nostream

This is a nostr relay, written in Typescript.

This implementation is production-ready. See below for supported features.

The project master repository is available on GitHub.

Features

NIPs with a relay-specific implementation are listed here.

• NIP-01: Basic protocol flow description
• NIP-02: Contact list and petnames
• NIP-04: Encrypted Direct Message
• NIP-09: Event deletion
• NIP-11: Relay information document
• NIP-11a: Relay Information Document Extensions
• NIP-12: Generic tag queries
• NIP-13: Proof of Work
• NIP-15: End of Stored Events Notice
• NIP-16: Event Treatment
• NIP-20: Command Results
• NIP-22: Event created_at Limits
• NIP-26: Delegated Event Signing
• NIP-28: Public Chat
• NIP-33: Parameterized Replaceable Events
• NIP-40: Expiration Timestamp

Requirements

Standalone setup

• PostgreSQL 14.0
• Redis
• Node v18
• Typescript

Docker setups

• Docker v20.10
• Docker Compose v2.10

Local Docker setup

• Docker Desktop v4.2.0 or newer
• mkcert

WARNING: Docker distributions from Snap, Brew or Debian repositories are NOT SUPPORTED and will result in errors. Install Docker from their official guide ONLY.

Full Guide

• Set up a Paid Nostr relay with Nostream and ZEBEDEE by André Neves (CTO & Co-Founder at ZEBEDEE)
• Set up a Nostr relay in under 5 minutes by André Neves (CTO & Co-Founder at ZEBEDEE)

Accepting Payments

1. Before you begin

   • Complete one of the Quick Start guides in this document
   • Create a .env file
   • On .nostr/settings.yaml file make the following changes:
     • Set payments.enabled to true
     • Set payments.feeSchedules.admission.enabled to true
     • Set limits.event.pubkey.minBalance to the minimum balance in msats required to accept events (i.e. 1000000 to require a balance of 1000 sats)
   • Choose one of the following payment processors: zebedee, nodeless, opennode, lnbits, lnurl

2. ZEBEDEE

   • Complete the step "Before you begin"
   • Sign up for a ZEBEDEE Developer Dashboard account, create a new LIVE Project, and get that Project's API Key
   • Set ZEBEDEE_API_KEY environment variable with the API Key above on your .env file

   ZEBEDEE_API_KEY={YOUR_ZEBEDEE_API_KEY_HERE}
   

   • Follow the required steps for all payments processors
   • On .nostr/settings.yaml file make the following changes:
     • payments.processor to zebedee
     • paymentsProcessors.zebedee.callbackBaseURL to match your Nostream URL (e.g. https://{YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE}/callbacks/zebedee)
   • Restart Nostream (./scripts/stop followed by ./scripts/start)
   • Read the in-depth guide for more information: Set Up a Paid Nostr Relay with ZEBEDEE API

3. Nodeless

   • Complete the step "Before you begin"
   • Sign up for a new account, create a new store and take note of the store ID
   • Go to Profile > API Tokens and generate a new key and take note of it
   • Create a store webhook with your Nodeless callback URL (e.g. https://{YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE}/callbacks/nodeless) and make sure to enable all of the events. Grab the generated store webhook secret
   • Set NODELESS_API_KEY and NODELESS_WEBHOOK_SECRET environment variables with generated API key and webhook secret, respectively

   NODELESS_API_KEY={YOUR_NODELESS_API_KEY}
   NODELESS_WEBHOOK_SECRET={YOUR_NODELESS_WEBHOOK_SECRET}
   

   • On your .nostr/settings.yaml file make the following changes:
     • Set payments.processor to nodeless
     • Set paymentsProcessors.nodeless.storeId to your store ID
   • Restart Nostream (./scripts/stop followed by ./scripts/start)

4. OpenNode

   • Complete the step "Before you begin"

   • Sign up for a new account and get verified

   • Go to Developers > Integrations and setup two-factor authentication

   • Create a new API Key with Invoices permission

   • Set OPENNODE_API_KEY environment variable on your .env file

     OPENNODE_API_KEY={YOUR_OPENNODE_API_KEY}
     

   • On your .nostr/settings.yaml file make the following changes:

     • Set payments.processor to opennode

   • Restart Nostream (./scripts/stop followed by ./scripts/start)

5. LNBITS

   • Complete the step "Before you begin"

   • Create a new wallet on you public LNbits instance

     • Demo server must not be used for production
     • Your instance must be accessible from the internet and have a valid SSL/TLS certificate

   • Get wallet Invoice/read key (in Api docs section of your wallet)

   • set LNBITS_API_KEY environment variable with the Invoice/read key Key above on your .env file

     LNBITS_API_KEY={YOUR_LNBITS_API_KEY_HERE}
     

   • On your .nostr/settings.yaml file make the following changes:

     • Set payments.processor to lnbits
     • set lnbits.baseURL to your LNbits instance URL (e.g. https://{YOUR_LNBITS_DOMAIN_HERE}/)
     • Set paymentsProcessors.lnbits.callbackBaseURL to match your Nostream URL (e.g. https://{YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE}/callbacks/lnbits)

   • Restart Nostream (./scripts/stop followed by ./scripts/start)

6. Alby or any LNURL Provider with LNURL-verify support

   • Complete the step "Before you begin"
   • Create a new account if you don't have an LNURL
   • On your .nostr/settings.yaml file make the following changes:
     • Set payments.processor to lnurl
     • Set lnurl.invoiceURL to your LNURL (e.g. https://getalby.com/lnurlp/your-username)
   • Restart Nostream (./scripts/stop followed by ./scripts/start)

7. Ensure payments are required for your public key

   • Visit https://{YOUR-DOMAIN}/
   • You should be presented with a form requesting an admission fee to be paid
   • Fill out the form and take the necessary steps to pay the invoice
   • Wait until the screen indicates that payment was received
   • Add your relay URL to your favorite Nostr client (wss://{YOUR-DOMAIN}) and wait for it to connect
   • Send a couple notes to test
   • Go to https://websocketking.com/ and connect to your relay (wss://{YOUR_DOMAIN})
   • Convert your npub to hexadecimal using a Key Converter
   • Send the following JSON message: ["REQ", "payment-test", {"authors":["your-pubkey-in-hexadecimal"]}]
   • You should get back the few notes you sent earlier

Quick Start (Docker Compose)

Install Docker following the official guide. You may have to uninstall Docker if you installed it using a different guide.

Clone repository and enter directory:

git clone git@github.com:Cameri/nostream.git
cd nostream

Generate a secret with: openssl rand -hex 128 Copy the output and paste it into an .env file:

SECRET=aaabbbccc...dddeeefff
# Secret shortened for brevity

Start:

./scripts/start

or

./scripts/start_with_tor

Stop the server with:

./scripts/stop

Print the Tor hostname:

./scripts/print_tor_hostname

Running as a Service

By default this server will run continuously until you stop it with Ctrl+C or until the system restarts.

You can install as a systemd service if you want the server to run again automatically whenever the system is restarted. For example:

$ nano /etc/systemd/system/nostream.service

# Note: replace "User=..." with your username, and
# "/home/nostr/nostream" with the directory where you cloned the repo.

[Unit]
Description=Nostr TS Relay
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
User=nostr
WorkingDirectory=/home/nostr/nostream
ExecStart=/home/nostr/nostream/scripts/start
ExecStop=/home/nostr/nostream/scripts/stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

And then:

systemctl enable nostream
systemctl start nostream

The logs can be viewed with:

journalctl -u nostream

Quick Start (Standalone)

Set the following environment variables:

DB_URI="postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/nostr_ts_relay_test"
DB_USER=postgres

or

DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432
DB_NAME=nostr_ts_relay
DB_USER=postgres
DB_PASSWORD=postgres

REDIS_URI="redis://default:nostr_ts_relay@localhost:6379"

REDIS_HOST=localhost
REDIS_PORT=6379
REDIS_USER=default
REDIS_PASSWORD=nostr_ts_relay

Generate a long random secret and set SECRET: You may want to use openssl rand -hex 128 to generate a secret.

SECRET=aaabbbccc...dddeeefff
# Secret shortened for brevity

Initializing the database

Create nostr_ts_relay database:

$ psql -h $DB_HOST -p $DB_PORT -U $DB_USER -W
postgres=# create database nostr_ts_relay;
postgres=# quit

Start Redis and use redis-cli to set the default password and verify:

$ redis-cli
127.0.0.1:6379> CONFIG SET requirepass "nostr_ts_relay"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> AUTH nostr_ts_relay
Ok

Clone repository and enter directory:

git clone git@github.com:Cameri/nostream.git
cd nostream

Install dependencies:

npm install -g knex
npm install

Run migrations (at least once and after pulling new changes):

NODE_OPTIONS="-r dotenv/config" npm run db:migrate

Create .nostr folder inside nostream project folder and copy over the settings file:

mkdir .nostr
cp resources/default-settings.yaml .nostr/settings.yaml

To start in development mode:

npm run dev

Or, start in production mode:

npm run start

To clean up the build, coverage and test reports run:

npm run clean

Development Quick Start (Docker Compose)

Install Docker Desktop following the official guide. You may have to uninstall Docker on your machine if you installed it using a different guide.

Clone repository and enter directory:

git clone git@github.com:Cameri/nostream.git
cd nostream

Start:

./scripts/start_local

This will run in the foreground of the terminal until you stop it with Ctrl+C.

Tests

Unit tests

Open a terminal and change to the project's directory:

cd /path/to/nostream

Run unit tests with:

npm run test:unit

Or, run unit tests in watch mode:

npm run test:unit:watch

To get unit test coverage run:

npm run cover:unit

To see the unit tests report open .test-reports/unit/index.html with a browser:

open .test-reports/unit/index.html

To see the unit tests coverage report open .coverage/unit/lcov-report/index.html with a browser:

open .coverage/unit/lcov-report/index.html

Integration tests (Docker Compose)

Open a terminal and change to the project's directory:

cd /path/to/nostream

Run integration tests with:

npm run docker:test:integration

And to get integration test coverage run:

npm run docker:cover:integration

Integration tests (Standalone)

Open a terminal and change to the project's directory:

cd /path/to/nostream

Set the following environment variables:

DB_URI="postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/nostr_ts_relay_test"

or

DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432
DB_NAME=nostr_ts_relay_test
DB_USER=postgres
DB_PASSWORD=postgres
DB_MIN_POOL_SIZE=1
DB_MAX_POOL_SIZE=2

Then run the integration tests:

npm run test:integration

To see the integration tests report open .test-reports/integration/report.html with a browser:

open .test-reports/integration/report.html

To get the integration test coverage run:

npm run cover:integration

To see the integration test coverage report open .coverage/integration/lcov-report/index.html with a browser.

open .coverage/integration/lcov-report/index.html

Configuration

You can change the default folder by setting the NOSTR_CONFIG_DIR environment variable to a different path.

Run nostream using one of the quick-start guides at least once and nostream/.nostr/settings.json will be created. Any changes made to the settings file will be read on the next start.

Default settings can be found under resources/default-settings.yaml. Feel free to copy it to nostream/.nostr/settings.yaml if you would like to have a settings file before running the relay first.

See CONFIGURATION.md for a detailed explanation of each environment variable and setting.

Dev Channel

For development discussions, please use the Nostr Typescript Relay Dev Group.

For discussions about the protocol, please feel free to use the Nostr Telegram Group.

Author

I'm Cameri on most social networks. You can find me on Nostr by npub1qqqqqqyz0la2jjl752yv8h7wgs3v098mh9nztd4nr6gynaef6uqqt0n47m.

Contributors (A-Z)

• Anton Livaja
• Juan Angel
• Kevin Smith
• Saransh Sharma
• swissrouting
• André Neves
• Semisol

License

This project is MIT licensed.