Soon! is having a busy week and its next on the todo list!

Monetization Musings: #Zaps , V4V, and the Pay-to-Play Pivot. Sustainability is the bee’s knees, and 2025 was our lab for micro-strategies: - Zap Goals: Timed targets under 100,000 sats/month, embedded site-wide. Hit ‘em, or the server’s off—keeps us lean and accountable. - Donor Badges: Big zappers get flair. Early supporters, you’re the real MVPs and are awarded rare Nostr badges. - Educational Content: Knowledge drops to empower users—because informed bees build stronger hives. - Pay-to-Play (Planned for Q1 2026): Recording and live-streaming to external sites. Some Hivetalk users log 10+ hours daily (love y’all!), but the economics need to work. Observations from the #Nostr projects? Subscriptions are a hard sell, V4V’s hit-or-miss (audience engagement is key), and growth might slow in 2026. Enter “Pay to Play”—could it be the direct, engaging path to better outcomes? We’re experimenting, because value flows where engagement hums. Stay tuned for updates.

you underestimate by about 10 million miles but that's okay, fren, or bot. 😆

Give us a day so that can set up a geyser alternative. we have closed our geyser, noted for its issues but need to build out our native one. The Hivetalk Team appreciates you much! cc:

Here’s the raw truth: HiveTalk is 100% bootstrapped. The challenge? Can a self-sovereign project scale on Nostr? Many said No, no, go get a grant. But – the numbers and time engaged in the market show that we’re making it work. Vanilla’s 18-month run and Honey’s beta launch prove bootstrapping *is* possible. It was not an easy decision, but we decided to align Hivetalk with the end users of our project. #Nostr users are who we are building for. We felt supported from the beginning and that was all the magic we needed to know that we could pull this off as a community funded project with passionate volunteers. Shout out to the core team - @ , @ ; y’all are legends! We’ve had many people come and go from the project, which is fairly normal for open source, and we are grateful for what each one has brought and shared with in the form of advice, feedback and testing. It’s humbling, exhilarating, and a testament to community zaps keeping the lights on ⚡

It already happened a long time ago. The masses are just beginning to wake up 😇

Hivetalk Mantra: Code Quality Comes First Thanks to awesome new #AI based tools we were able to rapidly accelerate our build cycles, experiment more and turn around our code releases faster, while building the project in our free time. A little over a year ago, churning out 100,000+ lines of code at this speed would have been unthinkable! We put a lot of work in grinding out the new version, making a lot of revisions and trial and error along the way. While velocity matters, shipping responsibly matters more. We invested heavily in DDoS relay hardening, and enforcing NIP-42 authentication on our relay, two critical infrastructure layers that matter but don’t show up as user facing visible work. We also tackled tech debt cleanup—the unsexy but essential work that prevents yesterday’s shortcuts from becoming tomorrow’s bottlenecks. Check out our progress in this beautiful Hivetalk Honey Build animation. https://youtu.be/UYAZvWG1KlA

Thanks for sharing Chief :) May we ask: do you usually use Vanilla or Honey?

Hopefully it’s easy for non nostr users for open rooms (even permanent ones) Soon private rooms will also be as easy to use too :)

Hivetalk users, we need your opinion / feedback. Do you prefer using Vanilla even though it's only the videoconferencing, it can't scale and has worse fidelity? Or do you prefer the posibility of scale that Honey offers and all the #nostr tools that are enabled? #asknostr

Glad to hear!!

Thanks to your constant support, We keep the lights on and #Hivetalk free :) Cheers!

Community Buzz: Small Businesses and Very Busy Bees If there’s one word for our user base this past 2025, it’s *vibrant*. We’ve watched small businesses and solopreneurs turn HiveTalk into their secret weapon for zap-powered transactions and global reach. Take @ , the English teacher zapping his way through lessons for Russian students—frictionless peer to peer lightning payments, no banks involved. Or @ , who hosted weekly “Shakespeare-vibe” coding sessions to demystify #AI tools for the community. These aren’t outliers; they’re the norm in our hive. Check out this talk from Nostr Valley about Nostr for Content Creators and see how Hivetalk plays a role! https://youtu.be/74wJ3NeKC3E

What is Honey Hivetalk? The game-changer we dropped in October 2025 as an early-stage working product. Built from the ground up with client and relay support, it scales effortlessly to thousands of users. We’re added more native #Nostr features, better handling for spotty internet in remote areas, and seamless integration for massive events. Honey isn’t just bigger—it’s smarter, turning video calls into zap-fueled social experiences. By year’s end, Honey’s beta has been live for three solid months, proving its mettle in real-world chaos. We’ve hosted everything from yoga flows to vibe coding meetups, and the feedback? It’s sweet as... well, you know.

What is Vanilla Hivetalk? Our OG client-only setup, capped at 100 participants for cozy, intimate gatherings. Released in early 2024 as a proof-of-concept, it’s now been humming along for a full 20 months as of January. Perfect for quick team huddles or small #Nostr meetups, it’s the reliable workhorse that’s kept our community buzzing without a hitch. You can check it out at: https://vanilla.hivetalk.org/active

Hivetalk and Nostrnests are on a different standard its 30312, since they are not streaming events, they are interactive media rooms. interesting idea you have. will discuss with our team

Thanks!