How Does Nostr Work

Nostr is a decentralized protocol that allows users to create and interact with social media networks and other types of content sharing systems. It is designed to be censorship-resistant, meaning that it is difficult for any central authority or individual to censor or control the content that is shared on the platform.

One of the key features of Nostr is its use of self-owned identities, which are created using a public and private key pair. The private key is kept secret by the user and is used to sign posts and other types of content, while the public key is used to identify the user and their content on the network.

To use Nostr, users must run a client, which can be a web-based application, a mobile app, or a command line interface. The client allows users to create and publish content, as well as interact with other users by following, liking, and re-posting their content.

To publish content on Nostr, users write a post or note, sign it with their private key, and send it to multiple relays. A relay is a server that is hosted by anyone and is responsible for accepting posts, known as events, from users to be stored on their server. Anyone can then query that relay about the data stored there. Users can trust one or multiple relays with their data, and if a relay is censored or removed, users can simply switch to another relay to continue sharing their content.

To receive updates from other users, clients query multiple relays to see if they have any information about the users that the client is following. The fetched data is then displayed to the user chronologically to create a feed of content.

Nostr is an open-source protocol, which means that anyone can build applications on top of it. This has led to the development of a variety of clients, including web-based applications, mobile apps, and command line interfaces, which offer different features and user experiences. We've already seen a full chess game implementation with the state of the game stored on nostr.

To get started with Nostr, users can sign up for a client like Damus or astral.ninja and generate a public and private key pair. They should then save their private key somewhere safe and use the client to update their profile, find users to follow, and create and share content.

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