If we want Nostr to truly protect privacy and resist censorship—like when X faced a government ban—we need to stop relying on relays with known IPs or domain names.

We need encrypted traffic between clients and servers by default. That means Tor (and networks like I2P and Nym) should just work right out of the box, ideally without leaving the mixnet where traffic could be exposed at the exit node.

💡 A lot of relay operators are already running Tor onion services, which is awesome—but we need to make them easier to discover and use. If a public relay becomes unavailable, we should be able to switch to the Onion service version seamlessly.

What do we need to do to make this happen? First, it’s about getting Nostr relay software to publish the Onion address when it’s set up. Then, it’s about getting clients to handle alternative transports like Tor or I2P natively, letting users choose between IP (TCP/IP), Tor, or other options.

We could also explore mapping DNS records to onion addresses or including the info in HTTP headers. But maybe the most straightforward approach is extending NIP-11 to include alternate transport details so that everything's baked into the protocol.

What do you all think? How can we push this forward? Let’s brainstorm and figure out the best way to support these privacy-preserving networks and keep Nostr resilient. I think we need Tor support in native clients where users can turn it on with a single click. Or maybe even have it attempt Tor as a fallback when the normal way of connecting fails.

burn, berlin, burn