Nostr Web Client

How does it work?

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

As said, above my head... But from my grug-brain understanding, it should only take 7-8 characters of a Nostr event ID before the chances that there is another event with the same leading characters is slim to none.

That being the case, a Nostr client doesn't really need the whole thing in order to pull up the event, so long as it is searching the right relays for it. If the full event ID is `nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq6z80pwapdkhn6st5d5uxfm5atcl82jzyhdwmurs7q656felnj6xqy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgswaehxw309ahx7um5wghx6mmd9uqzqc8ztkrnk6rnwl6dgznhtvxf6fuhpkja3y2tkuqpvl6uaxekycz5xdhvag,` then clients should only need `1qvzqqqq` to find that specific event, and those characters could be converted to mnemonic words that can be memorized or otherwise hidden in a message. Nostr clients could even support looking up the event using those mnemonic words.

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Discussion

Sat Nakamoto 8mo ago

That’s pretty cool!

Liberty Farmer 8mo ago

This would be game changing for requesting notes on HAMSTR. Huge bandwidth bytes savings.

arkinox 8mo ago

That's correct! But just to be precise, you posted an nevent1 which isn't the same as an event id; the event id is 64 hex characters and is typically hidden from the user. Raw hex strings could be an event id, public key, or private key, so the encodings like nevent, nsec, and npub make them easier to distinguish.

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

LOL! Note IDs, nevents, naddrs, and hex IDs... So many to try and keep straight!

I think I've got it now, though. So you are proposing making a mnemonic phrase out of the first 6-8 characters of the HEX ID of, well, anything you want to, right? Could be the hex version of a user's npub, the hex version of a bookmark list's ID, or the hex version of a book ID published to Alexandria, and as long as the Nostr client knows where to look for it, since relay hints aren't encoded into the hex, only the nevent or naddr, the client should be able to find it with just that mnemonic phrase.

And hex IDs are completely different from nevents and such. You can't just take the "nevent" prefix off of the front and what you are left with is the hex ID. It's a completely different set of characters.

Jumble is kind enough to allow users to see the raw event information if they want to, and I believe the hex ID of your reply is:

`a50bc29d3377e1b0f50a0f471ca7431d27489f013df620a90e313c5f10b1c2a9`

While the nevent is:

`nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzp68dx7vvdlltl7sg2qdv8838ze3tl5tq76y0jnz966fdsana6dz6qyt8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68yetvd96x2uewdaexwtcpr9mhxue69uhhwmm59e38y6t8dp6xymmvwshxuet59uqzpfgtc2wnxalpkr6s5r68rjn5x8f8fz0sz00kyz5suvfutugtrs4ffsug0m`

But we could have clients display an option to copy an "event seed" or some similar title for it, which is a mnemonic phrase of human readable words that represent the first 6-8 characters of the hex ID.

So, the question becomes, how will clients know where to find the referenced event without relay hints?

Do we have "indexer" relays that just record hex IDs and what relays they were seen on, so clients can reach out to the indexer to tell them where to look for the event? Or do we use a DHT for that? Or do we make the phrase 12 words, with the first 6 being a mnemonic of the author's pubkey and the last 6 the mnemonic of the event, and then the client can just check the author's kind 10002 relay list to see where to look for the event?

arkinox 8mo ago

Good questions! I like the "event seed" option you mention.

Without relay hints, it's just a game of brute force searching relays. But perhaps we could encode the relay somehow. TBH that's a bit trickier. The primary ID of a relay is its URL. Encoding all of it would take too many words. But expressing the relay URL in plaintext would betray the purpose of the preceding 6 words, which would reduce this scheme's effectiveness against shadowbanning. Perhaps it's up to the user. Include the relay if you aren't in an adversarial environment, and exclude it if you are; without a relay hint you'll simply have to brute force search relays for it until you find it, which can be somewhat automated. If you are sharing an event in such a furtive way, you might want to broadcast your event to as many relays as you can in order to ease the pain of finding it.

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

That makes sense. Tools like NADAR exist already for searching all known relays for a particular event, and yes, an event you want to share in this way could be intentionally blasted far and wide to assist in finding it with just the first several characters of the hex. Runs against the philosophy of outbox, though.

I think maybe sharing a 6 or 7 word string of the author's hex pubkey along with 6 or 7 words of the event's hex ID would probably do the trick, and be more in line with outbox, though.

A user could pretty quickly commit to memory the phrase referring to their public key, so they would just need to add the phrase representing the particular event they want to share. Clients could then find the author's kind 10002, which should already be blasted far and wide in the relays, and look for the event itself on the author's listed outbox relays.

I feel like this could help diminish the chances of collision as well. How likely is it there will be two events with the same author and the same leading 6 characters for their hex ID?

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

lol wow dude. "I'm not a dev" and then you drop this wild note. incredible :D

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Seems contradictory, right? Yet, here I am.

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

you're probably a prime "vibe coding" candidate. knows a _lot_ about what they want and deep ideas for how to do it, but the stupid lines of code themselves are the impediment.

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Yeah, but I feel like a vibe-coder should at least be able to review, understand, and correct what the AI spits out when necessary.

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

LOLOL you think all these vibe-coders are even looking at the work product?! they click the buttons and if they buttons do the right thing (half the time) they ship it

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Yes, and I find that horrifying! 🤣

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

You and me both, man

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Alright, say I want to make myself useful in a Nostr building context. Given my understanding of the protocol, where should I start in learning how to build on it?

arkinox 8mo ago

This is great, but the only problem with this is we would also need partial searches against author pubkeys and that has never existed among relay implementations. 😮‍💨

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

So, relays are going to expect the full hex string for pubkeys, and reject anything less than that, eh? Picky buggers, but yes that eliminates my suggestion unless that behavior was changed...

arkinox 8mo ago

That's correct, unfortunately

arkinox 8mo ago

We could PR it into existence

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Is there any reason, other than possible collisions where two pubkeys share the same leading characters, that relays should not support responses for partial pubkey inquiries?

arkinox 8mo ago

No reason. It's basically the same thing as event lookups.

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

I'm game. Just need to get my account sorted with GitHub. It was flagged, likely due to signing up with an email alias instead of my actual email... Then figure out how to add a PR. 😂

cloud fodder 8mo ago

nostr:nprofile1qqsrhuxx8l9ex335q7he0f09aej04zpazpl0ne2cgukyawd24mayt8gprfmhxue69uhkcmmrdd3x77pwve5kzar2v9nzucm0d5hsh2c3z4 would know.. he was pushing for its removal from strfry.. i assume its harder to code.

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Please, nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6, come tell us why we're out of our minds!

fiatjaf 8mo ago

It's just unnecessary complexity. REQ filters are already too powerful, they should be simpler. The use cases are marginal and never important, often just "cool". They can all be implemented using custom relays with crazy logic, which is what we should be doing anyway for many other things.

fiatjaf 8mo ago

Technically can't find an event even if you have the full ID anyway, because you don't know the relays the event is in. That's why we have nevent1 codes and relay and author hints in tags.

Choosing the relays for each client action is the most important part of Nostr but people have assumed that part away way too many times by hardcoding popular relays and expecting all events to be there, which works as long as we're ridiculously small, but kills the value proposition of Nostr entirely.

It's like assuming Bitcoin will always be zero: it's only true if the entire project is a failure, and in that case nothing matters anyway.

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

That was a major part of the reason I made the suggestion regarding partial pubkey queries. If you can query for a user's 10002 with just the first 6 characters of their pubkey, you can find their outbox relays where the event is likely stored, since 10002 events are intended to be shared far and wide.

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

That said, this could indeed be done with a custom relay. One that pulls in 10002 events from all known relays and allows for a query of just the first several characters of a pubkey. There is no need expect all relays to have this behavior. From there the client will have the relays it can expect to find the event, and relays DO currently support partial event ID queries, right nostr:npub1arkn0xxxll4llgy9qxkrncn3vc4l69s0dz8ef3zadykcwe7ax3dqrrh43w?

arkinox 8mo ago

Not all relay implementations support partial id queries

arkinox 8mo ago

I think it would be worthwhile to PR existing relay implementations. But if that fails, a custom relay implementation expressly for this purpose would be a great idea

fiatjaf 8mo ago

I didn't mean custom implementation for this purpose, I think you can probably do better with a custom relay implementation.

I mean, if it's already custom you can assign a serial number to each event and map those numbers to real events in a custom database. Then convert those numbers into single or double-word mnemonics for users.

Or is that boring, doesn't contain cryptographic tricks, centralized? Maybe it is, but I think boring is good and centralized is fine as long as it plugs into the rest of the Nostr ecosystem.

arkinox 8mo ago

Nothing else I know of can do this at a protocol level. It's like a compression cheat code. I think we should take advantage of it

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

he obliged :)

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

He rarely misses an opportunity to let us know when we're being silly.

Danny, the cyber guy 8mo ago

the only thing I can think of is that there is an ambiguity, where for example 66675 could be the start of a pubkey, the end of a pubkey or the middle. to me the idea of partial searches is a good one regardless.

implementation wise, it does add some complication depending on the database engine the relay you're writing uses, but not that much.

arkinox 8mo ago

I think it would be reasonable to limit these queries to prefix only. No searching the middle of a string for a partial hex value.

cloud fodder 8mo ago

it did exist in strfry 0.9

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

Right, the norm would be: "This guy shared an event in this funny way, that's my hint that HE provides the event/relay. Let me start my search with his NIP-05..."

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

That could work, if the place he shared it doesn't censor NIP-05s. They are domain based and easy to figure out what they are for, other than the fact that they look like an email.

arkinox 8mo ago

By the way, it's easy to convert n-entities to their raw components at https://nak.nostr.com

Just paste it into the box and it will be decoded for you. Then you can grab the raw event id, pubkey, etc.

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

I didn't know there was a web version of nak! that's nice

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Adding to my list of resources.

I need to learn how to use nak in general...

arkinox 8mo ago

Nak is a really really awesome CLI tool. I use it every day

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

CLI is intimidating for us plebs, man! I am barely getting used to doing things in CLI since I switched to Linux last year. Forcing myself out of the GUI comfort zone.

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

I prefer CLI tools most of the time, but sometimes its just not practical to access them - and then having a web GUI is invaluable.

arkinox 8mo ago

I hear ya! I used to prefer GUI but now prefer CLI for nostr protocol stuff. It's a slow descent into madness. Enjoy the ride

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

At least most CLIs are dark mode by default. 😉

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

same here

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

I essentially use it to "pre-prototype" a client. you can pretty ergonomically write a suite of unit tests just as a simple bash script to sanity-test a happy-path before writing any UI code.

case in point: https://github.com/vcavallo/khatru/blob/trim-kinds/examples/escrow/test.sh

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

Ah, dev-speak. I am not there yet... Maybe one day, one step at a time, I will understand all that.

I impress nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn often with the seeming contradiction of my depth of understanding of the protocol, somehow paired with my complete ignorance of how to write a single line of useful code.

vinney...axkl 8mo ago

We're all somewhere on the journey. I'm happy to answer questions any time if I happen to be further along a particular branch of the path.

In case it's interesting to you, what I meant in non-dev speak is:

Say I have some new Event Kind I want to introduce. I have in mind a handful of ways the kind might be used in an **eventual** app. I want to check that the design of the kind I have in mind will support those features. nak is basically a bare-bones nostr client - simple requests and simple responses all in text only - so if I have a relay running that understands my new Kind, I can use nak to make sure that the kind of requests I would send to the relay do what I hope.

Since it's a CLI tool, once I have a little collection of interactions tested out in nak, I can basically write those commands into a script (with a bit of extra diagnostic printout, etc.) and now when I run that script it either goes well: "okay great, the Kind makes sense, the relay handles it properly, and the user interactions work like I thought" or things fail and I can look into it further.

That "happy path" (the minimal actions a user might take in order to basically use the new features. not yet taking into account errors or weird edge cases, etc.) then acts as a kind of proof and assurance that "upgrading" those features into a client app UI is worthwhile and will work well.

In a nutshell: that "prototype with nak first" approach is like 1,000x faster to whip up than going straight from Idea -> UI. And sometimes you falsify some hypothesis you had really early and don't waste your time determining which color your buttons should be :)

Dikaios1517 8mo ago

That, sir, sounds incredibly useful for builders! Thank you for breaking it down that way!