Introducing Stream Road! 🐪
I think of Stream Road as a bridge: Nostr live streaming that’s reliable enough to use, friendly enough to send normies to, and useful even if your stream starts somewhere else.
I got excited about Nostr live streaming because the basic idea is incredible: go live, talk to people, get zapped directly.
After using it for Scardust and Noa’s streams, and again while broadcasting our V4V festival from Belgrade, I kept finding little gaps between that idea and the experience I actually wanted to use. So over the last few months I decided to build it.
Stream Road is a frontend, UX and service built around Kieran’s excellent Zap Stream Core, with a lot of work put into making streams, chat and metadata behave consistently across Nostr clients, while making the whole thing less confusing for people who don’t already understand Nostr, Lightning, zaps etc..
There are some exciting additions too, like Zap Battle, where viewers zap between two choices and financially incentivise streamers to make questionable decisions.
And there’s one bigger experiment: card zaps.
Plenty of creators can’t receive Super Chats or similar support on the big platforms. Zaps already give them another way, but most normal audiences don’t have bitcoin or a Lightning wallet and probably aren’t going to stop watching a stream to figure it out.
So approved Stream Road streamers can receive support “by card” through PayPal, while Stream Road sends them a real Bitcoin Lightning zap and handles the exchange and bureaucracy behind it.
You don’t have to move your stream. If you’re already live through another Nostr server, sign in with the same Nostr account and your stream should appear in your Stream Road dashboard automatically. Permissioned streamers can also embed a YouTube livestream.
The card part is permissioned to prevent abuse, but Stream Road keeps pointing people towards the better option underneath it: Nostr and sats, directly, cheaper, freer and without asking anyone’s permission.
It’s early, and I’m sure we’ll break things. But it exists now. :)
Come try it and join the party!
https://streamroad.moneyPlease Follow
@Stream Road for WOT thanks!
And a big thank you to the wonderful people who helped me along the way:
@Kieran @Noa Gruman @Avi Burra @OpenMike @Derek Ross @Amplified Tunes @Aaron of Essex @Richard Greaser @Scardust Official @bitchamler @NoGood ✌️ & Anons ♥️
