Nostr is an inclusive communication commons. A simple standard that defines a scalable
architecture of clients and servers that can be used to spread information freely. Not
controlled by any corporation or government, anyone can build on Nostr and anyone can use
it.
Nostr embraces the chaos of the early internet—multiple kinds of data, diverse forms of user
interaction and different clients providing their own perspectives over the same underlying
information.
The client is the app that is running on your computer or phone, the server is
whatever is running on a cloud somewhere with a domain name. In centralized platforms
and other protocols, one client talks to a single server. In Nostr clients connect to
many.
Nostr’s single unit of information is a cryptographically signed note, these are created
by users in their client software and published to one or more relays.
Clients are smart and act as agents for the users who install them. They decide which
relays to connect to and when and what data to request according to the circumstance and
user preferences.
These are the servers that notes are published to and read from. They cannot change the
contents of notes (that would invalidate the signature), but they can decide what to
store and for how long.
In Nostr, every user is represented by a secret number called a “key” and every
message carries a digital “signature” that proves its authorship authorship and
authenticity without the need for any authority to say so. This foundation of trust
enables the decentralized broadcasting of information.
Nostr doesn’t subscribe to political ideals of “free speech” — it simply recognizes that
different people have different morals and preferences and each server, being privately
owned, can follow their own criteria for rejecting content as they please and users are
free to choose what to read and from where.
When the network effect is not tied to a single organization a group of users cannot
harm others.
If you are a programmer or know how to run servers it is trivial to run your own
relay with your own rules.
Besides being a natural medium for a Twitter-like microblogging social network, Nostr
can also be used for other purposes. And not only similar things like sharingvideos, longformarticles,picturesorvoice notes. There
are initiatives on Nostr for the development of sub-protocols that powerclosed groups,decentralized wikipedia,couchsurfing,marketplacesorweb annotations; as well as protocols that don’t use Nostr
for the core data but as a coordination and discovery mechanism, such asdecentralized code collaboration using git,file hosting,torrent sharingandvideo livestreaming.
Nostr is an idea with a lot of open-source software around it and a large userbase, but
not a finished, polished product that you can buy without stress. We’re still pretty
much in the phase where new programmers and early adopters are needed to help us refine
the protocol flows and the user experience.