Nostr Compass #16

Welcome back to Nostr Compass, your weekly guide to Nostr.

This week: Amethyst ships v1.07.0 with pinned notes, relay management via NIP-86, and NIP-62 Request to Vanish support. NIP-5A (Static Websites) merges into the NIPs repository, defining how to host websites under Nostr keypairs using Blossom storage. Flotilla ships v1.7.0 with voice rooms, email/password login, and proof-of-work DMs. White Noise fixes relay churn in v2026.3.23, nospeak launches its [1.0.0](#nospeak (

)-launches-as-a-10-private-messenger) as a no-signup encrypted messenger. Nymchat adopts Marmot for MLS-encrypted group chats with NIP-17 fallback. Calendar by Form* reaches v1.0.0 with private calendar lists and ICS import, Amber adds mnemonic recovery and NIP-42 relay auth whitelisting, and the Marmot spec moves KeyPackages to addressable events while tightening MIP-05 push notification formatting.

News

nostr:npub142gywvjkq0dv6nupggyn2euhx4nduwc7yz5f24ah9rpmunr2s39se3xrj0 ships pinned notes, relay management, and Request to Vanish

Amethyst, the Android client maintained by vitorpamplona, shipped six releases in three days, from v1.07.0 through v1.07.5. The headline feature set spans six protocol surfaces: pinned notes, a dedicated polls feed screen, NIP-62 (Request to Vanish) support for requesting full event deletion from relays, NIP-86 (Relay Management API) from within the client, NIP-66 (Relay Discovery and Liveness Monitoring) assessments in the relay info screen, and NIP-43 (Relay Access Metadata and Requests) member information display.

NIP-86 defines a JSON-RPC interface for relay operators, letting clients send administrative commands such as banning pubkeys, allowing pubkeys, and listing banned users over a standardized API. Amethyst now exposes this directly in its relay management UI, so users running their own relays can administer them from the same client they use for posting. PR #2039 replaces the old hex-input dialog for ban and allow pubkeys with an interactive user search dialog.

v1.07.2 added GIF keyboard uploads and fixed a signing regression where Amber (

) rejection responses were being misread because older Amber versions returned an empty string for the rejected field (PR #2042). v1.07.5 fixes an image uploading crash. The v1.06.2 and v1.06.3 releases earlier in the week added a poll type selector for single vs. multiple choice polls, drag-to-seek on video progress bars, and anonymous posting improvements.

NIP-5A merges, bringing static websites to Nostr

NIP-5A (Static Websites) merged via PR #1538, defining how to host static websites under Nostr keypairs. The spec uses two event kinds: kind 15128 for a root site, one per pubkey, and kind 35128 for named sites identified by a d tag. Each manifest maps URL paths to SHA256 hashes, with optional server tags pointing to Blossom storage hosts where the actual files live.

The hosting model works like this: a site author builds a static site, uploads the files to one or more Blossom servers, then publishes a signed manifest event that maps paths to content hashes. A host server receives web requests, resolves the author's pubkey from the subdomain, fetches the manifest from the author's NIP-65 relay list, and serves files by downloading the matching blobs from Blossom. The site stays under the author's control because only that key can sign an updated manifest. The host server is replaceable because any server that understands NIP-5A can serve the same site from the same manifest.

The spec builds on infrastructure that already exists. nsite, the NIP-5A reference host implementation built by lez, and nsite-manager, hzrd149's management UI, were already running before the NIP merged. The merge makes the event kinds and URL resolution rules official, which gives second and third implementations a stable target.

nostr:npub1whtn0s68y3cs98zysa4nxrfzss5g5snhndv35tk5m2sudsr7ltms48r3ec fixes relay churn and expands client controls

White Noise, the private messenger built on the Marmot protocol, shipped v2026.3.23 on March 25. The main work is relay stability. Login no longer waits for every relay-list publish before moving on, because relay-list publishing now uses quorum logic and retries the rest in the background. One-off fetches and publishes use scoped ephemeral relay sessions instead of lingering in the long-lived pool, restored sessions recover their group refresh path after startup, and the app now exposes relay diagnostics and relay state inspection through PR #495 and PR #502.

The same release changes how conversations behave. PR #468 adds NIP-C7 reply threading with q tags and nostr:nevent references, PR #471 and PR #512 keep deleted messages visible as deleted placeholders instead of silently removing them, PR #478 adds an in-app bug report flow using NIP-44 (Encrypted Payloads) anonymous reports, and PR #486 adds support chat directly in the client. User-facing message controls also landed in the same window: PR #532 archives chats, PR #541 adds mute and unmute with configurable durations, and PR #535 adds notification settings. PR #539 is preparatory push-registration work, wiring APNs registration on iOS and Play Services detection on Android so registration can be built on top of it. On the backend side, the MDK (Marmot Development Kit) added MIP-05 push notification primitives and a notification request builder (PR #235, PR #238), while whitenoise-rs added push notification registration persistence (PR #688), background task cancellation fixes (PR #696), and key package recovery on startup (PR #693).

Nostr VPN reaches v0.3.0 with roster sync and invite v2

Following last week's launch coverage, nostr-vpn, the peer-to-peer VPN that uses Nostr relays for signaling and WireGuard for encrypted tunnels, continued its rapid release pace, shipping releases through v0.3.3. The version bump brings two breaking changes: the invite format moves to v2 (0.3.0 can still import v1 invites, but older builds cannot import v2 invites), and admin-signed roster sync was added to the signaling protocol. Mixed-version peers can still connect at the mesh layer, but older peers will not participate in roster synchronization.

The roster sync addition starts the move toward a managed network. An admin node can now push membership changes to all peers, so adding or removing a device from the mesh does not require each peer to manually update its configuration. The v0.2.x releases during the same week addressed specific deployment problems: v0.2.22 through v0.2.28 fixed Windows service management, added Android build scripts, and refined the LAN pairing flow.

nospeak launches as a 1.0 private messenger

nospeak, a private messenger built on Nostr, shipped its 1.0.0 release on March 27. The project includes one-on-one and group conversations, contact management, and a self-hostable architecture. One-on-one chats use NIP-17 (Private Direct Messages), which combines NIP-59 (Gift Wrap) with NIP-44 (Encrypted Payloads) to hide the sender from relays. For media, files are encrypted client-side with AES-256-GCM before upload to Blossom servers. The release also ships as a container image for self-hosting.

Flotilla (nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn) v1.7.0 adds voice rooms and email login

Flotilla, hodlbod's Discord-like NIP-29 (Relay-based Groups) client built around the "relays as groups" model, shipped v1.7.0 and v1.7.1 on March 30 and 31. The headline feature is voice rooms, contributed by mplorentz. Users can now join voice calls within group channels, with a join dialog (PR #109) that lets them select an audio input device and choose whether to join the voice call or just view the text chat. The dialog solves a UX problem from the previous iteration: entering a voice-enabled room previously forced microphone activation even when the user only wanted to read messages or check room settings.

The same release adds email and password login as an alternative to Nostr key-based auth, proof-of-work on DMs, DM editing, redesigned relay onboarding and settings, Blossom support detection via supported_nips, improved notification badges, Android push notification fallback, and file upload fixes on Android. v1.7.1 follows with a fix for pomade registration fallback when using an offline signer.

Hodlbod is also building Caravel, a hosting manager and dashboard for zooid relays, which logged 40 commits this week in initial development.

nostr:npub16jdfqgazrkapk0yrqm9rdxlnys7ck39c7zmdzxtxqlmmpxg04r0sd733sv ships Marmot-powered group chats

Nymchat (also known as NYM, Nostr Ynstant Messenger), the ephemeral chat client bridged with Bitchat, announced that all new group chats now use the Marmot protocol for MLS-encrypted messaging. The integration uses kinds 443, 444, and 445 for key packages, welcome messages, and group messages respectively, providing forward secrecy, post-compromise security, and zero metadata leakage. If a recipient cannot use MLS, Nymchat falls back to its earlier NIP-17 (Private Direct Messages) group chat path, which is still end-to-end encrypted but lacks the ratchet-tree properties of MLS.

The v3.55 and v3.56 series this week focused on group chat edge cases: loading on new devices, leave behavior, notification routing, and unread badge counts. The same cycle also patched an XSS vulnerability from unescaped HTML and added keyword and phrase blocking extended to user nicknames. This makes Nymchat yet another Marmot client joining White Noise and OpenChat, broadening the set of apps that can exchange MLS-encrypted group messages over the same protocol.

Releases

Calendar by Form* v1.0.0

Calendar by Form*, the decentralized calendar app built on NIP-52 (Calendar Events), reached v1.0.0 on March 29. The release adds private calendar lists using encrypted Nostr events (kind 32123) with NIP-44 (Encrypted Payloads) self-encryption, so users can organize events into private collections without exposing the grouping to relays. The same release adds ICS intent handling for importing calendar data from other applications and invitation requests for sharing events between users.

Amber v5.0.2 through v5.0.4

Amber, the NIP-55 (Android Signer Application) signer app, shipped three point releases: v5.0.2, v5.0.3, and v5.0.4. The most visible addition is mnemonic recovery phrase login (PR #358), which lets users restore their signer from a BIP39 seed phrase instead of requiring the raw nsec or ncryptsec string. PR #357 adds a NIP-42 relay auth whitelist, so users can restrict which relays are allowed to request client authentication. PR #353 adds encryption scope selection for decrypt permissions, letting users grant NIP-04-only or NIP-44-only decrypt access instead of a blanket permission. v5.0.4 fixes a bug where rejection was not respecting scoped encrypt and decrypt permissions and improves performance when receiving multiple bunker requests.

Aegis (nostr:npub179e5zckwq9vqsenc8ha9qv7p9vxwq20cq526ac67prts8kc4khmqu50zj8) v0.4.0

Aegis, the cross-platform signer, shipped v0.4.0 on March 26. The release adds Full and Selective authorization modes in Settings and fixes multiple QR-scanning problems. Follow-up commits d4f799f, 3313af9, 3b214e4, and e4f40b6 continue the same work with batch select controls, reusable batch selection stats, set-all-groups selection APIs, and per-permission usage statistics on the app permissions page.

nostr:npub1g5qtwz2nh9q0mnw555kv787kh6lysds95522gzptre3qpvz9p20s83m80d v0.2.7 through v0.3.0

Schemata, the JSON Schema definitions for validating Nostr event kinds, shipped four releases from v0.2.7 through v0.3.0 with 21 merged PRs. The v0.3.0 release brings pattern consistency fixes across relay URLs, hex IDs, MIME types, and BOLT-11 strings (PR #126), centralized relay URL patterns (PR #117), NIP-19 bech32 base type schemas (PR #118), and validation for kind 777 spell events (PR #125). The release pipeline now publishes a kind 1 note to Nostr on each release (PR #120), so the project announces itself through the protocol it validates. Schemata now supports a dozen languages beyond the canonical JS/TS package: Rust, Go, Python, Kotlin, Java, Swift, Dart, PHP, C#/.NET, C++, Ruby, and C.

Alongside Schemata, the team published schemata-codegen, an experimental code generator that takes a different approach to the same validation problem. Where Schemata's validator packages require a JSON Schema runtime dependency, schemata-codegen ports schemas directly into typed native-language constructs (typed tag tuples, kind interfaces, and runtime validators), removing the need for a validator library at runtime. The codegen-vs-validators comparison documents when each approach fits.

BigBrotr v6.5.0 through v6.5.4

BigBrotr, the relay analytics platform, shipped five releases from v6.5.0 through v6.5.4. The v6.5.0 release centralizes relay URL validation with a parse_relay_url() factory function and adds URL length checking and path sanitization. The monitoring infrastructure also received fixes: announcement events now include geohash location tags (following NIP-52), and timeout protection was added to the Geo/Net NIP-66 metadata tests that had no deadline and could hang indefinitely. PR #410 upgrades PostgreSQL from 16 to 18, which brings the async I/O subsystem and improved WAL throughput to the relay analytics pipeline.

nostr:npub1kpt95rv4q3mcz8e4lamwtxq7men6jprf49l7asfac9lnv2gda0lqdknhmz adds NIP-50 profile search

Vertex Lab, the team behind npub.world and the Vertex Web of Trust engine, announced that wss://relay.vertexlab.io now supports NIP-50 (Search) for profile queries. NIP-50 extends the standard Nostr REQ filter with a search field, letting clients send full-text search queries to relays that support indexing. Adding profile search to a relay that already serves Web of Trust data means clients connected to relay.vertexlab.io can discover users by name or description without a separate search service.

Hashtree (nostr:npub1klgggm0e8jmjzde5sswx0ger4fzmkfjqy9erdsq79fqsz80kzlzsz9ky7h) v0.2.17 and v0.2.18 ship WebRTC mesh and Iris Desktop

Hashtree, mmalmi's content-addressed blob storage system that publishes Merkle roots on Nostr, shipped v0.2.17 and v0.2.18 on March 31. The two releases cap a 30-commit sprint that adds three distinct capabilities. First, the hashtree-webrtc crate (renamed to hashtree-network in v0.2.18) adds WebRTC-based peer-to-peer blob distribution with unified mesh signaling across the Rust CLI, the simulation harness, and the TypeScript client. Second, the release pipeline now builds Windows artifacts (CLI zip and Iris installer), bringing cross-platform coverage to macOS, Linux, and Windows. Third, both releases bundle Iris Desktop 0.1.0, mmalmi's Nostr social client, as AppImage, .deb, and Windows installer assets alongside the hashtree CLI. Hashtree was first covered in Newsletter #10 when it launched as a filesystem-based Blossom-compatible store. The WebRTC layer is the first step toward peer-to-peer content distribution without depending on centralized Blossom servers.

Nostr Mail Client v0.7.0 through v0.7.2

Nostr Mail Client, the Flutter mail-style client built on Nostr identities, shipped v0.7.0, v0.7.1, and v0.7.2 in three days. The visible product work centered on onboarding (PR #9) and profile editing (PR #10), which are basic pieces for any client trying to present Nostr as a mailbox. The later point releases packaged that work into fresh Android and Linux builds.

Wisp (nostr:npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8) v0.14.0 through v0.16.1

Wisp, the Android Nostr client, shipped 13 more releases from v0.14.0-beta through v0.16.3-beta. The work this week includes NIP-17 rumor JSON fixes (PR #385), repost badges on gallery cards (PR #383), expandable reaction details (PR #382), persistent emoji sets (PR #381), and video autoplay controls (PR #380). The latest v0.16.3-beta also fixes custom emoji shortcodes with hyphens and missing emoji tags.

nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg 3.0.17

Primal Android shipped 3.0.17 on March 24. PR #1000 maps WalletException types to error codes in NWC responses, giving NIP-47 clients structured failure information instead of generic errors. PR #995 fixes poll zap votes appearing as Top Zaps, and PR #998 hides wallet balance and action buttons when no wallet is configured.

OpenChat (nostr:npub1nwt2g6fkshuj4udrs9zxr8992dyp75s9qx647kxaue98trzqqmssrxx05y) v0.2.4 through v0.3.0

OpenChat, the Avalonia-based chat client built on the Marmot stack, shipped six releases from v0.2.4 through v0.3.0 in four days. The commit log tells the story of a client filling in the gaps between "Marmot works" and "someone can actually use this daily." NIP-42 relay authentication landed, followed by a relay picker UI with duplicate event filtering. Voice messages gained pause, resume, seek, and time display. The signer path was hardened: Amber connections were fixed with an updated NIP-46 URI format, the WebSocket auto-reconnects before sending requests, and duplicate Amber requests are now caught by checking for replayed responses. On the storage side, Linux and macOS got AES-256-GCM secure storage with file-backed keys, and user metadata fetching now uses NIP-65 relay discovery and caches results in a local database.

nostr:npub17uvdffljczhlpjfvfj0q30dmh4ugh8wlzm8u6w64y2v4ts7fqsqqj28tr4 Signer 1.1

Igloo, the iOS FROST threshold signer from the FROSTR project, shipped v1.1 on March 28. FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold) signatures let a group of signers collectively control a Nostr keypair, where any t-of-n participants can sign an event without any single party holding the full private key. Igloo is one of the first mobile implementations of this approach for Nostr.

nak (nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6) v0.19.3 and v0.19.4

nak, fiatjaf's command-line Nostr toolkit, shipped v0.19.3 and v0.19.4 on March 26 and 30. Both releases fix panic conditions: PR #118 replaces strings.Split with strings.Cut to prevent a potential out-of-bounds access, and PR #119 prevents the same class of panic in curl flag parsing.

Flora v0.3.0

Flora, a Chrome extension for decentralized screen recording and sharing on Nostr, shipped v0.3.0. The release adds private encrypted video sharing with public, unlisted, and private modes. Private recordings are encrypted with AES-256-GCM and delivered to recipients via NIP-17 (Private Direct Messages), so the recording never touches a server in cleartext.

nostr:npub1yzvxlwp7wawed5vgefwfmugvumtp8c8t0etk3g8sky4n0ndvyxfslnm9n4 Mobile 2.0.3

YakiHonne, the mobile Nostr client, shipped 2.0.3 with relay reviews and join requests, expanded nested replies, auto-translation for notes, and NWC multi-relay support.

Project Updates

nostr:npub1xxdd8eusvdxmaph3fkuu9x2mymhrcc3ghe2l38zv0l4f4nqp659qskkt7a adds zap polls and nostr:npub16ndruwfg7dsdhnp3w8zvqrg0r2rn3wucnttgrg5acm2lhqpkepkqncr9qr payment verification

Zap Cooking, the recipe and content platform, merged 11 PRs this week focused on interactive content and payment flows. PR #277 adds zap polls (kind 6969), where users vote by sending sats and can view voter lists with profile pictures. PR #274 redesigns the poll UX so the voting interface sits more naturally in the feed.

PR #276 adds camera-based QR scanning to the Send Payment flow and integrates Branta, a verification service that checks whether a payment destination is legitimate before send. Branta checks payment destinations against phishing, address swaps, and man-in-the-middle interception before send. In Zap Cooking's implementation, a Branta-verified platform name and logo show up directly in the payment flow, and Branta-enabled QR codes can carry branta_id and branta_secret parameters so the wallet can verify the destination from the scanned code itself.

diVine (nostr:npub1wmr34t36fy03m8hvgl96zl3znndyzyaqhwmwdtshwmtkg03fetaqhjg240) lays groundwork for unified search and hardens video delivery

diVine, the short-form video client, spent the week tightening search, feed navigation, playback recovery, and upload behavior. PR #2540 lays down the foundation for a unified search screen, with grouped sections for Videos, People, and Tags. PR #2623 hardens pagination across profile feeds, inbox, notifications, discover lists, classic vines, search, and the composable grid feeds by moving them onto a shared pagination controller.

Video delivery also got several concrete fixes. PR #2643 retries Divine-hosted derivative sources in order and falls back to the raw blob before surfacing a playback error, so transient failures on one source do not kill playback immediately. PR #2634 keeps resumable uploads on the Divine-owned path when capability probing fails transiently, reducing broken uploads from short network faults. PR #2637 also changes the sensitive-content gate so videos are only hard-gated for actual warning labels, not merely for creator-supplied content warning labels.

nostr:npub15dc33fyg3cpd9r58vlqge2hh8dy6hkkrjxkhluv2xpyfreqkmsesesyv6e adds custom storefronts and nostr:npub1wm7wcrsx8q6378gwphzwhtmd60t8gpqjd4ny23m8gpc0x96jw0vs2jpud0 keeps shipping marketplace work

Shopstr, the Nostr-based marketplace, merged PR #245 adding custom storefronts. That gives sellers a more distinct home surface instead of forcing every listing into the same generic presentation.

Milk Market, a dedicated marketplace for milk, continued with storefront optimizations (PR #18), account recovery (PR #17), beef splits (PR #15), and MCP tool typing fixes (PR #16).

nostr:npub18m76awca3y37hkvuneavuw6pjj4525fw90necxmadrvjg0sdy6qsngq955 adds sound effects and extends its updater path toward Android

Notedeck, the desktop client from the Damus team, merged PR #1412 adding a sound effects subsystem with UI interaction sounds using rodio, and PR #1399 with Agentium updates including a CLI title flag and collapsible session folders. An open PR #1417 proposes APK self-update via Nostr/Zapstore on Android, building on Notedeck's Nostr-native updater work from Newsletter #14.

Nostria (nostr:npub1zl3g38a6qypp6py2z07shggg45cu8qex992xpss7d8zrl28mu52s4cjajh) adds repost relay hints and NIP-98 alignment

Nostria merged PR #583 adding NIP-18 (Reposts) relay hints to repost e tags for kind 6 and kind 16 events, PR #582 aligning Brainstorm HTTP auth (kind 27235) with NIP-98 (HTTP Auth) required tags, and PR #576 adding Schemata schema validation tests. The NIP-98 change means Nostria can authenticate to external services using the same HTTP auth format other clients use.

Nostr-Doc adds desktop packaging and offline-first work

Nostr-Doc, the collaborative editor from Form*, had a busy week of packaging and editor work. commit fcdc00a adds a desktop app, commit 3977a8e starts native app work, and commit 413a030 pushes the app toward offline-first behavior. On the editor side, commit 1855ce8 adds Ctrl+S save, save warnings, link preview fixes, and corrected strikethrough rendering.

rust-nostr optimizes NIP-21 parsing and adds relay-side NIP-62 support

rust-nostr merged eight PRs. The most notable is PR #1308, which optimizes NIP-21 URI parsing in PublicKey::parse by aligning it with standard bech32 parsing performance. Previously NIP-21 URIs took roughly twice as long to parse as raw bech32 keys. The project also has four open PRs adding relay-specific NIP-62 (Request to Vanish) support across the memory, LMDB, SQLite, and database test backends (PR #1315, PR #1316, PR #1317, PR #1318).

nostr-tools adds bunker relay control and fixes NIP-47 multi-relay parsing

nostr-tools merged PR #530 adding skipSwitchRelays to BunkerSignerParams for manual relay management, and PR #529 fixing NIP-47 (Nostr Wallet Connect) connection string parsing to support multiple relays as the spec allows.

Nostrability integrates Sherlock audit data and publishes Schemata overview

Nostrability, the interoperability tracker for Nostr clients, merged 14 PRs. PR #306 integrates Sherlock scan statistics into the dashboard. Sherlock is Nostrability's automated audit tool that connects to Nostr clients, captures the events they publish, and validates each event against the Schemata JSON Schema definitions to detect spec violations. The dashboard now shows per-client schema fail rates (PR #315) so developers can see which event kinds their client gets wrong. PR #323 overhauls the Nostr publish workflow so release announcements run as a separate job that cannot be cancelled by earlier CI steps.

elsat also published Schemata for nostr devs on March 30, describing how schemata, schemata-codegen, and Sherlock fit together and giving current coverage numbers: 179 event kind schemas across 65 NIPs, 154 tag schemas, 13 protocol messages, and 310 sample events.

Nalgorithm (nostr:npub1m2mvvpjugwdehtaskrcl7ksvdqnnhnjur9v6g9v266nss504q7mqvlr8p9) adds digest generation and local score caching

Nalgorithm, a new relevance-ranked Nostr feed project, started public development this week. commit cf6c501 lays down the initial web app that fetches posts from follows and scores them against a user-defined preference prompt. commit 8e931b6 adds a CLI digest tool that turns top-ranked posts into a spoken-word summary, while commit 4cb9c63 adds file-based score caching and incremental learned-prompt evolution from recent likes. commit c2edfb8 also stops caching fallback scores from failed batches, so a transient scoring failure does not permanently flatten a post's rank.

TENEX (nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft) adds RAG vector store and targeted MCP startup

TENEX, the Nostr-native agent framework that bridges AI agents to Nostr channels via Telegram, merged seven PRs this week. PR #101 adds a pluggable vector store abstraction with SQLite-vec, LanceDB, and Qdrant backends, giving agents retrieval-augmented generation without locking into one vector database. PR #102 makes MCP startup targeted: only MCP servers whose tools an agent actually uses are started, instead of eagerly launching all servers on first execution. PR #100 adds a send_message tool so agents with Telegram channel bindings can proactively push messages instead of only responding to incoming ones. PR #106 avoids a subprocess spawn that triggered a 9GB Bun/JSC memory pre-allocation by reading .git/HEAD directly instead of running git branch.

Dart NDK (nostr:npub1relaystr0ng75ecpd8av2v35kwf3a86vlrr3c4gs02p3gvy57haaqgt3a6p) moves Amber signer and adds Alby Go 1-click

Dart NDK, the Flutter Nostr development kit, shipped 11 merged PRs. PR #525 moves Amber signer support into the ndk_flutter package, and PR #552 adds Alby Go one-click wallet connection to the sample app. PR #502 adds an install.sh script for the CLI, and PR #523 removes the Rust verifier dependency in favor of native asset handling.

Protocol and Spec Work

Marmot moves KeyPackages to addressable events and tightens push notifications

The Marmot specification merged four PRs that change how the protocol handles key material and group membership. PR #54 migrates KeyPackage events from regular kind:443 to addressable kind:30443 with a d tag, eliminating the need for NIP-09 event deletion during key rotation. Addressable events overwrite in place, making rotation self-contained. PR #57 allows non-admin users to commit SelfRemove proposals (voluntary group departure), and PR #62 requires admins to relinquish admin status before using SelfRemove, preventing an admin from disappearing while still holding elevated privileges.

PR #61 tightens the MIP-05 push notification format, making the single-blob base64 encoding, versioning, token wire format, and x-only key usage explicit. The effect is one defined wire representation for token blobs and x-only keys across spec, client libraries, and app backends. Implementation of these spec changes landed in the White Noise stack this week and is covered in the White Noise v2026.3.23 section above.

NIP Updates

Recent changes to the NIPs repository:

Merged:

• NIP-5A: Static Websites (PR #1538): Defines kind 15128 (root site) and kind 35128 (named site) manifest events for hosting static websites under Nostr keypairs using Blossom storage. See the deep dive below.

• NIP-30 (Custom Emoji): Allow hyphens in shortcodes (PR #2297): Updates the shortcode description to include hyphens. Hyphenated shortcodes have been used in practice since the NIP was introduced, so the spec now documents current usage.

Open PRs and Discussions:

• NIP-C1: Agent TUI Messages (PR #2295): Proposes a structured message format for agents to send interactive UI elements through encrypted DMs, including typed text, buttons, card, and table payloads. The draft keeps everything inside existing NIP-17 and NIP-04 direct-message content as JSON. It does not define a new event kind, and it uses a simple callback string format for button responses.

• NIP-95: Hybrid Peer-to-Peer Relay Protocol (PR #2293): Proposes a hybrid relay model where relays stay authoritative but can also coordinate peer-to-peer distribution of recent events over WebRTC. The draft introduces relay messages such as PEER_REGISTER, PEER_REQUEST, and PEER_OFFER, with stable clients acting as Super Peers and the relay acting as the seed node and fallback.

• NIP-B9: Zap Poll Events (PR #2284): Reopens the old NIP-69 zap-poll idea now that NIP-88 (Polls) covers free polls. The draft uses kind 6969 poll definitions and kind 9734 zaps as votes, making it a paid polling system with economic Sybil resistance. It complements free one-key-one-vote polls.

• NIP-AD: Super Zap (PR #2289): Proposes a convention where zaps sent to a relay's pubkey or a client's pubkey are displayed as specialized promotional notes, effectively turning zap receipts into an ad surface. Relay operators and clients would publish profiles with lud16, fetch those receipts, extract the embedded content from zap descriptions, and optionally set minimum-sats thresholds to suppress spam.

• NIP-XX: Agent Reputation Attestations (PR #2285): Proposes kind 30085 as a parameterized replaceable event for structured reputation attestations about Nostr agents. The draft avoids a single global score by making reputation observer-dependent, adds temporal decay so old attestations fade, supports negative ratings with evidence requirements, and sketches both simple weighted scoring and graph-diversity scoring for better Sybil resistance.

• NIP-XX: Paid API Service Announcements (PR #2291): Proposes kind 31402 addressable events for advertising paid HTTP APIs, with Nostr handling discovery and HTTP 402 handling payment. The draft is tags-first so relays can filter on payment methods, prices, and capabilities without parsing JSON content, and it allows optional request and response schemas so clients or agents can auto-generate calls.

• NIP-XX: Key Derivation from LNURL-auth via SplitSig (PR #2294): Proposes deriving a Nostr keypair from an LNURL-auth ECDSA signature combined with a client-side random nonce. The derivation formula is nsec = SHA256(ecdsa_signature || nonce). The server sees the ECDSA signature (inherent to the LNURL-auth handshake) but never sees the nonce, and the browser generates the nonce but does not control the signature. Neither piece alone can derive the nsec. The intended outcome is that the same Lightning wallet produces the same Nostr key across devices, with the wallet as the recovery anchor and no server able to reconstruct the private key.

• NIP-55: Document rejected field (PR #2290): Documents the rejected field for intent-based signer responses, formalizing the behavior that Amethyst's v1.07.x fix had to work around.

NIP Deep Dive: NIP-5A (Static Websites)

NIP-5A defines how to host static websites under Nostr keypairs, using two event kinds and existing blob storage infrastructure to turn signed events into served web pages. The specification was merged on March 25 via PR #1538.

The model uses kind 15128 for a root site, one per pubkey, and kind 35128 for named sites identified by a d tag. Each manifest maps absolute URL paths to SHA256 hashes. Here is a root site manifest:

{
  "id": "5324d695ed7abf7cdd2a48deb881c93b7f4e43de702989bbfb55a1b97b35a3de",
  "pubkey": "266815e0c9210dfa324c6cba3573b14bee49da4209a9456f9484e5106cd408a5",
  "created_at": 1743465600,
  "kind": 15128,
  "tags": [
    ["path", "/index.html", "186ea5fd14e88fd1ac49351759e7ab906fa94892002b60bf7f5a428f28ca1c99"],
    ["path", "/about.html", "a1b2c3d4e5f6789012345678901234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef123456"],
    ["path", "/favicon.ico", "fedcba0987654321fedcba0987654321fedcba0987654321fedcba0987654321"],
    ["server", " https://blossom.primal.net"],
    ["title", "My Nostr Site"],
    ["description", "A static website hosted on Nostr"],
    ["source", " https://github.com/lez/nsite (nostr:npub1lez7kezu34ntcpe3xyshkmz8wnyhvmad0aulqez47rfscu4zxmrspm7u08)"]
  ],
  "content": "",
  "sig": "f4e4a9e785f70e9fcaa855d769438fea10781e84cd889e3fcb823774f83d094cf2c05d5a3ac4aebc1227a4ebc3d56867286c15a6df92d55045658bb428fd5fb5"
}

The serving flow works in three steps. A host server receives an HTTP request, extracts the author's pubkey from the subdomain (either an npub for root sites or a base36-encoded pubkey for named sites), fetches the author's relay list via NIP-65, and queries for the site manifest. Once the manifest is found, the server resolves the requested path to a content hash, downloads the matching blob from the Blossom server or servers listed in the server tags, and returns it.

The DNS subdomain format is tightly specified. Root sites use the standard npub as the subdomain. Named sites use a 50-character base36 encoding of the raw pubkey followed by the d tag value, all in a single DNS label. Because DNS labels are limited to 63 characters and the base36 encoding always takes 50, the d tag is limited to 13 characters. The spec also requires d tags to match ^[a-z0-9-]{1,13}$ and not end with a hyphen, preventing DNS resolution ambiguities.

Using content hashes means the same site can be served by different host servers, and file integrity is verifiable without trusting the server. A host server does not need to store any files itself. It fetches them on demand from Blossom using the hashes in the manifest. That means the author controls what is served, the Blossom server stores the raw files, and the host server just connects the two. Any of these three components can be replaced independently.

Existing implementations include nsite, the host server that resolves manifests and serves files, and nsite-manager, a UI for building and publishing manifests. The spec also added a source tag for linking to the site's source code repository, and the README update merged separately in PR #2286 registered both kind 15128 and 35128 in the NIP kind index.

NIP Deep Dive: NIP-62 (Request to Vanish)

NIP-62 defines kind 62 as a request for relays to delete all events from the requesting pubkey. The specification is legally motivated: in jurisdictions with right-to-be-forgotten laws, having a standardized, signed deletion request gives relay operators a clear signal to act on.

{
  "id": "a7b8c9d0e1f23456789012345678901234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12",
  "pubkey": "f1e2d3c4b5a697887766554433221100ffeeddccbbaa99887766554433221100",
  "created_at": 1743465600,
  "kind": 62,
  "tags": [
    ["relay", "wss://relay.example.com"]
  ],
  "content": "Requesting deletion of all events from this relay.",
  "sig": "11aa22bb33cc44dd55ee66ff77889900aabbccddeeff0011223344556677889911aa22bb33cc44dd55ee66ff77889900aabbccddeeff00112233445566778899"
}

The spec separates targeted and global vanish requests. A targeted request includes specific relay tags identifying which relays should act. A global request uses the literal string ALL_RELAYS as the relay tag value, asking every relay that sees the event to delete all events from that pubkey. Relays that comply must also ensure deleted events cannot be re-broadcast back into the relay, making the deletion sticky.

NIP-62 goes beyond NIP-09 (Event Deletion) in both scope and intent. NIP-09 lets you delete individual events, and relays MAY comply. NIP-62 requests deletion of everything, and the spec says relays MUST comply if their URL is tagged. It also asks relays to delete NIP-59 (Gift Wrap) events that p-tagged the requesting pubkey, which means incoming DMs get cleaned up alongside the user's own events. Publishing a NIP-09 deletion against a NIP-62 vanish request has no effect: once you vanish, you cannot un-vanish by deleting the vanish request.

This week, Amethyst v1.07.0 shipped client-side NIP-62 support, letting users initiate vanish requests from the app. On the relay side, rust-nostr has four open PRs adding NIP-62 support across the memory, LMDB, SQLite, and database test backends (PR #1315, PR #1316, PR #1317, PR #1318). This puts client support and relay support work into the same week.

The protocol design raises a practical tension. Nostr's value proposition includes censorship resistance, meaning relays should not be able to prevent publication. NIP-62 introduces a case where a relay MUST prevent re-publication from a specific pubkey. The two properties coexist because the request is self-directed: you are asking for deletion of your own events, not someone else's. The censorship-resistance property remains intact for everyone except the person who explicitly opted out.

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That's it for this week. Building something or have news to share? Reach out via NIP-17 DM or find us on Nostr.