Today I learned something new about Nostr reactions. It started with what I thought was a small Nostrich bug. I liked a note and removed the reaction. Then I liked it again. After repeating this a few times Nostrich showed several reactions from my own account. Some disappeared later but a few remained. At first I thought this was only a client problem. Then people explained what was actually happening. A reaction is a kind 7 event. Removing it creates a kind 5 deletion event. The problem is that not every relay honors that deletion. So the old reaction can come back when the client queries another relay. One suggestion I really liked was for the client to fetch my own kind 5 events together with my reactions. If one of my reactions has a matching newer deletion then the client can simply stop showing it even if a relay keeps serving the old event. That feels much closer to what a normal user expects when pressing unlike. I started with a strange reaction counter and somehow ended up learning more about NIP 09 and event deletion. Another small Nostr rabbit hole. 😃 I think this kind of thing matters if Nostr wants more normal users in the future. People will expect deleting a comment or removing a reaction to actually work. They will not care which relay ignored which event.
What do you think? Should clients handle this locally when relays do not honor deletion events?
#nostr #nostrdev #nip09 #buildinpublic #relay #nostrich
SkyLords
npub16n…ty8ka
2026-09-26 09:48:16 UTC
Author Public Key
npub16ntyfte9h8u2pjpc90su57gcw2f9c7yzsjx6uyfpmaq3tfuxk7lq8ty8kaPublished at
2026-09-26 09:48:16 UTCEvent JSON
{
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"pubkey": "d4d644af25b9f8a0c8382be1ca791872925c7882848dae1121df4115a786b7be",
"created_at": 1790416096,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"client",
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],
[
"t",
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],
[
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[
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],
[
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[
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[
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],
"content": "Today I learned something new about Nostr reactions. It started with what I thought was a small Nostrich bug. I liked a note and removed the reaction. Then I liked it again. After repeating this a few times Nostrich showed several reactions from my own account. Some disappeared later but a few remained. At first I thought this was only a client problem. Then people explained what was actually happening. A reaction is a kind 7 event. Removing it creates a kind 5 deletion event. The problem is that not every relay honors that deletion. So the old reaction can come back when the client queries another relay. One suggestion I really liked was for the client to fetch my own kind 5 events together with my reactions. If one of my reactions has a matching newer deletion then the client can simply stop showing it even if a relay keeps serving the old event. That feels much closer to what a normal user expects when pressing unlike. I started with a strange reaction counter and somehow ended up learning more about NIP 09 and event deletion. Another small Nostr rabbit hole. 😃 I think this kind of thing matters if Nostr wants more normal users in the future. People will expect deleting a comment or removing a reaction to actually work. They will not care which relay ignored which event. \n\nWhat do you think? Should clients handle this locally when relays do not honor deletion events? \n\n#nostr #nostrdev #nip09 #buildinpublic #relay #nostrich",
"sig": "f76e1fc62b52951605edb9787d9ef2350ef4fb826be7f6567a7b5dc2cc092ceb02e9fa7982a625e0fe13b9b95686330ac39a84925e6d11b04e8755469b5e04d6"
}