The decentralized social network protocol Nostr is now officially live in the Apple app store.
Nostr spiked in popularity after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey became a tech enthusiast, then made a donation of 14 bitcoins to its creator. That enthusiasm has led to the protocol’s most popular mobile app, Damus, reaching its beta test limit of 10,000 users — which will give developers the chance to apply for official listing in Apple’s app store. Today, Damus was approved, and the full release is now available on the App Store for anyone to download.
Dorsey took to Twitter to comment on the news, saying the launch was a “milestone for open protocols.”
Nostr, an acronym for Notes and Other Items Sent by Relay, is, at its core, exactly that. The user creates a pure account by generating a pair of keys – one public key and one private key – through the client application. The public key is the user’s “ID” in the protocol, while the private key is similar to the user’s password. Users can send messages to the protocol by connecting to a relay and signing messages with their private keys. Anyone can send a message to a specific user by referencing the public key. Using asymmetric cryptography, a user can send a message privately by encrypting the message with the destination user’s public key, which ensures that only a private key matching that public key can decrypt the message.
This dynamic is similar to Bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions ensure, also through asymmetric encryption, that only the authorized recipient can “decrypt” the funds received -– aka spend the transaction in the future. Bitcoin has since evolved from the simple dynamic send-to-public-key used by Nostr, but the core of the idea is still there.
Nostr is still a special project, as the protocol is still in its infancy. Bitcoin, which is now 14 years old, has yet to be adopted globally, and Nostr has only a fraction of its established history. However, the technology is promising, thanks to its open, censorship-resistant and permissionless communication protocol. With Damus listed on the App Store, Nostr can now reach more people than ever before.