Nostr Biweekly Review ( 1-14 Jan 2026)

GM, Nostriches!

The Nostr Review is a biweekly newsletter focused on protocol updates, exciting programs, the long-form content ecosystem, and key events happening in the Nostr-verse. If you’re interested, join me in covering updates from the Nostr ecosystem!

Quick review:

In the past two weeks, daily active pubkeys dropped to 93,987. New user growth decreased, while profiles with bios decreased by over 87.60%. Note events totaled 5.5 million and zap volume has decreased to 13.6 million sats. Additionally, 4 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 0 merged. A total of 100 Nostr projects were tracked, with 8 releasing product updates. During this period, 1 notable events took place, and 3 significant events are upcoming.

Nostr Statistics#

Based on user activity, the total daily active pubkeys reached 93,987, reflecting a decrease of 34.82% compared to the previous period. The highest daily activity was recorded on January 14th, 2026, with 7,211 active users.

The number of new users overall has decreased from the last period. In particular, the number of profiles with bios dropped to 30,961, marking a significant decrease of about 87.60% compared to the previous record of 249,765. The number of new profiles with contact lists dropped to 15,940, and pubkeys writing events also decreased to 287,844 within this period.

In terms of content publishing, approximately 5.5 million note events were published during this period, representing a decrease of about 39.56% compared to the previous cycle. Among them, Reposts reached a total of 279,879 within this period.

For zap activity, the total zap amount is about 13.6 million, showing a decrease of over 27.27% compared to the previous period.

Data source: https://stats.nostr.band/

NIPs#

Nip29: clarify what the relay key means #2190 fiatjaf ⁠fiatjaf

The PR aims to clarify the definition and usage of the "relay key" within NIP-29 (a Nostr protocol specification). It appears to be a focused update to the text to improve clarity.

Nostr Web Tokens #2187 pippellia-btc nnpub176p7sup477k5738qhxx0hk2n0cty2k5je5uvalzvkvwmw4tltmeqw7vgup

This PR proposes a new specification called Nostr Web Tokens (NWT).

Goal: Inspired by JSON Web Tokens (JWT), NWTs are Nostr events used to convey signed claims between parties on the web.
Features: It aims to provide a more flexible alternative to existing standards like NIP-98 (HTTP Authentication) and Blossom authorization events.
Benefits: It allows clients to define how long tokens are valid, potentially improving the signing user experience (UX) and security by reducing the need for constant re-signing of requests.

Add NIP for PQ #2185 trbouma ⁠fiatjaf

This PR proposes a new NIP (Nostr Implementation Possibility) to introduce Post-Quantum (PQ) cryptography support to the Nostr protocol.

Goal: To demonstrate "crypto-agility" in Nostr and provide a narrative to address potential future threats from quantum computing.
Implementation: The author mentions working with algorithms like ML-DSA-44 and Falcon-512 (which are NIST-standardized post-quantum signature schemes).
Use Case: The author suggests that while individual users might not need this immediately (due to the large size of PQ keys), it could be highly valuable for "super-high value events" published by applications or authorities.

Source: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pulls

Notable Projects#

Amethyst - v1.05.0: Bookmark Lists, Voice Notes, and WoT Scores ⁠Amethyst

Amethyst is an Android Nostr client designed for social networking and communication, enabling users to post, follow, bookmark, zap, and exchange messages over Nostr relays in a mobile-first experience. This release adds full bookmark list management, a redesigned voice notes and replies system, and introduces Web of Trust (WoT) scores via trusted providers to help surface reputable accounts, while significantly improving relay information visibility, database performance, caching, and event parsing. Together, these changes make Amethyst faster, more expressive, and safer to use, helping users better organize content, communicate more naturally, and navigate Nostr with greater confidence. This was the biggest release and the latest release was v1.05.1 of the week.

Amber - v4.0.7 ⁠Amber

Amber is an Android Nostr event signer that allows users and apps to securely create and sign Nostr events without exposing private keys. This release focuses on stability and usability by fixing several crashes, separating relay notifications from service-related notifications for clearer messaging, and preserving screen state on the login screen, resulting in a more reliable and smoother signing experience for both end users and developers integrating Nostr authentication and event signing into their apps.

Primal Android App - 2.6.18 ⁠Primal

Primal Android App is a mobile Nostr client designed for end users, offering a fast, full-featured social experience on Android with strong performance and native Nostr integrations. This release adds support for Remote Signer (NIP-46) and Android Signer (NIP-55), giving users more secure and flexible ways to manage keys and sign events, while numerous performance improvements such as avatar and media pre-caching, faster thread loading, smoother scrolling, and better image rendering make the app feel noticeably more responsive. Bug fixes and UX enhancements, including improved notifications behavior, deep link handling, and richer media metadata, result in a more stable, polished, and seamless daily Nostr experience.

Nostr Polls - v1.0.0: Pollerama Now on Android! ⁠ABH3PO

Nostr Polls (Pollerama) is an application focused on creating, sharing, and participating in polls in a decentralized way. This release marks Pollerama’s debut as a native Android app, bringing the pollerama.fun experience to mobile with Android-specific features such as direct login via Amber and Nsec. This makes it easier and faster for users to authenticate, vote, and create polls on the go, while benefiting from smoother performance and tighter integration with the Android Nostr ecosystem.

Nostr Ynstant Messenger (NYM) - v2.25.63 ⁠Luxas

Nostr Ynstant Messenger is a chat application designed for both ephemeral and persistent messaging, with optional anonymous, temporary chats bridged through Bitchat. This release improves internal handling by separating file types, which reduces processing overhead and boosts performance. As a result, users get faster message handling, smoother media interactions, and a more responsive chat experience, especially in conversations that include shared files. This was the latest and there was also the release of v2.24.63 last week.

Nostur - v1.25.3 ⁠Fabian

Nostur is a Nostr client for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, designed for manage feeds, DMs, and interactions across multiple accounts. This release adds “time ago” indicators in DMs, enables viewing other users’ feeds in new desktop columns, restores DM functionality on iOS 15/16, fixes message ordering and notification delays, improves DM fetching, and adds options for publishing DM relays, remote signer checks, and retrying failed signings. These updates enhance usability, reliability, and cross-device messaging consistency for users.

Nostr MCP Server - v2.1.0 ⁠bitcoinplebdev

Nostr MCP Server is a developer tool that implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to expose Nostr functionality such as reading, publishing, and interacting with events to large language models like Claude. This release streamlines the codebase by migrating tests and release workflows to Bun for faster execution, simplifying build scripts with native shell commands, and removing the NIPs search feature along with external GitHub API and node-fetch dependencies. These changes reduce complexity, speed up development and testing, lower dependency overhead, and make the server more lightweight and reliable for developers integrating Nostr capabilities into LLM-powered applications.

Citrine - v1.0.0 ⁠greenart7c3

Citrine is a Nostr relay designed to run directly on Android devices, enabling users to host and participate in Nostr relay functionality locally. This release marks its first stable version and improves reliability and usability by adding a crash report handler, supporting Android content resolvers, automatically broadcasting queued events to relays when the device comes back online, filling in missing settings strings, enabling hosting of web apps, and improving performance when loading event kinds, making Citrine more stable, resilient, and practical as a mobile Nostr relay.

Long-Form Content Eco#

In the past two weeks, approximately 500 to 600 long-form articles have been published, with over 40% being Bitcoin related articles and 60% related to Nostr and other topics across the Nostr Ecosystem.

The core discussion around decentralized technologies has shifted from theoretical utility to urgent economic and political necessity. We are witnessing a move beyond price speculation toward resilience against centralized failure, highlighted by two major global theaters:

The Iranian Internet Blackout & The Relay Revolution: The recent internet blackouts in Iran demonstrated the fragility of centralized communication. In this vacuum, Nostr Relays - dumb, decentralized servers that simply store and forward messages became critical infrastructure. Unlike centralized platforms that can be "switched off" by a single authority, relays operate like a hydra; shut one down, and the network routes around it. This event validated the "Freedom Tech" thesis: protocols, not platforms, are the only defense against state-level censorship.
Venezuelan Politics & The Bitcoin Lifeboat: In Venezuela, the narrative has moved beyond simple "inflation hedging" to active political resistance. As the government attempts to exert control through centralized digital currencies (like the Petro) and banking freezes, Bitcoin serves as a silent, parallel economy. "Success stories" here are not about becoming millionaires, but about basic survival, using permissionless keys to buy food and medicine outside the gaze of a surveillance state.
Taxation & Liberty: This friction has sparked renewed debate on taxation. As governments seek to regulate and tax these parallel economies, the conversation is pivoting to the moral imperatives of financial privacy. The "Cyberpunk Ethos" is resurfacing, arguing that money separated from state control is a prerequisite for personal liberty.

The focus on the Nostr ecosystem has expanded from simple infrastructure building to a vibrant "Developer Surge," fueled by new methodologies and a unique cultural mix.

Vibe Coding & The Developer Surge: A massive influx of new talent is flooding the Nostr ecosystem, accelerated by "Vibe Coding"; the practice of using AI-assisted tools to rapidly prototype and build. This has lowered the barrier to entry, allowing non-traditional developers to build clients, tools, and relays based on "vibes" and community needs rather than just rigid engineering specs. This speed of iteration is creating a hyper-evolutionary environment for apps.
Poetic Mix with Nostr Keys: The culture is softening the hard edges of cryptography with artistry. Users are increasingly viewing their Nostr Public Keys (npubs) not just as addresses, but as digital identities mixed with poetry and aesthetics. "Vanity mining" for keys that start with specific words or names has become a form of digital expression, blending the mathematical rigidity of hex keys with human creativity.

As the ecosystem matures, the definition of security is tightening.

Mobile Security & User Sovereignty: With the rise of mobile-first users in developing nations, protecting private keys on handheld devices is paramount. The focus is on Signers; dedicated apps that isolate keys from social apps, ensuring that even if a "vibe coded" game is buggy, the user's master identity remains secure.
The Inevitability of Centralized Breaches: The narrative on "Cyber Security" has hardened. It is no longer a question of if a centralized database (bank, social media, government ID) will be breached, but when. The industry is pivoting toward "Self-Sovereign Identity" (SSI) on Nostr, where the user owns their data graph, and no central honeypot exists for hackers to target.

Broader topics continue to connect technology with deep philosophical questions. The "religion" of sound money is now backed by the "reality" of active relays and censorship resistance. We are seeing a convergence where Cryptography acts as the shield for Liberty, and protocols like Nostr provide the voice for those silenced by politics.

Thank you,

and others, for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.

Nostriches Global Meet Ups#

Recently, five (1) Notable Nostr and Bitcoin events have been hosted.

Digital Freedom with Nostr & Bitcoin - 4th January 2026 Takes place at Jives Coffee Lounge where Nostr and Bitcoin will be discussed. Also, attendees will be helped to set up your free Nostr account, free Bitcoin Lightning wallet, etc.

Here are the upcoming Nostr and Bitcoin events that you might want to check out.

POSSE content with Drupal using Nostr at FOSDEM 2026 - 31st January 2026 at Université Libre de Bruxelles Time: 5.35 PM - 6.00 PM CET (UTC+1) organized by ⁠Sebastix

Digital Freedom with Nostr & Bitcoin - 1st Febuary 2026 Takes place at Jives Coffee Lounge where Nostr and Bitcoin will be discussed. Also, attendees will be helped to set up your free Nostr account, free Bitcoin Lightning wallet, etc.
Nostr Nights #1 - 2nd February 2026 Nostr Nights is a quarterly meetup for anyone passionate about building, growing, and exploring the future of decentralized social technology. Whether you're brand-new to Nostr or already building on it, this event is designed to help you learn, connect, and go deeper. Each session features conversations with people building real projects on Nostr, hands-on onboarding for newcomers, educational deep dives into how the protocol works, and open discussions about emerging tools, use cases, and best practices. It’s an opportunity to ask questions, share what you're working on, and collaborate with others pushing the ecosystem forward.