Replies (45)
Nostr privacy is total shit and nip 17 as well! People shouldn't use DMs on here
Why is it total shit?
Vitor I don't have to repeat this for years and you know the answer. Everything is public and traceable on here.
Keychat
You can clearly see that Keychat's messages continuously update their sending address and receiving address, like a traveler who stays in a different hotel each day and sends and receives mail from those hotels.
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Keychat
Evolution of Receiving Addresses in Signal, Simplex Chat, and Keychat
A receiving address is indispensable to any chat application—just as an envelope needs only the recipient’s address. Because this address is exposed plaintext metadata, its design determines how much metadata privacy the user enjoys.
Signal each user has a single receiving address that is also their ID. For Bob and Carl alike, Alice’s address is always the same—simply A—and it never changes.
Simplex Chat Here, the receiving address (smp://<queueKey>@<relay-host>/<queueId>) is different for every contact. Alice has one fixed address for Bob, A(b), and another for Carl, A(c). Having separate—but constant—addresses for each contact is already a significant improvement over Signal’s single, global address.
Keychat Keychat goes a step further: the address not only differs per contact but also rotates over time. Alice begins with A(b1)for Bob and A(c1) for Carl; after she replies, they become A(b2) and A(c2), and so on. Each time Alice responds to Bob, her address is refreshed. This dynamic, per-contact rotation provides even stronger privacy than Simplex’s static per-contact addresses.
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Then try to break my DMs. Or better. Try to simply figure out who I talk to on NIP 17. No one was able to break it yet. But maybe you know something we don't. Until somebody breaks, NIP 17 DMs over nostr are as good as it gets.
Post a bounty 10 bitcoin and it will be broken
bbbbbut our LP's need lock-in!!!
Keychat
It’s sad to see Simplex fall into the tempting smart-contract blockchain token trap.
This is also why Keychat uses ecash sats as postage stamps for messages.
Fiat mind virus
6 7?
This is literally the perfect opportunity for somebody to fork SimpleX to use I2P servers only and make the perfect P2P messaging app.
Waste of time. You can't turn a platform into a protocol. The control is still there.
What's wrong with Nostr DM and privacy issues?
ya I'm curious too 👀
💯
Keychat
It’s sad to see Simplex fall into the tempting smart-contract blockchain token trap.
This is also why Keychat uses ecash sats as postage stamps for messages.
The original spec (nip04, still used on Damus and Primal afaik) leaks metadata. Meaning the content is encrypted but others can see who sends messages to who at what time. Nip17 fixes this and is supported by a bunch of clients like Amethyst, key chat, yakihone and others.
Main issue from a user point of view is that there's now multiple specs that are not compatible, so depending on the client people use they might not see DMs from people from the other client. Nip17 is superior in terms of privacy so unfortunate that not all clients support it after all that time.
Keychat
We have identified the main issues with Nostr direct messages (DM), listed roughly from most to least significant:
1. Different clients implement different DM NIPs (NIP-4 vs NIP-17), causing a lack of interoperability.
2. Users connect to different relays with little or no overlap, so recipients may never receive messages.
3. Message notifications are unreliable.
4. Spam — the system is vulnerable to unwanted messages.
5. Metadata privacy concerns: with NIP-4, others can see who is messaging whom; with NIP-17, others can see who is receiving DMs.
6. No forward or backward secrecy: if a private key is compromised, both past and future messages can be decrypted.
Note: “Nostr DM” here refers to the direct‑messaging feature of Nostr Microblog, not a standalone chat application.
They embody different design trade‑offs. This is why we ranked metadata privacy concerns and the lack of forward/backward secrecy lower in the issue list.
When you need to contact a Nostr microblog user, consider whether using Nostr DM is sufficient or whether you should use a dedicated chat app.
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Keychat
The relationship between NIP-4 and NIP-17 is similar to:
iPhone ↔ iPhone: It uses iMessage first (Apple’s service). Blue bubbles.
iPhone ↔ Android: It uses SMS/MMS (the carrier’s traditional texting standard). This isn’t an “Android-only protocol,” it’s the old common language that all phones can speak. Green bubbles.
If at least one person in the chat is using a client that supports both NIP-4 and NIP-17, interoperability is no longer an issue.
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And just like that, most of us can finally stop trying to deal with SimpleX's UX.
It's sad to see them choose the dirty Shitcoin/NFT path, especially because *Bitcoiners* made large donations (including Jack Dorsey IIRC). Such an insult to all of them.
@0xchat @White Noise and others :
The stage is all yours 👍
View quoted note →Bye bye SimpleX 👋
Then shitcoinery is the logical next step.
Do you know if most/all clients now use NIP 17 ? Are others still able to see who you DM even if they can’t see the contents? Thanks!
If Alice sends Bob a NIP-17 DM, others will only see that Bob received a DM from a random account; they won’t see that it was sent by Alice.
All the privacy larpers pushing for simplex got rugpulled. lmao.
It's why you never should be a maxi.
As things change and new information and agendas become visible we need to change our tools. SimpleX was good while it lasted.
Things change fast and you don't want to stay attached to a glorified vision of the past.
Vitor Pamplona
This is why we build protocols, not platforms. SimpleXChat wanted a platform the company can control since day 0. The more they developed, the clearer it got that the game wasn't privacy, but control.
They were all the rage when we were developing NIP-17. Many, many people told us to just use their system instead of building our protocol. It looks silly now, but I am glad we didn't follow their way doing business.
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Is it really a platform when I can run my own SimpleX instance for my family quite fine without ever touching their advertised servers?
But yes, if we could see some of the better design choices in SimpleX that protect metadata on top of a protocol like Nostr and some incentive model to easily plugin severs/encrypted media relays on i2p that would be an instant win of 1M of people interested in the privacy space.
That's one data point too much if you ask me.
Nobody should know that Bob just got a message.
simplex are designing it wrong.
nostr messages are all signed, they only need checking, other than that, identity is ironclad. so this changes how you can do a distributed database if the events are sovereign.
the question is not about whether the events are authentic, but about whether you care to forward them on, or see them in the first place.
nostr can use an eventual consistency consensus that is not probabalistic like pBFT and Nakamoto Consensus relays can produce a consensus mostly by gossiping.
in actual fact, to some extent nostr is already running various kinds of simple, some even retarded, gossip chatter propagation patterns. these aren't a consensus but they are 50% of what you need to make one.
add the actual consensus algorithm that causes nodes to tend towards having the same view of the network and you can rely on having the same answer from a query anywhere that has a subscription to sync what you want to find.
the distinction is huge. it means with a nostr like event protocol you can do arbitrary consensus, not only a single global database view.
i will be demonstrating this in the coming months. first two use cases that it can apply to are a name registry and broadcast automation.
with a consensus running over many nostr relays we can have our own DNS registry system, even, there can be relays that specialise in this registry. when i say "broadcast automation" i mean making it so the sync workers of relays know who wants what so they just push it to them.
it can be so much more powerful and censorship resistant this way. when you use blockchain style single global databases you massively raise the baseline cost of participation. same principle in play why the nakamoto consensus stays decentralised where pBFTs rapidly aggregate into oligarchies of 3-5 individuals who are usually serial blockchain pirates.
You'd have to start by rewriting it from Haskell into a language that more than three people on the planet can actually read — besides the SimpleX Chat devs and Tim Sweeney 😅
The best thing to do is talk about it with #badsimplex we discuss this in the group chat the only place evgeny responds directly to people. If you don't want to go in & get some answers use the tag & spread it because they got no idea in there how disappointed people are. In their own little world this is a success because l3 kve whatever shit secures anonymity in payment & the nft is just to make it so you can't use this outside of Simplex but you could gift it to another person.
Imagine awh your free group just hit your 500MB limit & you don't wana purge it's okay i'll buy your next "voucher" to increase your space. The idea is that it will be more then just a chat app. With channels yup here we go the discord scheme channels each one a different functionality so in the future a group is like a free hosted webpage because channels will give you tje layouts you want for your community.
I said channels should come out first before this otherwise it wouldn't make sense but they need money now to hire people because the development team is only 4 people. Me & others have argued for external payment methods but nope they want to do this eth>voucher>buy your hosting space.
Discord & Guilded started this we are the future of web hosting community building stuff now it's become a model make a chat app or start as one. Expand to channels being different ux & boom you got your new all in one controlled hosting page go upload your satisifed you get to talk & control.
It's crazy ain't it?
Also to on what you said it's not about control.
To most outsiders, Nostr still looks like just another crypto project, essentially Bitcoin over Lightning. The belief that “Bitcoin has already won” is the main argument for keeping Nostr Bitcoin only. While common within the community, to outsiders it’s indistinguishable from the same maximalist rhetoric used by every other altcoin project, each declaring victory in its own echo chamber.
If Nostr wants to break free from that perception and stand apart as a genuine, censorship resistant communications protocol rather than a Bitcoin marketing arm, it should introduce a NIP allowing users to specify which cryptocurrency they are willing to accept. This would let the free market decide value preference, proving that Nostr supports genuine freedom of choice rather than ideological gatekeeping.
Zaps could continue to function seamlessly: each user sets a default currency, and if the recipient supports it, a one tap zap still works as normal.
By embracing this openness, Nostr would gain a powerful network effect advantage over any single coin ecosystem, becoming the neutral communications layer for the entire decentralised economy rather than a subset of it.
right on the money. unfortunately most nostr devs and users are Bitcoin maxis and they'll cast you out if you try something like this.
Just my two sats, if I wanted to be on a social network full of crypto wankers, I’d just be on Fartcaster or back on Xitter.
the beauty of nostr is that you can choose to use Bitcoin-only relays and clients. an inflow of users and devs would be a net positive for the protocol imo.
It’s not about promoting other coins, it’s about making them irrelevant.
By opening Nostr to any currency, you expose every closed ecosystem to a protocol that doesn’t need a token to survive. That’s how you make the imitators obsolete.
Bitcoin doesn’t need protection; it just needs a fair arena to prove it’s the most sound money.
That’s what Nostr should be, an open protocol where freedom, not ideology, wins.
What is the difference between a platform and a protocol?
As far as I know, no one is stopping anyone from putting shitcoins on Nostr. Its an opensource protocol, the protocol won’t stop them. The problem is that most shitcoin developers are to busy scamming their tokens to actually build it. They know that it wouldn’t really add any value to their pockets.
Not using SimpleX.
View quoted note →It does not affects us, users, anyway
No private routing feature tho
Saying “they can build their own clients” is a copout.
Protocols are about interoperability, if the clients don’t talk to each other, it’s not a protocol, it’s just a bunch of walled gardens sharing a name.
That’s exactly why we need to expand the Zap NIP to read the payment preferences in users’ profile metadata. Profile data should allow more than just a Lightning address. If a user specifies another currency, clients should respect that.
Right now, in response to closed, coin specific ecosystems, we’ve basically created our own version of the same thing, just dressed up as “freedom” and “openness.” If Nostr really wants to lead, it should be open by design, not by slogan.
If Keychat were to implement a two-hop mechanism, the forwarding relay would need to include the capability to forward messages to the destination relay.
