What is Nostr
Nostr is a protocol built using self-owned account/identities so that it enables us to create ‘decentralized’ social networks and even other types of solutions.
“nostr” stands for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays” and
is an open protocol for censorship-resistant global networks created
by @fiatjaf. The simplest open protocol that is able to create a
censorship-resistant global “social” network once and for all.
It doesn’t rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, therefore it works.
The Nostr social network is build much like twitter, where you can create posts ( like tweets), like posts, follow someone or unfollow them, retweet/repost. Normally the term ‘post’ or ‘note’ is used to refer to creating a post on the nostr social network.
- Follow me and follow you
https://nostr.rocks/
https://www.nostr.guru/p/2f5e91b73d74061840a4cbb40638cc7b393356acd330ae0bcc37189c7258b10f
https://astral.ninja/npub19a0frdeawsrpss9yew6qvwxv0vunx44v6vc2uz7vxuvfcujcky8snh60z9
How does Nostr work?
Using Nostr means using one of its clients to access the Nostr network. There are two components: clients and relays.
- User is identified by a public key. Every post is signed.
- To publish something, you write a post, sign it with your key and send it to multiple relays (servers hosted by someone else, or yourself). Clients fetch data from relays of their choice and publish data to other relays of their choice.
- To get updates from other people, you ask multiple relays if they know anything about these other people.
Relays
- Relays are (so far) application agnostic. You can run your own or use any or all of the public instances.
- Anyone can run a relay.
- A relay is very simple and dumb. It does nothing besides accepting posts from some people and forwarding to others.
- Relays don’t have to be trusted. Signatures are verified on the client side.A relay doesn’t talk to another relay, only directly to users.
wss://rsslay.fiatjaf.com read write
wss://nostr-pub.wellorder.net read write
wss://expensive-relay.fiatjaf.com read write
wss://relayer.fiatjaf.com read write
wss://nostr-relay.freeberty.net read write
wss://nostr.bitcoiner.social read write
Clients
- Everybody runs a client. It can be a native client, a web client, etc.
- Every client validates these signatures.
Nostr vs Farcaster
Both Nostr and Farcaster use relays (called “hubs” in Farcaster) to store and transmit social data (like posts) to users (who run software, called “clients”). Farcaster uses the Ethereum architecture (eg, uses ethereum key-pairs for accounts), while Nostr does not use a blockchain (though you see a lot of lightning transactions, and theoretically could support any blockchain).
