Nostr

P2P Protocols

Open protocol for decentralized, censorship-resistant social networking using cryptographically signed messages distributed via relay servers

Hybrid Community Low capture risk
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Details

License Public Domain
Dev Status Released
Owner fiatjaf (pseudonymous creator, identified as Giovanni Torres Parra) / Community-maintained
Country Brazil
Start Year 2020
Stack JavaScript, Rust, Go, C#, Python
Funding Donations
Last Investigated Jan 15, 2026

Use Case Domains

Communication Identity & Trust

Affordances

End-to-end encrypted Protocol federation Consent-based audiences Sovereign identity

P2P Protocol Attributes

P2P Architecture Relay-based (WebSocket relays, not pure P2P)
Overlay Network User-defined (clients choose which relays to use)
Content Addressing Event-based (events identified by hash)
Local-First N/A (relay-dependent, not local-first)
E2EE Supported via NIPs (NIP-04, NIP-44 for encrypted DMs)
CRDTs Lib N/A (append-only event log, not CRDTs)
Byzantine Fault Tolerance Event signatures (prevents tampering, not consensus)
Signature Schnorr signatures (secp256k1, same as Bitcoin)
Permissions Relay-level (relays set their own acceptance rules)
Semantic Web Compatability N/A (custom JSON schema)
Smart Contract N/A (no smart contract capability)
Protocol Stack Position Application-layer (built on TCP/IP)
Asset / Value Embedding None — Nostr is a bare relay-and-client messaging protocol with no native token. Zaps (Lightning Network micropayments via NIP-57) are an optional application-layer convention layered on top of the protocol, not a protocol-native economic mechanism.
Protocol Maturity / Standardization De Facto Standard (NIP process — community-driven specification via Nostr Implementation Possibilities; no formal standards body; wide adoption)