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GM @Victor Stabile!

Keychat attaches a 1 sat stamp to every message. But it doesn’t contact the Ecash mint server for each one. Instead, it fetches a batch of 1-sat ecash tokens in advance and uses them as needed to stamp messages.

Here’s ChatGPT o3’s take on the history of using public keys as user IDs. Since the invention of public-key cryptography in the 1970s, several consumer-facing applications have used the user’s public key directly as their ID: • PGP / GPG (1991) – Users share a short PGP fingerprint (a hash of their public key) as their email identity. • Bitcoin addresses (2009) – A Base58-encoded hash of a public key acts as the account for sending/receiving funds. • Bitmessage (2012) – The “BM-…” address is a Base58 public-key hash used for encrypted mail and broadcasts. • Tox ID (2013) – The long Tox string embeds the full public key; add it to start an E2E-encrypted chat. • Tor .onion v3 / Ricochet IM (2014) – A 56-character .onion address is derived from an Ed25519 public key and serves as the chat ID. • Secure Scuttlebutt (2014) – Feed IDs look like @<base64-public-key>.ed25519; the key is the permanent identity. • Ethereum-style addresses (2015) – 0x… hashes of public keys function as login/payment accounts across smart-contract chains. • Nostr npub (2021) – An npub is a Bech32-encoded 32-byte public key; any client can verify signatures from it.

Keychat + Kinostr

How Keychat thinks about group The essence of a group is to establish a boundary where only members can participate in communication. In a decentralized system, this boundary can only be enforced through encryption. Groups generally fall into two categories: **chat groups** and **feed groups**. The former focuses on interaction—members are visible to each other, and messages are shared with the entire group. The latter is centered around content sharing—members are invisible to one another, and messages are individually encrypted for each recipient rather than broadcast to all. Compared to chat groups, feed groups create much less social pressure, allowing both the sharer and the recipients to interact in a more relaxed and private environment. View quoted note →

At the core, it’s the same encrypted note — but the way it’s presented makes all the difference. Form shapes essence. The user knows the note will show up in their friends’ feeds, not in a chat room. That makes it feel more relaxed — it’s a message shared with many, not a direct conversation. And for the friends who see it, there’s no expectation to reply, unlike with a DM. View quoted note →

Maybe we could use NIP-17, which is used to encrypt DMs, to encrypt feed notes as well. Suppose you have 10 friends — when you post a note, it’s essentially like sending 10 identical DMs. However, the note still appears in the feed. Only your friends can decrypt and read it; others can’t see the content. View quoted note →

We are still in the early stage of a money paradigm shift. View quoted note →

We’re very happy to see more and more people recommending Keychat. View quoted note →

We’re not quite sure why so few Nostr clients choose to use seed phrases. View quoted note →