Nostr Bi-weekly Review ( 1-14 April 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 decreased to 238,389. New user growth decreased, while profiles with bios increased by over 22.55%. Events totaled 5.2million and zap volume decreased to 11.8 million sats. Additionally, 14 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 2 merged. A total of 103 Nostr projects were tracked, with 13 releasing product updates. During this period, 1 notable event took place, and 6 significant events are upcoming.
Nostr Statistics
Based on user activity, the total daily active pubkeys reached 238,389, reflecting a decrease of 5.94% compared to the previous period’s 253,436. The highest daily activity was recorded on April 3rd, 2026, with 20,910 active users, representing a 15.45% increase compared to the previous record of 18,111.
The number of new users overall showed mixed trends from the last period. In particular, the number of profiles with bios rose to 857,746, marking an increase of about 22.55% compared to the previous record of 699,932. However, the number of new profiles with contact lists fell to 154,032, a 10.44% decrease from 171,992. Meanwhile, pubkeys writing events decreased to 156,255 within this period, representing an 8.15% drop from the previous 170,116.
In terms of content publishing, approximately 5,269,760 total events were published during this period, representing an increase of about 16.98% compared to the 4,504,959 from the previous cycle. Among them, Reposts reached a total of 331,632 within this period, marking a 0.48% increase compared to the previous 330,037.
For zap activity, the total zap amount is about 11.8 million, showing a decrease of over 28.05% compared to the previous period.
Data source: https://npub.world/stats , https://stats.andotherstuff.org/
NIPs
NIP-XX: Relay Self-Declaration Manifest and Retention Horizon #2314 Micrard
- Proposes two minimal wire protocol primitives for relay transparency: 1. Kind 10100 - Relay Manifest Event: A gossipable replaceable event where relay operators declare their endpoints (clearnet, Tor, I2P), retention policy, write policy, and supported NIPs. It uses TOFU key binding via NIP-11 pubkey to prevent spoofing. 2. HORIZON Relay Message: A new relay-to-client message [“HORIZON”, <sub_id>, <earliest_timestamp>] sent before EOSE when a subscription’s time range extends past the relay’s retention window, providing explicit temporal boundaries instead of silent dead-ends.
Update C7 to only allow kind 9 messages in chat views #2310 staab
- The pull request updates NIP-C7 to specify that only kind 9 messages should be allowed in chat views
- The PR proposes to merge 1 commit from the c7-only-9 branch (in the coracle-social/nips repository) into the master branch.
One sentence in NIP-01 that helps resolves a huge issue with relay connection management. #2307 dskvr
- The PR adds a single sentence to NIP-01: “Relays MUST only accept connections to a single endpoint when additional path segments do not influence its behavior.” The author explains that string-based duplication (e.g., wss://relay.damus.io/<random_string>) causes massive issues for client-side relay connection management, where random path segments are accepted but ignored by the relay. This ambiguity makes tracking and de-duplication very difficult, leading to situations where clients maintain multiple redundant connections to the same physical relay.
NIP-85: Clarifications #2304 vitorpamplona The PR makes a small improvement to the language in NIP-85 regarding multiple keys and relays per service provider, making it slightly more prescriptive. The PR proposes to merge 2 commits from the nip-85-language-update branch (in the vitorpamplona/nips repository) into the master branch.
Source: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pulls
Notable Projects
- Titan is a native nsite:// desktop browser for the Nostr web, named after Saturn’s largest moon — hidden beneath a dense atmosphere — reflecting its role in revealing a new layer of the internet; it resolves nsite:// URLs via Nostr relays, renders static sites from Blossom servers, implements NIP-5A (nsite v2), and introduces a Bitcoin-native naming protocol for permanent, decentralized domain ownership.
Bikel - New Tool Mnpezz
- Bikel is an open-source, decentralized mapping and geolocation application built on the Nostr network, enabling cyclists and athletes to track rides, attach media, organize events like alleycat races, and send Bitcoin micropayments, all while maintaining full ownership of their location data through NIP-52 time-based events and portable identity across clients and relays.
- Snort is a fast, React-based Nostr UI focused on performance and security. The v0.5.0 release delivers major security hardening (real Schnorr signature verification, hardened NIP-46 against forged relay messages, improved PIN encryption, and removal of unsafe delegation trust), significant performance upgrades (batched WASM verification, lazy loading, priority-based profile loading, and worker-relay optimizations), and broad stability fixes across React render loops, hooks, and memory leaks, along with improved SSR compatibility and default relay handling. Although this was the biggest release, there were also 2 more releases last week after this. (v0.5.1, v0.5.3)
- Amber is a mobile Nostr event signer (Android app) used to securely sign events for other Nostr apps and connections. This release improves stability and reliability by fixing event validation issues, race conditions, and subscription leaks, removes a dependency, updates the Quartz library, adds new backup options (WebDAV and Google Drive sharing), and improves relay reconnection behavior with exponential backoff. This was the latest, and there was also the release of v6.0.0 last week.
- Mostro is a peer-to-peer Lightning Network exchange platform built on Nostr, used for non-custodial Bitcoin trading between users. This release is a small hotfix addressing a regression that blocked range orders, along with changelog updates and release maintenance. This was the latest, and there was also the release of v0.17.2 last week.
- Nostria is a Nostr-based social platform (end-user client) focused on user-controlled, non-extractive social networking. The v3.1.19 release is a UI refactor that migrates all dialogs to a new unified dialog component for improved consistency and maintainability. There were also a lot more releases last week.
Comet - alpha-d52907f Christian Chiarulli
- Comet is a local-first encrypted notes app built with Tauri, React, TypeScript, and Rust, using Nostr for sync and Blossom for blob storage. This release mainly improves the editor experience by refining list behavior (better cursor snapping, indentation, auto-renumbering, and selection handling), improving blockquote and tag metadata handling, and cleaning up tests, lint rules, and formatting for a more stable and responsive editing system.
- Primal Android App is a full-featured end-user Nostr client with integrated wallet support for social interaction and Bitcoin payments on Android. In this release, it improves wallet reliability and multi-account support, adds better error handling for NWC wallet responses, enhances auto-reconnect for both remote signer and wallet services, and fixes multiple UI and stability issues including poll crashes, incorrect poll zap display, feed scrolling behavior, and wallet visibility handling when no wallet is present, along with minor Dev Tools and onboarding QA improvements.
- Shosho is a mobile live-streaming app built on RTMP with Nostr integration for broadcasting and social interaction. In v0.15.2, it improves Android usability by fixing keyboard handling, correcting status bar color display issues, and resolving screen rotation problems in the live stream carousel, resulting in a more stable and smoother streaming experience. This was the latest and there were also the releases of v0.15.1 and v0.15.0 last week.
- Nymchat is an ephemeral chat client built on Nostr (bridged with Bitchat) for temporary, anonymous messaging. This release is a small hotfix focused on changing the ordering of relay connections to improve connection stability and behavior during startup and syncing. This was the latest, and there were a lot more releases last week.
- Mostro Mobile Client is a secure mobile app for peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading on the Mostro network. This release adds timestamps to chat messages and improves first-launch onboarding with community discovery and node selection, while also fixing session crashes, localization issues, settings persistence, and improving relay stability by upgrading the Nostr networking layer with parallel connections and refined timeouts.
- Wisp is a minimal Android Nostr client focused on fast, lightweight messaging and interaction. This beta release improves chat UX with inline action icons in message headers, enhances emoji picker by sorting emojis based on usage frequency, and fixes a reply-count issue caused by LRU cache eviction, improving overall reliability and conversation continuity. This was the latest release, and there were some more beta releases last week. (v0.17.4-beta, v0.17.3-beta, and v0.17.2-beta)
- Nosflare is a serverless Nostr relay designed to run on Cloudflare Workers with a Cloudflare D1 database backend. This release is a hotfix addressing a database table creation issue. This was the latest, and there was also the release of 7.9.40 last week.
Long-Form Content Eco
In the past two weeks, approximately 75,015 kind 30023 events have been tracked (long-form articles), with over 60% being Bitcoin related articles and 40% related to Nostr and other topics across the Nostr Ecosystem.
The Evolution of Decentralized Networks The core discussion around decentralized technologies continues to evolve, heavily relying on cryptographic encryption to ensure the private nature of decentralized tech. As global dynamics shift, the community is increasingly dismantling the myth behind Western control (America), moving definitively toward resilient, user-driven models designed for securing your digital identity from the government and other parties. Looking ahead, the Bitcoin future outlook remains focused on the signal: leveraging this technology to build sustainable, privacy-centric infrastructures that prioritize true personal freedom over centralized oversight.
Nostr Expansion: Marketplaces and Grassroots Community As the ecosystem grows, the focus has broadened to include practical tools and community-driven events. Continuous platform updates are introducing powerful utilities like the Nostr VPN for enhanced censorship resistance, and the Nostr Boutique, empowering a truly decentralized marketplace that redefines peer-to-peer commerce. Alongside this digital growth, physical communities are strengthening; Bitcoin meetups across the UK and Ireland are providing crucial, foundational guidance. This grassroots approach lowers the barrier to entry, ensuring that users truly understand the underlying protocols and can navigate these evolving spaces safely.
Cultural Shifts, Economics, and Maximizing AI To support this shift, the infrastructure is evolving far beyond simple financial transactions to challenge legacy systems and amplify diverse voices. Critical economic discourse is taking center stage, exploring deep systemic issues such as why feminists should be angry at fiat, not capitalism. The network also fosters a vibrant, uncensored environment that welcomes other religious, motivational, life, and fictional stories. Furthermore, as artificial intelligence reshapes the digital landscape, the community is pioneering concepts like Vibe coding and the integration of AI agents. The prevailing sentiment is empowering: AI can’t replace you if you also maximize it. Creators and developers are learning to harness these tools in tandem with decentralized networks, blending digital sovereignty with augmented productivity.
Conclusion: A Blueprint for the Future Ultimately, the convergence of these tools bridges deep philosophical ideals with practical reality. The financial sovereignty of Bitcoin, secured by advanced encryption, and the open, uncensored commerce of Nostr provide a tangible framework for a new digital era. Through grassroots education, robust privacy tools, and the protection of profound cultural expressions, the ecosystem proves that decentralized tech is no longer just about code. It is about empowering individuals, maximizing human potential alongside AI, and building a resilient, multifaceted reality.
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.
- Digital Freedom with Nostr & Bitcoin - Sunday, April 05, 2026: (Colorado Springs, CO) - A meetup at Jives Coffee Lounge (16 Colbrunn Ct) focused on Bitcoin, Lightning, and Nostr.
Here are the upcoming Nostr and Bitcoin events that you might want to check out.
- Nostr: Introducing Renaud Lifchiz: Holds on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 at Chez Ginette, 101 Rue Caulaincourt, 75018 Paris, France Organised by
- Brisbane BitDevs March - NOSTR - Takes place on Sunday, April 19, 2026 at The Dalgety Public House, 6a/110 MacQuarie St, Teneriffe QLD 4005, Brisbane, Australia
- Nostr Atlanta #12 - Lunch & Learn - Spaces Workshop - Takes place on Wednesday, April 22, 2026 at ATL BitLab, 684 John Wesley Dobbs Ave NE UNIT A1, Atlanta, GA 30312, United States
- NosVegas 2026 - Tuesday, April 28, 2026 - Takes place at We All Scream Night Club, 517 Fremont St, Las Vegas, NV 89101, United States organised by
- Digital Freedom with Nostr & Bitcoin - Takes place on Sunday, May 03, 2026 at Jives Coffee Lounge, 16 Colbrunn Ct, Colorado Springs, CO, United States
- Nostr Nights #2 @ Bitcoin Park Nashville - Takes place on Monday, May 11, 2026 at Bitcoin Park, 1910, 21st Avenue South, Nashville, Davidson County, Middle Tennessee, Tennessee, 37212, United States
Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.
