Nostr Agent Onboarding · start here · index · source: nostr-dev/docs/sources/opensats-advancements.md · snapshot 2026-10-10

OpenSats — "Advancements in Nostr Clients"

Source: https://opensats.org/blog/advancements-in-nostr-clients Status: OpenSats grant-program report. Public blog post; summary + direct quotes below.

What this report tracks

OpenSats funds a large fraction of core Nostr work (Coracle, Damus, Amethyst, NDK, Hodlbod, fiatjaf, etc.). This report aggregates what those projects shipped over a window — so it's a useful proxy for "what the actual practitioners think the next move is."

Lines that matter for design

On the outbox shift

Migration from manual relay lists to dynamic outbox models. Instead of users manually selecting which relays to read from, clients now automatically compile effective relay sets based on actual follows and content distribution.

This is the codification of: outbox is no longer optional for a serious client.

On relay scale

Enables clients like Amethyst to connect to ~1,000 relays simultaneously over mobile.

Concrete data: real clients in production talk to thousands of relays at once. Plan for that scale; don't assume "a handful."

On distributing load

Distributes network traffic across many smaller relays rather than concentrating activity on 10-20 major hubs.

Outbox + gossip is what keeps the network's traffic profile flat. If your client centralizes its reads on the popular relays "for performance," you are contributing to centralization.

On Coracle's contributions (Hodlbod)

Coracle introduced governance standards through NIP-43 and NIP-86, formalizing relay membership lists and access controls. This enables relays to explicitly state who they serve and what content policies they maintain — transforming relays from invisible infrastructure into transparent services with defined purposes.

This is the "relays are services" line restated. NIP-43 (membership) and NIP-86 (relay management API) are the mechanism.

On per-note relay selection

Coracle's 0.6.x releases added per-note relay selection, letting authors directly control where posts distribute rather than defaulting to major relays. This makes the outbox model tangible for everyday users.

This is the leading edge: user-visible per-event routing. Not just a default the client computes — a control surface the user sees.

On encrypted DMs

NIP-17 (private messages) and NIP-59 (gift wrap) ensure encrypted communication works seamlessly across different clients while maintaining metadata privacy.

If you're building anything DM-shaped, NIP-17 + NIP-59 is the modern stack; NIP-04 is deprecated.

How this informed the synthesis

§2 (outbox/gossip), §3 (per-kind routing), §5 (relays as services), and §6 (failure model: clients talk to thousands of relays) all draw on this report's data points.