Nostr notes by Juraj

Cypherpunk communities and services – who you meet on the ...

2026-05-07T23:16:00+02:00

Cypherpunk communities and services – who you meet on the parallel path

Most cypherpunk resources focus on technology and skip the social layer. Big mistake. Technology alone rarely suffices. Communities and service providers are what make it actually usable.

A few problems: Communities "don't count", service providers are evil ("they take fees! it should be free!"). And religious dogmatism.

https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2026/05/07/cypherpunk-communities-services-parallel-path/

I wrote ...

2026-05-07T22:33:20+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…v7le
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I wrote nprofile1qqsrcvzxmazwgpmtua0yn7pzaenr96pf7u6zu9ktnrq3v5mylr8fn2szn8jx9 exactly for replacing these "I need your life story" payment gateways with a simple Lightning gateway that runs on your PHP hosting and uses Cashu mints to accept lightning invoices.

Because usually the story is - sure, I don't like corpo-pay, but running BTC Pay is too difficult. Cashu Pay is a drop-in replacement for basic features that you unzip on PHP hosting and click through a wizard and you're good to go.

Cypherpunkové komunity a služby - koho stretnete na paralelnej ...

2026-05-07T17:15:00+02:00

Cypherpunkové komunity a služby - koho stretnete na paralelnej ceste

Väčšina cypherpunk zdrojov sa sústredí na technológiu a preskakuje sociálnu vrstvu. Veľká chyba. Technológia sama o sebe väčšinou nestačí. Komunity a poskytovatelia služieb sú to, čo ju robí použiteľnou.

Pár problémov: komunity „sa nerátajú", poskytovatelia služieb sú zlí („berú si poplatky! malo by to byť zadarmo!"). A náboženský dogmatizmus.

V knihe Krotitelia Entropie sú hlavnými postavami práve poskytovatelia - dokonca "VCs". Potrebujeme ich v realite a myslím, že je fajn začať tým, že na nich zmeníme pohľad, cez super román to môže byť dobrý spôsob.

https://juraj.bednar.io/blog/2026/05/07/cypherpunkove-komunity-a-sluzby-koho-stretnete-na-paralelnej-ceste/

Well, it's smart, you know nothing is vegan.

2026-05-06T21:28:08+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…5gld
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Well, it's smart, you know nothing is vegan.

Thanks, will try

2026-05-05T13:29:38+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…9fwv
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Thanks, will try

The mint can be run by the service. And you need convert Bitcoin ...

2026-05-04T08:02:26+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…g4nc
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The mint can be run by the service. And you need convert Bitcoin to notes as you need, no need to go big. So this is a non issue for this use case.

For most of human history, the bread problem was solved by money. ...

2026-05-03T21:13:09+02:00

For most of human history, the bread problem was solved by money. You hand the baker coins, the baker hands you bread, neither of you needs to know the other's name. Reputation only became necessary once we introduced asynchrony and reversibility: credit, chargebacks, pay-later. The seller has to bet on who you are instead of what you paid, and that bet is what accounts, KYC, fraud scoring, and social graphs are pricing. Identity theatre is unpriced credit risk in a uniform.

Cashu and Routstr collapse that detour. Bearer ecash for an LLM call is structurally identical to coins for bread. Settled on the spot, no counterparty bet, no recourse needed because there's nothing to recover. We didn't invent anything. We walked back to where we started after a few centuries of building ledgers, banks, and identity systems to patch the holes in deferred payment. Money → identity theatre → money.

The cypherpunk point here is boring: finality is cheaper than verification.

Beautiful. How do I publish my music there? Is there a way to ...

2026-05-03T21:03:52+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…jq5t
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Beautiful.

How do I publish my music there?

Is there a way to autoimport v4v music? The v4v music scene is big already, all music indexed in RSS feeds. Seems like a natural fit.

Fountain.fm or https://lnbeats.com/ play it.

Sure, if you are a human. I agree.

2026-05-02T21:33:44+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…nnlc
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Sure, if you are a human. I agree.

No, he's currently unavailable eating Kate's pussy (with ...

2026-05-02T21:32:27+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…w6se
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No, he's currently unavailable eating Kate's pussy (with top 1% vaginal microbiome)

I know, I run one of the eight or so nodes... :)

2026-05-02T21:31:16+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…x5r0
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I know, I run one of the eight or so nodes... :)

If cypherpunks had a space ship to fuck off to the stars, it ...

2026-05-02T14:16:33+02:00

If cypherpunks had a space ship to fuck off to the stars, it would have a "Starfucker" grafitti on it and look like this.

Who joins us on the Starfucker? Don't trust, verify that it won't kill us all. It even has "Never die" on it! Much better than trust me bro.

Can I have this in my living room someday please? I'll invite ...

2026-05-02T14:06:41+02:00

Can I have this in my living room someday please?

I'll invite friends

It seems super funny how corpos are trying to push stablecoin ...

2026-05-02T09:23:06+02:00

It seems super funny how corpos are trying to push stablecoin agentic payments with complicated schemes. Writing payments for every api call into blockchain, even the corporate one, is super expensive. So they make super complicated facilitators which would make it possible. It's basically prepayment to a third party.

We have Cashu (npub17fz…9yxv). Just include the token in request headers and get change if needed. No back and forth required. The API can claim the payment immediately on the mint. Even if you consider the threat model the same (mint=facilitator), the protocol is much more elegant. And even getting Cashu tokens can be done over lightning, so lower exposure and still no on chain fees or waiting.

I think the problem is that people are scared of sats as the unit. Originally I thought it's custody risk (and I mean mainly regulatory risk), but facilitators are custodians. I think it's just cultural. And Coinbase / Circle pushing their product.

Economic implications: Each usdc held on Base or elsewhere is financing American government. And each Base transaction helps the pnl of Coinbase.

Each sat held and used helps the parallel way. I made my choice. Better tech, better privacy and no financing of monopolies on violence. That's why my agent has a Cashu wallet. And I'd gladly finance good mints with some fees.

I think both might be just the economic situation in the world. ...

2026-05-02T08:32:51+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…59s0
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I think both might be just the economic situation in the world. People preferring cheaper countries

Art of the deal Prediction: they will get it

2026-05-02T08:06:43+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…06yg
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Art of the deal

Prediction: they will get it

Prvý záznam z Bitcoin je retro je von! #naddr1qv…tyq6

2026-05-01T16:54:08+02:00

Prvý záznam z Bitcoin je retro je von!

quoting
naddr1qv…tyq6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd92mAI7a7E

Záznam zo živého podcastu o stablecoinoch z konferencie Bitcoin je retro 2026.

I've spoke to good friends who were there last year and this ...

2026-05-01T15:42:24+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…kk2h
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I've spoke to good friends who were there last year and this was their impression. They did not come back.

Anyway, I don't go to the US unless I absolutely have to, so I'll stick with the other America and Europe for now.

There's a concept I subscribe to which is Similicity at the ...

2026-05-01T15:41:13+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…pmxd
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There's a concept I subscribe to which is Similicity at the far side of complexity.

Yes, it's mental load to handle this, but when you handle it, there's simpllicity at the other side of it, which gives you even more freedom (including peace of mind).

Yeah. In Europe, MeshCore is literally almost everywhere, at ...

2026-05-01T15:39:48+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…jsfd
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Yeah. In Europe, MeshCore is literally almost everywhere, at least in cities I've visited so far. Like you don't even need to put the lora node to the window, I can just use it from bathroom if I want to.

And I think it's quite nice to start the network effect with something that benefits from it - group chat. Which Sideband is not really good at.

You don't need to choose one or the other. BitChat for ...

2026-05-01T13:39:50+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…rpnr
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You don't need to choose one or the other.

BitChat for everyone who has the phone (so basically everyone). Than you can use Bitchat-meshcore bridge - and you need just two - to connect those two meshes. Not perfect, it only interconnects the channel data (very hard to do full bitchat protocol bridge over lora), but this combines advantages of both - range of meshcore, no hw requirements of bitchat.

https://github.com/jooray/MeshCore-BitChat

And your point is exactly right - hard to setup when you're being bombed. But it's easier to connect a few areas with a few devices and then use bitchat in populated areas in the local mesh.

Can you quote in which lines of code those backdoors are? ...

2026-05-01T13:35:49+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…pq44
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Can you quote in which lines of code those backdoors are? It's open source, so they should be visible, not abstract.

I would go even further. There is no "governance model" ...

2026-05-01T13:30:19+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…t0nd
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I would go even further. There is no "governance model" that is generic. A community might agree on when you should not make loud noises, but they should not govern what you smoke on your balcony.

Meaning this - you can be sovereign individual in what your money for saving is. Your business, comunity should not touch it. But the community will probably converge towards several payment networks (which might be using completely different tech than what you save in). And these networks might be global, although you agree locally on the use. You might belong to several communities, even in the same area. The tennis court has different governance than the park.

I think this is what most people don't get - one extreme is statists thinking "you can't do cherry-picking, it's all a package - taxes, education, healthcare, roads, laws, ...". But with flag theory we see you can absolutely do cherry picking. Sovereign individuals think it's all on them. I agree there will be individual, community and global aspects, but each with cherry-picking where it makes sense.

And it's not designed, but discovered. (How it looks like is in TamersofEntropy (nprofile…cr99)).

❤️

I still can't comprehend that humans are flying to space and ...

2026-05-01T09:06:35+02:00

I still can't comprehend that humans are flying to space and at the same time there are these medieval dominance structures and millions of people still think they're a good idea.

Stay strong in Persia! ❤️

I see a lot of questions and misunderstandings in the comments. ...

2026-05-01T09:00:52+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…pyqd
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I see a lot of questions and misunderstandings in the comments. Might be worth your time if you don't know what calle (npub12rv…85vg) is talking about.

https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2025/12/08/the-internet-and-computers-arent-what-they-used-to-be-why-your-apps-stopped-working-hardware-attestation/

I understand. I think last year a friend told me that most people ...

2026-04-30T17:56:16+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…t92u
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I understand. I think last year a friend told me that most people were to see the orange man and in the venue across the road were amazing v4v concerts that had basically zero attendees.

Anyway I get it, I go to events like this, although not in the US.

The EU has an ad campaign for democracy. That’s the biggest lol ...

2026-04-30T16:49:32+02:00

The EU has an ad campaign for democracy. That’s the biggest lol ever.

Free science = you can freely research anything the grant committee approves. But you’d better not publish certain statistics.

Freedom of speech = evil Elon Musk doesn’t want to delete what we tell him to. So, a fine. Watch out for "harmful" websites—we’ll shut them down for you, so you can express yourselves freely.

And then, please pay with your taxes for ads telling you how incredibly free you are.

Nostr event nevent1qqst50wls5hau74x9w4famkqx8cve46skfjlu5nfgfs506wzl8xzsqgzyrdtd3sxt3pehxa0kzc0rl66p35zww7wtsv4nfq43tt2wzz375rmvh6ssqs

2026-04-30T12:43:04+02:00

No, I will not join your Discord or Telegram channel.

Tamers of Entropy/ Krotitelia entropie launch Maybe you have ...

2026-04-30T12:23:13+02:00

Tamers of Entropy/ Krotitelia entropie launch

Maybe you have noticed the strangeness of the world we live in is increasing. We can constantly play catch-up and try to make sense of it, which we should do to some extent, especially with technology that will affect us all. But for most things, walking a parallel path has both better outcomes and we can make better sense of what we create. This is what the characters of my new novel Tamers of Entropy do (available now for preorder in English original, and Czech and Slovak translations - both paperback and audiobook).

Tamers of Entropy has a wide range of topics: hacking, identity, bureaucracy, parallel market structures, consciousness, mind and their expansion. And a few very interesting themes. It is a story happening over three decades, and it was written over three decades, but it is very current.

I use the characters as guides. I often ask questions such as "What would Satoshi do?". It works even better with characters of the story. Each of them is unique in a different way, not supernatural. The genre is documentary sci-fi, hacker story, but it changes during the book to something I won't spoil. It is a lunarpunk story. I hope you enjoy it.

Practicalities:

Two versions:
- Paperback: €24.99
- Premium: €49.99 during preorder, €59.99 after. Paperback + USB stick with the audiobook and extra materials + an "open after reading" envelope.

Order links:
- English: https://hackyourself.io/product/tamers-of-entropy-jurajlisa/
- English with delivery to CZ/SK: https://juraj.bednar.io/product/tamers-of-entropy-jurajlisa/
- Slovak: https://juraj.bednar.io/product/krotitelia-entropie-sk/
- Czech: https://juraj.bednar.io/product/krotitele-entropie-cz/

More info: https://tamersofentropy.net/

Books ship throughout May. We're doing a launch at Cryptobyte in Liberec, where physical copies will be available on the spot. If you want a signed copy, mention it in the order notes.

Humanity, post AI. ...

2026-04-30T12:17:53+02:00

Humanity, post AI.

Nostr event nevent1qqsq4y4a7hrwh3hgxzt6xzx2s73avr0ku6vm5rthyfg28prcgc0xvmgzyrdtd3sxt3pehxa0kzc0rl66p35zww7wtsv4nfq43tt2wzz375rmvl8eer2

2026-04-30T10:48:32+02:00

This is great UX 😀 Also KYC services should do this. ...

2026-04-30T10:34:31+02:00

This is great UX 😀

Also KYC services should do this.

Solarpunk - positive vision of using technology to build a better ...

2026-04-30T10:04:10+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…7c99
_________________________

Solarpunk - positive vision of using technology to build a better society
Cypherpunk - realization that the state and centralized entities are attackers and they want monopoly over building better futures (and they suck at it)

Lunarpunk= solarpunk+ cypherpunk

Build it, but don't be naive

Interesting. Can't you set a different caching server?

2026-04-30T08:33:04+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…0s5h
_________________________

Interesting.

Can't you set a different caching server?

Price manipulation is a statist hallucination. There can't be ...

2026-04-30T08:29:36+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…7ept
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Price manipulation is a statist hallucination. There can't be manipulation, some people do trades. But price is price, it's created by matching bids and asks.

After what I read, I know this is not an event for me. Seems like ...

2026-04-30T08:27:38+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…l5zc
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After what I read, I know this is not an event for me. Seems like the event is to kiss the ring.

But I'm happy there are some good parts to it too.

I sign this statement with my npub. For podcasts, there is ...

2026-04-30T08:24:35+02:00

I sign this statement with my npub.

For podcasts, there is fountain_app (npub1v5u…n0v5)

quoting
nevent1q…4txk
i hate hate hate hate (hate) that spotify is shoving podcasts into my face when I open the app, now even in the form of tiktok-slop style short-form videos, because fuck you that's why I guess, and my assumption is that it will only get worse from here. to add insult to injury it's political stuff. LEAVE ME ALONE. i just want to listen to some music ffs

Why we launched @nprofile…cr99 on Nostr, some thoughts about ...

2026-04-30T00:14:54+02:00

Why we launched TamersofEntropy (nprofile…cr99) on Nostr, some thoughts about identity, multiple Nostr accounts, why characters of the novel post here and a tool to make it possible.

quoting
naddr1qv…hfqr

The characters in my new novel TamersofEntropy (nprofile…schs) are cypherpunks. Of course they're on Nostr and not on other platforms. It started as a practicality - I didn't want to deal with e-mail addresses and whatever verification they need, it's just too much hassle. I'd rather generate random numbers.

But here's the thing: Nostr isn't mentioned in the book. Bitcoin gets a passing note. Zero-knowledge proofs, hard money, decentralization — all of it is background noise and it's a good thing. Infrastructure that works, not ideology that distracts.

Image: Tamers of Entropy packaging, by nogoodkid (nprofile…jchg) . Note that this is a photo, not AI generated, this is the package of the book (the premium version with the audio, but paperback will be similar, just without the stickers).

Simplicity on the other side of complexity

There's a concept I subscribe to - Simplicity on the other side of complexity. A hipster coffee stand at a Mexican beach is simplicity. There are two ways to get there - you just do it, or you first become a hedgefund manager, make lots of money and then the coffee stand is buying back your freedom.

These are two different coffee stands. Meaning - I am not discounting the complexity. We need to think about these things, use them, push them forward. But once we get it, we can remove the noise. Personally, I think simplicity at the other side of complexity is the holy grail of a good life. It's not negligence, not even retardmaxxing - you figured out things so well that you're simplifying, because you did the homework.

My friend bitpunk.fm is typing (nprofile…s0sn) said it well: cypherpunks are too focused on cypher, and not enough on punk. The community got rich on Bitcoin and started confusing the tool with the mission. The mission was never about getting rich, although I don't mind people who were right getting rewarded by serenity. Cypherpunk and cryptoanarchy was about building parallel paths — spaces where you don't ask permission, where barriers are just information about where to build.

That's what the book is about. Mesh networks. Infrastructure. Surveillance. People who see a wall and start digging. And about identity.

Nostr and Identity

So why Nostr for the launch?

It started with nogoodkid (nprofile…jchg) - the art director of the project. He once told me he's Nostr-only. Dropped everything else. I thought: that's insane. You're an artist. You need reach. You need discovery. But he doesn't need reach to a bunch of people. He uses it as a filter. He wanted a career change, work with different kind of people. So you go where those people are and you don't need too many. He wanted to work with Bitcoiners, Nostr people, people who think differently. There's not a crowd of them on Facebook.

Image (of and by): nogoodkid (nprofile…jchg)

Back to the identity, it rhymes with the themes in the book. He said that he wanted to stop using his name. Because for him, his name was attached to meetings, to corporations, to his CV and portfolio. No Good Kid is more fluid, it can be him, but also his collaborators sometimes.

Tamers of Entropy is looking at identity and there are two themes (without spoiling too much) that rhyme with this. You'll notice that none of the characters, none of the authors and none of the collaborators use a surname. While I get why surnames are good for marketing sometimes (a friend is a lawyer and his surname marks a family tradition, it's a brand), I subscribe to James Scott's view that he presented in Seeing like a state. Surnames are herd control and taxation tools. The local overlords needed unique naming scheme to know who owes taxes. There has been a revolt in many parts of the world. People were giving their kids the same given name, making their whole names the same, in order to avoid head tax. "Yes, John has already paid the tax" - even though there were three Johns, with the same surname and parents. Actually in the novel, a few (quite important) characters don't even have a name. Not even a nickname.

The second thing is that the use of names tricks us. Once we have a name, it assumes continuity. Juraj is the same guy you met 30 years ago in high school, I know him! No honey, you don't know me, you know a Juraj from 30 years ago. We change, evolve all the time. I wouldn't even want to have a tea with Juraj from 30 years ago - not that I don't like him, but he was a kid, needing to figure things out and I have already figured them out. Our cells change, even our memories change. Experience changes us. This idea of continuous identity limits us too much. Yes, we are a continuity, but we're a keypair away from being someone else, for a moment, for a project, for a purpose, for a fantasy, whatever. Changing our identities like clothes allows us to experiment.

That's why I don't like the "what do you do?" question. It implies what I do now is somehow tied to who I am. But what I do and who I am changes. "You don't step into the same river twice".

Nostr makes this easy. Every collaborator on this book — editors, designers, the whole team — has a Nostr identity in the credits. As the preferred way to reach them.

But it goes further. I made a few of the main characters their own Nostr keypairs. They're posting now, before anyone has read the book. Commenting on what they see, jumping into conversations, existing in the world as themselves. Not AI-generated — written the way they would actually think and speak.

Right now their posts look like fragments from strangers. After you read the book, you'll understand the lens they see through.

The book's main page pulls their Nostr feed - TamersofEntropy (nprofile…schs) (which reposts all the posts by the characters - they each post under their own npub). Even if you're not on Nostr yet, you can watch them post on the web.

For me it's both fun and worldbuilding that doesn't stop at the last page.

The Emanator

Managing twenty-ish Nostr identities taught me something: the protocol is simple, but the workflow is a design problem.

I have my main account. Project accounts — AnyPay (nprofile…7t7a) and Cashu Pay Server (nprofile…8jx9) for example. And now the characters. Each with their own keypair, their own voice.

The problem: no one follows an empty account. Even if the content is real, you're shouting into a void. The solution is obvious — boost from my main account. But I don't want to flood my feed with automated noise, and I don't want to manually repost everything.

So I built Nostr Emanator. It queues character posts into the future so they post consistently. More importantly, it pre-signs reposts — when account A posts, account B automatically reposts. The Tamers of Entropy account collects all character posts. My main account boosts the projects. Content stays separate for people who want to follow just one thing, but gets reach through the network.

It also helps me to do multiple account interactions, mainly replies. People respond to posts. Existing Nostr clients make you switch accounts one by one. Emanator lets me monitor interactions across all identities from one interface, with the same mute list everywhere. If I mute someone on my main account, I don't see their replies anywhere else either.

I think interactions are important. When someone finds time to react - engage with what you wrote, you should appreciate it, and maybe write something back.

If you manage multiple Nostr identities, you probably need something like this. I built it because I needed it. The protocol carries the signal. Emanator just makes it manageable.

You can try it at emanator.cypherpunk.today. Right now, no monetization and it only supports remote signer (Amber), I don't want any private keys.

Get the book! :)

It is amazing. Follow the characters, see what they are up to @Tamers of Entropy and get the book here: TamersOfEntropy.net. Available in English (original) and Czech and Slovak translations as paperback and audiobook.

Yeah, @npub1f49…zpez once told me that we have this space ...

2026-04-29T09:26:32+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…jeta
_________________________

Yeah, bitpunk.fm is typing (npub1f49…zpez) once told me that we have this space technology that we can send anyone money, stream by minute and whatnot. And we use it to stream pennies.

It made me increase my sats/min in fountain_app (npub1v5u…n0v5) significantly.. It also saves my time, because when something is not it, it not only wastes my time, but sats as well. I turn off anything that is boring and not adding to my life experience (the "free" - meaning ad sponsored - content is a problem).

Someone also said we should see it in dollars. The number looks more real, 100 sats look like a lot, but when you see the dollar amount, it's nothing.

"born for iphone, but made for @npub1235…0ht5 "

2026-04-28T21:33:45+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…fp03
_________________________

"born for iphone, but made for GrapheneOS (npub1235…0ht5) "

The gift of not belonging

2026-04-28T21:32:44+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…dvvl
_________________________

The gift of not belonging

Lol 😁

2026-04-28T21:32:23+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…df9h
_________________________

Lol 😁

Let's do it. I think public park is exactly the right place ...

2026-04-28T21:30:44+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…gvw7
_________________________

Let's do it.

I think public park is exactly the right place for it.

We can even do a rpi with PyMC with better wifi and it can do other things as well. Repeater perhaps.

Cc @npub1j0h…w6rf

2026-04-28T10:01:22+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…fpym
_________________________

Cc nogoodkid (npub1j0h…w6rf)

What good is a social network or protocol without a lot of users? ...

2026-04-28T10:00:58+02:00

What good is a social network or protocol without a lot of users?

First a personal flip to this question. I was on mailing lists, usenet, irc, silc, kyberia, facebook, ... Everytime it became too crowded, I left. Not with a statement, rarely it was even a decision. I did not even burn any bridges and I don't think anything bad about people who stayed. I just stopped going, because the noise (and sometimes drama) was too much compared to the signal.

I'm not an introvert, but in this regard something similar - otrovert. I like interactions, I don't get group rituals.

So what good is a social network without numbers to back up reach? I used to work for a web portal of a TV station. I think one of the worst investments there is is buying a lot of reach. Maybe if you sell mass market shampoo or junkfood, it makes sense. For every other case, you want limited reach. Limited to people who want to hear from you. They might or might not know that they want to hear from you, but the second it feels you intruded their attention, you lost a good customer. And that's true regardless if they buy from you or don't. There's an aftertaste of force.

People often hate the practice of marketing, but I realize it's because they were exposed to so much junk. It's like saying you hate Chinese food because you only went to shitty restaurants and got food poisoning. Go to a five star Chinese restaurant.

I get it, the shitty marketing way outnumbers nice, honest marketing that you want to hear.

So what good is a social network without reach?

You want to reach the right people. Those that want to hear from you. Of course small doesn't mean it's the right fit. Promoting scammy shitcoins or junkfood on Nostr won't work, we don't care. But the story is more complex than numbers.

And personally - I'd rather not read bullshit with breaking as the first word. And "this changes everything". I wish there was more content that I'm interested in. But this also has a flipside. A lot of content that I'm interested in is just not on other networks.

I don't have this experience. It just works very well lately, ...

2026-04-27T13:04:47+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…uzxn
_________________________

I don't have this experience. It just works very well lately, even with larger code bases.

Maybe you used older model or not so good harness?

So the Americans turned off Open Evidence for Europe over the ...

2026-04-27T13:03:16+02:00

So the Americans turned off Open Evidence for Europe over the weekend. It's an AI tool for doctors that will digitize global healthcare before Czech hospitals stop using floppy disks. If our doctors want to keep using it, they're apparently supposed to write to their European MP.I'll never understand what kind of "good" was going through the heads of officials and politicians in Brussels when they pushed Europe to the periphery of the world with their stupid regulations. The future is in technology, whether they like it or not. In Europe, technologies aren't being created — and soon they won't even be allowed to be used. And that's solely and exclusively because of the stubbornness of a few hundred people in Brussels. No voters ever asked for GDPR, the AI Act, the Data Act, or any other similarly insane rules. They just decided to do good.I'm just wondering what I should tell my kids to study. My daughter will probably end up giving tours of Gothic castles, and my son will sell VPNs. And when they get bored, they'll just switch places.

(Reposted from Czech original)

AI arbitrage opportunity

2026-04-27T08:41:44+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…8y8p
_________________________

AI arbitrage opportunity

Thank you.. But I'm more interested in what kinds of problems ...

2026-04-27T08:33:08+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…dez8
_________________________

Thank you.. But I'm more interested in what kinds of problems people have with relays. I have a few Nostr clients and would like to avoid any issues.

What times we live in... Wow #nevent1q…9pv2

2026-04-27T07:11:04+02:00

What times we live in...

Wow

quoting
nevent1q…9pv2
How Claude Helped Me Crack a Bitcoin "Spending PIN":

On Bitcoin je Retro, I was contacted by a frustrated Bitcoin user who had forgotten the spending PIN for a significant amount of Bitcoin stored in his Android mobile wallet, Bitcoin Wallet https://github.com/bitcoin-wallet/bitcoin-wallet.
The only thing he knew was that the PIN had 8 digits, which isn't a lot, but it's not a small number either. And he asked me to crack it.

I installed the mobile wallet and imported the encrypted Bitcoin wallet protected by a PIN. I noticed that the PIN appears in two places where a brute-force attack is possible—"Send Coins," where you must enter the PIN, and if it's correct, the transaction goes through. And another function, "Change Spending PIN," where you must first enter the old PIN, then the new one; if they match, the PIN is changed, and the private keys are re-encrypted.

I asked Claude to import the encrypted wallet. He identified it as a v8 protobuf encrypted with a spending PIN and determined its format: KDF parameters scrypt N=65536, r=8, p=1; a 32-byte AES-256-CBC key; and PKCS#7 padding.

I asked Claude to download the source code for this Bitcoin wallet and analyze whether a brute-force attack would be better carried out via the "Send Coins" functionality (which he deemed a stupid, slow idea) or via "Change Spending PIN" (which he deemed a good, significantly faster idea).
He immediately showed me the verification formula that must be satisfied during a brute-force attack:
crypt(utf16be(pin), salt) → AES decrypt → unpad → secp256k1 The public key derived from the plaintext must match the stored public key (encryption_parameters + key.public_key in wallet.proto)
Based on that, he implemented a fully functional cracker in a few minutes. And he ran it right away. On my 16-core laptop, he could only manage 80 attempts per second. He estimated that trying all 8-digit possibilities would take 2–3 weeks.

Claude suggested that we could significantly speed this up if I gave him access to a cloud service (AWS, Hetzner, anything).
I generated and gave him an API key for our Hetzner. Using it, Claude ordered the 5 most powerful servers (we couldn't get more due to our Hetzner limit)—probe-cpx62. He installed, configured, and launched them all fully automatically, without any manual intervention.
At the same time, he created a parallelized version of the PIN cracker, breaking down the PIN ranges to be tested so it could crack them in parallel across all servers.
He also wrote a monitoring script and kept me updated on the progress.
After 14.5 hours of active operation on 5 powerful servers, he reported:

HIT, PIN = .....
It was found by shard 1 (178.104.180.200) after ~14.5 hours (52,237.9s)
The PIN meets the condition:
verify_pin(PIN, salt, iv, ct, pub) == True (the secp256k1 public key from the decrypted private key matches the stored one)
I'm shutting down all the servers.
Claude's total runtime was less than 30 minutes.

I didn't see any code; I didn't log in to any server. Claude designed and implemented all the above operations on his own (I really didn't advise him on anything).
I just waited for the result, which I got on the first try.

As humans, we'll soon be redundant in the AI agents' loop—I already feel that way.

And the priestess (@nprofile…zwsz ) continued today, I ...

2026-04-26T22:23:22+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…su9w
_________________________

And the priestess (mariannasadecka (nprofile…zwsz) ) continued today, I couldn't see that, had another program 😉

But it was a Bitcoin procession through the city with a small crowd 😉

Also part of Bitcoin je retro (nprofile…u2lg)

I've never had to worry about relays in my life and I used ...

2026-04-26T21:37:15+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…k466
_________________________

I've never had to worry about relays in my life and I used all the clients. What is there to worry about?

Maybe there's another person who is alone everywhere you they ...

2026-04-26T21:26:56+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ev42
_________________________

Maybe there's another person who is alone everywhere you they go and you will meet them somewhere in spacetime and you'll hit it off immediately, because you have something in common!

Greatest moment on the mesh yesterday. Yes, it was very lively ...

2026-04-26T09:45:29+02:00

Greatest moment on the mesh yesterday. Yes, it was very lively during the day on bitchat, but it ended up being me and mariannasadecka (npub125h…td8j) on the mesh while she was singing (with 4xSuper) and I was sending her photos of her singing (photo that I meshed nogoodkid (npub1j0h…w6rf) ).

Two people being massaged on the stage. Bitcoin je retro (npub1j6z…69z8) was the most Lunarpunk thing that I ever experienced in my life.

Nostr event nevent1qqsx9afyaalc89r6fz59jyad8wq7ruh3vqql9g8383qnrtg6shjswkszyrdtd3sxt3pehxa0kzc0rl66p35zww7wtsv4nfq43tt2wzz375rmvpjz4hc

2026-04-26T01:45:19+02:00

Turns out... You can just do things.

Install Bitchat, open, set a nick. Welcome to the mesh. If two ...

2026-04-24T21:42:40+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…j3f3
_________________________

Install Bitchat, open, set a nick.

Welcome to the mesh. If two phones are in bluetooth reach, they can chat.

If another is added, reachable by one of the existing phones, the other can see (the middle phone relays).

DMd. Yes, it's all good.

2026-04-24T10:53:54+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…8z28
_________________________

DMd. Yes, it's all good.

Also prolonged breath out.

2026-04-23T21:43:57+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…awhn
_________________________

Also prolonged breath out.

I'm quite happy with it. But I am a geek.

2026-04-23T21:43:35+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…tmck
_________________________

I'm quite happy with it. But I am a geek.

Hot tip: If you have shitloads of subscriptions and you don't ...

2026-04-23T15:31:07+02:00

Hot tip: If you have shitloads of subscriptions and you don't need them anymore, tell your AI agent to find a way to migrate away. Get a Start9 (nprofile…fu08), nextcloud, or whatever, let agents write migration scripts and verify it all went out. Cancel all the corporate bullshit.

Before, the cost for subscriptions was much lower than cost (mental cost, time) to migrate. Not anymore. Get free. I'm migrating.

https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/issues/2902

2026-04-23T14:44:03+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…83xd
_________________________

https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/issues/2902

Yes, it's an affiliate link (I openly admitted I shared it so ...

2026-04-23T14:37:40+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…n4v7
_________________________

Yes, it's an affiliate link (I openly admitted I shared it so you can support the development of the FOSS app).

And when I click it, I have exactly the same error, because I myself also use uBlock Origin 😉

Good read. My two cents: I am using it because it supports mlx ...

2026-04-23T14:36:27+02:00

Good read. My two cents: I am using it because it supports mlx explicitly. llama.cpp is still metal, so it's a bit slower. Although I love llama.cpp and was using it natively.

LM Studio - I don't like it, many bugs, closed source.

What I want: FOSS, models are introduced and supported fast, ideally one command (ollama pull-like) model installation, embedding models support.

I am not saying ollama is perfect, but works for me better than alternatives I looked at.

quoting
nevent1q…ger6
Juraj (nprofile…ww3s) https://sleepingrobots.com/dreams/stop-using-ollama/

Thanks, good read. I am using it because it supports mlx ...

2026-04-23T14:36:12+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…8435
_________________________

Thanks, good read. I am using it because it supports mlx explicitly. llama.cpp is still metal, so it's a bit slower. Although I love llama.cpp and was using it natively.

LM Studio - I don't like it, many bugs, closed source.

What I want: FOSS, models are introduced and supported fast, ideally one command (ollama pull-like) model installation, embedding models support.

I am not saying ollama is perfect, but works for me better than alternatives I looked at.

How do I know that my talk on Saturday at @nprofile…u2lg will ...

2026-04-23T14:28:47+02:00

How do I know that my talk on Saturday at Bitcoin je retro (nprofile…u2lg) will be good? When putting it together with Claude, it kept saying something about some legalese and terms of service 😃

Switched to a chinese model (Kimi K2.6), it was way less censored.

I don't know exactly what it did not like, I just gave it my research, dumped all my Nostr posts for the last year and asked it if I did not forget anything important.

And I have! So it will be even better.

Yes, I will make all you beautiful people a recording.

You have signatures on the apks, the OS won't install if ...

2026-04-23T14:26:12+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…kajt
_________________________

You have signatures on the apks, the OS won't install if it's with a different key. So only first time problem - but that's the same with zapstore, unless you know the author's npub.

BTW: Obtainium has many sources, including just plain web URLs, not only github. I guess it could even search zapstore if needed. That would be a cool project.

My PulseLibre app for vagus nerve stimulator is on Zapstore! ...

2026-04-23T11:06:11+02:00

My PulseLibre app for vagus nerve stimulator is on Zapstore!

https://zapstore.dev/apps/com.pulselibre

Get your Pulsetto here (you will support app development): https://juraj.bednar.io/pulsetto

Beware, you have to cancel trial right after ordering the device, because they will bill you for the premium app automatically after 14 days!

Get the Fit version, it fits better. And yes, it works, measured on HRV. Good thing if you are chronically stressed and need immune or gut support (both are greatly modulated by the vagus nerve).

Alright! https://zapstore.dev/apps/com.pulselibre Get your ...

2026-04-23T11:05:18+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…xhxs
_________________________

Alright!

https://zapstore.dev/apps/com.pulselibre

Get your Pulsetto here, beware, you have to cancel trial right after ordering the device, because they will bill you for the premium app automatically after 14 days!

Get the Fit version, it fits better. And yes, it works, measured on HRV. Good thing if you are chronically stressed and need immune or gut support (both are greatly modulated by the vagus nerve).

https://juraj.bednar.io/pulsetto

This weekend, there is @nprofile…u2lg in Bratislava (many ...

2026-04-23T10:29:32+02:00

This weekend, there is Bitcoin je retro (nprofile…u2lg) in Bratislava (many English language talks!).

https://bitcoinjeretro.cypherpunk.today/

It's very cool. Also, there will be a Bitcoin sauna tomorrow, with singing and whisks, etc. Tickets on the same site.

"Bitcoin is retro" means Bitcoin is now almost old enough to vote, drive and drink :).

I am teasing my novel Tamers of entropy, which starts in 2003, when the protagonists were sketching the same sovereign stack out of necessity — mesh networking, encrypted communication, bearer money, no single point of failure. Twenty+ years later the tools exist and the characters are compounding them for something magical. We're catching up to the vision.

That is what my talk at Bitcoin je retro is about - did we catch up to the vision? (Spoiler alert: We are way beyond old cypherpunk dreams. Cypherpunk future is now).

If you want to know when you can preorder Tamers of entropy, sign-up here (choose EN, SK or CZ language - and yes, you can put an npub there, TamersofEntropy (nprofile…cr99) are Nostr native):

https://tamersofentropy.net/signup.html

Well, Obtainium works - I don't have to do anything, just ...

2026-04-23T09:54:03+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…xhxs
_________________________

Well, Obtainium works - I don't have to do anything, just publish the app wherever and people add url.

Picking a Qwen3.6 model in Ollama? More parameters ≠ better ...

2026-04-23T09:42:22+02:00

Picking a Qwen3.6 model in Ollama? More parameters ≠ better model. Architecture matters.
qwen3.6:27b is a dense model — every token goes through the entire network. Slower, but higher-quality output. qwen3.6:35b-a3b is MoE (mixture of experts): a router picks a few experts, and only ~3B of the 35B parameters are active per token. Much faster, usually lower quality. You still need all 35B loaded into RAM. The benchmarks back this up: Qwen claims the 27B dense beats their own previous flagship 397B-A17B MoE on agentic coding.
Quantization is rounding the weights (4-bit, 8-bit, …). Smaller file, faster inference, mild quality loss. Running unquantized is usually slower because of memory-bandwidth overhead.
MLX is Apple Silicon–native inference, the fastest path on a Mac. In Ollama, though, the MLX builds of Qwen3.6 are text-only for now — vision isn't wired up on Ollama's MLX path yet, and Unsloth's vision-capable builds don't currently work on Ollama either. If you need images, you're stuck waiting, or going outside Ollama (LM Studio, mlx-vlm).
TL;DR: dense is better for quality, MoE for speed, quantization almost always yes, MLX on a Mac — but in Ollama, no images yet.

Pick here: https://ollama.com/library/qwen3.6/tags

F-Droid is also not very secure, they build with outdated ...

2026-04-23T08:15:41+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…j0cf
_________________________

F-Droid is also not very secure, they build with outdated libraries.

Alright, I'll look into it. Have at least one app to publish.

2026-04-23T08:15:09+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…mw90
_________________________

Alright, I'll look into it. Have at least one app to publish.

Nice write-up #naddr1qq…4fqc

2026-04-23T08:09:50+02:00

Nice write-up

quoting
naddr1qq…4fqc

Private communications over public infrastructure

Today I want to write down some thoughts on what it really means to have private communications over public infrastructure, and whether such a thing is even possible at all.

This article was motivated (or should I say triggered?) by several things. Part of it comes from the current state of DMs in Nostr. Part of it comes from the privacy claims different projects make. And part of it comes from recent conversations I have had, also because I care about privacy. Privacy is crucial. We need to fight for it, and if we get it wrong and just assume things are private when they are not, things are going to get very scary.

I want to set the ground first, then look at the privacy model and tradeoffs of the main DM approaches around Nostr: NIP-04, NIP-17, Marmot, Nostr Double Ratchet, and NIP-4e.

First things first: private communications and encrypted communications are not the same thing.

Private communications usually depend on encryption to protect message content. But encryption alone is not enough to make a communication system private. You may encrypt what you say, yet still expose who you are talking to, when you are talking, how often you are talking, where you are connecting from, and how large your messages are. A third party can still learn a lot. This is metadata leakage, and in many cases, it is enough to build a revealing picture of relationships and behavior between different parties without reading a single message. Metadata is not "just data." It is actionable intelligence.

In other words: Encryption protects what you say; privacy protects that you said it at all.

That distinction matters a lot in Nostr because Nostr was never designed as a private messaging network. It was designed to be an open network built around relays. Those relays are meant to be queryable, subscribable, "dumb", and easy to use as public dissemination infrastructure. That design is powerful for openness and censorship-resistance, but it is hostile to strong privacy by default.

The next thing I want to clarify is the concept of public infrastructure. From the perspective of this article, it refers to shared, openly accessible systems or mediums, sometimes controlled by a third party, that anyone can use but that lack inherent controls to prevent interception, inspection, or eavesdropping by unauthorized parties. In this context, that includes networks, protocols, and services like relays.

Public infrastructure fights privacy at every layer, which is exactly why the distinction between encryption and privacy matters so much here.

One historic precedent makes this easier to understand. During World War II, encrypted radio traffic itself was not always immediately decryptable, but the metadata around that traffic was already useful. Timing, frequency, origin, volume, and communication patterns helped infer enemy movements, unit locations, and operational behavior. In other words, not being able to read the message did not mean the communication was private. The metadata still spoke loudly, and that lesson maps uncomfortably well to modern digital systems.

"We kill people based on metadata," stated by Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA, during a 2014 debate at Johns Hopkins University.

"Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content." Stewart Baker, former NSA General Counsel

That is also why I am skeptical every time I hear privacy claims built on top of public, observable infrastructure. If the substrate is public, queryable, persistently collectable, and operated by third parties, then metadata becomes part of the threat model whether we like it or not.

In Nostr, this problem becomes very concrete.

Even if a DM standard encrypts the content, an observer can still learn a lot. If the observer is a relay operator, it can see when a client connects. It can see the IP unless the user adds another protection layer such as Tor or a VPN. It can see when an event arrives. It can store traffic over time and build heuristics. An external observer with access to the relay stream may also infer a lot, depending on how much metadata the event exposes publicly.

I also think it is useful to distinguish two different kinds of observers throughout this article.

The first is an external observer. This is someone who can collect publicly visible events from relays, subscribe to public streams, and analyze what is exposed in the events themselves. An active observer could also infer the arrival time of an event even if its timestamp is randomized. This observer does not necessarily run the relay.

The second is a relay operator observer. This observer has a much stronger vantage point. They can see connection timing, source IPs unless users hide them, exact arrival timing, authentication attempts, and all the relay-local heuristics that never appear in the event itself.

That distinction matters because some protocols hide more from the external observer than from the relay operator. A scheme can look much better at the public event layer while still leaking a lot to the operator actually serving the traffic.

There is an attempt to mitigate part of this for external observers with relay auth, aka NIP-42, which allows clients to authenticate to relays. That can help a relay restrict access to sensitive events. But NIP-42 is not a privacy cure. It is a gatekeeping mechanism. In practice, it requires the client to reveal its identity to the relay in order to gain access. And for a relay to know which private events a user is allowed to fetch, those events usually need enough routing information to tie them to the relevant participants. That is useful operationally, but it comes with a clear tradeoff: access control becomes entangled with metadata exposure.

So the question I want to explore in this article is not whether Nostr can carry encrypted messages. It clearly can. The real question is whether it can support private communications over public infrastructure in a strong sense, or whether what we really get are different degrees of content secrecy with different amounts of metadata leakage.

That is the lens I want to use for the rest of this article.

NIP-04

NIP-04 was the first DM standard Nostr had. Today it is deprecated and explicitly marked as not recommended in favor of NIP-17, but it remains the cleanest example of the distinction I am trying to make.

In NIP-04, the message content is encrypted, but the event metadata is highly revealing. The event is authored by the sender’s real pubkey, although anyone could use an ephemeral pubkey. The receiver is identified in a p tag. The timestamp is visible. The event kind is visible. And the ciphertext size is visible as well.

That means the content may be hidden, but the communication pattern is not.

If you are an external observer collecting these events, you can map who is talking to whom and when. If you are a relay operator, you can usually do even better because you also see connection-level information and exact receipt timing. Even if a client tries to blur some timing details, the relay still sees when the event actually arrived.

So what does NIP-04 really give us? It gives us encrypted content, but it leaks social graph information, timing, sender identity, receiver identity, and payload size. That is already enough for strong traffic analysis. You do not need to decrypt anything to extract valuable intelligence from it.

This is not even a controversial interpretation. The specification itself warns that it leaks metadata and says it should not be used for anything that really needs to be kept secret, except perhaps in combination with authenticated relay restrictions from NIP-42.

That said, there is one thing NIP-04 does have going for it. Since sender and receiver are explicit, it works relatively naturally with relay authorization models. A relay can restrict access to the parties involved because the parties are visible in the event. But that convenience is also part of the privacy failure. The same metadata that helps a relay gate access also helps an observer understand the communication graph.

So NIP-04 is simply encrypted communication, but not private communication in any strong sense. It is the perfect example of why those two ideas must not be conflated.

NIP-17

After NIP-04, Nostr moved toward NIP-17, which uses NIP-44 encryption together with gift wraps. This was a real step forward.

The biggest improvement is that NIP-17 does a better job hiding the sender from the public outer event. The gift wrap is authored by an ephemeral key, and the actual message with the real sender is carried inside nested encrypted layers. On top of that, clients are encouraged to randomize timestamps to make simple timing correlation harder.

All of that is meaningful. I do not want to undersell it.

But I also do not want to pretend it solves the problem.

The receiver still needs a way to receive messages. In practice, that means the outer event still carries routing information for the receiver. An active observer can see that gift wraps are being delivered to some receiver-facing key. It can observe timing, volume, relay overlap, and ciphertext size. If the observer is a relay operator, it can also observe connection behavior. An external observer may not get the full picture that NIP-04 leaks publicly, and that is an important improvement, but important metadata is still available.

There is also another tradeoff that matters for the broader story. Gift wraps help obscure purpose because the same mechanism can be used for more than just DMs in Nostr. More specifically, the kind gift wraps use, 1059, is not exclusive to private chats. That is genuinely good for privacy, since not every gift wrap is obviously a chat message. An external observer seeing a kind 1059 event cannot automatically conclude that it is DM traffic. But the same design also creates a broad spam surface. An attacker can cheaply create many gift-wrap-looking events for a target receiver and force the receiver to spend resources figuring out which ones are real, or bury them under a pile of fake gift wraps. This spammy nature is also why some relays do not accept them.

I do not want to focus too much on UX in this article, but this is one of those places where privacy and usability pull in different directions. NIP-17 also gets awkward with relay authentication because the sender uses an ephemeral key, so it does not have a clean way to prove it should be allowed to fetch these events.

So I would describe NIP-17 as a meaningful improvement over NIP-04, especially in sender concealment, deniability, and reduced public visibility. But I still would not call it fully private communication. It is better encrypted communication with a more cautious metadata posture, but not a complete escape from metadata leakage.

Beyond The NIPs Umbrella

The Nostr repository itself mainly gives us NIP-04 and NIP-17, plus the new NIP-4e, which is still a PR. But there are other serious attempts to push the privacy and security model further. The two most relevant ones for this discussion are Marmot and Nostr Double Ratchet.

These two are interesting because they do not just tweak the outer format of Nostr DMs. They bring in much stronger messaging primitives. Marmot brings MLS. Double Ratchet brings the family of ideas popularized by Signal. In both cases, the cryptography becomes substantially more ambitious, giving us things like forward secrecy and post-compromise recovery, which neither NIP-04 nor NIP-17 gives us.

These terms, forward secrecy and post-compromise recovery basically mean that if a private key is compromised, an attacker should not automatically be able to read historic messages or future messages.

That matters, but it still does not let us skip the transport question.

Marmot

Marmot combines MLS with Nostr. MLS, short for Message Layer Security, is a serious group messaging protocol designed to provide strong content confidentiality, authentication, forward secrecy, and post-compromise security for groups. It also scales much better for larger groups than Double Ratchet. Those are not small properties. They are major upgrades compared with the simpler encrypted-message schemes we find in NIP-04 or NIP-17.

This is something that should be said clearly: MLS gives Marmot genuinely strong secrecy properties at the message layer.

But the problem I am exploring here is not just message secrecy. It is private communications over public infrastructure. That is where the picture becomes more complicated.

Marmot maps MLS artifacts onto Nostr events and uses relays as a dissemination layer. That means things like key packages, welcome flows, group events, and group routing all have to live within a public relay environment. The protocol tries to preserve privacy through encrypted payloads, private MLS group IDs, ephemeral outer pubkeys for group events, and other techniques. Those are meaningful design choices, and they do improve the situation.

But there is an important nuance here. The private MLS group ID and the relay-facing nostr_group_id are not the same thing. In theory that is good because the real internal MLS group identifier stays private. In practice, though, the relay-facing nostr_group_id still behaves like a stable public routing identifier. That means it is observable, it is collectable, and it is spammable in the same way gift wraps are. So even if it is not the real MLS group ID, it still creates a public handle that observers and attackers can use.

This matters even more because Marmot traffic is not especially hard to identify from the outside. If a user publishes key package events on kind 443, or on kind 30443 in the newer transition, that already signals that the user might be using Marmot. And if an observer subscribes to group messages which are kind 445 events, they can infer Marmot group traffic directly. Those event kinds are not generic cover traffic. They are much more revealing than NIP-17 gift wraps, whose kind 1059 can be used for several different purposes in Nostr.

From my perspective, I do not think its current design gets Marmot to strong privacy in the way some descriptions suggest.

The reason is simple. Marmot still operates over public relays. Even if the content is well protected, relays and active collectors can still observe that Marmot is being used. They can see when certain group identifiers become active, when bursts of traffic happen, how much data is flowing, how large the messages are, and which relays appear to be involved. An external observer can infer protocol usage from the specific Marmot kinds used and from the stable routing surface. A relay operator gets all of that plus the usual network-level vantage point, exact arrival times, and IP-level heuristics.

There is another issue: MLS is not just cryptography. It is also coordination. That burden becomes harder in Nostr because relays are a dissemination substrate, not an ordering oracle. Multiple admins can race. Offline members can come back with stale state. Welcome flows and commits need careful discipline to avoid drift.

This is not mainly a privacy problem, but it matters because every time a protocol needs more coordination over weakly ordered public infrastructure, the system inherits more complexity, more observable recovery patterns, and more room for operational fragility. As I already said, I do not want to turn this article into a UX piece. But this is exactly one of those places where the search for stronger privacy and stronger secrecy can make the total system harder to operate.

So my conclusion on Marmot is nuanced.

I think Marmot substantially improves content security and secrecy compared with simpler DM schemes. Thanks to MLS, it brings real forward secrecy and post-compromise security, and that is a serious advancement. But I do not think public Nostr relays let Marmot honestly claim strong private communications in the broader sense. Metadata observability and public collection remain very real constraints.

Nostr Double Ratchet

Nostr Double Ratchet is the closest thing in this space to bringing a Signal-like messaging primitive into Nostr instead of relying on simpler static encryption flows.

Double Ratchet gives us stronger secrecy properties thanks to forward secrecy and post-compromise recovery. Instead of deriving a static conversation secret and reusing that basic relationship forever, the ratchet evolves keys as messages are exchanged. In practical terms, that means a compromise now should not automatically reveal all past messages, and if the compromise ends, future secrecy can recover after fresh ratchet steps.

That is real progress. Just like with MLS, I think this should be acknowledged clearly rather than buried under transport criticism. If the question is message secrecy, Double Ratchet is much closer to the state of the art than NIP-04, and in an important sense it also improves on the baseline security model around ordinary NIP-17-style direct messaging.

At the same time, Nostr Double Ratchet does not get to cheat physics.

The messages still move through Nostr events and relays. And here the event kinds matter more than they may seem at first glance. In this design, the encrypted outer transport for ordinary ratcheted messages uses kind 1060. That is important because kind 1060 is not generic cover traffic. If an external observer sees repeated kind 1060 events, they can reasonably infer that this specific messaging system is in use, just like in the case of Marmot.

Not every part of the protocol is equally revealing. Invite and AppKeys records use kind 30078, which is a general application-data kind in Nostr and does not by itself prove that Double Ratchet is being used. Encrypted invite responses use kind 1059, which blends into the broader gift wrap universe. Shared-channel bootstrap also leans on kind 4. So there is some reuse of more generic Nostr surfaces. But the core ratcheted message transport still stands out.

That means the outer layer is still informative. An external observer can learn that kind 1060 traffic is happening, see the outer event pubkeys, timestamps, traffic bursts, approximate message sizes, and repeated communication rhythms. Even if they cannot read the content, they can still cluster activity, try to infer which identities or devices are active, and distinguish steady chat traffic from bootstrap traffic such as invites or device-management updates. Those flows also use protocol-specific kinds that do not blend into the general Nostr event stream.

The relay operator learns even more. It sees exact arrival times, subscription behavior, source IPs unless users hide them, and the full local timing picture that never appears in the event itself. At the same time, Double Ratchet does seem to avoid one of the more obvious metadata problems we saw in Marmot: ordinary traffic does not depend on a stable public routing identifier in the event itself.

There is also a tradeoff here around scale. Double Ratchet is naturally attractive for 1:1 communication because it gives strong secrecy with relatively clear security intuition. But it is not the most natural fit for large fanout by itself. The moment it tries to scale those guarantees into more complex group and multidevice environments, the protocol surface and complexity grows quickly. The Nostr Double Ratchet project itself includes multidevice identity mapping, session management, and sender-key-style group messaging, and that is powerful, but it also shows the cost of pushing stronger security models over a public relay substrate. The event kinds used reflect that expansion. Once a system needs separate kinds for encrypted transport, invites, device authorization records, shared-channel bootstrap, and group sender-key flows, an observer gets more protocol fingerprints to work with even if the message bodies remain sealed.

So my take is that Double Ratchet is a major upgrade in secure messaging properties, and it may improve privacy in a limited sense by making traffic less trivially interpretable. If I have to choose a protocol for 1:1 communication over Nostr relays, it would be this one. But it still does not solve the central problem of public infrastructure. The relays still know that communication happened. They still see timing. They still see patterns. And if the infrastructure remains public and observable, those patterns remain part of the attack surface.

Just a side note to finish this. Neither Marmot nor Nostr Double Ratched play well with relay auth, NIP-42.

NIP-4e

NIP-4e is a bit different from the other things I have covered so far, because it is not really trying to be a standalone DM protocol. It is better understood as an auxiliary mechanism that can be used together with schemes such as NIP-04 or NIP-17.

Its core idea is to decouple encryption from identity.

That may sound subtle, but it solves a real problem. Many Nostr patterns assume the identity key is also the key used for encryption, including self-encryption flows used for syncing data across devices. That breaks down in setups where the identity key is intentionally not present on the device, like bunkers, threshold signing systems, secure enclaves, or other more sovereign key-management architectures. NIP-4e tries to fix that by letting a user keep a separate encryption key and distribute that capability securely across devices.

From an architectural point of view, I think that is a good idea.

It improves key hygiene. It makes local encryption workflows more practical. It lets someone keep their identity signing setup more isolated while still doing encryption on-device. And it fits better with a world where people want a stronger separation between identity authority and application-level encryption.

But if we bring it back to the main question of this article, the answer stays modest.

NIP-4e does not suddenly make communications private. If you use NIP-4e together with NIP-04, you still inherit the metadata exposure of NIP-04, even if the keys used are not the real keys. If you use it with NIP-17, you inherit the strengths and weaknesses of NIP-17. What changes is not the public nature of the transport, but the keying model.

In fact, the protocol introduces its own observable artifacts through announcements and device key-sharing events. That does not make it bad. It just means it should be evaluated honestly. NIP-4e is useful infrastructure for decoupled encryption and multi-device sovereignty. It can support other DM standards. But by itself it is not a privacy breakthrough.

Conclusions

So, is private communication over public infrastructure even possible?

After going through all of these approaches, my answer is: yes, in some sense, but not really.

Public infrastructure fights privacy at every layer.

Spacially if the infrastructure is publicly reachable, queryable, and persistently collectable, then metadata becomes part of the system whether the protocol authors like it or not. That does not mean encrypted messaging over public infrastructure is useless. Far from it. It can still be extremely valuable. It can still raise the cost of surveillance. It can still make censorship harder. It can still improve user sovereignty. But if we want to be honest, we cannot collapse all of that into the word private and move on.

So I do not think the honest story is that Nostr already has private messaging. I think the honest story is that Nostr has several attempts at encrypted messaging, and those attempts sit at different points in a tradeoff space between secrecy, metadata exposure, complexity, scalability, and usability.

That is not a failure. It is just reality.

If anything, I think the most dangerous thing we can do is use imprecise language and teach users to trust guarantees the system does not actually provide. Honest language is part of security. If a protocol has strong content confidentiality but weak metadata privacy, we should say exactly that. If a system makes observation harder but still possible, we should say that too.

Nostr can absolutely be a powerful substrate for encrypted and censorship-resistant communications. I believe that. But if what we want is truly private communication, then public infrastructure is still an adversarial environment. And the more honestly we admit that, the better chance we have of building and designing systems that improve things for real instead of just sounding private.

I intentionally kept this piece focused on privacy rather than UX, even though the two constantly touch each other. But it is hard to read through these protocols without noticing that better secrecy and a better privacy posture often come with costs in complexity, spam resistance, coordination, recoverability, or general usability.

Encrypted is not the same as private. Public infrastructure is not a neutral carrier. And if we want private communications on top of public systems, we have to be far more demanding about metadata, far more honest about tradeoffs, and far more precise in the claims we make.

Dan Sullivan napísal Free Zone Frontier pre podnikateľov. ...

2026-04-22T23:30:12+02:00

Dan Sullivan napísal Free Zone Frontier pre podnikateľov. Netušil, že píše operačný manuál pre cypherpunkerov. Bitcoin, Aave, liberationtravel (nprofile…wzs5) — všetko podobný scenár: úskok z mainstream hry do takej, ktorú regulátori nevedia rozoznať. Spolupracuj s niekým mimo svojho odboru a úplne unikneš konkurencii. A každá Free Zone má dátum exspirácie.

https://juraj.bednar.io/blog/2026/04/22/free-zone-frontier-na-cypherpunk-sposob/

Dan Sullivan wrote Free Zone Frontier for entrepreneurs. He ...

2026-04-22T23:25:23+02:00

Dan Sullivan wrote Free Zone Frontier for entrepreneurs. He didn't realize he was writing an operations manual for cypherpunks. Bitcoin, Aave, Liberation.travel — all the same move: step sideways into a game regulators can't see. Cooperate with someone out of your field and completely escape competition. And every Free Zone has an expiry date.

https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2026/04/22/free-zone-frontier-and-cryptoanarchy/

Nowhere WebXDC is now in WebXDC store. Use it directly from ...

2026-04-22T18:30:00+02:00

Nowhere WebXDC is now in WebXDC store. Use it directly from DeltaChat's 'app store'.

https://webxdc.org/#jooray-nowhere

Welcome to the mesh! ❤️ Give bitchat-meshcore firmware a try ...

2026-04-22T11:20:43+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…6927
_________________________

Welcome to the mesh! ❤️

Give bitchat-meshcore firmware a try if you have a spare node, you can showcase meshcore to visitors even without a device.

What are the central planners smoking... Good that they have age ...

2026-04-21T22:30:45+02:00

What are the central planners smoking...

Good that they have age verification app. Soon you'll be able to prove you're 37 or older to buy cigs, lads.

Splendid!

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn08jy6w0l5o

I had to make it. ...

2026-04-21T21:57:33+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…l76p
_________________________

I had to make it.

nevent1qqstengh3qwckgzvfgphrk62kamm7wysrx60qwa6d2p646zxy6kgvwgm3yxu4

There's a cool new project called Nowhere by @nprofile…3g8c ...

2026-04-21T21:56:44+02:00

There's a cool new project called Nowhere by 5t34k (nprofile…3g8c)

And there's also Nowhere over Delta Chat (nprofile…cdr5)

Of course it's used for sending cats. That live entirely inside URL. Which lives entirely in an end-to-end encrypted chat app that supports WebXDC standard.

Fractal.

Have fun.

https://github.com/jooray/nowhere-webxdc

Wow, super cool. ...

2026-04-21T10:19:55+02:00

Wow, super cool.

https://nowhr.xyz/s#yzXS8cqvys5XSlD0zElwNGbUUahzyyxWKM5XSDAJZtRTsPowf1aDTYlHak4OUAioAAA

Adjacent tech: There's a standard called WebXDC for in-chat apps. They live as a self-contained zip with HTML and JS/images/.... It can't go to the internet, but it can communicate with other people in the chat.

At very least, it can render these URLs as well. It is used by DeltaChat. I've tried forking DeltaChat to work with Nostr instead of e-mail, somewhat works.

quoting
nevent1q…fy5p
Yes that is correct.
I also have forked bitchat to create bitchat-ne just as a demo to show how a nowhere renderer could be embedded in another app. In the forked bitchat you can send a nowhere link and it will open even with no internet.

I was using Oracolo quite a lot for different projects ...

2026-04-19T22:04:04+02:00

I was using Oracolo quite a lot for different projects (LunarpunkFestival (nprofile…pjw0) and Bitcoin je retro (nprofile…u2lg) events for example). I had to hack a few things - menu and popup to buy tickets for events for example. Multilingual content (switchable language) for Bitcoin je retro. Formatting, embeds, etc.

I also wanted to greatly improve speed - both initial load and clicking on articles. For example full article was loading from relays even though it has just been downloaded from relay a second ago before you clicked on the link. I added caching.

You can see the result (without the pop-up, which I don't need for this project) at https://theohm.art/ which is a website for my project theohm (nprofile…7eag) (check out The Merge and The View if you haven't yet:).

Description of features here: https://github.com/jooray/oracolo/blob/main/FORK.md

Yes. But apps need to explicitly support it, add Graphene's ...

2026-04-19T11:21:05+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…xy0a
_________________________

Yes. But apps need to explicitly support it, add Graphene's trust root to list of accepted certs (and API-wise, it's a different API). They might support it. But it's still a bandaid, other FOSS systems won't work. If you need to port some after market os to your older Android, it won't work. If you want to use an old Nokia phone and only a computer with Linux, you're out of luck. And there's no need for that, if you have cryptographic proof of age, it's enough, you don't need attestations.

I really don't like they are normalized these days :(

Nostr event nevent1qqstzpg3n5mdf8vd32jyc64waxp8nsmq7vjqynj5d60xz459jeafxfqzyrdtd3sxt3pehxa0kzc0rl66p35zww7wtsv4nfq43tt2wzz375rmvf4sy3y

2026-04-19T11:17:39+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…we5y
_________________________

https://hackyourself.io/product/cypherpunk-visions-and-trends-2023-2025/

Sound rehearsal before @npub1j6z…69z8 Three Bitchat users on ...

2026-04-18T21:05:10+02:00

Sound rehearsal before Bitcoin je retro (npub1j6z…69z8)

Three Bitchat users on the mesh. I am where I belong.

❤️

I miss her trolling... ...

2026-04-18T11:38:05+02:00

I miss her trolling...

True, to some extent, but we approach it directly. We are ...

2026-04-18T11:33:52+02:00

True, to some extent, but we approach it directly. We are building parallel path, not fight the system.

I've learned this for example from Dan Sullivan - his idea of Free Zone Frontier. People try to compete, but the best way to compete is to build something that is so different, that it does not even compete, it's a category by itself.

Honestly, fighting the system seems like a total waste of time, the system is commiting suicide. We need something else when it crashes, focusing on fighting it is a distraction.

But I agree in spirit!

(How building of that parallel way looks like is in my novel TamersofEntropy (nprofile…cr99) BTW: https://tamersofentropy.net/ - a lunarpunk story).

Very good podcast. From multiple angles. I was expecting some ...

2026-04-18T11:25:49+02:00

Very good podcast. From multiple angles. I was expecting some nice geeky content about Linux distribution for sovereign computing, but it's much more and very aligned with my thinking. What's our purpose when AI will get better at literally everything? Should we despair, build? What side of history...? The meaning of sovereign computing. And when he gets to StartBot, that's brutal cool :)

I am a Linux geek, so I discounted Start9 (nprofile…fu08) because I can just do everything myself (or tell my AI agent to do it), but I think it is extremely important. In my book Cypherpunk Visions and Trends, I predicted we will need and build sovereign nodes. People like MattHill (nprofile…klxw) are making it happen.

Recommended listen, geek or not.

https://fountain.fm/episode/slw43HLq2kMTwNeSLThm

"Some things are just more fun to believe, in which cases I ...

2026-04-18T10:19:03+02:00

"Some things are just more fun to believe, in which cases I refuse to verify."

Good strategy:)

V poslednom čase bolo zverejnených niekoľko „hacknutí" ...

2026-04-18T10:13:11+02:00

V poslednom čase bolo zverejnených niekoľko „hacknutí" systému EU Age Control. Myslím si, že väčšina týchto ľudí vôbec nechápe, ako to skutočne funguje a čo vlastne hackovala. Pre tých z vás, ktorí o tom veľa nevedia – pravdepodobne si robíte nesprávne predstavy. Preto som sa do toho ponoril trochu hlbšie. Nie je to jednoduché – implementácie, návrhy architektúry a stovky strán byrokratického žargónu. Verím však, že vám to poskytne oveľa ucelenejší obraz než kusé „spustil som AI agenta proti verejnému repozitáru, neviem čo to znamená, ale tu je to, ako som to ‚ja' hackol".

Bude vás EÚ trackovať na pornostránkach? Je "tá appka" skutočne deravá?

https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2026/04/17/eu-age-control-the-trojan-horse-for-digital-ids/

There have been recent "hacks" of EU Age Control. I think ...

2026-04-18T10:07:53+02:00

There have been recent "hacks" of EU Age Control. I think most of those people don't understand how it actually works and what they were hacking. For those of you that don't know much about it, you are probably assuming wrong things about it. I dug a bit deeper into it. It's hard - implementations, blueprints and hundreds of pages of bureaucratic-speak. But I believe this will give you a much more complete picture that bite-sized "I ran an AI agent against the public repo, don't know what it means, but here's how 'I' hacked it".

https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2026/04/17/eu-age-control-the-trojan-horse-for-digital-ids/

Hermes agent

2026-04-17T20:01:32+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…chwm
_________________________

Hermes agent

On Nostr, it will be the other way around. We will not scan eyes, ...

2026-04-17T20:00:37+02:00

On Nostr, it will be the other way around. We will not scan eyes, we'll put purple lasers in them.

quoting
nevent1q…wt57
Zoom and Tinder are rolling out Sam Altman's eye scanning technology for proof of humanity. 👀

Which Nostr app will be the first to scan eyeballs?

The best podcast I've heard lately. And not only for tech. He ...

2026-04-17T18:32:28+02:00

The best podcast I've heard lately. And not only for tech. He has very similar ideas to mine. Highly recommended, good guide for the present.

https://fountain.fm/episode/slw43HLq2kMTwNeSLThm

quoting
nevent1q…x04h

It's not about not being single, it's about staying cool.

2026-04-17T08:15:55+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…w2t0
_________________________

It's not about not being single, it's about staying cool.

Nerd tinder - keep your Bitchat on, let it drain the battery and ...

2026-04-16T21:56:26+02:00

Nerd tinder - keep your Bitchat on, let it drain the battery and when you see someone in the Bluetooth mesh, write them immediately.

Tell your nerdy friends. See you in the mesh.

What you need to train is adaptability. In technological ...

2026-04-16T12:50:45+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…m200
_________________________

What you need to train is adaptability. In technological singularity, there is no way to tell what will be unique in a year.

Very cool. Also check @npub1a00…9q3h for outdoor work. I'm ...

2026-04-15T22:42:44+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…j2m8
_________________________

Very cool. Also check daylightco (npub1a00…9q3h) for outdoor work. I'm not affiliated, just use it often to write and now edit translations of TamersofEntropy (npub15x6…syd3)

Everything is just a prompt away. For less creative people, this ...

2026-04-15T00:36:16+02:00

Everything is just a prompt away.

For less creative people, this means they lose they job.

For more creative people, it is a huge risk of burnout, because suddenly, everything they ever wanted to create is achievable.

Corollary: If you fear for your job, be more creative, you'll have the opossite problem.