Nostr as Foundational Identity

• Social
• Software Development
• Network Participation
• Conclusion

Nostr is an open and extensible protocol built around a simple and powerful idea: your public key is your identity.

This NOM proposes that the Network of Momentum (the Network) adopt Nostr as a shared identity layer across social interaction, software development, and network participation.

§Social

The Network should not depend on any single platform to preserve its documents, announcements, and public discourse.

This NOM proposes that Nostr serve as the primary public record for the Network.

Signed Nostr events make authorship and content independently verifiable while allowing replication across relays, clients, and websites.

Important artifacts SHOULD be published to Nostr, regardless of their origin, using NOMs or other relevant standards where appropriate.

§Software Development

Development of the Network should not depend on centralized collaboration platforms.

Source code and contributions SHOULD use NIP-34 where appropriate, extending Nostr identity across repositories, patches, issues, and other development activity.

The same identity model can extend to software releases and cryptographically link source revisions, build artifacts, and their publishers.

Decentralized distribution of signed release artifacts remains an area for further exploration.

§Network Participation

The Network should provide first-class support for Nostr identities as on-chain principals.

Nostr public keys should be able to receive Network assets and authorize transactions without prior registration.

While Nostr already supports payments through standards such as NIP-57 Lightning Zaps and NIP-61 Nutzaps, these rely on Nostr-agnostic systems with their own tradeoffs.

The Network can complement these systems and create opportunities for interoperability and cross-network liquidity.

§Conclusion

By adopting Nostr as its foundational identity layer, the Network can give users a unified reputation, contribution history, asset ownership, and authority while making it easier to recognize and reward contributions across the ecosystem.

The Network builds on Nostr without requiring changes to the underlying protocol, allowing both ecosystems to evolve independently.