Nostr Compass Podcast #3

By Nostr Compass January 12, 2026
Nostr Compass Podcast #3

Read the Newsletter: Nostr Compass #3

Timestamps

00:00 Intro to Episode 3 00:48 HODL Invoice Escrows in Shopstr 03:51 The Historical Evolution of Nostr: December 2020 10:37 Nostr’s Growth and Community Engagement: December 2021 16:49 Jack Dorsey’s Impact on Nostr: December 2022 28:37 Nostr’s Encryption Developments: December 2023 55:43 2024 Milestones 56:06 Funding and Growth in the Nostr Ecosystem: December 2025 57:52 NIP Protocol Developments and Innovations 59:27 Reflecting on Five Years of Nostr 01:00:59 Exploring B2B Use Cases and Post-Quantum Algorithms 01:02:27 Amethyst Building a Desktop App in the Shadows 01:03:34 Voice Messaging Features and Adoption 01:06:06 Direct Messaging and New App Features 01:07:15 Local Relays and Offline Functionality 01:11:38 Data Resilience and Synchronization 01:14:31 Nostr as an Address Space 01:20:28 Developer Tools and Ecosystem Growth 01:22:59 NIP Updates 01:24:49 ZapStore and App Distribution Improvements 01:26:32 Messaging Innovations and Integration 01:28:12 Infrastructure Projects and Command Line Utilities 01:30:21 Security Audits and Best Practices 01:43:41 White Noise Media Updates 01:44:37 npub.cash 01:46:23 Nostr Java Library v1.1.1

Show Notes

Introduction

Episode 3 of the Nostr Compass Podcast celebrates five years of Nostr development with a comprehensive retrospective of December milestones from 2020 through 2025.

Featured Topics

HODL Invoice Escrows in Shopstr

Shopstr’s new trust-minimized payment system for physical goods using HODL invoices. The architecture locks buyer funds in their own wallet using Alby’s makeHoldInvoice, with settlement triggered only after merchant inventory verification. The handshake flows through NIP-17 encrypted DMs with multi-merchant cart support.

Five Years of Nostr Decembers

December 2020: Genesis

  • fiatjaf releases Branle, the protocol’s first client
  • One or two experimental relays serve early adopters
  • The Telegram group @nostr_protocol launches
  • Core architecture established: secp256k1 public keys, signed posts, dumb relay storage

December 2021: Early Development

  • Nostr hits the Hacker News front page (110 points, 138 comments)
  • Network runs on approximately seven relays with fewer than 1,000 users
  • Branle receives private key import and multi-relay support
  • Command-line client noscl provides terminal-based interaction

December 2022: The Tipping Point

  • Jack Dorsey donates 14.17171699 BTC (~$245,000-$250,000)
  • Twitter suspends journalists, announces bans on Nostr/Mastodon promotion
  • NIP-19 merged, introducing bech32-encoded identifiers (npub, nsec, note)
  • Client proliferation: Damus, Astral, Snort, Amethyst development begins
  • 36+ commits to NIPs repository

December 2023: Ecosystem Maturation

  • NIP-44 revision 3 merged after Cure53 security audit (10 issues found)
  • ChaCha20 and HMAC-SHA256 replace flawed NIP-04 encryption
  • OpenSats fourth wave of grants funds Lume, noStrudel, ZapThreads
  • Nostr Wallet Connect v0.4.1 extends NIP-47 methods
  • jb55 posts that 2024 may be “the last year of Damus”

December 2024: Protocol Advancement

  • Notedeck Alpha launches (Rust-based desktop client)
  • OpenSats ninth wave funds AlgoRelay, Pokey, Nostr Safebox, LumiLumi
  • Gossip 0.13.0 lands with NIP-92/NIP-94 support, Blossom integration
  • 30 pull requests submitted (10 merged)
  • 224,000+ daily trusted pubkey events, 4x YoY growth

December 2025: Ecosystem Expansion

  • OpenSats fourteenth wave funds YakiHonne, Quartz, Nostr Feedz
  • NIP-BE (Bluetooth Low Energy) enables offline device sync
  • NIP-A4 (Public Messages) and NIP-29 clarifications merged
  • Primal Android becomes full NIP-55 signer
  • NDK achieves 162x faster cache queries

Current Developments

Amethyst Desktop Module

PR #1625 creates a full :desktopApp module using Compose Multiplatform, with login and global feed screens functional. The architecture converts :commons to Kotlin Multiplatform, enabling shared UI between Android and desktop while laying foundation for iOS.

Voice Messaging Features

PR #1622 adds dedicated voice reply screens with waveform visualization, re-record support, media server selection, and upload progress indicators.

Direct Messaging and New App Features

Notedeck gains messaging in PR #1223, expanding beyond timeline browsing into direct communication.

Local Relays and Offline Functionality

Citrine can now host web applications, turning phones into local-first Nostr web servers. Automatic reconnection and event broadcasting when network connectivity returns.

Data Resilience and Synchronization

Discussion of patterns for maintaining data integrity across distributed relay networks.

Nostr as an Address Space

Exploration of Nostr’s identity and addressing model beyond social applications.

Developer Tools and Ecosystem Growth

The Nostrability Developer Toolkit Registry maintains a curated list of SDKs and libraries across TypeScript, Rust, Python, Go, Dart, Swift, and more.

NIP Updates

  • NIP-54 - Critical internationalization fix for wiki d-tag normalization, preserving UTF-8 letters for Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic, and other scripts
  • NIP-54 Djot migration - Proposal to switch wiki content format from Asciidoc to Djot
  • NIP-XX Quorum - Threshold multi-signature governance using FROST signatures

Releases and Tools

ZapStore 1.0-rc1

Complete UI refresh, rewritten package manager, App Stacks for curated discovery, background update checking, infinite scrolling.

Messaging Innovations

KeyChat v1.38.1 adds UnifiedPush support for Android and Linux push notifications, plus biometric authentication.

Infrastructure Projects

  • nak v0.17.4 - CLI tool update with Blossom mirror functionality
  • Mostro v0.15.6 - Dev fee audit events through kind 8383 Nostr events

Security Audits and Best Practices

Discussion of security patterns across the ecosystem: Marmot audit findings, Applesauce signature verification by default, proper key handling.

White Noise Media Updates

Media upload retry options, profile edit warnings, and race condition fixes in whitenoise-rs.

npub.cash

v3 rewrite migrates to Bun, adds SQLite support, implements LUD-21, and adds realtime mint quote updates.

Nostr Java Library v1.1.1

WebSocket handling refactors and improved test robustness.

Links

#nostr compass #podcast #3 #1625 #1622 #1223
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