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Identity and Nostr

PlebChat has no email-and-password account. It uses a Nostr keypair.

Public and secret keys

  • Your public key, usually shown as an npub, identifies you. Share it.
  • Your secret key, usually shown as an nsec, authorizes actions as you. Never share it.

The same key can identify you in other Nostr applications. PlebChat does not issue it, own it, or provide a password reset. Back up a newly created nsec offline. Anyone who obtains it can impersonate you and decrypt data encrypted to that key.

A browser signer can keep the secret outside PlebChat while approving signatures when needed.

What relays do

Nostr relays receive and return signed events. They are closer to replaceable message boards than account servers:

  • your identity does not belong to a relay;
  • several relays can hold the same event;
  • changing relays does not create a new identity;
  • signatures let clients verify who published an event.

Relays can still observe connection metadata, event timing, public tags, and ciphertext size. Encryption hides content, not every fact about activity.

The interactive Nostr data map follows profiles, articles, comments, highlights, private messages, app records, and files through their usual storage locations. It also explains the outbox model and the most common event kinds.

People you follow

Feed in the rail is an inbox of new notes from people you follow. It shows what you have not read yet. Scroll past a note and it is marked read and hidden. Empty means you are caught up.

Following in the rail lists your contact list. Muted on that tab lists people on your mute list. A Recommended row shows 25 people you do not follow yet: the same seed writers Discover uses, then people in your 2-hop web of trust. Open a person for their profile, then a short shelf of writings, notes, who they follow, and their public mute list. See all zooms that shelf. Notes show pictures and quoted events. Paste an npub to follow someone new. The list and each person stay on this device after the first load.

You may see several Nostr identifiers:

  • npub — a person's public key;
  • nprofile — a profile plus suggested relays;
  • note or nevent — a particular event;
  • naddr — a replaceable object such as an article or public debate.

PlebChat accepts relevant identifiers when browsing a shelf or joining a debate.

Why PlebChat uses Nostr

A portable key makes identity independent of PlebChat. Signed events make public authorship verifiable. Encrypted events let several devices exchange private state without turning a PlebChat database into the owner of that state.

This does not remove the need for care: protect the secret key, choose relays you trust to be available, and keep independent backups of important work.