JOjonstaab·Apr 11, 2026
That's what decentralization looks like. You might also try:
nostr.com
nostr.how
nostr.net
nostrich.love
nostrhub.io
usenostr.org
And of course https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
In Bluesky April 2026 Outage Post-Mortemnostr-protocol
nostr
Communication & Social2020–2026
nostr-protocol / nostr
nostr
a truly censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter that has a chance of working
51Distinct people
68Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
12.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
a truly censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter that has a chance of working
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
If you've not heard about it, check out nostr protocol -- https://krisconstable.com/check-out-the-nostr-protocol/ "nostr - Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays". "The…
cqwww used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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Also in these discussions
- aljazceru/awesome-nostr · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- nostr-protocol/nips · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year68 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-11-15 20:12:34 UTC to 2026-04-11 11:07:23 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
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View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 37 | 2 | 35 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 20 | 0 | 20 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
68 sourcesI don't know why your comment is being downvoted, first I heard of the protocol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/
Is that because of it being crypto adjacent?
In We need to protect the protocol that runs BlueskyI hate to break it to Bloomberg, but this was posted to both nostr and X. One of those seems more likely than the other to be "freedom technology". A cynic might say that they knew full well, and took advantage of the ambiguity.
Sign things, and share them on relays. HtP
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
In Jack Dorsey Leaves Bluesky Board and Calls X 'Freedom Technology'I think your best bet here is Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays): https://nostr.com https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
Nostr isn't a federated platform like Mastodon or Lemmy, it's more similar to the AT protocol created by Bluesky, whilst being far simpler to understand and write apps using it. The nostr protocol is defined by a series of NIPs (Nostr implementation possibilites https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips), the most basic of which can be implemented in a client or a relay in 50-100 lines of code in any modern programming language.
Each user runs a client, anyone can write a relay or run any of hundreds of existing implementations, both clients and relays can choose to support a number of NIPs. Users have a public-private keypair, and distribute notes to relays signed with their private key, which are veri
Read the rest
fied by relays. Clients subscribe via websockets to any number of relays (I usually have 20-30), and receive notes from all users on those relays' databases, or filtered by the public keys of the users you're following. Relays for the most part don't communicate with each other. If you're ever blocked or banned from a relay, you'll still be able to have your notes seen as long as you have at least one relay in common with anyone who wants to see them. I run my own as well for extra resiliency.
At the moment there's ~50 standardised NIPs, which add features like likes, zaps (bitcoin tips for notes), user status, post expiration, mentions, search, DMs, and public chats. Nearly all of these are supported by popular clients and relays. While nostr is primarily used for social media at the moment, it's already possible to build upon as a protocol for pretty much any online service.
The total active user count on most public relays I'd estimate is somewhere around 500k to a million, though the nature of the protocol makes it impossible to estimate its true size. The perceived community on most relays before following anyone frankly can get pretty cancerous, mainly due to a lot of clients sorting notes by new by default, so I can only hope to high heaven it'll improve as it grows.
Though like any new non-centralised platform, it's more difficult to get started on for most non-technical users as they have to pick one of hundreds of clients to install, and requires caution to never leak your private key and be very wary of which clients you trust it with.
Without movement on this [1] I can't see adoption.
[1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/issues/97
In June 2023 Data Dump is missingI think the next stage is decentralized social media. Something like nostr (1) where there’s no centralized entity determining the algorithm to boost. It’s up to the individual to follow users.
Perhaps the next challenge would be human verification, even with this protocol we’d need something to index public people by to handle discovery.
Even before LLM’s became as mainstream as they are, most social media platforms were riddled with spam: affiliate marketing, drop shipping crap, and people who are running some sort of con.
1 - https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr already has 8k stars on github
In Social media for AI bots: “No humans allowed”Holding me back from posting updates of what I had for breakfast is the problem of private key sharing with services that I can use in order to post updates of what I had for breakfast.
A client or service will inevitably be compromised. And with it, the private keys of some, or assumed all, using it, whether stored by the service or logged on entry by a compromised system.
Private keys should be chained, master->subkey, with subkey the public key of the service __or a solution like that or that ends in the same result. When (not if) a service or key is compromised, the key can be blacklisted and/or any key co-signed by a compromised service blacklisted.
I'm confused by the oversight. It's also been raised here https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/issues/97
Until then, I'll have to keep my updates of what I had for breakfast to myse
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lf.
Unfortunately, most alternatives to Mastodon seem to be either explicitly right-wing (which you may or may not care about) or designed to copy and consume Twitter's business model, and aren't likely to be any better than Twitter in the long run.
Mastodon really is the best alternative at the moment, and it doesn't have to be difficult (although the most difficult option - self hosting your own identity server - is also the most secure.) You can find hosting solutions or even do what I (the laziest person) did and just run multiple accounts through each instance's public website and use browser bookmarks and/or a third party client. Not much more difficult than joining subreddits, but more annoying in that there is no actual shared identity between accounts. Plenty of political activists and media services are already on the platform.
But
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since you asked, I found some, with what seemed to be the biggest or most recent HN discussiona I could find. Absolutely no guarantees on my part regarding utility, practicality, security or whatever, though.
Nostr protocol: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33746360
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33323815
Counter Social: https://counter.social/index.html
https://gizmodo.com/jester-hacker-trying-to-fix-social-media...
(^weirdly no HN traction on this one tha I could find)
Cohost: https://cohost.org/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33920553
Post.news
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33655193
Gettr: https://gettr.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27702867
Gab: https://gab.com/
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=gab
Parler: https://parler.com/
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=parler
Diaspora: https://diasporafoundation.org/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18361631
(^ HN apparently hasn't had a meaningful discussion about Diaspora in years, which doesn't bode well)
Manyverse: https://www.manyver.se/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607995
WT Social: https://wt.social/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31706842
(I think this is dead)
That's what Nostr is designed to fix: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
In Bluesky Is a ScamNope – it is its own thing. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
In Nostr – Decentralized social network> If you have any evidence that that doesn't give him any control, I'd be happy to see it
Here you go: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/nips
Not joking it’s a protocol and clients decide what standards they want to implement.
In Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An IntroductionNostr’s GitHub page discusses the issues with SSB.
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#the-problem-with-ssb...
In Nostr (“Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”) – An IntroductionIt's possible if users host their own Mastodon instance, which for the vast majority of users is way too much of a hassle to do.
This is one of the reasons I think the nostr protocol is a better way of building a decentralized + censorship resistant social network.
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#the-problem-with-mas...
In Mastodon hit 10M usersFYI, this website is a nostr client. Nostr is a decentralized messaging protocol where many relays are used to share messages among many clients. There are mobile client apps like Damus, and there are web clients like this website. There are others. Some relays are free, and some relays are paid, which helps filter out spam.
Messages are cryptographically signed, and users are identified by their public key. Users typically follow other users like they would on Twitter, but the client manages everything, so there is no dependency on any relay.
Messages are typically posted to many relays at once and clients typically read from many relays at once. Jack Dorsey's message is being displayed here because it was copied to a relay that this website has access to. The same message is accessible elsewhere.
"Global" means that you download
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all the public messages that a relay has, instead of just downloading messages posted by people you follow.
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
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