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A social network for the decentralized era

Learn about Nostr: A simple, open protocol that enables a truly
censorship-resistant & global social network.

Get startedView Nostr on GitHub
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event.json
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{
  "id": "4376c65d2f232afbe9b882a35baa4f6fe8667c4e684749af565f981833ed6a65",
  "pubkey": "6e468422dfb74a5738702a8823b9b28168abab8655faacb6853cd0ee15deee93",
  "created_at": 1673347337,
  "kind": 1,
  "tags": [
    ["e","3da979448d9ba263864c4d6f14984c423a3838364ec255f03c7904b1ae77f206"],
    ["p","bf2376e17ba4ec269d10fcc996a4746b451152be9031fa48e74553dde5526bce"]
  ],
  "content": "Walled gardens became prisons, and nostr is the first step towards tearing down the prison walls.",
  "sig": "908a15e46fb4d8675bab026fc230a0e3542bfade63da02d542fb78b2a8513fcd0092619a2c8c1221e581946e0191f2af505dfdf8657a414dbca329186f009262"
}

  * The Basics

      + What is Nostr?
      + Get started
      + Verify your identity
  * The Protocol

      + The Nostr Protocol
      + Events
      + NIPs
  * Clients

      + How do clients work?
      + Guide: Iris (Web)
      + Guide: Astral (Web)
      + Guide: Damus (iOS)
  * Relays

      + What are relays?
      + List of relay implementations
      + Nostr Watch /[?]
  * Resources

      + Other resources
  * Contributing

      + How to contribute

The Basics

What is Nostr?

Nostr is a simple, open protocol that enables global, decentralized,
and censorship-resistant social media.

Get started

Create an account and join thousands of others on Nostr.

The protocol

Learn more about how the Nostr protocol works and what makes it
special.

Find a client

Find a client (app) for the web, iOS, Andriod, or Desktop.

Contribute

Find out how you can help the Nostr protocol or Nostr.how

---------------------------------------------------------------------

What is Nostr?

Nostr is a protocol, designed for simplicity, to create a
censorship-resistant global social network. Let's unpack that a
little:

Simple

The protocol is based on very simple & flexible Event objects (which
are passed around as plain JSON) and uses standard public-key
cryptography for keys & signing. This makes it easy to run relays and
build clients and ensures that the protocol can be extended over
time.

Resilient

Because Nostr doesn't rely on a small number of trusted servers for
moving or storing data, it's very resilient. The protocol assumes
that relays will disappear and allows users to connect & publish to
an arbitrary number of relays that they can change over time.

Verifiable

Because Nostr accounts are based on public-key cryptography it's easy
to verify messages were really sent by the user in question.

Like HTTP or TCP-IP, Nostr is a protocol; an open standard upon which
anyone can build. Nostr is not an app or service that you sign up
for.

Why we need Nostr

Social media has developed into a key way information flows around
the world. Unfortunately, our current social media systems are
broken:

Big tech social media

 1. Uses your attention to sell ads
 2. Uses bizarre techniques to keep you addicted (refer to point 1)
 3. Decides what content to show you based on a secret algorithm that
    you can't inspect or change
 4. Has complete control over who can participate and who is censored
 5. Is overrun with spam and bots

Mastodon (and similar)

 1. User identities are attached to domain names which are controlled
    by third-parties.
 2. These third-parties can ban you, just like centralized social
    media platforms. Server owners can also block other servers.
 3. Migration between servers is difficult and can only be
    accomplished if servers cooperate.
 4. There are no clear incentives to run servers, therefore they tend
    to be run by enthusiasts and people who want to have their name
    attached to a cool domain. Because of this, users are subject to
    the despotism of a single person, which is often worse than that
    of a big company like Twitter, and they can't migrate out.
 5. Since servers tend to be run by amateurs, they are often
    abandoned. This effectively bans everybody that signed up via
    that server.
 6. There are huge issues with data duplication across servers.

Next
    Get started -

On this page

 1. What is Nostr?

     1. Simple
     2. Resilient
     3. Verifiable
 2. Why we need Nostr

     1. Big tech social media
     2. Mastodon (and similar)