Armada: Encrypted, Open-Source, Discord Alternative (Built on Nostr)

113 pointsposted 11 hours ago
by long____cat
(soapbox.pub)

8 Comments

adrianwaj

2 hours ago

"Chat apps belong to whoever runs the servers. Armada is spread across free public servers." https://armada.buzz/

The key is to make the server a browser tab. Make it possible for normies to run a server. I suppose CORS would be the problem. Would a browser extension work?

"ZeroNet and KAD (distributed hash tables) ...every member of the network donates a certain amount of storage and bandwidth (adjustable at will) without being able to choose which specific scrap of content to host...The biggest immediate problem, however, is that there isn't a single, easily hostable piece of software that includes everything Nostr is ready to do now."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429833

coldblues

4 hours ago

Horribly vibe-coded like most of the Nostr projects out there. There is no sign of quality or technical interest in this project. There is also this tendency to build black boxes that do not show the innards of the protocol for reasons of "user-friendliness". The project does exactly this, to its detriment. Just like Mastodon and Matrix, most people will be centralized on the few Nostr relays set by default.

ravenbitcoin

2 hours ago

I thought it was masterfully vibe coded. As for centralization, you know you can change the relays that your community uses. You can even run your own.

grommz

3 hours ago

Very nice. You should consider rotating the label of a community periodically, not just triggered by rekey events. Makes it impossible or at least very hard for relay operators to delete the entire community by label.

mongrelion

5 hours ago

Coincidentally I am looking for self-hosted alternatives to Discord for a local community where I live. I have been considering Matrix (one of the Rust implementations) + Element, so I wonder what makes this a better or worse alternative, but there seems to exist no comparison table/chart.

robotmay

4 hours ago

Honestly I'll take pretty much anything over Matrix. I've tried to get it set up but it just feels unfocused. Too many server variations; none of which are at parity with the complex default stack, and too many clients; none of which I particularly liked. To me Matrix is kinda like Wayland in that early design decisions have made it awkward for how people want to use it in the modern day (in Wayland's example, the absolute shitshow of getting push-to-talk to work in apps running within it).

I'll have to try out Armada to see how it compares, as I'm always suspicious of the claims of decentralised software as they often end up having some unique downsides.

nunobrito

5 hours ago

This is a great tool, really deserves more recognition that currently has.

Discord tries to fool with the concept of "servers" which really aren't, Armada is indeed giving full control where data goes and even on public NOSTR servers is kept safe/private beyond doubt.