nostr Resources

TL;DR: nostr1 is a protocol that has the power to replace twitter, Instagram, and all the other data silos that force various feeds down our collective throats.

🚀 Get Started 📖 Learn More

💻 Get Involved

What is nostr?

You, probably

nostr is new and confusing but also really cool. It is the simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global “social” network once and for all.

It is free as in freedom and puts the user in control.

↓ Table of Contents ↓

Get Started

While there are many clients, the following three are currently quite popular: Damus for iOS, Amethyst for Android, and noStrudel for Web. Primal is often recommended too, as it works on all platforms.

Download a suitable client:

🍎 Damus 🤖 Amethyst

🌐 noStrudel   ·   🌐 Primal   ·   🌐 Coracle   ·   🌐 Phoenix   ·   🌐 Iris

FAQ

What’s the easiest way to create a profile? 🦚 Going to nstart.me is probably easiest. The wizard will walk you through every step. There is also nosta.me, which introduces relays and other nostr activities.

What is the best nostr client? 🦚 There is no best. You’ll have to pick a client according to your tastes!

What is the second best nostr client? 🦚 This question is best answered by watching this video.

Is nostr just a twitter clone? 🦚 No, it’s way more than that. I’d suggest you browse nostrapps.com and try one of the more adventurous apps yourself!

Where do I store my “nsec” aka private key? 🦚 Make sure read the key management section!

What is an “npub”? 🦚 Your “npub”, or nostr public key, is your public identity. It is unique to you and can be used to look up your profile and initiate a connection with you, either via a follow, a DM, or a zap.

What are zaps? 🦚 Zaps are nostr’s way of seamlessly transferring value between users. They are neither “tips” nor “expensive likes,” but a new way of expressing value and counterfeit-resistant engagement. They are sat-based tokens of appreciation with perfect scarcity. They are, as one nostrich so beautifully put it, a way to say: keep doing you. Zaps are flowing through the system at all times, as you can clearly see via zaplife.lol.

How do I set up my client properly? 🦚 Check out these guides:

What are relays, and how do I find them? 🦚 Read the relays section.

Are all nostr apps available on the App Store? 🦚 They are not. The existing monopolies are threatened by nostr and what it represents. But fear not, we will build our own app stores. We have one on Android already: Zapstore, an app store built on nostr.

Where do I find alternatives to existing stuff? 🦚 Have a look at noalt.app

How do I find people to follow? 🦚 Use various search tools, browse trending notes, or check out Following._ for convenient, user-curated packs of suggested follows. You can follow topical hashtags like #introductions, too. Yes, on nostr you can follow hashtags. You can also visit Npub.world to search for a specific person. Find your X/twitter friends by using this seach query: - 🔎 “verifying my account on nostr” (ppl you follow). This uses the nostr.directory verification message, but the &pf=1 limits the twitter search to only people you follow.

I have more questions. Who can help me? 🦚 Consult this external FAQ, asknostr or use the #asknostr hashtag in a note from any client.

Learn More

nostr’s design is very basic:

To use nostr, you need a key and a client.

Keys

Your keys are your identity. You can think of your public key (npub...) as your username and your private key (nsec...) as your password.

Two quick things:

Keys exist in two formats, hex and the above mentioned npub/nsec. You can use a key converter tool3 to convert between the two formats.

Use Alby or nos2x to generate your keys, or generate them using a dedicated tool like rana. The aforementioned extensions will store your keys safely (or at least more safely). Check out this list for a sampling of key management tools.

If you’re on mobile, it is recommended to use a native signer like Amber on Android or Nostash on iOS.

You can also generate your keys by other means if you know what you’re doing.4 It’s still early days, so be prepared to get rekt.

Clients

Periodically check nostr.net which keeps a curated list of clients or have a look at the client comparison table.

Mobile clients:

There are more native clients in development, Nostros6 and Voyage7 being two of them.

Nootti is the first iOS native cross-posting client for Nostr, Bluesky and Mastodon. Nos is another iOS client that integrates with other social protocols.

Web clients:

On Android you can use the Kiwi Browser to use the Alby or nos2x extension, which allows you to use any web client.

There’s also Nostr Console, algia, and nostr-commander if you’re into CLI stuff.

Web clients for content creators:

Desktop clients:

Relays

Relays are simple servers that you can leave behind at any time (so they can’t turn evil). You need to connect your client to a relay for it to work. There are many relays & you can run your own. Check out this video for a quick tutorial on managing relays.

Run your own:

Paid relays:

Paid relays effectively deal with spam by charging users a small usage fee in sats. You can set your global feed to paid relays only, which will get rid of almost all spam.

Unique relays:

Relays can also act as content curators, unlock different ways of interacting, be the home of communities or groups, and more. See an example of a human-curated feed here.

Tools

Managing your nostr keys AND your profile is as essential as backing up your private keys for Bitcoin!

nostr can do more than just social media.

Games

Games? WTF? Yes, games:

Tips & Tricks

Some things work a bit differently and aren’t always obvious, such as:

Posting images

Many popular clients support image uploads directly. (Keep in mind that all uploaded images to external hosts are public, so don’t upload confidential things willy-nilly.)

Most clients will display image URLs as images, so you can just upload any image to image sharing sites and post the URL like this:

https://i.ibb.co/w4WvnYb/image.png

This also works for videos.

Here are some free image hosts:

Blossom uses nostr to decentralize media hosting. If your favorite social client offers blossom support, check out blossomservers.com to find a list of rated and reviewed blossom servers.

If you still have an X/twitter account, you can attach your profile picture to your nostr profile by following this guide.

Nostr Addresses

Having a nostr address (aka NIP-05) can make it easier for people to find your profile, associate you with a business or organization, help to guard against impersonation, or provide access to members-only areas.

If you have a domain and want to host your own address, here is some useful info:

There are also centralized nostr address providers that you can use. Paid providers often offer other services alongside of address hosting. Be aware that all these are centralized and that they can rug-pull you at any moment:

- [NostrCheck.me](https://nostrcheck.me/) - [NostrVerified.com](https://nostrverified.com/) - [cosanostr.com](https://cosanostr.com)

Paid services:

- [NostrPlebs.com](https://nostrplebs.com/) (12.5k sats) - [no.str.cr](https://no.str.cr/verify.html) ($1.00 USD) - [Verified-Nostr.com](https://verified-nostr.com/) ($0.99 USD / month) - [Nostrich.Love](https://uselessshit.co/nostr/nip-05/) (420 sats) - [Nostrich.House](https://nostrich.house/) (1 sat / hour)

Provider missing? Price changed?
Please create a PR or open an issue to fix it!

Receiving Zaps

Zaps are V4V lightning payments that are broadcast as nostr events, so that clients can display them on user profiles and specific notes.

To receive zaps you need a lightning wallet that supports NIP-57.

Popular custodial solutions are:

The Cashu protocol is bringing bitcoin-backed ecash to custodial Nostr zaps and beyond. It is still quite new (aka experimental). You can read more about it here. A couple of nice wallets to try are:

You can find ecash mints and read reviews at bitcoinmints.com.

Self-custodial solutions:

Mentions & Deep Links

You can mention a note or a user by putting an “@” before an npub or note like this:

When mentioning a note in another note, the note will be shown as a quote-note.9

Most clients support the nostr: URL scheme as defined in NIP-21, which means you can link to your nostr profile by putting “nostr:” in front of your npub. This will result in a link that opens in the user’s nostr client, like so: open my nostr profile.

You can use this for http redirects too, which can be used as a way to verify your nostr profile if you own a domain, like so: dergigi.com/npub

There is even a redirect tool that you can use; h/t to David for putting it together.

Stats

When Jack joined (and funded some nostr devs), general interest in nostr took off and has been growing since. Accurate statistics are a tricky thing to capture on a decentralized protocol but here are some good examples:

Sats

Some clients will render Lightning invoices natively, showing the recipient, amount, and a pay button. One such client is Damus, which shows a nice little widget and a pay button.

Most clients support basic search, but there’s also:

Some DVMs, like Noogle, have search capabilities, as well.

Bots

RSS

You can also create an RSS feed on nostr by following this guide . Narr is a web-based nostr feed aggregator and RSS reader. There is Noflux, too.

You can automatically generate a Podcast feed from any npub using castr.me.

Books

Podcasts

Episodes:

Privacy

There are multiple privacy issues when it comes to using nostr.

Your IP address is exposed to the relays you connect to, so consider using a VPN or similar. Some clients also support connecting via Tor. Tor nostr relays exist, but not all clients support Tor nostr relays.

Relays also know which public keys you are requesting, meaning your public key will be tied to your IP address.

Privacy & Image Uploads

Some third party media hosters may be able to see, and share your IP address.

Privacy & Direct Messages

Only the message content is encrypted on Nostr: the sender, recipient and timestamp are visible to everyone. There are a few approaches currently underway to improve this. To best understand how your direct messages are handled, check with your favorite message client developer.

For truly secure and private messaging, check out White Noise, a decentralized messenger built on Nostr that provides end-to-end encryption with forward secrecy and post-compromise security.

More info

Articles and explainers:

Videos:

For conference videos have a look at the nostr world channel.

Get Involved

nostr is an open protocol and most clients are open-source. You are encouraged to report bugs and create pull requests!

nostr protocol:

Check out awesome-nostr for links to other clients, libraries, relay implementations, and related projects to work on.

HelloNostrDocs is a simple guide for getting started with nostr development.

There is also NostrDesign, a great resource for developers and UIX design for nostr.

If you would like to donate to nostr development, have a look at various nostr projects or visit the OpenSats Nostr Fund.

This site is open source too. If you can, please improve this page. You can also create a translation.

Translations

Please create a PR to add your translation to the list above.

About

This project evolved out of a gist that was quite hastily put together. Its purpose was to help people wrap their heads around nostr, and I guess this is the purpose still.

Some of the text above is copied from nostr-protocol/nostr and nostr.net. I just left some stuff out, so consider the descriptions and explanations an opinionated summary.

If you found a typo, please fix it. If you have suggestions, please create an issue. If you want to scream at me because you think this whole thing is stupid, please find me on nostr.

  1. nostr = Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays ↩︎

  2. You have to trust whoever is running the website, obviously, and some clients are vulnerable to XSS attacks. A lot of people got rekt already, and had to re-build their nostr identity because of it. ↩︎

  3. There’s also the damus.io/key but DO NOT use it for private key conversions. Don’t paste your private key into websites. Just don’t. ↩︎

  4. BIP-85 is an option, for example. ↩︎

  5. Apple Silicone only (M1 or M2 chip) ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. KoalaSat/nostros ↩︎

  7. dluvian/Voyage ↩︎

  8. Fork with small modifications/fixes: Install a nostr relay ↩︎

  9. How’s that for a tongue twister? ↩︎