What is Nostr? Everything you need to know about this protocol dedicated to decentralized social networks
This article is a translation of an article from Cryptoast.fr, which you can find here.
Why do we need censorship-resistant social networks?
The main reason Bitcoin has not yet been widely adopted is that most people around the world do not fully grasp the importance of having a censorship-resistant store of value.
Indeed, most people, particularly in Western countries, have never truly faced targeted censorship of their monetary exchanges. Thus, even when Bitcoin is presented as a scarce asset that preserves its value over time, people unfamiliar with BTC often reply that gold or stocks already serve that function.
Yet Bitcoin’s real added value lies in its decentralization and censorship resistance before the scarcity of its BTC currency.
Moreover, the direction taken by Western policies, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Europe, tends towards an environment of overcontrol and increased censorship, targeting certain people based on the opinions they express, the people they associate with, or the activities they engage in.
Here are a few examples of freedom-restricting measures taken by governments that present themselves as democracies:
- Julian Assange: Prosecuted for revealing state secrets via WikiLeaks;
- Edward Snowden: Forced into exile after exposing mass surveillance programs in the United States and the United Kingdom;
- Canadian truckers’ protest: Crackdown on protests against COVID-19 measures;
- Chat control: European project to surveil private communications;
- Restrictions during the COVID crisis: Strict measures limiting individual freedoms;
- Arrest of Tornado Cash developers: Incarcerated for creating a privacy tool on the Ethereum blockchain;
- Arrest of Samourai Wallet developers: Incarcerated for creating a privacy tool on the Bitcoin blockchain;
- Arrest of the founder of Telegram: Oppression for creating a secure messaging service;
- Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC): Presented by some central bankers as a tool of control;
- Gradual elimination of cash: Reduction of transaction anonymity by relying exclusively on third parties (banks, Visa, Mastercard, etc.).
This list is not meant to frighten you, but to make you aware that censorship, often denounced in history classes with regard to the USSR or in traditional media when discussing the Chinese regime, also exists in the West and seems to be intensifying over time.
Even if you think you have nothing to hide and are convinced that the current government will not censor you, keep in mind that the next government could use the tools already in place, implemented in the name of protecting citizens, to censor you.
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Thus, the world has a crucial need for communications infrastructure that is both censorship-resistant and privacy-preserving.
On the one hand, this would protect users from abuses by Big Tech, whose main activity is to sell your attention to brands and collect your data, preventing them from reselling it without your consent.
On the other hand, it would prevent a government or company from using this information against you, thereby compromising your freedom of expression or harming your personal dignity.
In 2021, journalist Damien Bancal revealed that the personal data of 39 million French people, including first names, last names, postal addresses, and phone numbers, were for sale on the dark web. This information is there due to data leaks from the applications we use daily, including those run by government institutions.
For all these reasons, a non-censorable monetary system like Bitcoin is becoming indispensable for our society. The same goes for a secure system for expression, message exchange, and information sharing, and it is in this context that the Nostr protocol emerges.
How does Nostr work, the protocol that fulfills the Web3 dream?
Several protocols enabling the creation of blockchain-based, supposedly decentralized social networks have existed for several years, such as Lens Protocol, Farcaster, and Friend.tech.
While these are well-intentioned, these protocols and social networks ultimately depend on the blockchain they run on, their adoption, and their ability to scale.
In short, whether it’s Ethereum or its layer 2s, these networks are already largely subject to censorship, like Ethereum, where nearly 50% of blocks comply with the standards of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a U.S. agency that imposes economic and trade sanctions aligned with U.S. foreign policy objectives.
Even using Bitcoin, the most censorship-resistant blockchain, would not be relevant to support a social network due to its lack of scalability.
How does the Nostr protocol work?
Nostr, short for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays,” is a protocol that, as its name suggests, allows notes and various content to be transmitted via a network of relays.
The term “Notes” refers to any type of written message, similar to what you might find on networks like X (formerly Twitter). As for “Other Stuff,” this broad expression reflects the protocol’s great flexibility.
Indeed, thanks to a system of relays and clients, which we describe in more detail later in this article, there are virtually no limits to the types of content that can be shared on Nostr.
“Relays” play a key role in making the network decentralized and censorship-resistant. With Nostr, each user can create their own relay to store their own data, that of their close contacts, or that of other users. The network’s decentralization and scalability therefore depend on the number and quality of these relays.
Nostr presents itself as an easy-to-use protocol that returns control of data to its users. Notes are digitally signed, timestamped, and verified by public keys, thus guaranteeing their authenticity.
In addition to offering data sovereignty to its users, the Nostr community is particularly aware of the influence of dominant social networks, which exploit our attention to display ads and collect our data for commercial purposes.
Thus, although some Nostr clients (social networks built on the protocol) could also exploit our data, users are free to choose whether to use them or not, which makes these clients far more respectful of our privacy than popular social networks, and consequently less attractive to advertisers.
Nostr represents the real Web3
At the dawn of the Internet, the first version of the Web essentially allowed users to read information published by site creators.
With the arrival of blogs and then social networks, the Internet evolved into what we now call Web2, allowing users to read, but also write and publish content.
The advent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies spurred enthusiasm around “blockchain technology,” presented as a revolution offering users not only the ability to read and write, but also to own their data and digital assets thanks to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), thus forming what we call Web3.
However, the reality on the ground, the blockchain trilemma, and the progressive centralization of Ethereum, and the even greater centralization of alternative networks like Polygon or Solana, have sapped momentum from the true Web3 narrative that championed decentralization.
By distancing itself from “blockchain technology,” Nostr seeks to go beyond the Web3 dream and emphasizes that a blockchain is merely a data structure.
Rather than deluding itself by integrating a cryptocurrency with dubious tokenomics, Nostr entrusts the network’s sovereignty and decentralization to its users, using cryptography in an ingenious way, enabling it to achieve what Web3 had always hoped to become.
Nostr relays
Nostr is simply a protocol, i.e., a set of rules enabling messages to be exchanged on the Internet in a structured way, relying on relays.
These relays, deployed by Nostr users, function like servers, receiving, storing, and broadcasting messages to other connected clients. Since Nostr is decentralized, each client can connect to multiple relays to minimize the risk of data loss.
If all the relays a user is connected to become inaccessible, their messages can no longer be retrieved. That’s why it’s important to connect to several relays, or even run your own, to ensure better availability and stronger resistance to censorship.
Nostr clients
Nostr clients are the applications that allow users to interact with the Nostr protocol. They can take the form of web, mobile, or desktop apps. Their role is to retrieve data from relays and send new messages so they are distributed across those relays.
Each Nostr client offers a different experience. Among the best-known, some imitate the X social network, such as:
- Primal, available on all devices;
- Iris and Snort, available on web browsers;
- Damus and Nostur, available on iOS;
- Amethyst and Iris, available on Android.
However, many other clients offer different experiences:
- Habla and Highlighter, dedicated to longer formats like the Medium social network;
- Zap Stream, dedicated to live broadcasts similar to Twitch;
- Tunestr, dedicated to live music;
- Fountain, dedicated to podcast distribution, including those from Cryptoast;
- And Wavelake, dedicated to music streaming like Spotify.
Thus, a user can switch clients or even use several simultaneously. As long as these clients connect to the same relays, their activity will remain visible.
You should imagine each Nostr client as a window giving access to the data circulating on the network. Each window points in the same direction, but not all show the same information, nor present it in the same way.
Here’s the same post seen by two different clients: the text, image, and account that published it are identical, as is the publication time, but the way this information is displayed varies by client.
Nostr events
In Nostr, events are objects that structure exchanges on the network. Each event is associated with a specific type that determines its function.
For example, type 1 corresponds to a text note, similar to a tweet on X, while type 0 concerns metadata such as a user’s name or profile photo. Each event contains information like a cryptographic signature that guarantees its authenticity.
Events are transmitted and stored by relays, which can handle each type of event differently. For example, they can keep multiple type 1 events while allowing the updating of type 0 events.
This architecture allows events to be used for various use cases, and new event types can be created via sub-protocols, ensuring interoperability and compatibility with the many existing clients.
NIPs
Similar to the Bitcoin Lightning Improvement Proposals (bLIP) for the Lightning Network, Nostr Implementation Proposals (NIPs) are proposals made by users to add features and improve the Nostr protocol.
Instead of each developer creating their own solution, NIPs also coordinate the adoption of common standards, thus facilitating information compatibility between Nostr clients. Anyone can propose or comment on a NIP, ensuring that Nostr’s evolution remains collaborative and decentralized.
Keys
Every Nostr account is based on a public/private key pair, similar to Bitcoin wallets.
The public key, which begins with “npub1,” serves as the identifier visible to all. The private key, beginning with “nsec1,” acts as a secure password, similar to the seed phrase of cryptocurrency wallets.
Unlike a password, a private key cannot be reset if lost. It is therefore crucial to protect it, ideally in a password manager or via a browser extension like Alby; it can also be stored by the application itself like a hot wallet on mobile.
This private key embodies the sovereignty of your identity on Nostr. If you do not possess it, or if a third party holds it for you, you will not be able to fully benefit from the censorship resistance the network offers.
As in the cryptocurrency world, where we say “Not your keys, not your crypto,” for Nostr, if it’s not your private key, it’s not your identity.
Zaps
Nostr can also serve as a gateway to adopt Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. In fact, Nostr clients leverage the latter and its high scalability to enable zaps, microtransactions used as super likes or tips on a post by sending satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
Introduced by NIP-57, zaps allow users to support content creators or services by sending them Bitcoin in just a few clicks.
In addition to contributing to the popularization of Bitcoin, zaps enable a different economic model from traditional social networks, which primarily rely on advertising.
Who’s developing Nostr?
The Nostr protocol was created in 2020 by a pseudonymous developer known as Fiatjaf, with the goal of offering a decentralized alternative to social networks like X.
Among the main developers and contributors are:
- William Casarin, developer of the Nostr client Damus. He is also the creator of the zaps described;
- Martti Malmi, the developer who helped Satoshi Nakamoto create and maintain the Bitcoin.org website; he now contributes to Nostr’s development;
- Miljan Braticevic, founder of the Nostr client Primal;
- derGigi, a Bitcoin developer now very active on Nostr. He considers this platform a natural extension of the freedom offered by Bitcoin and publishes many blog posts on the subject.
Many other developers are also working on Nostr, so it’s impossible to name them all. It’s also worth mentioning the involvement of the OpenSats organization, which actively supports funding for open-source projects like Bitcoin Core, Tor, Cashu, GrapheneOS, and of course, Nostr.
How to use and contribute to Nostr?
The best way to guarantee maximum participation and freedom of expression on Nostr is to run your own relay. By managing a personal relay, you keep a permanent copy of all your posts and interactions, making them impossible to censor.
This approach is ideal for those with technical skills who want to contribute to the decentralization of the Nostr network, or even for beginners equipped with an Umbrel server, for example. In addition, there are other ways to support Nostr, such as contributing to projects, giving feedback, or promoting the network’s use in everyday life.
For those who simply want to use Nostr and enjoy its benefits, the easiest way is to start with the Primal client, one of the most widely used and user-friendly.
In the same way that a Nostr client can choose not to disclose all the network’s data, Cryptoast’s Nostr account will not share any information regarding cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.
What future for the Nostr protocol?
Nostr is a very young protocol, only 2 years old, and by comparison its development corresponds to Bitcoin 10 years ago, with less scalability, security, and adoption.
Several types of network attacks are conceivable, notably:
- Spam attack: Attackers could massively send empty or irrelevant events (types 6 and 7) to saturate relays. This would overload relays and the network. Measures such as rate limiting or relay pricing can curb such abuses;
- Sybil attack: Attackers could create numerous fake accounts to manipulate the network, e.g., artificially generating followers or interactions by exploiting the low difficulty of creating multiple identities on Nostr.
In addition, Nostr’s main current shortcoming is its lack of privacy. On Nostr, privacy relies mainly on the use of public/private key pairs for authentication and message signing. Thanks to this cryptography, users keep control of their own data.
However, private messages on Nostr lack confidentiality: while message content is encrypted, metadata, such as the source and destination of messages, their length, and the time sent—remains unencrypted.
That said, these flaws, like the lack of privacy, are not unique to Nostr and could be corrected in the future with the implementation of new NIPs. For now, the network’s efforts focus on ease of use and the stability of relays and their exchanges.
At maturity, Nostr could also benefit Bitcoin by facilitating the exchange of payment codes (BIP47), as well as the coordination of PayJoin and CoinJoin transactions, thereby improving the privacy of Bitcoin transactions.
For all these reasons, the Nostr protocol is seeing strong adoption within the Bitcoin community, which is particularly attuned to the ideas and values championed by the Cypherpunks since the 1990s.
At the time of writing, Nostr has about 40,000 active users, including Jack Dorsey, a longtime Bitcoiner and founder of Twitter. Dorsey is active on Nostr; he made an initial donation of 14 BTC to Fiatjaf and helps fund conferences dedicated to the protocol, such as NostrAsia, NostRica, and NostRiga.
Also present is whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor, whose means of expression were censored after he revealed in 2013 the mass surveillance programs carried out by the U.S. government.
The involvement of so many users—and of personalities so well-known and concerned with the need for censorship resistance—demonstrates Nostr’s potential, even as it is only in its early years of development. Its architecture and community could allow it to become, alongside Bitcoin, the foundation of a truly decentralized Internet.
