Akamaister on Nostr: I’ve been thinking more about what I’m actually trying to build with Continuum ...

I’ve been thinking more about what I’m actually trying to build with Continuum Memorials & Milestones.

There are already services exploring Bitcoin as a permanent anchor for human memories. One example is EverstoneBTC, which offers memorials—including pet memorials—as well as other important life events.

Their architecture is somewhat different from what I’m doing. For richer memorial content, the basic idea is to store the content outside Bitcoin and put a cryptographic hash into OP_RETURN. Bitcoin then permanently preserves the proof of that content rather than all of the content itself.

I think that’s a perfectly reasonable architecture. Photos, biographies, documents and other larger media obviously aren’t appropriate to put directly into Bitcoin blockspace.

What I’m doing right now with Continuum is deliberately much simpler.

For $21, I create a short human-readable inscription where the actual words themselves are recorded in Bitcoin using OP_RETURN.

When my dog Whiskers passed away earlier this month, for example, I inscribed:

WHISKERS
May 4, 2010 – Sept. 5, 2026
FOREVER LOVED

Those words aren’t represented only by a hash. They’re actually part of the Bitcoin transaction.

Continuum also provides a simple viewer that renders the inscription in a nicer, human-readable form. I’m adding a QR code so the memorial or milestone can easily be shared or potentially connected to something physical—a card, plaque, photograph, etc.

But there’s another part of this that matters to me: the viewer itself shouldn’t become a point of dependency.

The viewer is open source and built with ordinary HTML and JavaScript, with no external software dependencies required to run it. I’ll provide a link allowing someone to download or clone the viewer source and run it locally.

So if mycontinuum.xyz disappeared someday, you wouldn’t have to trust me—or even need my website—to preserve the inscription or view it nicely. The actual inscription remains in Bitcoin, and the software for presenting it can be kept and run independently.

I think there’s value in keeping this first level extremely simple and with a low barrier to entry.

Whiskers’ private cremation cost us about $325. If, while making those arrangements, somebody had offered me the option to permanently record his name, dates and a few words on Bitcoin for another $21, I would have seriously considered it. Given how much he meant to me, I probably would have considered paying considerably more.

Longer term, I want Continuum to support fuller memorials and milestones too: photographs, stories, documents and other media. My current thinking is that richer content could live as Nostr notes and/or blobs on Blossom, with a cryptographic hash anchored in Bitcoin.

That gives me two complementary models:

Simple inscription — the actual short message lives on Bitcoin.

Full memorial or milestone — richer content lives outside Bitcoin, with Bitcoin permanently anchoring its integrity.

And this isn’t only about death. The same system could commemorate a birth, wedding, anniversary, graduation, business founding, achievement or another moment somebody considers worth remembering.

I’m still testing the idea. I have one paying customer so far, and I’m genuinely interested in honest feedback—including criticism.

The question I’m trying to answer isn’t whether everyone likes the idea.

It’s whether there are people who look at an important person, life or moment and think: yes, this is worth permanently remembering.

That’s what I’m building.