’re implying it’s much worse than I anticipated. Which clients have their priority linked to received bitcoin? ]
You must log in or register to comment.
I had a look at Nostr and it seemed more like a Twitter competitor, which is why I use Lemmy.
Defederation doesn’t make a place disappear from the internet, although exploding-heads is shutting down at the end of the month as apparently they got frustrated with being defederated everywhere (which reveals a lot about the real purpose of that instance).
But what I mean is: do you have any examples of monero.town users causing actual problems here on slrpnk.net or harassing people via DMs?
I remember only one such occasion and when I got in contact with the monero.town admin it was resolved pretty well on their end, so I currently don’t really see an urgent need to defederate them here.
Of course there is the option to defederate as a statement of some sort, and I did so for Facebook’s Threads, but as much as I think cryptocurrencies are poisoning the well, I think that monero.town is not really comparable to Facebook etc.
Isn’t it fair to say that literally all cryptocurrencies in the ‘proof of work’ model are extremely not-solar-punk to the extent that they’re kind of the antithesis of solarpunk?
I say this because under the current model these are hardware systems designed to essentially waste as much energy as possible for no good reason whatsoever
block chain tech could be useful for tracking the status, qualities, dispositions etc of physical or logistical resources in a democratic, anonymous, and decentralized way WITHOUT the equivalent energy expenditure of burning several hectares of old growth forest per hour, but that’s a far cry from what these shitcoins all do.
We shouldn’t defederate. The environmental impact depends on the tech and how you produce power…
Also other than cash, bartering, monero is the only currency that respects privacy.
We need privacy and anonymity in a free society, even a solar punk one.
Solarpunk’s goal is anarco-comunism, there wouldn’t be any money nor a need for it, it would follow gift economy.
I’d argue that like most leftist ideologies it’s about both the ends and the means to get there, so we shouldn’t ignore the utility of privacy in transactions as we work towards that future, but I do agree with what you said. We should try to use currency only as necessary. It’s unproductive to hold one currency on a pedestal for its qualities, it should only be seen for its immediate practical utility while also weighing negative environmental and political impact
I’m not sure I’d call Monero an “also-ran” given that it’s the only cryptocurrency that’s actually regularly used as a currency, rather than just as a speculative asset/Ponzi scheme.
Sure the primary use as a currency is buying drugs, but that’s still use, and plenty of people happen to like drugs.
