The Numbers Are Back: How Jeff Gardner Is Bringing Clarity to Nostr's Growth

• The Data Gap Problem
• Enter Jeff Gardner
• What the Numbers Say
• Why This Matters Beyond Bragging Rights
• Get Involved

For a while there, flying blind was just part of the Nostr experience.

When Nostr dot band went stale after its original creator moved on, the ecosystem lost one of its most valuable tools for understanding itself. How many people were actually using the protocol? Were numbers growing or shrinking? Nobody really knew—and in a space where skeptics love to claim “nobody uses that,” having solid data matters.

In the latest episode of Soapbox Sessions, Derek Ross and Heather Larson bring good news: the numbers are back, and they’re telling an encouraging story.

§The Data Gap Problem

Decentralized networks have a measurement problem baked into their design. On a centralized platform, one company controls all the servers, which means they have complete visibility into user activity. They know exactly how many people logged in today, what they posted, and how long they stayed.

Nostr doesn’t work that way. Events propagate across hundreds of independent relays, each with its own partial view of the network. Aggregating that into meaningful statistics requires someone willing to do the work of pulling data from multiple sources and making sense of it. When Nostr dot band stopped updating reliably, that work simply wasn’t getting done.

The result? A thriving protocol with no good way to prove it was thriving.

§Enter Jeff Gardner

Jeff Gardner’s new tool at stats.nostr.band addresses this gap head-on. Rather than relying on a single data source, the platform aggregates information from multiple relays to build a more complete picture of network activity. Even better, it’s designed for community contribution—users can submit their own statistics to improve accuracy.

This collaborative approach fits the ethos of decentralization perfectly. Instead of trusting one entity to report the numbers honestly, the community collectively validates what’s actually happening on the network.

§What the Numbers Say

Here’s the part that should make Nostr enthusiasts smile: the data shows real growth.

According to Jeff’s analytics, a recent day saw nearly 39,000 unique public keys publishing events. For context, that’s significantly higher than the stagnant figures Nostr dot band was showing before it stopped updating. The daily and monthly active user metrics tell a similar story—more people are using Nostr, and they’re using it consistently.

These aren’t vanity metrics either. Unique pub keys publishing events means actual humans (or at least their clients) doing actual things on the network. That’s the kind of engagement that matters.

§Why This Matters Beyond Bragging Rights

Good analytics aren’t just for winning arguments on the internet. They serve practical purposes for everyone building in the ecosystem.

Developers deciding where to invest their time want to know if the user base is growing. Relay operators need to understand traffic patterns to plan capacity. Projects seeking funding can point to concrete numbers instead of hand-waving about “momentum.” And newcomers curious about Nostr can see evidence that they’re joining something alive, not a ghost town.

Decentralization is powerful, but it requires trust. Transparent, community-validated statistics help build that trust by showing the network’s health in terms anyone can understand.

§Get Involved

Derek and Heather close the episode with a call to action: if you’re running a relay or have access to Nostr data, consider contributing to Jeff’s tool. The more data sources feeding into the analytics, the more accurate and useful they become.

This is decentralization in action—not waiting for a company to solve the problem, but showing up and solving it together.

Check out the stats at stats.nostr.band and see the growth for yourself.

Soapbox Sessions explores decentralized communication, the Nostr ecosystem, and the future of the open internet. New episodes drop weekly.