Sticking my nose into Nostr

Hello all,

I've been exploring another new tech that seems popular lately, called Nostr. Nostr could be another decentralized twitter alternative.

What is Nostr?

Nostr stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays". It is a protocol that describes a way of passing simple messages around using servers called "Relays".

https://nostr.com/

Nostr can be used for all sorts of things. You can play Chess over it, or have telegram like chat or a Reddit-like forum. But it's most popular use right now it create a Twitter-like forum.

Not a crypto coin

So it's not a crypto, it doesn't have a coin and it's not tied to any particular crypto coin. And you can use it without crypto coins. It seems to be very popular with the bitcoin crowd and many of those using it along with the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Some degree of decentralization

Though it isn't a crypto, it does have some degree of decentralization and properties of crypto. It has public and private keys for your account. When you use it, you will connect to a number of relays, usually between 10 to 15, so censorship would be difficult. Some relays could censor or adopt bad policies, but you could avoid those.

The whole thing is open source, so you could always run your own Relay.
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr

Basics of using Nostr

There are many ways to use Nostr, but I'm going to go over how I did it. Just like with a crypto, the first step is to come up with your Public and Private keys. Your public key serves as your identity, and you must guard your private key, and write it down somewhere safe.

Don't enter private keys directly into a site.

We are all Hive veterans right? You don't enter your private Hive keys when logging into hive.blog or whatever. You are smart and use Keychain to sign with your keys.

Well Nostr has similar options that you should use. Your choices are either Alby (https://getalby.com/) or nos2x (https://github.com/fiatjaf/nos2x). Either one is probably fine, but Alby will also give you Bitcoin Lightning functionality. I used nos2x to generate my keys but then uninstalled it and entered those keys into Alby and can just use that.

Nostr client: https://astral.ninja/

There some different options to get on the Nostr network, but I choose https://astral.ninja/. Not sure if this is the best choice, but it's what I choose and seems to work fine enough. When you sign on to this site, again, don't enter in your private key, but instead, use your browser plugin to sign for you. Then you can go to settings and set up your information and profile picture and such.

The Relays

I haven't put much thought into what relays I use. I appear to be using nine relays which is probably fine for now. One possible pitfall to the system is that, if a friend or someone you are interested in following doesn't use any of the same relays you do, then you won't see their messages. This can be easily fixed by adding one or two relays in common.

If you have too few relays, then you may be missing out on content, but start to add too many, and your performance may suffer. The sweet spot seems to be around 10-15 relays, which is a lot.

The holy checkmark

There is another step you can do. You don't have to do it, but doing it makes you extra cool. You want to be as cool as you can right? And get that lovely golden checkmark next to your name. This is called NIP05 verification, and what it does is verify you through a third party site or system.

There are a bunch of different ways to do this, but, if you are a Hive person, which I know you all are, there is a nice and easy way to do it, which I will describe.

How to get NIP05 verified for a Hive Person

  1. Go to https://hive.ausbit.dev/ This is a cool site made by a cool dude named @ausbitbank. Log into this site.
  2. Got to "Posting JSON Metadata"
  3. There should a little button for "Nostr", click on that.
  4. You can enter your PUBLIC Nostr key here and then submit it. This will now associate your Nostr with your Hive.
  5. Go back to your Nostr client, edit your Settings.
  6. There should be a place to edit your NIP-05 Identifier.
  7. Put in (your hive name)@v4v.app
  8. Through the magic of @brianoflondon v4vApp, you will be verified!

Thanks again to @ausbitbank and @brianoflondon for writing these great apps.

Also if you want more detail, read the post https://peakd.com/@brianoflondon/what-is-nostr-and-why-is-it-exploding-a-guide-for-hiveans which is pretty good and helped me with the verification.

Follow me on Nostr!

My public key is:

npub1wakz2ycqy8u22gfpjp3knrsagm8n7l888ea5lrywv36cgsvfwytqq5h2jx

Would be fun to see some of you on there. Nostr is a bit rough around the edges. We'll see how it turns out. How they can handle spam and other problems that turn up.

Happy Nostring!


(image created using Midjourney, used with permission)

Posted using Neoxian City



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23 comments
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WOW Mr. Dragon, you find this decentralized (some degree 😅) and who knows (except 🐲) it will be our new home.
I will surely join it very soon, you described all things very clearly (Thanks for it)

I will re-visit this blog, when joining Nostr

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Wow Norst definitely seems cool and I'm sure it'll only get better, the Idea of it being decentralised is delighting knowing the likeliness of sensorship is next to zero.

I guess I'll give it sign up pretty soon, so I surf around and probably learn a thing or too.

Thanks so much for the thorough guide and explanation on how to sign-up, be on the safe side and as well connect it with our hive account.

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This is new. Notr, surprisingly this is the first time I’ve heard of it. Anyways it will be great to try it out. Let me see if I can create an account. 🤔

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Thank you very much for sharing with us new decentralized technology alternatives that we could benefit from later

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Woo, I just did it and got my checkmark. Still exploring how it all works,Thanks for the info Sir

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Great that you take the time to share more social networks in which we can support ourselves to show and share our work

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It's so awesome to see how these new tech are coming in daily. And with the increasing need for decentralisation, they are coming in at the right time.

Nostr is pretty cool. I had better jump on the bubbling train now.

Thank you, Mr. D.

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Yep we are hive veterans and I'm really very curious to explore one more blockchain based blogging platform like hive. Thanks dear Neoxian for suggesting us Nostr and I'll suggest my friends too. Have a nice day.

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Thanks so much for this wonderful update sir. Though I am still yet to grab a full of understanding of how it operates. Looks so new to me. But I am sure when I get my hands working on it it would be cool to explore.

Thanks so much for sharing sir.

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Roger that, I am on it!!!! Thanks for the details :)

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Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

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I think we will see in the next 12 months new visions of web3, mostly by ai tech.

Makes me think most things are out today are already outdated. Maybe the fast ones can adapt it.

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Thanks for the tutorial. Very helpful. Are you running your own relay?

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No, I'd want to run a lightning node first, and not doing that yet either.

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Is that so you can take bitcoin payments through Nostr?

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Well, I can take payments now, using Alby's custodial wallet, but it would be nice to have a non-custodial wallet.

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(Edited)

Yes, that would be a better wallet. :-)

BTW, I just set up Alby and Astral.ninja for my Nostr. Now I've got to figure out how to use it. lol

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This is very helpful to us And I love to try this. Thank you for sharing this to us.

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You had me with "Playing chess over it...". I am going to try it for sure. Sounds like the technology/protocol of the future.

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