[nostr]: New command to publish events to nostr relays

[niteshbalusu11]

Signed-off-by: Nitesh Balusu [email protected]

Created a new command called nostr which broadcasts messages to relays.

Protocol flow: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md

Clients to use for testing: https://iris.to/

Note: Private key needs to be added in hex format.

Example relay to use: wss://nostr.foundrydigital.com
(I run this one)
Need to add this relay to your client for testing, most clients come with default relays which should also probably be added to bos.

[niteshbalusu11]

This is an initial PR, we have to figure out how the message would look like.
Also we could send random messages, need to add some parsing of the message to see if its a group-open message, if the parsing fails may be just broadcast the message as is?

[alexbosworth]

This is an initial PR, we have to figure out how the message would look like. Also we could send random messages, need to add some parsing of the message to see if its a group-open message, if the parsing fails may be just broadcast the message as is?

parsing of which message?

[niteshbalusu11]

Most people will have their private key stored in bech32 format with a prefix of nsec because that's how clients usually generate and give you, maybe we should should accept both bech32 and hex as input but while saving we convert to hex and save because we sign with the hex key.

[alexbosworth]

Sounds good to me

Is it possible the key could be optional and it could just generate a key itself, or does that not make sense within the Nostr world because the key then isn't tied to your identity?

[niteshbalusu11]

We could generate a key and log it. People can use it to login into any other client. bos is also a client anyway. How are we tying a key to an identity by generating one?

[alexbosworth]

We could generate a key and log it. People can use it to login into any other client. bos is also a client anyway. How are we tying a key to an identity by generating one?

generating a key sounds cool to make it optional to add one, also could there be some default gateways?

for identity i mean maybe the generated key wouldn't be optimal for people because it wouldn't be their normal identity so no one would be following them?

[niteshbalusu11]

I think it's only useful if someone will be using Nostr for the first time. Maybe --generate-keys should be its own flag.

[alexbosworth]

i think this should be a copy of the default relays file, or define it in full here

[alexbosworth]

Does this work? Wouldn't it be the key signing?

[alexbosworth]

I started to look at this

Some things I'm thinking should be changed though:

• Generally speaking I never want private keys to live in command arguments
• It should be possible to remove the private key

And maybe

• It seems like there should be some default relays
• Relay management seems like it should be more invisible, less frequent
• Have integration/unit testing incorporated

Stretch

• Don't require bringing your own key
• Allow subscribing to stuff
• Schema for keys shouldn't necessarily be 1:1 in terms of 1 identity for 1 node, could be 1 node, many identities

Big Stretch

• Figure out how paid relays work and support that
• Add an end to end publish/subscribe flow for trade-secret/group-open/balanced-open/swap

So I started on it but I want to get it to MVP state in terms of feature and design

[niteshbalusu11]

Sounds good. You can use this for a default relay. I run it.

wss://nostr.foundrydigital.com

Paid relays as of today, there is a NIP where you can advertise to clients you're a paid relay. And then you build your own UI for people to come and add their pubkeys to the whitelist by paying an invoice.
I plan to make mine paid soon.

[alexbosworth]

Is there a link for the paid relay stuff?

[niteshbalusu11]

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/11.md

It's missing in this, but basically from what I understand it's just adding is_paid: true and payments_url : url
to this.

{
  "name": <string identifying relay>,
  "description": <string with detailed information>,
  "pubkey": <administrative contact pubkey>,
  "contact": <administrative alternate contact>,
  "supported_nips": <a list of NIP numbers supported by the relay>,
  "software": <string identifying relay software URL>,
  "version": <string version identifier>
}

Here's a paid relay website:
https://eden.nostr.land/invoices

[alexbosworth]

ok cool i'll play with that

[alexbosworth]

I'm still working through the basics of this one, making progress

[niteshbalusu11]

Cool ok.