How to Use Blogstr Question Box: Receive Questions and Publish Answers with Zaps

• What inspired this feature
• What you can do
• Enable your Question Box
• Set your Lightning address
• Find and open a Question Box
• Ask a question
• Check for incoming questions
• Write and save an answer
• Zap to publish an answer
• After payment
• What anonymous means here
• Hide a question from your Question Box
• Try it on your profile

Blogstr has a Question Box that anyone can add to their profile.

https://share.blogstr.net/ask/

Enable it, and an “⚡ Ask [name]” card appears on your profile so readers can send you questions.

Questions are public as soon as they are posted. The profile owner writes and saves an answer privately. Once the asker—or anyone else—sends the required Zap, that answer is published for everyone.

Both asking a question and Zapping to publish an answer can be done anonymously, without signing in to Blogstr.

This guide covers the full flow: enabling your Question Box, receiving questions, saving answers, and publishing them through Zaps.

The screenshots use the Japanese interface. The instructions below use the English button and field names.

§What inspired this feature

This feature was inspired by “⚡ もちょぴに質問する,” created by @murap_yacht.

I enjoyed that experience and wanted to make a similar profile-based Question Box available to other people through Blogstr.

It seemed useful for both the people asking questions and the people answering them. Nostr also provides the pieces to connect the workflow: signed questions, profile settings, Zap receipts, and published answers can all be represented as events.

That became Blogstr Question Box.

§What you can do

With Blogstr Question Box, you can:

• Add an “⚡ Ask [name]” card to your profile.
• Receive public questions from readers.
• Let the asker set the Zap amount required to publish an answer.
• Write and save an answer before making it public.
• Let the asker or a third party Zap to publish the answer for everyone.
• Ask questions and send publication Zaps anonymously.

The asker specifies the publication amount when posting the question. Posting a question does not require an upfront payment. After the profile owner saves an answer, a qualifying Zap for at least the requested amount triggers automatic publication.

Use Blogstr for the Question Box workflow. Its questions and published answers are public Nostr events; the Question Box controls and automatic publication flow are implemented in Blogstr.

§Enable your Question Box

Sign in to Blogstr and open Edit profile in Settings.

Check “Show Question Box on profile.” This setting saves when you toggle it; approve the signing request if your signer prompts you.

Your profile now has an entry point to your Question Box.

§Set your Lightning address

To receive Zaps that publish your answers, set the Lightning address field in Edit profile and click Save profile.

Use a receiving address that supports Nostr Zaps. Blogstr verifies the LNURL payment information and receipt signer before allowing an answer to be saved for automatic publication.

You can receive questions without a Lightning address. Saving an answer for the Zap-to-publish flow requires a verified payment destination.

If you need a receiving address, Setup guide includes a Coinos setup flow.

Publication Zaps go directly to the profile owner’s receiving address. Blogstr does not hold the funds.

§Find and open a Question Box

When enabled, your Question Box card appears at the top of the Articles tab on your profile.

The card is a pinned entry point. It is not published as a long-form article and does not appear in the article feed as a new article.

You can also open Question Box from the navigation or visit the Question Box directory to find profiles accepting questions. Enter a name or profile identifier and click Search; Clear resets the search.

§Ask a question

Open someone’s Question Box to see the question form.

Fill in:

• Your question.
• Zap required to publish the answer, in sats. Use a whole number of at least 1 sat.
• Whether to Ask anonymously, if you are signed in.

Ask anonymously is checked by default even when you are signed in. Uncheck it if you want to publish the question under your Nostr identity.

If you are signed out, Blogstr signs the question with a temporary Nostr key generated in your browser. It does not create a Blogstr login or sign you in.

Click Ask anonymously, or Ask if you have chosen to use your own identity.

The question is published to Nostr relays immediately. Until an answer is saved, it shows Waiting for answer. Only the profile owner sees Write answer.

§Check for incoming questions

When someone posts to your Question Box, the question appears in your Blogstr notifications.

Open the notification to go to the question in your Question Box and write an answer.

§Write and save an answer

When viewing your own Question Box, click Write answer below a question.

Enter your answer, then click Save answer.

Saving does not publish the answer in plaintext. Your browser signs the answer event with your Nostr identity, encrypts it for Blogstr’s publishing agent, and publishes the encrypted event to relays.

The publishing agent can decrypt unpublished answers. It does not have your secret key and cannot change the answer while retaining your valid signature.

After saving, the question shows a status such as:

🔒 Answer ready — publish for ⚡ 10 sats

While the answer is still unpublished, the profile owner can use Replace answer to save a replacement.

§Zap to publish an answer

Once an answer has been saved, the question has a Zap to publish button.

Anyone can use this button, including someone who did not ask the question. One qualifying payment of at least the requested amount makes the answer public for everyone.

Click Zap to publish to open the payment dialog.

Zap anonymously is checked by default for publication Zaps. Uncheck it if you want the Zap request signed by your own Nostr identity.

If you are signed out, Blogstr uses a temporary key to sign the Zap request. You can pay without creating an account or signing in.

Confirm the amount and pay. With a connected Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) wallet, you can pay from that wallet. Otherwise, use the invoice QR code or copy the BOLT11 invoice into a Lightning wallet.

Use the Zap to publish flow so the Zap request references the question and the prepared answer. A regular profile Zap is not a publication payment.

§After payment

While publication is pending, the question may show:

Zap sent. Waiting for the answer to be published on Nostr.

Sending the payment and publishing the answer are separate steps. Blogstr’s publishing agent verifies a matching NIP-57 Zap receipt, then publishes the answer event that the profile owner already signed.

When Blogstr detects the receipt, it requests publication of that answer immediately. The interface also watches for the published answer and updates when it arrives.

If the browser misses the receipt—for example, because you close the page after paying from an external wallet—a periodic recovery process can pick it up. The documented schedule runs at roughly 30-minute intervals and requires the receipt to be available on relays. Publication can take longer if the receipt is delayed or the relays or publishing service are unavailable.

If your wallet shows that payment succeeded, allow time for receipt verification and publication before attempting another payment. When Blogstr finds an existing valid payment for the prepared answer, it blocks an additional publication payment and waits for the answer to appear.

Once published, everyone can read the answer. There is no per-reader viewing key: the Zap funds public release of the answer.

§What anonymous means here

Questions and publication Zaps default to anonymous because both leave public Nostr events. You can choose to use your own identity by unchecking the anonymous option.

Anonymous means the question or Zap request uses a temporary Nostr key instead of your signed-in identity. It does not guarantee that the activity is untraceable. The question text, Zap request, and receipt can still be public, and the payment provider may have its own records.

Keep personal information you would not want published out of your questions and answers.

§Hide a question from your Question Box

As the profile owner, open a question’s action menu and select Hide from Question Box to remove it from your profile’s question list.

This publishes a hide marker for your Question Box. The original public question event remains on Nostr relays; hiding it is not a network-wide deletion.

§Try it on your profile

The flow is:

1. Enable Show Question Box on profile in Edit profile.
2. Set a Zap-capable Lightning address and save your profile, if you have not already done so.
3. Open the “⚡ Ask [name]” card on your profile.
4. A reader posts a question and sets the publication amount in sats.
5. You check the question through notifications or your Question Box.
6. You write and save an answer.
7. The asker or anyone else uses Zap to publish.
8. After the Zap receipt is verified, the signed answer is published for everyone.

Question Box gives the person asking, the person answering, and the people who want to read the answer a way to contribute to the same exchange.

Enable it on your profile and try it with your readers.

You can also ask Blogstr a question.