So I read about a new way of doing streaming, using a system that integrates with nostr and hence Lightning and Bitcoin.

The service is located at zap.stream and provides a way for you to stream live, using a typical OBS stream or similar.

What is different is that everything is integrated with Nostr, so you have to use a Nostr key to login and to sign all your actions such as creating a stream or even chatting.

As I already have a GetAlby profile set up with Nostry that wasn’t difficult at all. As soon as I asked to Login on the website it just prompted Alby and I approved it there and I’m done.

Somehow it picked up all my config including my profile thumbnail and profile text, I presume from Nostr.

I’m still finding Nostr quite opaque but this part worked fine.

What did surprise me is that broadcasting on zap.stream costs me money, it is really cheap but still. To make it easier the new account was preloaded with 1,000 sats, and at 21 sats a minute to broadcast that lasts about an hour.

Adding the stream server and stream key into OBS was easy, I am actually using the Lovense Streamaster which has the OBS multi-streaming bundled in, so I could add the server and stream key and go ahead in one click.

The stream came out fast and smooth and very clear, so no excessive compression anywhere. I suspect zap.stream is just using the actual stream I’m sending. So that is costing them some bandwidth costs, hence the fee I suppose.

When I hit the “Stream” button I had some choices like title, subject and so on. There are options to add “Goals” and a tick box for NSFW so they know that camgirls are going to try it.

As I’m normally nude in the office I turned on the NSFW box, and I believe that excluded me from the list of live streams on the home page. Understandable but it does mean discoverability is a problem for camgirls.

Therefore I posted about it on Nostr, Reddit and X.

When finished I presume it will be a recording, or perhaps not? I’ll find out in time as I’m still streaming as I type this.

A “viewers” counter on the screen let me know that people did watch my stream, at least I think they did, but just one single person replied in chat to anything I said.

I guess that means most people don’t have an account set up, or does it cost people to chat and I didn’t know?

As a first experiment, it worked great technically and wasn’t hard to do, but as a camgirl broadcasting platform, it didn’t work due to not enough viewers. That’s the usual problem with a new site of course, and as they are not targeting NSFW streaming I’m not sure they would ever have enough viewers for me.

Is this the future for bitcoin camgirls? Using your own technology to cut out the middle man, and take (almost) all the earnings directly into your own wallet?

It sounds like a great idea, but for the moment therefore it is an interesting but niche streaming platform.

Have you tried it out? Let me know in the comments!