Nostr

Nostr is an open rule set for how short messages are sent and found on the internet. The name is an abbreviation for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.” The difference to Instagram or X is that no single company owns the network. Anyone who wants to take part generates a pair of numbers: a secret key, which functions like a password, and a public key, which acts like an address or username. Posts are then sent to several independent servers called relays. Anyone may run such a relay server, and any app may connect to them.

Account bans without a platform

On ordinary platforms, your account doesn’t belong to you. It sits in a company’s database. If the account is banned, posts and followers are gone. With Nostr, identity is just the secret key on your device. A relay can refuse you, but it cannot delete your identity.

Just as important is the ability to switch. On a closed platform, moving means rebuilding all your contacts from scratch. With Nostr, you keep using the same key in a different app. Followers, profile, and old posts remain intact. Experts call this “interoperability”: different programs working with the same data.

That’s why, starting in 2022, Nostr showed up mainly in the Bitcoin scene and in debates about censorship. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, supported the project with a donation. Critics counter that a network without an operator is also hard to moderate. Hate speech and spam can’t be shut down centrally there.

Keys, signatures, and relays

Every post on Nostr is a small data packet, an “event.” It contains the text, the timestamp, and the sender’s public key. Added to this is a signature, i.e. a verification code calculated with the secret key. No one can work backward from the verification code to the secret key. But anyone can verify that only the rightful owner could have generated it.

The process resembles a signature that cannot be forged. A relay therefore doesn’t need to trust the sender. It checks the signature and simply stores the event. Your app then asks several relays at once whether there are new events from the people you follow. It assembles your timeline from the responses.

A common misconception: that Nostr is a blockchain like cryptocurrencies use. That’s not true. There is no shared chain of data and no reward for participating in computation. Relays store data independently of one another, and no one knows everything. The price for this is responsibility: whoever loses their secret key loses their identity for good. There’s no hotline for “forgot password.”

Damus, zaps, and news coverage

You can’t download Nostr itself, since it’s just a rule set. You install an app that implements these rules. Well-known ones are Damus and Primal on smartphones, as well as Iris in the browser. The experience feels familiar: write, follow, reply, repost.

A typical special feature is “zaps.” With these, you send a post tiny amounts of bitcoin as applause, often just a few cents. So instead of a like, the author gets real money. This is made possible by the Lightning Network, an add-on system for very small and fast bitcoin payments.

In news articles, Nostr usually comes up in connection with decentralized networks. It’s often mentioned in the same sentence as Mastodon or Bluesky. All three try to free social media from individual corporations, but choose different technical approaches to do so. Nostr is the most radical variant, because it deliberately does without any central authority whatsoever. User numbers are well below those of major platforms, but the project is being watched closely in expert circles.