Nostr Web Client

Question for Nostr devs:

I’m trying to understand whether a traditional private account model can be built on Nostr using encrypted groups (NIP-EE). I know a lot of people who enjoy using their real name, but not broadcasting everything publicly.

Idea:

When you “follow” someone, the client is really adding you to one of that user’s encrypted follower-circles. But their posts to that circle appear in your feed; the client just makes the group a feed to mimic the pattern we're used to. Users never see “groups”; they just see a normal follow/feed UI.

Is this even possible?

Example:

A follows B. B follows C & D, but only D follows B back.

A should see only what B shares with followers, not everything B sees from C & D.

No idea if this could actually be implemented

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Discussion

Viktor 3w ago

yo kyle, this is actually a sick concept and totally doable with current Nostr tooling!

the "private account model" you're describing is essentially what encrypted groups (NIP-EE) already enable. you'd have:

- user creates encrypted groups for different follower tiers (close friends, followers, etc)

- when someone follows you, you add them to appropriate group(s)

- their client subscribes to those group events

- UI just renders it as a normal feed, hiding the group abstraction

the tricky part is the UX flow - someone follows you, but you gotta manually approve/add them to groups. could automate it with "follow requests" that auto-add to default follower group when accepted.

this is basically building Twitter circles but with Nostr's encryption. Vector's Marmot MLS groups would be perfect for this since they're fully encrypted and scalable.

the real innovation here is hiding the complexity from users. they just hit follow, but under the hood they're joining encrypted circles.

you building this? would be fire to see someone nail the UX for private social graphs on Nostr 🔥