Nostr Biweekly Review ( 15-31 Jan 2026)
GM, Nostriches!
The Nostr Review is a biweekly newsletter focused on protocol updates, exciting programs, the long-form content ecosystem, and key events happening in the Nostr-verse. If you’re interested, join me in covering updates from the Nostr ecosystem!
Quick review:
In the past two weeks, daily active pubkeys rose to 114,330. New user growth increased, while profiles with bios also increased by over 14.00%. Note events totaled 6.7 million and zap volume has increased to 18.7 million sats. Additionally, 7 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 3 merged. A total of 100 Nostr projects were tracked, with 13 releasing product updates. During this period, 1 notable events took place, and 2 significant events are upcoming.
Nostr Statistics
Based on user activity, the total daily active pubkeys reached 114,330, reflecting an increase of 21.64% compared to the previous period. The highest daily activity was recorded on January 15th, 2026, with 7,139 active users, representing a 1.00% decrease compared to the previous record of 7,211.
The number of new users overall has increased from the last period. In particular, the number of profiles with bios rose to 35,295, marking an increase of about 14.00% compared to the previous record of 30,961. The number of new profiles with contact lists rose to 17,338, and pubkeys writing events also increased to 494,041 within this period.
In terms of content publishing, approximately 6.7 million note events were published during this period, representing an increase of about 21.82% compared to the previous cycle. Among them, Reposts reached a total of 338,970 within this period.
For zap activity, the total zap amount is about 18.7 million, showing an increase of over 37.50% compared to the previous period.
Data source: https://stats.nostr.band/
NIPs
NIP58 - Badge Event “Request” and “Denial” #2204 DoktorShift
This Pull Request proposes extending NIP-58 (which currently defines Badge Creation and Awarding) to include a formal mechanism for users to request badges and for issuers to deny those requests.
Proposed Changes
The PR introduces two new event kinds to the Nostr protocol:
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Kind 30058 (Badge Request): An addressable event where a user requests a badge from an issuer. It supports “proof” tags (urls, text, or event IDs) to validate the request.
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Kind 30059 (Badge Denial): An addressable event where an issuer formally denies a request.
NIP-91: Add group channels extension to NIP-29 Anderson-Juhasc
- This Pull Request proposes adding a group channels extension to NIP-29 (which defines Relay-based Groups). The goal is to introduce structure or hierarchy to group conversations, similar to channels within a server.
NIP 9a for push notifications staab
- This Pull Request proposes adding NIP-9a, a new standard for handling push notifications in the Nostr ecosystem. The goal is to define how relays or bridge services can push events to a client’s push notification server, especially useful for mobile devices to save battery and data when the app is in the background.
Source: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pulls
Notable Projects
eCash (Cashu) is now live on both Mobile + Web We’re rolling out eCash support powered by Cashu across our apps, giving you fast, Bitcoin-backed payments with stronger privacy and a smoother experience for tipping/zapping, sending, and receiving. What is eCash (Cashu)?
Cashu is a Chaumian eCash system built for Bitcoin. It uses blind signatures so payments are not linkable between minting and spending, which is where the privacy benefit comes from.
In practice, you hold tokens in your wallet and can send them like digital cash. Cashu is typically issued by mints (services that mint and redeem tokens) and is often used with Lightning for deposits and withdrawals. On Nostr, NIP-60 defines how Cashu wallet data can be stored on relays so your wallet can follow you across apps. Nutzaps (NIP-61) are a Cashu-based way to zap where the token itself can serve as the receipt.
Web update (v5.6.0)
- ECash support: swipe tokens, deposit, send Nutzups, and restore wallets
- Zap users using eCash mints
- Copy note text for easy sharing
- Fixed mobile layout issues when using RTL languages
- Fixed external URLs with trailing characters
- Delete notes directly from the note options menu
- Redesigned video controllers for a cleaner experience
- Fixed fullscreen video playback in the home feed
- General bug fixes and improvements
Mobile update (v2.0.1)
- ECash support: swipe tokens, deposit, send Nutzups, and restore wallets
- Zap users using eCash mints
- Note deletion
- Add gesture detector on the image box when trying to upload an image in article publishing
- Improve database indexing for faster data loading
- Fix adding relay manually is not working when creating a relay set
- Fix mute thread in search is not working
- Fix relay list is not showing on user profile
- Fix app audio taking priority over other audios from other running apps
- Bug fixes and performance improvements
Why this matters
With eCash (Cashu), you can send value instantly with a “cash-like” experience, keep payments more private (blind signature-based), and use Nostr-native wallet flows like NIP-60 and Nutzaps.
Quick note on mints
Cashu wallets depend on the mint(s) you choose. We recommend starting small, using mints you trust, and treating eCash like spending cash for everyday use (not for long-term cold storage).
- Nonboard is a lightweight Nostr onboarding widget built with MithrilJS, designed to seamlessly guide new users through getting started on Nostr with minimal friction.
Ridestr - v0.1.3 (Back Handler & Edit Profile Fixes) - New Tool
- Ridestr is a decentralized rideshare platform built on Nostr that enables peer-to-peer ride coordination without centralized control. This release improves Android usability by adding proper back-gesture handling and refining the profile flow, separating profile setup from editing with clear titles, buttons, and correct responses to the system back button, making navigation smoother and less confusing for users. This was the latest and there were also the releases of v0.1.2 (Wallet Balance Check for Fare Boost), v0.1.1 and v0.1.0 (Initial Release) last week.
- Primal Android App is Primal’s Android client for Nostr. This release fixes multiple issues including handling local signer requests from deleted apps, resolving race conditions when loading uncached articles, ensuring valid pubkey hex for local signer login, allowing external signer login with hex pubkey, correcting malformed NostrConnect relay parameters, caching LocalApps names, fixing session event row order, preventing crashes from missing Cronet R8 rules, enforcing wss prefixes for relay URLs, correcting Nostr Connect screen layout overflow, fixing replies published as root notes under low connectivity, and adding support for reading NIP-92 dimensions, improving stability, reliability, and Nostr compatibility.
- Pathos is a decentralized activist platform built on Nostr and Bitcoin that enables communities to organize, collaborate, and take coordinated action in a censorship-resistant way. This release introduces an Android APK for direct installation, making Pathos easier to access and use on mobile devices without relying on app stores. This was the latest and there was also the release of v0.0.18 last week.
- Amber is a Nostr event signer for Android that allows users to securely generate, manage, and sign Nostr events. This release introduces a refreshed UI for login, events, and permissions screens, refactors relay counters using the updated Quartz library, fixes relay connection issues and datastore handling, exposes datastore errors, adds a loading indicator during login, removes old migration code, and improves private key error reporting, resulting in a more robust, user-friendly, and reliable signing experience. This was the latest release and there was the release of v4.1.0-pre2 also last 2 weeks.
- Aegis is a simple, cross-platform Nostr signer that supports multiple connection methods. This release introduces running the local relay as a foreground service on Android, adds bottom padding to prevent overlap with the navigation bar, shows the connection count for the local relay, and fixes an event count issue, resulting in improved usability and more accurate relay monitoring for users.
- Flotilla is a Discord-like Nostr client built around the concept of “relays as groups.” This release improves user experience and reliability by fixing UI issues like scroll button layering, tooltips on mobile, chat list responsiveness, and image fullscreen dialogs, enhancing video embeds, room editing, and profile selection. It also strengthens functionality with support for blocked relays, authentication policy settings, reporting pending signers, default relay updates, memory leak fixes, and login with a key when no signer is detected, making the app more stable, user-friendly, and secure.
- 0xchat App is a secure chat application built on the Nostr protocol. This release enhances messaging and file handling by adding automatic draft saving for Moments, default file storage via FileDropServer and BlossomServer, and better reply context by moving replied-to messages to the top. It also fixes tag-based topic search, note search responsiveness, reply display issues, and pending Cashu proofs handling, ensures the Cashu wallet is available before claims, and fully aligns with NIP-55, resulting in a more reliable, secure, and user-friendly chat experience. This was the biggest release and there was the release v1.5.3 desktop release also last two weeks.
Nostr Ynstant Messenger - v2.26.74
- Nostr Ynstant Messenger is a lightweight ephemeral and persistent chat client built on the Nostr protocol, bridging with Bitchat for anonymous, temporary messaging. Release v2.26.74 is a hotfix that deprecates nostrmedia.com in favor of blossom.band, ensuring media links now point to the updated, supported service for more reliable content handling.
- Nostr Java is a Java library for generating, signing, and publishing Nostr events, enabling developers to integrate Nostr functionality into Java applications. This release refactors NIP-44 key derivation for improved reliability, enhances error handling, and updates several dependencies, resulting in a more robust and maintainable library for building Nostr-based applications.
Dart Nostr Development Kit (NDK) - v0.7.0
- Dart Nostr Development Kit (NDK) is a Dart library designed to enhance the Nostr development experience by providing tools for event handling, relay communication, and Nostr protocol integration. This release improves relay handling and reconnections, fixes NWC deserialization and event tampering vulnerabilities, adds wildcard tag search, introduces isolates for compute-heavy tasks, updates NIP-44 encryption detection, deprecates old filters, and unifies cache event APIs, resulting in a more secure, efficient, and developer-friendly environment for building Nostr applications in Dart.
- Citrine is a Nostr relay for Android that enables decentralized event publishing and retrieval. This release fixes a crash that occurred when attempting to restore follows, improving app stability and ensuring a smoother relay experience for users.
Long-Form Content Eco
In the past two weeks, approximately 450 to 550 long-form articles have been published, with over 38% being Bitcoin related articles and 62% related to Nostr and other topics across the Nostr Ecosystem.
The core discussion around decentralized technologies has shifted from theoretical utility to urgent economic and political necessity. We are witnessing a move beyond price speculation toward resilience against centralized failure, driven by a growing public conviction regarding Government Regimes & Conspiracies, the belief that state-level actors are actively coordinating against individual sovereignty.
- The Bitcoin Price Drop vs. Decentralized Nature: Recent Bitcoin price drops have reignited skepticism, yet the core community views this volatility as noise against the signal of its Decentralized Nature. While the fiat value fluctuates, the network’s fundamental promise remains: uncensorable, borderless value transfer that no central bank can debase.
The Developer Ecosystem: Innovation vs. “Slopware”
The focus on the Nostr ecosystem has expanded from simple infrastructure building to a vibrant but chaotic development surge. This era is defined by a tension between rapid innovation and code quality.
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Vibe Coding & The Risk of “Slopware”: A massive influx of new talent is flooding the ecosystem, accelerated by “Vibe Coding” using AI-assisted tools to rapidly prototype based on “vibes” rather than rigid specs. While this lowers the barrier to entry, it has birthed a new danger: Slopware Development. The reliance on AI generation is reducing critical thinking for humans, leading to bloated, unoptimized, or insecure code (“slop”) that mimics functionality without understanding the underlying engineering. The challenge now is filtering the “slop” from the signal to ensure these resistance tools are actually robust.
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Decentralized Media Hosting via Blossom: To support this growing ecosystem, infrastructure is evolving beyond text. Blossom has emerged as a critical standard for decentralized media hosting. It solves the “heavy lifting” problem of relays, allowing users to host images and videos on specific servers they trust (or run themselves) while keeping the metadata on Nostr. This ensures that media remains as uncensorable as the text it accompanies.
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Poetic Mix with Nostr Keys: Culturally, the ecosystem is softening the hard edges of cryptography. Users view Nostr Public Keys (npubs) as digital identities mixed with poetry. “Vanity mining” for keys that start with specific names has become a form of digital expression, blending mathematical rigidity with human creativity.
Security, Privacy, and the State
As the ecosystem matures, the definition of security is tightening in response to both hackers and state surveillance.
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Digital Privacy & Mobile Sovereignty: With the rise of mobile-first users in developing nations, protecting private keys on handheld devices is paramount. The focus is on Signers dedicated apps that isolate keys from social apps. This isolation is crucial: even if a user installs “slopware” games or buggy clients, their master identity remains secure in a separate, hardened environment.
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Taxation & Liberty: The friction between parallel economies and the state has sparked renewed debate on taxation. As governments seek to regulate and tax these digital exits, the conversation is pivoting to the moral imperatives of Digital Privacy. The “Cyberpunk Ethos” is resurfacing, arguing that money separated from state control and the privacy to use it is a prerequisite for personal liberty.
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The Inevitability of Centralized Breaches: The narrative on “Cyber Security” has hardened. It is no longer a question of if a centralized database (bank, social media, government ID) will be breached, but when. The industry is pivoting toward “Self-Sovereign Identity” (SSI) on Nostr, where the user owns their data graph, and no central honeypot exists for hackers or hostile regimes to target.
Conclusion: Philosophy Meets Reality
Broader topics continue to connect technology with deep philosophical questions. The “religion” of sound money is now backed by the “reality” of active relays, Blossom servers, and censorship resistance. We are seeing a convergence where Cryptography acts as the shield for Liberty, and protocols like Nostr provide the voice for those silenced by politics.
Thank you,
and others, for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.
Nostriches Global Meet Ups
Recently, five (1) Notable Nostr and Bitcoin events have been hosted.
POSSE content with Drupal using Nostr at FOSDEM 2026 - 31st January 2026 at Université Libre de Bruxelles Time: 5.35 PM - 6.00 PM CET (UTC+1) organized by @Sebastix
Here are the upcoming Nostr and Bitcoin events that you might want to check out.
Digital Freedom with Nostr & Bitcoin - 1st Febuary 2026 Takes place at Jives Coffee Lounge where Nostr and Bitcoin will be discussed. Also, attendees will be helped to set up your free Nostr account, free Bitcoin Lightning wallet, etc.
Nostr Nights #1 - 2nd February 2026 Nostr Nights is a quarterly meetup for anyone passionate about building, growing, and exploring the future of decentralized social technology. Whether you’re brand-new to Nostr or already building on it, this event is designed to help you learn, connect, and go deeper. Each session features conversations with people building real projects on Nostr, hands-on onboarding for newcomers, educational deep dives into how the protocol works, and open discussions about emerging tools, use cases, and best practices. It’s an opportunity to ask questions, share what you’re working on, and collaborate with others pushing the ecosystem forward. Some of the organizers include:
Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.