I know I might be talking to myself a little, but just documenting I guess. Started on Nostr with Damus. For whatever reason I could NOT follow people. Id click follow, and jt would follow, and then when I’d close the app and open it again, anyone that Id follow would be wiped. So I tried a different client app (Nos Social). When I started following people on there it would now start to show on there and Damus. And now the follow feature works on my Damus App. Glad everything seems to be working now, but idk yall. Idk if the average person would be as persistent as me to troubleshoot and tinker. I still don’t know exactly what was causing this. I heard it had to do with relays, but even before I got it to work, I was repairing and adding relays and that didn’t seem to work.

Replies (31)

Can you walk me exactly step by step what you did? For example 1) step 1 create keys on nostr.com 2) step 2 ______ 3) step 3 paste keys in damus
Step 1: Went on Nostr.com from my iMac thinking it was a platform just like Instagram, X, etc., not realizing it was its own protocol that all these client apps would be built on. Step 2: Created keys on Nostr.com. (Didn’t do anything with those keys for about a week or two) (Saw a video on Youtube about Nostr and which apps work well with it for iOS and Android. Then the concept of what Nostr is clicked) Step 3: Downloaded Damus on my iPhone. Step 4: Air dropped the keys file I previously made from Nostr.com into my iPhone from my iMac — because I didn’t want the keys to go to waste. Step 5: Pasted keys into Damus and tried to build my profile and connect with people from there. I had noticed that following people was seemingly glitchy, but figured it was just taking the relays time to update or something. But then after closing and opening the app intermittently I began to realize that the following function was just not working at all. It would show I followed if I clicked follow in one session. But if I opened and closed the app, the same person I had followed previously would show up as not followed. Then I tried a different client (Nos Social), followed some people on there, and then following now works on Damus. Also before that, the notifications section would not show anything, only after I made the fix did it start working. I know that was lengthy, but just trying to give as much detail as possible.
Mrbloom's avatar
Mrbloom 4 months ago
I use primal and everything works well with my devices .... I recommend it !!!!
They're just keys generated clientside using a well used library. Where you generate keys is irrelevant to the issues you have.
TBH this happens every time I onboard someone to Damus. The default relays never seem to work as expected and it always has the most issues with following other users or saving profile data. I’ve mostly had to switch to Primal to get anyone properly set up.
What is happening under the hood is a private key/nsec is successfully generated *without* a contact list, a relay list. Damus accepts the nsec, and does not overwrite the contact list. The rationale is that in certain situations the user might accidentally lose a larger contact list. This is a crap experience for first time nostr joiners. Will investigate how to improve.
Oh wow. I’m not 100% sure I understand all of the ins and outs of the Nostr protocol, but I think I understand what you’re saying. Thank you for the help. I’ll be sure to recommend a client app directly when pointing someone to Nostr.
I’ve seen this problem occur both with keys created via Damus as well as other clients including Primal. I don’t have too much specific I can offer, only that Damus is one of the more frustrating clients when it comes to seeing newly created profiles, as well as publishing profile edits for new users with the default relay set.
It’s hard for me to give you a detailed answer because it’s something I mainly observe when helping others onboard, which is infrequent. Without the ability to manage multiple npubs in Damus and create new ones without signing out of this one, it’s not something I can quickly test.
I tried setting up a test profile using Damus running on my MacBook and didn’t run into any real issues so maybe it’s not a consistent problem. This npub populated right away for me when I searched for it: @new npub who dis For all I know, it could have been something to do with my own relay set, which is hopefully resolved now.
jb55's avatar
jb55 _@jb55.com 4 months ago
the "cold start" issue is real and a bad experience. it takes a bit for things to get into the cache, especially on mobile connections when downloading all the profile pictures and metadata.
jb55's avatar
jb55 _@jb55.com 4 months ago
I'm guessing all it could take is one large pfp to wipe out the bandwidth on the connection and then nothing would load. need QoS or something