Nope it’s just built on the basic functionality of computers and networks.

When you post something, you send it to those generous relay operators, who are storing all of our posts and follows etc.

Then your client (Damus, snort, etc) acts kinda like a web browser. It asks for info from the relays and displays it for you in a nice format.

There is cryptography in that posts are signed by your private key. But there’s no “crypto” in the sense of shitcoins