Right now, communities still live on our own DB layer. Part of that is product-related. I’m still shaping moderation, discovery, ranking, and overall community UX based on real usage. I’d rather map that carefully onto emerging standards than rush it and end up with a worse experience.

I’ve experimented with these NIPs already, but in practice it didn’t feel stable or smooth enough yet to build the core of the product on top of. The other part is technical. Relay support for these kinds of community/group flows is still uneven, and public infrastructure just isn’t reliable enough yet for me to make that the foundation of the product.

Once these NIPs are more mature, or once I can properly support this through my own relays and infrastructure, I absolutely want to move the community layer in that direction.

Substr is still early and I’m still figuring out core decisions around architecture, UX, moderation, and infrastructure in real time. Opening the code too early would create pressure to support contributors, explain unfinished decisions, and maintain a level of polish that the product itself hasn’t reached yet.

There’s also a more human side to it. This is still an early, personal project, and I’m not at the point where I feel ready to fully detach from it. 😂

The project will be open in the future, but right now my focus is getting the product and infrastructure to a place where I actually feel confident standing behind