Introducing Layer3.press: unstoppable publishing + unstoppable subscription payments

We’re excited to unveil our new project, Layer3.press, at the Bitcoin Global Summit in Nashville. Thank you to the Human Rights Foundation for uniting great people together to chart the path toward a freer future.

In recent years, we've witnessed a troubling surge in censorship across Western nations and major democracies. What once thrived on vibrant, open discourse has been steadily curtailed amid pivotal events like Brexit, Trump, the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and mass migration. We've shifted from broadcasting Baghdad Bob on CNN amid the Second Gulf War to imposing continent wide bans on Russia Today and now, increasingly, silencing our own citizens.

Governments are secretly censoring content and blocking payments

Behind the scenes, governments are pressuring platforms like X and publishing hubs such as Substack to ban journalists and creators based on their political viewpoints. Everyday users in these countries open apps like X or Instagram, oblivious to the fact that followed accounts and content have vanished from view. The censorship is transnational, with Australia censoring Europeans discussing events in America. The censorship reach extends further: authorities can compel internet service providers to block websites, apps, RSS feeds, and even email deliveries. Compounding this, they target payment gateways, instructing credit card processors to halt subscription revenues.

Unstoppable publishing, powered by Nostr

Enter Layer3.press, our steadfast response to safeguard censored voices, ensuring they connect with readers and sustain themselves through paid subscriptions. Layer3.press delivers a sleek, intuitive publishing platform equipped with a robust text editor that integrates images, videos, and audio. It mirrors the polished feel of tools like Substack, Ghost, or WordPress, minus the centralization vulnerability.

What sets Layer3.press apart? Beyond standard distribution to the web, mobile devices, RSS feeds, and email lists, every post cascades across the worldwide Nostr relay ecosystem. Nostr stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays" and is a resilient, decentralized protocol of autonomous servers (relays) that handle message routing and storage. It's inherently permissionless, free from any single point of authority, and secured by cryptographic key pairs for user identities.

When you publish on Layer3.press, your content propagates through a web of global relays, accessible to audiences via their preferred Nostr apps. Decentralization is its superpower: attempting to suppress it requires chasing down relays scattered across the globe like an endless game of whack a mole.

Unstoppable subscription payments, powered by Bitcoin Lightning

But freedom of expression demands fair compensation. That's why Layer3.press integrates a frictionless subscription model powered by Bitcoin's Lightning Network, streamlined with an embedded Coinos.io wallet for effortless setup. For enhanced anonymity, subscribers can layer Cashu atop Lightning, concealing payer wallet addresses to shield subscribers from scrutiny. And for broader accessibility, fiat credit card options are baked in, with real time conversions between traditional currencies and Bitcoin.

Paid subscribers receive articles through encrypted Nostr direct messages delivered securely via any compatible client, each one encrypted with the subscriber's public key and signed by the creator's signature. Truly unstoppable delivery and monetization! Paid subscribers can also receive their articles via email and read the full articles via a web paywall if those channels are not blocked.

Create AI-powered news hubs

Complementing Layer3.press, we're excited to also launch Layer3.news: a Nostr-powered news hub to easily read Nostr articles and RSS articles from across the web. We use AI to group similar articles together into stories and also use AI to show the consensus and differences in opinion across perspectives. We go global, incorporating translations and insights from outlets in China, Israel, Russia, and beyond to provide a summary of what everyone is saying about a story. Soon, you will also be able to create your own news hubs with AI-powered story grouping and perspectives by providing specific RSS feeds and Nostr accounts.

It’s easy to get started

Onboarding is super easy, even if you're already established elsewhere. Our sync feature automatically imports fresh articles from your current setup and mirrors them to Nostr. This feature was tuned in collaboration with The Signal, the non-hyperbolic current events publication we were lucky to connect with at the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Our small team is proud to have shipped an unstoppable all-in-one publishing system. But we’re not done! We are developing open source editions of both the publisher and reader apps, runnable entirely on your own computer. So even if Layer3.press gets blocked from your country, you are still publishing and earning.

Become unstoppable today at Layer.press. Freedom to publish, freedom to earn!