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nostr-protocol
nostr
Communication & Social2020–2026
nostr-protocol / nostr

nostr

a truly censorship-resistant alternative to Twitter that has a chance of working

Communication & Social
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
51Distinct people
68Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
12.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:49:33 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

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.

0102030402020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 1 submissions, 5 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 37 mentions; 2 submissions, 35 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 20 mentions; 0 submissions, 20 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC615
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC37235
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC20020
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

37 sources
gemmy·Dec 21, 2022
If you're looking for a social protocol that is even more decentralized than federated sites like Mastodon, have a look at Nostr. Every user account is just a public/private key pair. When you create a post, you sign it with you private key and the post is stored on a relay server. Anyone can run a relay server. I find Nostr much more exciting than federated sites, b/c it uses decentralized ids. You never have to worry about losing your social graph due to a federated server admin shutting down their server or banning you. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
In Protocols, not platforms
legutierr·Dec 18, 2022
Nostr is perhaps the most interesting of the list. Fully decentralized; messages are cryptographically signed; users are identified by their private keys; following is done on the client side, with no stateful server-side component; messages broadcast via stateless relays. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr Overall design seems very simple. It feels a bit like email, in the sense that you could probably put together a barebones implementation like sendmail and still be fully functional.
In Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
hk__2·Dec 18, 2022
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr > How do I find people to follow? > > First, you must know them and get their public key somehow And here lies the main problem of most of these decentralized alternatives: how do you discover new content? One of the biggest innovation of Twitter was to be able to follow a hashtag-- say #SomeEvent2022 and you see all tweets using that hashtag, not only those of people you follow. This tends to be abused by spamers, but it’s a great way to follow what’s going on at large events or find stuff related to some topic.
In Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion
323·Dec 18, 2022
> But everything about Mastodon seems badly designed and engineered. The focus on "servers" seems technologically anachronistic Jack linked to nostr which tries to solve some of these problems: https://nitter.it/jack/status/1603945963944480768 > The problem with Mastodon and similar programs: - User identities are attached to domain names controlled by third-parties; - Server owners can ban you, just like Twitter; Server owners can also block other servers; - Migration between servers is an afterthought and can only be accomplished if servers cooperate. It doesn't work in an adversarial environment (all followers are lost); - There are no clear incentives to run servers, therefore they tend to be run by enthusiasts and people who want to have their name attached to a cool domain. Then, users are subject to the despotism of a single person
Read the rest
, which is often worse than that of a big company like Twitter, and they can't migrate out; - Since servers tend to be run amateurishly, they are often abandoned after a while — which is effectively the same as banning everybody; - It doesn't make sense to have a ton of servers if updates from every server will have to be painfully pushed (and saved!) to a ton of other servers. This point is exacerbated by the fact that servers tend to exist in huge numbers, therefore more data has to be passed to more places more often; - For the specific example of video sharing, ActivityPub enthusiasts realized it would be completely impossible to transmit video from server to server the way text notes are, so they decided to keep the video hosted only from the single instance where it was posted to, which is similar to the Nostr approach. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#very-short-summary-o...
In Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion
drexlspivey·Dec 17, 2022
Nostr is another protocol that is growing rapidly especially since Jack Dorsey discovered it a few days ago and is pushing it hard on twitter. He even made a 15 btc donation to its development fund. Nostr is a more sane version of activitypub where your identity is just a public key and not dependant on any server, no signup required. Due to this it also natively support BTC payments and micropayments through the lightning network https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
In Post, the latest Twitter alternative, is betting big on micropayments for news
leesalminen·Dec 15, 2022
Today, Jack Dorsey, donated 14BTC (~$250,000) to the developers of the nostr protocol. From their Github repo[0]: The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global "social" network once and for all. It doesn't rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, therefore it works. [0] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
In Jack Dorsey donates to develop decentralized social network protocol [pdf]

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