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Advancements in Nostr Relays
When the nostr white paper was published in 2020, fiatjaf described relays as deliberately simple (and dumb). They accept posts from users, store them, and forward them to others who ask. Anyone can run a relay, and users can connect to whichever ones they choose through their nostr client. The minimal design gives the network its resilience: there is no single point of failure, no gatekeeper who can silence a user across the entire system, and no platform to shut down.
As the network grows, so do the demands on this layer. OpenSats has funded relay-focused projects through The Nostr Fund since 2023, supporting developers who are building the software that runs relays and the frameworks that help others build new ones. These projects also include monitoring and hosting tools that make relay operation more accessible, personal relay applications that give users direct ownership of their data, and content filtering and feed intelligence that help people find what they care about.
This report highlights ten of those projects, covering work across five areas:
- Relay Software and Infrastructure
- Relay Discovery, Monitoring, and Hosting
- Personal and Portable Relays
- Access and Content Distribution
- Relay Intelligence, Filtering, and Logic
Let's take a closer look at how each of these projects has made an impact over the past year.
Relay Software and Infrastructure
The software that powers relays determines how fast, reliable, and flexible the network can be. When that software is packaged as shared frameworks and libraries, other developers can stand up new relays without writing everything from scratch.
nostr-relay-nestjs
nostr-relay-nestjs is a relay built with NestJS, designed for clear structure, high test coverage, and easy modification. With support from OpenSats, developer Cody spent multiple quarters improving how quickly the relay responds to requests, expanding the set of nostr features it supports, and extracting reusable components that now benefit the wider relay development ecosystem.
A central outcome of this work was the development of nostr-relay, a standalone TypeScript framework extracted from nostr-relay-nestjs. The framework gives developers a starting point for building their own relays. They can choose their preferred database, add features through a plugin system, and build on a codebase with nearly 100% test coverage and clear documentation. The core of nostr-relay-nestjs itself was replaced with this framework, with both projects now sharing a common foundation. One of the first projects built on this framework was nostr-relay-tray, a desktop personal relay application covered later in this report.
Speed and efficiency have been a focus across several release cycles. Cody made a series of improvements to how the relay stores, retrieves, and processes events by reducing redundant work, speeding up filtered searches, and caching frequent requests. As a result, most queries now complete within 10 milliseconds. Additional features include full-text search, access control lists, and basic usage statistics.
As the relay matured, Cody shifted his focus toward the framework and desktop relay projects, allowing nostr-relay-nestjs to continue serving users while the framework and tooling give other developers a foundation for building their own relay implementations.
nostr-relay Infrastructure
Developer mattn operates relay infrastructure for the Japanese nostr community, running two relay implementations on his own servers: nostr-relay and cagliostr. With OpenSats' support, he continues to maintain and develop these relays alongside algia, a command-line tool for interacting with nostr.
Much of mattn's work involves maintaining the underlying software that powers nostr-relay and cagliostr. He has been granted direct commit access to fiatjaf/relayer and fiatjaf/eventstore, the shared framework and database layer that his relays and others are built on. When mattn encounters a bug in his own relay, he fixes it upstream in the framework, so the correction reaches every relay built on the same codebase.
One fix corrected a bug where relays sent authentication challenges at the wrong time, an issue that had gone undetected for two years. Another fixed gift-wrap deletion so that only the recipient of an encrypted message could remove it from the relay. A third fix resolved a signaling failure that caused some nostr apps to stall or disconnect without explanation.
While none of these fixes were flashy, I believe they were all significant improvements.
—mattn
He also built nostr-webhook, a service that monitors specific types of nostr posts and automatically triggers actions on the web when they appear. This allows developers to create bots on nostr with minimal setup. Together with his relay operations and command-line tools, mattn's work forms a consistent layer of infrastructure for nostr users in Japan.
Relay Discovery, Monitoring, and Hosting
A healthy relay ecosystem depends on visibility and accessibility. Clients need reliable data about which relays are online and what type of events they support. Communities and individuals who want to operate relays need tools that handle the technical complexity for them.
nostr.watch
nostr.watch helps users, developers, and relay operators see which relays exist, whether they're online, and how well they're performing. With OpenSats' support, developer sandwich rebuilt the monitoring infrastructure behind the service and created tools that make relay data more useful across the ecosystem.
A major focus has been NIP-66, a specification that sandwich authored for sharing relay health data through nostr. Relay monitoring has traditionally depended on whoever runs the monitoring service. With NIP-66, anyone can publish observations about relay status, and anyone else can read and use that data, eliminating the need for a single authority to be the source of truth about which relays are up and how they behave.
To put this into practice, sandwich deployed 8 automated monitoring stations spread across 6 continents that regularly check relays and publish the results. To tag the data with accurate locations, he built and published nostr-geotags, an open-source module that produces standardized geographic labels for nostr events.
[The pattern introduced by NIP-66] is a resilient data distribution model. The pattern can be applied to many domains, and is naturally resistant to censorship and centralization.
—sandwich
Several tools were built that put NIP-66 to use. myrelay.page is a self-hosted landing page that relay operators can customize to describe their relay and its purpose, and it has already been adopted by other operators. An advanced relay list editor is also in development, and will serve as the foundation for the next version of nostr.watch.
relay.tools
relay.tools is a web-based control panel and hosting service that lets anyone create, configure, and manage nostr relays. Users can set up a relay, define moderation rules, manage spam prevention, and handle billing. With OpenSats' support, developer jeremyd delivered improvements across hosting, billing, and moderation.
A major milestone was the self-host installer, which allows anyone to deploy the full relay.tools stack on a standard server using a single shell script. The system takes care of the setup automatically: security certificates, database configuration, and ongoing updates all happen behind the scenes. It also supports custom domain branding, so a community operator can run their own relay hub under their own name.
Authentication was another area of focus. On nostr, relays have traditionally controlled who can write to them, but controlling who can read has been limited. jeremyd built an authentication proxy for the strfry relay engine that handles identity verification in a separate process, bringing read-level access control to strfry relays for the first time. This enables private communities and group features where membership determines what content is visible.
The platform's billing system was rebuilt around Lightning payments with a credits-based balance. Relay hosting costs were reduced from 21,000 to 12,000 sats per month, and relay owners who accept paid users can apply those payments toward their own balance. Customer support was built using nostr itself, with a dedicated support account and relay for communicating with operators. jeremyd also spent time working with developers building group and private community features for nostr, so that relay.tools can support these use cases as they scale.
Personal and Portable Relays
Personal relay software on desktop and mobile gives users direct ownership over their nostr data. Posts, messages, and contact lists stay on the user's hardware, available offline and independent of third-party operators.
nostr-relay-tray
nostr-relay-tray is a desktop application that runs a personal relay, built on the nostr-relay TypeScript framework described earlier in this report. With OpenSats' support, developer Cody designed the application to make relay operation accessible to people who have no experience managing servers. User events are stored locally on the desktop, searchable, and available to any nostr client that connects to this personal relay.
Over the past year, nostr-relay-tray gained full-text search, proof-of-work configuration, and a more capable event filtering system that gives users granular control over which events to accept or reject. Support for NIP-09 (event deletion) was added, along with the ability to delete events by filter, so users can manage what their relay stores over time. Dark mode, improved tray icon customization, and macOS-specific interface refinements improved the user experience across platforms.
One significant addition to nostr-relay-tray was the integration of pigeon, a purpose-built reverse proxy that allows users to expose their local relay to the public. A relay running on someone's laptop becomes reachable by other nostr clients, with the proxy handling the networking layer in the background.
An unexpected outcome of this work was Jumble, which started as an event browser inside nostr-relay-tray and grew into a standalone client designed around browsing relay feeds directly. Jumble is covered in more detail in our impact report on nostr clients.
Together, nostr-relay-tray and its related projects lower the barrier to self-hosted relay operation on desktop. A user can install the application, store its own data, expose it to the broader network through pigeon, and browse local events through Jumble without touching a command-line interface or configuring a server.
Citrine
Citrine is a nostr relay that runs on Android, turning a mobile device into a personal storage hub for nostr data. Nostr clients on the same device can connect to Citrine, read stored events, and publish new ones. This allows users to back up their notes locally, view their content offline, and share a single event store across multiple nostr apps on the same mobile device. With OpenSats' support, developer greenart7c3 has developed Citrine from a minimal relay into a more capable one with authentication, backup tools, and faster query speeds on mobile hardware.
Early development focused on completing the core functions that nostr clients expect from a relay: accepting events, serving them back on request, and handling filtered queries. With that foundation in place, greenart7c3 added features for data management. Users can restore their contact list from the relay if a client loses sync, export or import the full database to move content between devices, and pull their existing history from public relays into local storage.
As a relay's database grows into hundreds of thousands of events, speed on mobile hardware matters. greenart7c3 reworked how the database indexes and processes requests, pushing write speeds from roughly 10 to 68 events per second and read speeds from about 1.2 to nearly 5 queries per second. The gains make a noticeable difference for anyone relying on Citrine as a daily backup, though results vary by device and database size.
Additional releases added authentication and protected event support, giving the relay control over who can connect and what content they can access. Auto-backup options let users schedule regular snapshots of their data, and Tor integration is underway for those who want to run their relay over a private connection. A community contributor added support for Android's built-in content sharing layer and the ability to broadcast queued events when connectivity returns, both shipped in v1.0.0. greenart7c3 also added the ability to host lightweight web applications from the relay in the same release, allowing for small nostr-connected services to run entirely from a user's phone.
For users who want offline access to their notes, a reliable backup of their social graph, or a shared data layer for nostr apps on their phone, Citrine provides that foundation without requiring any additional hardware or server setup.
Access and Content Distribution
A relay's value depends partly on who can reach it and where its content can go. Lowering the cost of running a relay opens participation to users in more regions, and bridging content into formats like RSS extends its reach to audiences outside of nostr.
PlebOne Relay
PlebOne Relay is a free, web-of-trust-filtered nostr relay designed to give users a spam-free experience. With support from OpenSats, developer PlebOne built and operates the relay as a public service, particularly for users in regions where paying thousands of sats per month for a private relay is unrealistic.
The relay went through a full architectural rebuild in late 2025, moving from its original backend to a new one written in Rust with support for nostr features including event deletion, expiration, authentication, and live events. Performance improvements followed, with database indexing, caching, and data compression added to keep the relay responsive as usage grows. Login security was redesigned in January 2026, with NIP-05 verification added so relay users can claim a human-readable nostr address at no cost, another service that typically requires payment elsewhere.
The relay has been up and running for four or five months now. I have zero spam issues since it is a web-of-trust relay, and I get to keep it free for those who can't afford to pay for a private spam-free relay. I am all for people making a buck, but I feel there are people using nostr in other parts of the world where paying for a relay is not realistic.
—PlebOne
The relay currently serves a small, growing number of users. PlebOne has focused on keeping operational costs low so the service can sustain itself while remaining free, extending that approach to identity and other services that are typically gated behind payment.
Nostr Feedz
Nostr Feedz is a web application, also built by PlebOne, that connects nostr's long-form writing ecosystem with RSS readers. Users can follow traditional feeds and nostr long-form articles side by side, and the application also works in reverse by generating feeds from nostr long-form content, so writers who publish on nostr can share their work with anyone who follows content through RSS.
The application now supports category and tag organization, multiple reading themes, a Chrome extension for subscribing to feeds from the browser, and an admin dashboard for managing subscriptions. Feed syncing between devices is handled through a custom nostr event kind described in the subscription sync spec, with two-way sync and category support shipping in January 2026. A user's subscriptions and reading progress stay consistent whether they access Nostr Feedz from the web or from the command-line client.
That command-line client, NostrFeedz-cli, extends the project to the computer terminal. It reads feeds and nostr long-form posts, stores everything locally for offline access, and supports image and video viewing through external viewers. Login options include NIP-46 remote signing.
Together, PlebOne Relay and Nostr Feedz address cost and accessibility challenges. The relay lowers the cost of participating in the network, and Nostr Feedz builds a bridge between nostr's publishing tools and readers who may still rely on RSS as their primary way of following content online.
Relay Intelligence, Filtering, and Logic
Publishing anything on an open protocol creates a practical challenge in how users find content they care about and filter out content they don't want. Some relays automatically classify content so users can choose what reaches them. Others analyze who a user follows and interacts with to show them more relevant posts. Both approaches keep the filtering transparent and under the user's control.
nostr-filter-relay
nostr-filter-relay is a relay that uses machine learning to classify nostr content and let users filter what they see. With support from OpenSats, developer atrifat built a system where content flowing through the relay is analyzed by a set of specialized detection services, and users can choose which categories of content can reach them.
The relay works by sitting between nostr clients and a local storage relay. As events arrive, they pass through a monitoring layer that sends text and media to classification services for analysis. These services evaluate content across several dimensions: whether images are safe or explicit, what language a post is written in, whether the text contains hate speech, what the overall sentiment is, and what topic it falls under. The results are stored as labels using NIP-32, a nostr specification for attaching structured metadata to events. When a client requests events, the relay checks those labels against the user's preferences and delivers only what passes the filters.
Posts arriving from ActivityPub bridges can be distinguished from nostr-native accounts, giving operators control over how federated content is handled. Each of these capabilities runs as its own open-source service, and atrifat built and maintains all of them. atrifat also trained custom machine learning models for hate speech detection, added GPU acceleration for operators whose hardware supports it, and implemented rate limiting and connection controls for stability.
The filtering is opt-in by design. Users connect to the relay with parameters that describe what they want to see, and all filtering features can be disabled with a single setting. Any relay operator can deploy the full stack using the published Docker images, choosing which classification services to enable based on their community's needs. By keeping the intelligence layer modular and open source, nostr-filter-relay gives relay operators tools for content curation without requiring centralized moderation.
AlgoRelay
AlgoRelay is an algorithmic relay that generates personalized feeds for nostr users based on their social graph and interaction patterns. With support from OpenSats, developer utxo built what became the first nostr-native algorithmic relay, one that works across clients through the relay protocol itself.
Most nostr feeds are chronological: a client requests recent events from the relays it connects to and displays them in order. This works well for small follow lists, but as the network grows, chronological feeds can bury interesting content under volume. AlgoRelay addresses this by analyzing a user's social graph, tracking which authors and topics generate engagement within their network, and ranking notes accordingly. The algorithm was refactored early in development to rank any note type, giving it flexibility beyond just short-form posts.
Client adoption was an important milestone. AlgoRelay is now supported by four nostr clients: Jumble, Coracle, Nostur, and NoStrudel. Users of these clients can add AlgoRelay to their relay list and receive a personalized feed alongside their regular chronological timeline. This interoperability across multiple clients is central to the project's design: the algorithm lives at the relay level, so any client that connects to it benefits without needing to implement feed ranking logic of its own.
Giving users access to more variety of feeds and the ability to tune their own feeds is how we can escape the biased and manipulative tactics of big tech algorithms.
—utxo
utxo also built a user dashboard where users can log in and adjust how their feed is weighted, added signature validation on settings updates for security, and implemented data purging tools to manage storage over time. The approach is fully transparent and open source, so anyone can inspect the ranking logic, run their own instance, or fork the project to build a different kind of algorithmic feed.
The projects covered in this report show developers working across the relay layer in ways that reinforce one another. Reusable frameworks and shared specifications are helping new relay projects start from tested foundations. Personal relay software on desktop and mobile is giving users direct ownership over their data, with tools that make self-hosting practical and remote access easier. Monitoring infrastructure is improving, with relay health data published through the protocol itself so it can be verified and reused without depending on a central authority. Filtering, ranking, and access management are moving closer to the relay layer, where they can operate transparently and under the user's control.
The nostr ecosystem benefits from the diversity of relays built and operated in different ways for different needs. Some are designed for resilience and portability, others for discovery, moderation, or personalization. When relay software is accessible enough for individuals to run on their own hardware, and adaptable enough for communities to operate specialized relays around their own needs, participation remains broad and control remains distributed.
Support for relay development through The Nostr Fund helps build the infrastructure that nostr depends on. If you believe in strengthening the open, decentralized foundations that make this work possible, consider making a recurring donation to help sustain this work.
If you are a developer working on a nostr project that strengthens this ecosystem, we encourage you to apply for funding.