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 323,838. New user growth decreased, as profiles with bios also declined by about 8.42%. Events totaled 17.3 million and zap volume increased to 12.8 million sats. Additionally, 13 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 2 drafts. A total of 110 Nostr projects were tracked, with 11 releasing product updates. During this period, 2 notable event took place, and 2 significant events are upcoming.
Nostr Statistics#
Based on user activity, the total daily active pubkeys reached 323,838, reflecting a decrease of 4.28% compared to the previous period's 338,310. The highest daily activity was recorded on June 3rd, 2026, with 24,243 active users, representing a 2.52% decrease compared to the previous record of 24,870.
The number of new users overall showed mixed trends from the last period. In particular, the number of profiles with bios fell to 1,349,861, marking a decrease of about 8.42% compared to the previous record of 1,473,933. Furthermore, the number of new profiles with contact lists also decreased to 252,802, a 2.85% drop from 260,226. Meanwhile, pubkeys writing events decreased to 185,309 within this period, representing a 4.10% drop from the previous 193,230.
In terms of content publishing, approximately 17,348,328 total events were published during this period, representing an increase of about 11.08% compared to the 15,618,361 from the previous cycle. Among them, Reposts reached a total of 536,487 within this period, marking a 3.95% increase compared to the previous 516,091.
For zap activity, the total zap amount is about 12.8 million, showing an increase of over 4.07% compared to the previous period.
Data source: https://npub.world/stats , https://stats.andotherstuff.org/
NIPs#
NIP-29: invite code suffix for group identifiers
Anderson-Juhasc
This PR proposes adding an optional suffix to NIP-29 group identifiers to allow sharing an invite code alongside a group identifier. Specifically:
- Current situation: NIP-29 has kind:9009 for creating invites and a code tag on kind:9021, but no way to combine a group identifier with an invite code
- Proposed solution: Add an optional suffix format: naddr1...?invite=<code
- Design benefit: The ? character isn't in the bech32 charset, so everything before it remains a valid naddr, ensuring backward compatibility
- Implementation: Clients that support this suffix will use the code to populate the code tag in the kind:9021 join request; clients that don't understand it can simply ignore the suffix
This PR adds Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) capabilities to NIP-29. The author notes that while this change is not backwards compatible, it provides a much more coherent and flexible approach.
Conversation Highlights:
- fiatjaf (Jun 11, 2026) questioned whether readers should be expected to know what RBAC means before reading the PR
- staab (Jun 11, 2026) humorously responded that RBAC stands for "Role-based-access-control" and admitted they had to look it up themselves
Avoid nip46 silent timeouts arthurfranca
The PR addresses a problem with NIP-46 (bunker protocol) where bunkers that don't support a custom method don't respond, leaving clients hanging in timeout states (5-30 seconds depending on implementation). The author proposes modifications to allow clients to receive error replies instead of silence, enabling faster failure detection.
Key points:
- The author is experimenting with custom NIP-46 methods not all bunker implementations support
- Goal is to provide immediate error responses instead of silent timeouts
- Mentions other custom methods like Semisol's NIP-44 v3 methods currently only supported by Amber
Source: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pulls
Notable Projects#
Aura - v0.1.0-beta.2 - New Tool
- Aura is a Nostr-based social app where people share emotions as color moments and connect through mutual vibes rather than profiles. With no accounts, follower counts, ads, or public engagement metrics, Aura enables private, feeling-first connections built on shared emotions. In this release, Aura launches its first public beta, introducing color moments, mutual vibe-based connections, private “whispers” messaging, social features such as the Room, sync streaks, and Constellation, opt-in city-level discovery, Android home-screen widgets, mute and report tools, and key backup options, while leveraging multiple Nostr standards for presence, messaging, encrypted lists, and social interactions.
- Nostr Mail Client is an email application built on the Nostr protocol that enables sending and receiving encrypted emails through a familiar mail interface. In v0.13.0, the release adds address book contacts for easier email management, updates the default background to use the primary container color for a more consistent appearance, and fixes email avatar colors to be generated deterministically so contacts maintain a consistent visual identity across sessions. This was the latest, and there was also one more release (v0.12.5) last week.
- Amber is an Android signer app that securely manages Nostr keys and signs events for other Nostr applications without exposing private keys. In this release Amber focused on performance, reliability, and usability improvements, reducing battery drain from relay reconnects and WebSocket pings, removing dead relays from subscription pools, and preventing unnecessary device wake-ups during notification updates. The release also modernizes the settings interface with Material 3 styling, adds support for NIP-46 logout and event kind 39701 (Public Web Bookmark), improves handling of invalid bunker requests, fixes several crashes and a database connection leak, refreshes UI titles when languages change, and updates the app to Kotlin 2.4.0 and Gradle 9.5.1.
- Nostria is a social Nostr client focused on user-friendly interaction with decentralized feeds, profiles, and notifications. In v3.1.46, the update improves core UX stability by fixing accidental reactions while scrolling, note editor resizing issues, and occasional avatar disappearing bugs. It also adds a new setting to disable interaction sounds and improves settings architecture with proper sub-routing per section. The notification system was redesigned so counters now only reflect genuinely new activity after login or after “mark all as read,” preventing old or previously loaded notifications from incorrectly inflating the unread count. While this was the biggest release of the week, there were also the releases of v3.1.48 and v3.1.49.
Islam chernomortsev evgeny, Artem Lytkin
- Bitchat is a decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app that combines offline Bluetooth mesh networking with internet-based Nostr relays for global communication, designed for accountless, serverless messaging. In this release the update focuses heavily on stability, security, and architecture improvements: it rate-limits iOS peer notifications to prevent flooding, strengthens Nostr validation and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) checks, and fixes multiple chat and macOS UI issues. The release significantly expands test coverage across transport, identity, and media flows (up to ~99%), refactors core BLE and chat architecture for better performance and maintainability, improves CI reliability, and enhances reliability of relay handling, voice messages, and media components, while also introducing performance gains and improved mesh connectivity behavior. This was the biggest release of the week, and the latest was v1.5.3.
- Nymchat is an ephemeral, privacy-focused chat client built on the Nostr protocol, with optional bridging to Bitchat for temporary and pseudonymous messaging. In this release the update adds a kaomoji picker triggered via a “\” command and introduces the ability to switch cameras during video calls for better usability. It also includes important hotfixes, resolving issues where zap badges would disappear and fixing a bug where message signature verification was not consistently preserved. This was the biggest, and there were a lot more releases last week.
- Mostro Mobile Client is a secure mobile application for interacting with the Mostro peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading protocol, allowing users to create, manage, and settle decentralized trades. In this release, the update significantly expands trading and bond-based anti-abuse mechanisms, including maker bonds to reduce spam, bond payout workflows, and improved handling of bond-slashed and cancellation states. It also improves order history and notifications, adds fiat amount limits in order creation, and enhances relay discovery by switching to bootstrap-based peer discovery. The release includes multiple fixes for session handling, bond payout flows, and trade state consistency, making the trading lifecycle more reliable and resistant to out-of-order or malformed events.
- Dark Wisp is a mobile Nostr client designed for browsing, posting, and interacting with the Nostr social network with a strong focus on privacy and relay routing. In v1.0.0, it introduces private interactions such as private replies, reactions, and zaps, along with embedded Tor support with fail-closed routing to enforce anonymous connectivity. The release also adds support for NIP-A3 payment targets (kind 10133) and includes a performance-related fix reverting packaging changes that caused regressions on GrapheneOS devices. This was the latest, and there was one more release last week. (v0.0.1-alpha)
- Mostro Core is a Rust-based library that provides peer-to-peer functionality for decentralized applications and serves as the foundation of the Mostro ecosystem. In v0.13.0, Mostro Core introduced Protocol v2, replacing relay-based communication with direct NIP-44 encrypted transport (kind 14) for more efficient and private messaging between peers. The release also strengthens security by binding v2 identity proofs to trade keys, preventing proof reuse across trades. As part of the protocol transition, dual-mode support was removed, meaning a node now operates exclusively in either Protocol v1 or Protocol v2, simplifying compatibility and reducing complexity.
- Nostr VPN is a decentralized mesh VPN built in a Tailscale-style architecture, using a FIPS-backed data plane to securely route traffic between peers without traditional centralized VPN infrastructure. This release focuses on maintainability and cross-platform stability, upgrading FIPS core components and refactoring large Rust modules into smaller submodules for better code management. It also improves dataplane reliability under load by incorporating upstream control-plane and packet-handling fixes while preserving session continuity, enhances Windows compatibility for shared dataplane worker state, and simplifies build requirements by removing the need for a sibling hashtree checkout thanks to pinned upstream dependencies. This was the latest and there was also the release of v4.0.72 last week.
Angor - 0.2.30 (Unstable Release)
- Angor is a decentralized peer-to-peer funding protocol (in alpha stage) built on Bitcoin and Nostr that enables users to create and manage crowdfunding-style projects without relying on centralized platforms. This unstable release focuses on improving usability and stability, especially in the mobile project creation flow with single-tap image uploads and better scroll behavior. It also changes the default network to mainnet for production readiness and fixes a Lightning invoice race condition that previously caused a stuck loading spinner, improving reliability in payment processing flows while explicitly remaining in an experimental/unstable phase.
Long-Form Content Eco#
In the past two weeks, approximately 188,644 kind 30023 events have been tracked (long-form articles), with over 55% being Bitcoin related articles and 45% related to Nostr and other topics across the Nostr Ecosystem.
The digital feed is buzzing right now with a perfect blend of hardcore tech talk, global community building, and a little bit of football. Here is a quick look at the main topics dominating the conversation.
The Privacy and Ecash Frontier Privacy is taking center stage. The community is heavily focused on Ecash as the next big step for digital transactions. Users are sharing their personal Bitcoin privacy journeys and explaining exactly why switching to secure mobile setups like GrapheneOS matters so much for Bitcoiners. The core message is that Bitcoin is the currency of the future, and keeping those transactions private is a top priority.
Borderless Communities The social layer is incredibly active. Timelines are full of Bitcoin event teasers and detailed breakdowns of local meetups. There is a beautiful push for wider adoption, highlighted by the strong calls for Muslim sisters to attend the upcoming Muslim Women Bitcoin Summit. It is a solid reminder that Bitcoin truly knows no borders.
Tech Wars and World Cups The classic battle of old versus new continues with daily updates on centralized versus decentralized systems. A very popular thread right now contrasts "open source doom" with Nostr's resilient architecture, proving why we need better tech. And sprinkled right in the middle of all this heavy technical analysis are World Cup highlights.
Because honestly, what is the point of building a secure, decentralized financial revolution if we cannot take a quick break to scream at the referee?
Thank you,
Simon Consultingsimon-consulting.btc@bringin.xyz
markusturmmarkus@einundzwanzig.space
ꓘɨℓσꬺƄɨP110ꓘɳσ[Ŧƨ] 𓅦丰kilombino.com
V E C T O Rnpub1hruju…f3yh
Mandalorianamisatoshi@primal.net
Shigeru Minami⚡️🇯🇵npub1tzfhj…kje9
Bitcoin Events UKBitcoinEventsUK@verified-nostr.com
Kudzai Kutukwanpub123sfq…wk9x- npub1vey6d…pk2h
- markusturmmarkus@einundzwanzig.space
and others, for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.
Nostriches Global Meet Ups#
Recently, two (2) Notable Nostr and Bitcoin events have been hosted.
Nostr meetup - June 2026 - Took place Monday, June 01, 2026 : Online
Digital Freedom with Nostr & Bitcoin - Took place Sunday, June 07, 2026 at Jives Coffee Lounge, 16 Colbrunn Ct, Colorado Springs, CO, United States
Here are the upcoming Nostr and Bitcoin events that you might want to check out.
- Nostr London Meetup (2140) — June 2026 - Takes place Wednesday, June 24, 2026 at (TBA)
- Digital Freedom with Nostr & Bitcoin - Takes place Sunday, July 05, 2026 at Jives Coffee Lounge, 16 Colbrunn Ct, Colorado Springs, CO, United States
Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.
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