Nostr Web Client

Is there no NIP for relays that implements PoW?

Lets say the user has to :

sha256(1'000'000 x pubkey of user + user chosen random 64bit number)

if the resulting hash has at least the first 7 bits as 0's the message is accepted by relays.

1 million times the pubkey of the user limits it to max gpu acceleration, as most cheap fpga's do not have enough space for it.

Blake 2y ago

There is a remote signed NIP (I think , or just something that’s possible anyway) that allows a user to ask a server perhaps to calculate the event id before it’s signed.

You can’t generate an events id before you know the exact content, as it’s part of the hash.

Potentially instead of pay to relay (either 1/sat, have a relay subscription), perhaps min POW is the other option.

At least one relay required a min POW. The issue is you lose a lot of data for things like the event reactions which may not be by clients who use POW.

Paying 1/sat to a relay instead of burning CPU for POW seems like the more desirable approach.. but PoW as a fallback is nice for anonymity.

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Discussion

armstrys 2y ago

POW would be trivial for clients to implement in various places in the nostr protocol. Python-nostr and the bija client have live implementations of event ID POW. I agree that pay to play (sats instead of POW) seems cleaner, but there is something to be said for the accessibility of POW. Setting some static level of POW would effectively remove most mobile clients unless the work was delegated elsewhere.

The nice thing is that event-based POW is more easily delegated than public key POW since the private key isn’t needed for the hashing

Blake 2y ago

Yep. I agree.

I’ve been playing with POW for months now..

Obviously a remote POW service/API and a client that can call it. I’m interested in perhaps building this if anyone is interested.

Something that’s missing today is a clearer POW to $ calculation cost. If we can estimate that better, we know what to charge.