If you’ve heard about Nostr and done some research online, you’ll probably have found many articles and GitHub pages that don’t exactly point you towards anything useable. If this is a new social media platform, where is the Nostr website?
The truth is, there is no Nostr website because Nostr isn’t a social media platform; it’s a protocol you can engage with that can be used to build social media platforms. There is no official Nostr website or mobile app, as is the case with traditional social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
In Nostr, you own your account by creating a private and public key pair. Once you’ve created your private key, you can begin to post on any Nostr-supported client, which will push your posts to the default relays or relays you have selected.
Since your private key is not tied to a specific application, you can use it to access your account on any client that supports Nostr. Think of it like e-mail; when you use e-mail protocol (SMTP), you can receive your e-mails, regardless of what e-mail program they use. Once your e-mail account is set up, you can log in to it using a host of applications on your desktop, browser or mobile phone and gain access to all your messages in our inbox and outbox.
The e-mail protocol isn’t a walled garden, and you can choose the preferred application you use to interact with your e-mail account.
What are Nostr clients?
Nostr clients are software applications that allow users to connect to the Nostr protocol and interact with the various relays that store data. When you log in to a Nostr client using your private key, you can access the features of that client to conduct user actions like making a post, leaving a comment, liking, or reposting another user’s content.
Once you’re signed in to a client, you will get the “social media” experience and will be your point of contact with the protocol. If you start to explore some of the clients, you might find many of the earlier services seem to be stripped-down versions of Twitter.
But this is only one use case for Nostr as a social media protocol; it’s a base layer for exchanging information between users. Since It’s an open protocol that anyone can use and build on and we will see many social media experiences migrated to the service as demand for services increases with the user base and clients compete to secure different users.
Since Nostr connects people on the base layer of the protocol, once you connect with someone with a follow or they follow you, you can engage with them regardless of the social platform (client) built on Nostr you use. You don’t have to re-establish connections if you switch platforms and can even communicate with one another through cross-platform communication.
If this explanation didn’t help, you’re still trying to get your head around it; perhaps the next point of action would be to find a Nostr-supported client and begin to engage with these applications instead.
What types of clients are there?
There are a few different Nostr clients available, each with its own unique features and capabilities and servicing different user experiences. The first differentiating factor between clients is the platform you can access, some might be web-based, and you can find them via their domain in any browser.
In contrast, others might be desktop applications that you would need to download and install on your computer, and finally, mobile clients, which would be native apps on either Android or iOs.
Regardless of the client you use, one thing you need to do that is universal: generate a public and private key pair. You can do this using Nostr key generation software or find a client you like and follow that client’s onboarding process to help you generate a public and private key pair.
Once you have your key, you need to guard it wisely; there is no coming back from this point if you lose your keys, you lose your account, there is no e-mail reset or recovery service, and you are in complete control over your account.
This key pair serves as a self-sovereign identity on the Nostr network. Once you have your set of keys, you can either use them directly on a client (not always advised) or leverage a key management tool which allows you to sign your keys to a client without exposing it.
Websites
The first and most popular way to access the Nostr network is by visiting one of the many web clients that have sprung up to cater to Nostr network users. If you have your private key ready, you can visit any of the following sites, login and begin engaging with the users the same way you would on traditional social media sites.
| Web Client | Domain |
|---|---|
| Astral Ninja | https://astral.ninja/ |
| Coracle Social | https://coracle.social/ |
| Hamstr | https://hamstr.to/ |
| Iris | https://iris.to/ |
| Primal | https://primal.net/ |
| Nostrgram | https://nostrgram.co/ |
| Nostr Rocks | https://nostr.rocks/ |
| Satellite | https://satellite.earth/ |
| Snort Social | https://snort.social/ |
| Yo! Sup | https://yosup.app/ |
Mobile apps
If Nostr is going to crack the social media market, it has to provide a mobile-first experience; today, most people opt to conduct their social media engagement on their phones either through the mobile web or mostly via native apps.
To help bring Nostr to smartphones and give users that app store experience they have become accustomed to with social media, a few mobile apps have begun to spring up.
Desktop apps
If you’re not a fan of web clients or mobile clients and prefer to run Nostr on your desktop, there are a few applications available to give you the experience you prefer.
| Desktop Client | Windows | Linux | MacOS |
|---|---|---|---|
| More-Speech | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Client competition for nostr users
Nostr, while a simple protocol, is an innovation in online communication, and it remains to be seen whether this protocol will attract many developers and users. Many protocols have come and gone, but the ones that remain are those that make specific actions so easy that developers default to leverage them instead of building custom solutions.
While there are several clients currently open to the public, we will have to see how many users a specific client can attract or how many Nostr users the entire ecosystem will hold if it is to compete in the exciting social media landscape, which consists of giants with massive spending power and will not be easy to compete with let alone dethrone.
Overthrowing existing monopolies is never easy, but as bitcoin started from humble beginnings with the intention of taking on central banks, Nostr has elements of that dogged determination and appeals to the same user base. So, for now, bitcoiners remain the core user base of Nostr, and it will be up to clients to create an experience familiar to non-bitcoin users and bridge the gap.
Do your own research.
If you’d like to try out Nostr or want to learn more about it, we recommend checking out the following resources to kickstart your research.
Are you on Nostr?
If you are a Nostr user and want to hang out and chat with us or follow our content on your preferred Nostr front end, feel free to add us using our PubKey below.
7ecd3fe6353ec4c53672793e81445c2a319ccf0a298a91d77adcfa386b52f30d
The Bitcoin Manual’s Nostr Pubkey
Give us your notes
If you have used Nostr, which client do you prefer and why? Are there any clients that you think deserve mention? Let us know in the comments down below.
