# 149 – The Bat Signal Virus: Ridestr and Drivestr with Stirling Forge

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/plebchain-radio-6414268/149-the-bat-signal-virus-ridestr-and-drivestr-with-stirling-forge
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/plebchain-radio-6414268/149-the-bat-signal-virus-ridestr-and-drivestr-with-stirling-forge.md
Podcast: [Plebchain Radio](https://stenobird.com/podcast/plebchain-radio-6414268)
Published: 2026-02-06T06:00:28+00:00
Episode link: https://feeds.fountain.fm/xRzQd3loNa0ItnvWXcOz/items/ykQVQa6pRbXI7AFNgF4m/files/AUDIO---DEFAULT---02d5384d-6c57-4e38-acec-19203f5b5d98.mp3
Audio file: https://feeds.fountain.fm/xRzQd3loNa0ItnvWXcOz/items/ykQVQa6pRbXI7AFNgF4m/files/AUDIO---DEFAULT---02d5384d-6c57-4e38-acec-19203f5b5d98.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/plebchain-radio-6414268/episodes/149-the-bat-signal-virus-ridestr-and-drivestr-with-stirling-forge
Duration seconds: 6229

## Resource

In this episode, Avi talks with Stirling Forge about building a decentralized rideshare alternative on Nostr, sparked by the brutal economics of driving for Uber and Lyft today. Stirling shares his background: former weather forecaster turned rideshare driver who stacked sats hard when payouts were better, then watched driver take-home shrink dramatically in recent years (with platforms extracting a much bigger share). From there, the episode dives into his open-source project: Ridestr (rider) and Drivestr (driver), a peer-to-peer rideshare flow that uses Nostr as the communication layer, does routing and fare calculation locally on-device, and aims to keep privacy tighter (drivers share approximate location; riders avoid broadcasting location by default). A big chunk is the “how does this not die to network effects?” question, and Stirling’s answer is the episode’s secret sauce: Road Flare , a “bat-signal” mode for repeat rides. Riders scan a driver QR once, save them to a favorites list, and later ping their personal micro-network of trusted drivers first, reducing signup friction and sidestepping the classic chicken-and-egg problem. Links Stirling on nostr Ridestr Video 1 | Ridestr Video 2 Ridestr GitHub page Avi's New Book – July 18 Finding Home Episode 3 – Paraguay [IndeeHub Code: PIONEER21 ] Avi's First Book – 24 (2nd Edition)

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