I think it is possible to do an adapted version of the Signal protocol using a special kind of relay and a special kind of message. The targeting and querying wouldn't use public keys, but single-use blind tokens that the relay servers wouldn't be able to associate with any entity (unless, of course, to an IP, but we can work around that later) but would still be able to account for, charge money for or use other forms of whitelisting.
This wouldn't be Nostr properly, instead it would be a different protocol, very similar to Nostr, but optimized for private communication. This way Nostr can be left as a public broadcasting service, which is what it excels in.
Anyway, if you have an idea of how this could work please talk about it or do something (as I said, I have a rough idea of how this could work, but it's not fleshed out and I don't give it a very high chance that I am correct on my hypothesis).
fiatjaf /
npub180…jh6w6
2023-03-09 10:59:38
in reply to nevent1q…fcp4
Author Public Key
npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6Published at
2023-03-09 10:59:38Event JSON
{
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"pubkey": "3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d",
"created_at": 1678359578,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"p",
"3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d",
"wss://nos.lol"
],
[
"e",
"18201adbf7b7ad49d80f54a72cf859bc5f2e55df5dd5e668a6a9b6ecdcaccc36",
"wss://nos.lol",
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],
[
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],
"content": "I think it is possible to do an adapted version of the Signal protocol using a special kind of relay and a special kind of message. The targeting and querying wouldn't use public keys, but single-use blind tokens that the relay servers wouldn't be able to associate with any entity (unless, of course, to an IP, but we can work around that later) but would still be able to account for, charge money for or use other forms of whitelisting.\n\nThis wouldn't be Nostr properly, instead it would be a different protocol, very similar to Nostr, but optimized for private communication. This way Nostr can be left as a public broadcasting service, which is what it excels in.\n\nAnyway, if you have an idea of how this could work please talk about it or do something (as I said, I have a rough idea of how this could work, but it's not fleshed out and I don't give it a very high chance that I am correct on my hypothesis).",
"sig": "f170134a292b8f1df74943e1d7afefad54510d092aa171c46efd76600960535b77be1d6134693d4b8cb8c23bec6429b01f7c96eaf5e78165b4b2996623f32d25"
}