Every time you open Waze, Google gets a live GPS feed of your location. Speed traps, traffic jams, road hazards — convenience, but also surveillance.
I've built an alternative. And it goes beyond just traffic events.
Roadstr: real-time road events on Nostr. Spot a speed camera? Publish a kind-1315 event tagged with a geohash. Other drivers see it instantly. Confirm it's still there with a kind-1316 event.
Just signed events on relays.
**Privacy by Design**
🔒 Ephemeral keys — new keypair per report, no identity linking
🔒 NIP-40 expiration — reports auto-expire (4h for police check speed traps, 30d for potholes)
🔒 Geohash precision — 1km² area, not your exact GPS for queries
🔒 No background tracking — you broadcast only when you choose to report
Roadstr is working today:
🌐 Web client: cypherpunk.today/static/roadstr
📱 Android app available (
GitHub
GitHub - jooray/roadbeacon: Roadbeacon — decentralized road-event reporting over Nostr and MeshCore. OsmAnd plugin and web client.
Roadbeacon — decentralized road-event reporting over Nostr and MeshCore. OsmAnd plugin and web client. - jooray/roadbeacon
or zapstore) - integrates with OSMand
📋 Protocol spec: kinds 1315 + 1316
🔧 Developer guide for integration
We're looking for the first independent client implementations. If you build a Nostr client, Roadstr adds road intelligence in ~200 lines of code.
**Beyond Nostr, beyond road reporting**
The NIP allows transformation into short data packet and back for reporting over MeshCore - local info, over the air and back (so if you hear it through MeshCore, you can broadcast the Nostr event!)
Also - and this is key - there are many more map events that are useful. A dangerous person with a gun. Unsafe zone (natural disaster). When there's something happening around you, you might want to know about it and tell others.
Very early demo. Available now.
Web version:
Android (with OSMand integration):
Replies (45)
This is fun. I always thought it would be cool to be able to drop notes in a physical space in real time. As people pass they could get notified.
You could spoof loads of traffic on your route to clear the roads. Prob need some geo web of trust
Shitposting potholes
CoMaps does this already.
To get updates for speed cameras would be brilliant but you'd need data turned on.
Offline mode over Bluetooth? Similar to bitchat.
Yeah but comaps is a little off with it's map data. I keep having to use osm site because the info is off.
Does this work worldwide?
Proper link for the web version:
30d expiry for potholes? Bro these are rookie numbers
You can cycle keys if you don't want to log in, as your concerns are very valid.
Some of us are on degoogled phones so we aren't worrying about that issue, but, the reports could be anonymized at the client level, though, the relays would know too much to make most people comfortable.
Rotating, random keys would be the just best thing. 🤔
AND A WEEB
Going to test this driving from San Sebastian to Madrid today
Thanks. I'm on it!
Default is just an ephemeral one time key. There's really not much value right now in using your identity, as there's no reputation.
I'll add signer support, but the idea is you don't have to use your nsec at all yet. In the future, reputation and zaps would be cool.
Yes. But right now there's no traffic reporting.
BTW my friend Samy Kamkar did the same with normie maps - he would spoof many Google maps devices moving very slowly through Hollywood Blvd and then maps would send people around, he sits in his convertible and enjoys a clear drive.
I see that now.
That's smart.
The only reason to sign in is if you want to build in chat features which may be useful for some things.
I'm confused. Doesn't this just dox your location?
Oh, I see it now. You can generate a new key for every single one. That's really cool.
Yup.
I wanted to do that first, but they don't support plugins. So the only way to go it is fork the apps
It uses ephemeral keys for each event. And queries don't use any identity at all
You don't need to, it uses randomly generated nsecs for each event
There's a way to programmatically query Waze and replicate its events. You would have to run it for an area you are interested in, but that would be a way to seed it and use network effects of Waze
It's expiry after last confirmation.
Yes, there's pywaze and other ways to do it. I hope some anonymous dev does it 😁
That wouldn't with in cars.
Bt wouldn't work with cars, but there's at least the MeshCore part
I used google as a proxy of someone might interested in analyzing it. Obviously it could be anyone or any government as well, foreign or domestic.
Yep. I always forget how good it is.
It doesn't use your npub. Generates random ephemeral key for each event.
Osmand can do navigation, but reporting so far no. You need to zoom out and see what's along there. I don't think there's a way to do it with osmand and I don't want to write and maintain a navigation app.
That's good. Still skeptical about the public posting of individual gps data, that's never privacy friendly.
Yes, but I think we are quite far from any kind of attacks. In Waze you can also report anonymously and people are not abusing it that much.
I prefer not to overengineer and rather release sooner. We'll deal with sibyl attacks when they come.
Agreed, best to get the idea out there.
Once simple way is proof of work. There's a NIP for that. You can have the client mine the event for like, 1 second, 5 seconds, whatever. If it runs in the background people won't even notice, but it'll slow down spam.
However this doesn't solve the problem of people throwing up random non-existent reports. But what if you just used consensus instead? This only applies once there's a serious network effect, but you could only show items that X number of people have reported/agreed exist. That's probably what waze does anyway.
Yes, but you'd have to run it for your area. I've done some preliminary research and I think it's possible. There are several Python modules that can get road traffic data from Waze programatically.
If someone wants to give it a shot and vibe code it, point it to the nip in roadstr repo and it should work. Would be cool. Maybe I'll get back to it soon, but it's a nice vibe coding side project for anyone who wants to give it a shot.
Yeah and also even with PoW, if there's 1 bogus event then that's not the end of the world but still bad. Might make someone take a different route for instance. Someone needs to invent PoL (proof of location)
Check the new release
Installed. I'll poke at it soon!
Do you feel protected?
#2
1. Every cancer patient should get cured 🙏🏻
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2. Linux is the OS of freedom 🖥️
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3. Waze without the centralized tracking 😍
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4. Nostr is just for plebs who likes freedom 👇🏻
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5. Love and kindness is still exist on Nostr ❤️
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6. A huge difference between the communities of Nostr and X 👇🏻
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7. A nice life lesson from a nostrich 📖
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8. What do you think? 🤔
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9. Let’s help him to test and build Powr 🫱🏻🫲🏿
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10. Is Clave on App Store? 😍
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11. Do you think so? 🫵🏻
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#community_nostr_recap
How do you avoid spam (false noise data)?
