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Nostr, Notes, and Other Relayed Stuff is a protocol that enables censorship-resistant communications over multiple unrelated relay servers used to host and deliver messages to users. User identities are simply pairs of cryptographic keys, allowing them to completely own their identity, and all messages are signed with their identity keys, preventing message tampering in any way. Relays serve as intermediaries in the transmission process, ensuring smooth and reliable communication between senders and receivers.
Understand the basics of Nostr transmission, notes and other things
Nostr is based on the concept of events, the basic message format with which clients communicate by publishing or downloading events to relay servers. Each event has a basic structure that includes the public identity key that created it, a signature of the identity key that created it on the event, the actual content of the message, and other events it might be related to, such as messages to those that a user answers. , quoting, etc.
This ensures the data integrity of all messages, preventing any alteration of a message after its creation. Changing a single bit of a message would invalidate the signature. It also ensures that users completely own their identity. No one can take away your identity as it is simply a private key that only you possess, unlike Twitter where your (@handle) is simply an identity that Twitter lends you and that they completely control. Additionally, because all Nostr events are signed by a user’s identity key, it is impossible for someone to fraudulently post messages as another user without compromising that user’s private key.
The role of relays in transmission
Relays are the mechanism by which different Nostr users interact with each other. There are never two relays that communicate with each other, they only interact directly with the user clients. Any client, when creating an event, can publish it to any relays they want, ideally several for redundancy. Other users can then query streams for specific events, any events created by a specific user, or other criteria.
Each relay is free to establish its own policies governing which events they will accept and under what conditions. Some streamers are completely free to post and download events, some charge one-time fees, there are even proposals from Nostr for streamers to require a hashcash-style proof of work to be performed before a client can post an event to the server.
Each stream is also free to restrict what users can or cannot post events to the server. Overall, Nostr can operate in a censorship-resistant manner despite this because clients can check out any online streams for events. If a relay server refuses to accept events from a specific user, it can notify followers on other relay servers that they will accept its events, and other users can simply begin checking those broadcasts to see the censored user’s messages.
This ability for clients to simultaneously query any number of independent relay servers for events is what ensures Nostr’s overall resistance to censorship.
We provide: A Nostr client and a relay implementation
Damus is the most widely used mobile client for Nostr, available on iOS, as well as one of the largest streaming servers currently operating. Damus was developed by William Casarin, a developer who previously worked on the Lightning network. He began developing Damus as a passion project after learning about the Nostr protocol and is a co-author of NIP-57 on the Nostr protocol specification. NIP-57 defines “Zaps,” or Lightning payments built into Nostr as a form of the Like button on most social media protocols.
Damus has pushed Nostr to implement new PINs, or features for the Nostr protocol, since the client’s creation. Despite the problems Damus has had in meeting Apple’s AppStore policy requirements, William and Damus have a bright future ahead of them in terms of pushing the boundaries of innovation at Nostr.
The future of Nostr
Currently, the dominant use of the Nostr protocol is for social media applications that are effectively Twitter clones with a decentralized, censorship-resistant foundation. In principle, much more can be done with the protocol. It is also possible to create other variations of social networks such as Instagram or Facebook. There are even possibilities for decentralized versions of applications such as GitHub or Google Docs. The possible types of applications that can be developed in Nostr are limited only by the imagination of the people who create them.
News summary of the week (November 6 – November 13, 2023)
- There is an 8-day period between November 9 and November 17 in which all 12 spot bitcoin ETFs can be approved. A Bloomberg analyst said the SEC could make a decision on 9 of the 12 ETFs by January 10.
- The SEC has problems hiring crypto asset specialists because it requires these specialists to part with their crypto assets to work at the SEC to avoid any conflict of interest.
- CitiGroup was fined $25 million for discriminating against Armenian-Americans and preventing them from obtaining credit cards or bank accounts by blocking people whose names ended in -Yan or -Ian.
- Custodia Bank has launched its bitcoin Custody platform.
- The United States Federal Reserve has sent a cease and desist letter to bitcoin Magazine. The Federal Reserve accused bitcoin Magazine of trademark violations for its FedNow product line.
- For the first time in 18 months, bitcoin surpassed $38,000.
