mplorentz
Matt Lorentz

Technologist, solarpunk, gamer, backpacker, passionate about using the internet to push more power to more people.

Public Key

npub16zsllwrkrwt5emz2805vhjewj6nsjrw0ge0latyrn2jv5gxf5k0q5l92l7

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdpg0lhpmph96va39rh6xtevhfdfcfph85vhl74jpe4fx2yry6t8spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dswzpmhl

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub16zsllwrkrwt5emz2805vhjewj6nsjrw0ge0latyrn2jv5gxf5k0q5l92l7

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Last Notes

2026-03-21 16:54:12 UTC

This guide was so useful. Especially the app recommendations as a user coming from iOS.
#nevent1q…58dk

2026-03-21 16:52:15 UTC

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It's so obvious in the photo, but I don't notice it while using the phone. Maybe there is some magic going on with the hardware or software because yeah even here in Amethyst the horizontal lines look perfectly straight. Maybe its a trick of the brain.

2026-03-21 16:49:17 UTC

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Thanks! I will check that out!

2026-03-21 12:53:50 UTC

I'm up for this too!
#nevent1q…6z2p

2026-03-20 21:54:35 UTC

Hello funny square phone.
https://image.nostr.build/e57b4cb7d160e5580cb31b3132227a2d096f89e208926dc6cf245c45e257e6e9.jpg

2026-03-19 01:16:38 UTC

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Welcome back!

2026-03-18 14:44:56 UTC

I'm planning out my trip to DWeb camp in Berlin this year. I've never been to Germany. Does anyone have recommendations of things to see while I'm there or places to stay? Any advice on traveling in Germany?

2026-03-16 21:57:51 UTC

One part of Star Wars that always seemed unfuturistic was how disconnected all the tech was. Like they talk to each other on radios and carry data around on chips and pay with cash a lot of the time. But watching Andor today it doesn’t seem so silly. Like I could totally see a world where AI accelerates offensive capabilities so quickly that as a defense we just turn off the internet and computers become simpler tools again.

2026-03-12 12:21:35 UTC

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Yeah I have a dev instance deployed at https://shipwreck.scuttle.works. The two relays that I know support livekit atm are wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com and wss://relay.scuttle.works. I'll DM you an invite to the latter.

2026-03-11 19:15:36 UTC

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ah sorry just saw this

2026-03-11 13:22:19 UTC

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Yeah he's been building it for like a year and a half. I have been helping out for about 3 weeks 😂

2026-03-10 22:02:01 UTC

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❤️ makes sense! I will keep you posted then.

2026-03-10 22:01:19 UTC

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Yes! DM me your contact info?

2026-03-10 18:19:06 UTC

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I am really hoping to find some collaborators who would be excited to help build, figure out the processes, and share the stewardship and sysadmin work. But there is room for more consumer roles too who pay some money, get to use the services and vote on major things.

2026-03-10 12:34:20 UTC

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Summoning @nprofile…6htl @npub1w4j…30zp @npub1c87…8avm @npub176p…vgup @npub1x8r…ptks @npub138h…rdr2 @npub1qlk…yayc @npub1x82…5yd5 @npub1tvw…s44n @npub1n8g…ufd0 @npub1wmr…g240 @npub1yau…vjmf @npub1vjh…ejkd @npub1j4g…fuu4. Any interest in this idea? (don't reply to this message tho it will ping everyone tagged. Reply to the message above)

2026-03-10 12:19:53 UTC

I've had this idea for a while to start a Nostr-native cooperative to do things like run a reliable relay, host a multi-sig signer, and dogfood Nostr tools for organizing. Also it seems to me like a cool way to find and meet other lefty Nostr users. I'm a member of the https://social.coop cooperative Mastodon server and I'm imagining something similar.
Is anyone else interested in starting or joining something like this?

2026-03-10 12:06:49 UTC

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I would love to, and maybe test compatibility with my flotilla integration.

2026-03-06 15:56:18 UTC

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I knew he was evil but I didn’t know that. TIL thank you.
And nice to see you around these parts :)

2026-03-04 15:09:00 UTC

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Support replied with this:
Your recent lightning send to Destination Node ID: <redacted> was cancelled by Strike as we have detected that the recipient wallet service provider may be associated with Cuba.
As stated in Strike’s Terms of Service, Strike does not allow transactions with restricted jurisdictions, such as Cuba, that are subject to U.S. OFAC sanctions.

2026-03-04 14:48:44 UTC

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Nope. I sent support a message so maybe they will reply with something.

2026-03-04 14:39:08 UTC

Strike just locked my account (not the first time) for trying to make a lightning payment to @npub130m…l29s.
I think I'm done with them. Any other exchanges that play nice with US with <=1% fees?

2026-03-02 22:17:24 UTC

Loneliness in a screenshot 😢 @npub107j…ncxg
https://blossom.lorentz.is/0c9dac66d7889cccded6a70613d28427ee5f3dd10f169129dbb1e709667db2a1.png

2026-03-02 18:33:29 UTC

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LiveKit is basically a set of open source code to do exactly this! That's the direction we are heading, there is a PR going here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/2238

2026-02-26 18:07:23 UTC

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I'm really impressed with the livekit.io audio quality. At least for four people in North America it wasn't any worse than any other tool I've used.

2026-02-26 18:06:21 UTC

Just had the first flotilla design review meeting *in flotilla* using the voice rooms feature I am building. Fun times!

2026-02-23 22:12:17 UTC

Re-reading the Declaration of Independence today. It's surprising to me how many of the grievances describing the tyranny of the king of England also describe the actions of Trump today:
- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither
- For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
- For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States
- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world
- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent
- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury
Nothing about pedophile rings in the Declaration though.

2026-02-23 21:06:31 UTC

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Hm, yeah I'm not thinking of gamers specifically. But reading about Discord's tech makes it clear that it's very difficult to do well.
I self-host a teamspeak server for my gaming friends and it works well enough. It would be nice to have better chat integrated in (like Discord) but other than that we are pretty happy with it.

2026-02-23 21:03:59 UTC

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Sweet, I will definitely ping you when I have something to test!

2026-02-23 21:03:27 UTC

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Thanks! The more I understand how Nostr Nests work the more I think I'll do the same or very similar.

2026-02-23 21:01:27 UTC

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Thanks! Another vote for LiveKit. Seems like that's the way to go.
I haven't tried to self-host flotilla yet but I plan to. Hopefully I can smooth out the docs for that. If you want to give the app part another try I'll DM you an invite to the "meta" server.

2026-02-23 18:44:11 UTC

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@npub1v0l…qj49 @npub18am…p424 do you think it makes sense to use the nostrnests.com architecture with livekit and NIP-53 for this? If you were building nostrnests today would you use the same tech?

2026-02-23 18:27:49 UTC

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@npub107j…ncxg have you thought about this for chachi?

2026-02-23 13:53:24 UTC

While I put the finishing touches on Horcrux I'm starting to contribute to Flotilla, and one of my goals is to get Discord-style voice channels added before their age-verification policies go into effect. If you are a user of Discord voice channels, what's one thing you would change about them?
I've always been interested in Discord voice channels because they are a rare combination of ephemeral, porous, serendipitous social space on the internet. Most of our internet communication happens in low-bandwidth, structured spaces where the contents are saved permanently. So in that sense Discord voice channels share more in common with IRL spaces than something like microblogging.
If you're a user of voice channels or otherwise would like to give input on them, I'd love to interview you. And if you'd like to be an early tester or to collaborate on the implementation please reply here or send me a DM!

2026-02-23 13:39:09 UTC

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I think Kotlin Multiplatform with native UIs is a completely different beast than if you use the new Compose Multiplatform UI framework. In general I think Flutter will help you build faster because the UI libraries and tooling is very mature. Google cut a few developers when they moved more Flutter libraries into community management but Flutter isn't going anywhere anytime soon. KMP with native UIs is for big teams who want maximum polish and nativeness on each platform. KMP + Compose Multiplatform should bring it into Flutter territory but the iOS version just came out of beta and the web version is still in beta. But Flutter's web performance is pretty rough, so for a new Nostr app that needs to be web-native I would lean towards KMP.

2026-02-16 20:54:30 UTC

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I guess it depends on what your goals are. When I was building https://spoilerfree.gg last summer I was able to get enough data to figure out where users were falling off the site for about $100 of Reddit ads. I think I got over 1000 users to come through the site.
I feel like ads before you have product market fit are useful for learning what is and isn't working (although they are inferior to user interviews). After product market fit they become useful for driving revenue/adoption.

2026-02-13 19:47:03 UTC

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I think it's worth experimenting with. Throw fifty bucks at it, see how much the needle moves.

2026-02-13 19:38:55 UTC

I dropped a couple flotilla links on Reddit. Upvotes appreciated:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1r08bd8/comment/o57vbf5/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1r0cffb/comment/o57vac9/

2026-02-13 14:28:31 UTC

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I like the marketing pattern of making a page on your marketing site titled “Flotilla for Discord users” that specifically talks to people looking to leave Discord. Great for humans and SEO.
Also there have been a lot of threads about Discord alternatives on Reddit.com/r/selfhosted lately. Maybe I’ll comb through those today and suggest Flotilla and I can ask on Nostr for upvotes.

2026-02-11 13:18:36 UTC

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Any plans for voice channels to court Discord users specifically?

2026-02-06 12:19:32 UTC

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I’m running https://github.com/v0l/route96 on my home server. It is built to be multi-tenant but it has a whitelist feature.

2026-01-29 17:03:22 UTC

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I'm getting a 504 Gateway timeout from Cloudflare when trying to view that link :(

2026-01-26 15:32:52 UTC

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For me it's mainly that to Google I am ultimately a product to be sold, to Apple I'm still a customer. I know about Graphene and I actually plan switch one day. But it's a lot of friction for ultimately a pretty similar threat model.

2026-01-26 15:23:39 UTC

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Hah, yes, solarpunk is more of a mindset for me. I'm currently hooked up to the grid in Indiana powered by coal and natural gas 🙃. Solarpunk is a hopeful vision of what technology could do for humanity. The idea is that if we can achieve energy independence on a personal or community level through solar or other renewable sources then we could start to make more progress on the big threats to human thriving like climate change, information warfare, centralization of corporate and nation-state power. It's an optimistic alternative to cyberpunk, where technological advances lead to further consolidation of power by elites and increased oppression for the rest of us.

2026-01-26 15:10:38 UTC

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I'm having new waves of imposter syndrome when it comes to AI use. I'm building in a less familiar ecosystem (Flutter) and AI is letting me do that way faster than if I didn't use it. Horcrux is quite literally software that wouldn't exist without AI, because I wouldn't have been able to squeeze the project into the timeline that got funded.
I like to think that I'm experienced enough to know where the tradeoffs are, where my code is weak, and what needs more attention. But until I have a successful product in the hands of users it's going to be hard to know whether the AI was a net positive. It's so hard to know anything objectively about software development and when it comes to AI there is all this concerning research about developers perceiving speed increases where there are none. I guess on some level I just believe I'm smarter than most other devs. That's the problem with us developers, isn't it 😓.

2026-01-22 22:27:08 UTC

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Wow I forgot to remember about sublime text for 10 years or so.

2026-01-22 22:18:58 UTC

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I hope this isn't a subtweet from my Horcrux demo today 😅

2026-01-16 16:00:20 UTC

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I'm happy to host a signer.

2026-01-15 19:29:42 UTC

Here is a pretty detailed quarterly report on my Horcrux project for OpenSats, if that interests you: https://mattlorentz.com/2025/12/29/horcrux-end-of-year-update.html

2026-01-10 18:00:15 UTC

Maybe we should start a club. There must be at least three of us!
#note157y…kg6y

2026-01-06 15:02:32 UTC

Playing ambient audio to keep your Nostr signer alive on iOS is hilarious and definitely against Apple's rules, but I love it. More power to you 😂
#nevent1q…t5pj

2026-01-05 18:07:42 UTC

Is anyone here going to EthDevner in February? I am not an ethereum person at all, but I have met a lot of cool people over the years (who are also not big ethereum people) who have been to this conference and loved it. I think I might go this year. They have a track for "Cypherpunks, Solarpunks & Communities". Idk what ethereum has to do with solarpunk but I kind of want to find out.

2026-01-03 23:09:50 UTC

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Flutter. I gave it a shot so we’ll see.

2026-01-03 23:07:57 UTC

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I’m sad to hear that. You are one of the most interesting voices in my feed!

2026-01-03 18:49:54 UTC

If I vibe code my own workout app will I actually work out or no? 👍 / 👎

2025-12-18 18:36:03 UTC

Ok hodlbod has been COOKING on his frost signer thing with email login. I just got a demo from him and it has me more excited about Nostr than I have been in a long time.
- users can sign into Nostr apps via email (or someday any other identity system they like. Phone? Facebook? snail mail? Āhau?) but behind the scenes they still have a private key
- no server or company ever needs a full copy of their private key
- at any point they can extract their Nostr key from the system to use another one (like a bunker, hardware signer, or just a different group of signing servers, etc.)
The big problem with Nostr onboarding is that people need to put in a significant amount of work to understand and manage keys before they even get a chance to get any value out of the software. But pomade enables someone to join without thinking about keys, *and later* start caring and still be able to take full custody of their key. It is the second part that nobody has really done before, on Nostr or anywhere else that I know of. It's not bulletproof, but it combines all the best tech we have to balance ease-of-use, security, and user control.

2025-12-17 23:28:22 UTC

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👍 I like to call it an ecosystem.

2025-12-17 23:27:10 UTC

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Who is “we”? Are you anonymous?

2025-12-15 23:20:23 UTC

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Because it’s slower than Chrome and Safari.

2025-12-15 21:35:25 UTC

@npub1jlr…ynqn I think at some point I heard you say you get a summary of recent Nostr events every day. Is that from a DVM? Have you written about this somewhere? I would like to try something similar.

2025-12-15 18:39:09 UTC

I wrote up some instructions for running a promenade signer, if that's something that interests you. Promenade creates a cluster of servers that cooperatively sign of Nostr events without any of them knowing your Nostr secret key. Bleeding edge identity tech. Join us! #naddr1qv…t2nc

2025-12-15 18:31:00 UTC

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bug: it doesn't work in Firefox

2025-12-09 22:04:18 UTC

Happy horrible software vulnerability day everyone https://react2shell.com/

2025-12-08 23:24:01 UTC

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This would require an overhaul of clients and any relays that use wot, auth, or similar features, correct?

2025-12-03 16:52:47 UTC

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Whoah, thanks for the mega zap. Much appreciated 🙏🏻

2025-12-02 20:32:49 UTC

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🎉 Thank you Itunu! This is so nice to hear.

2025-12-02 19:51:06 UTC

This website speaks to the nerd inside me on so many levels. I think I'm going to give the "No S Diet" a try. https://everydaysystems.com/

2025-11-26 19:36:40 UTC

I just posted a project update video for Keydex that shows the current features and future plans. Plus an announcement that I'm renaming the project from Keydex to Horcrux! Check it out: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/oyxzSzhocB3k6BNbVTdU7d

2025-11-24 20:11:26 UTC

I'm so excited that Satellite is back. It's always had my favorite design of any Nostr app.
#nevent1q…328t

2025-11-24 20:02:40 UTC

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The release looks great! Satellite's thread view has always been my favorite, I'm so glad you kept and improved it.

2025-11-24 19:58:29 UTC

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nerd

2025-11-24 19:51:33 UTC

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hah, linking to 20 lines of source code for a feature as complex as search is such a flex 💪

2025-11-19 17:54:05 UTC

I've been quiet lately but I've just been very heads down trying to get Keydex ready for it's first alpha usability test, which I'm about to head to right now! I'll try to post a project update this week, as I passed the halfway point on my (relatively tight) 4 month timeline recently.

2025-11-07 22:02:17 UTC

I just did a weird thing with gift wraps in Keydex and I want to make sure it's not dumb. I'm having a bug where lockboxes are showing back up on the devices of key holders after they have been removed. Like this:
1. Alice invites Bob to be a key holder for their lockbox
2. Bob accepts
3. Alice publishes a shard of the lockbox data for Bob to download, gift wrapped and addressed to Bob.
4. Bob changes their mind and deletes the lockbox from their device.
5. Later when Bob reopens the app it downloads the shard event again and recreates the lockbox.
Of course I could maintain some local state about what has been deleted, but it would be better to just nuke the shard from the relay. We could ask the original publisher to do it, but we can't guarantee they are online. So what if we just include the ephemeral key used to gift wrap the shard in the seal? Now Bob can publish a NIP-09 deletion request to delete the shard.
I could see this being useful in other places too. For instance you could have a type of direct message that gets deleted from relays as soon as it is downloaded by the recipient.

2025-10-23 20:54:08 UTC

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Yeah I haven't used it much in the past couple weeks. I've been in more of a refactoring mode and have just been doing one-off prompts or using Cursor's plan mode for that. I would like to get back and try it on some more tightly scoped features though.
I should circle back to Claude code at some point but viewing and accepting changes with the Cursor diff viewer is just so ingrained in my workflow now, I think I would miss it a lot.

2025-10-23 20:51:28 UTC

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I guess what I am dreaming of is not really NIP-87 exactly. It's more like NIP-29 plus encryption minus the assumption that the policy engine for the group is running at a particular DNS name. If you decouple the policy engine from the relay/DNS now you can innovate on that separately and create some really sweet trust structures, or not and just keep your group on a single relay.

2025-10-23 20:48:14 UTC

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It seems to me like a rogue relay owner in a NIP-29 group is just as disastrous as a rogue group admin NIP-87?
And this isn't in NIP-87 but I don't see any reason you couldn't use FROSTR threshold signatures to publish events from the admin key. In this way a few admins could hold shards or you could even distribute a shard to every group member and have clients collaborate to approve membership changes or other policy changes?

2025-10-23 20:39:52 UTC

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Oh I never thought about this. Yeah you wouldn't be able to filter content by tag or author because everything is gift wrapped? Is that how this worked in Coracle groups @npub1jlr…ynqn?
It seems like spam wouldn't be too much of a problem though. Because all messages are giftwrapped with the shared key the relay can easily tell if a person is a valid member of a group or not by checking the pubkey and signature right? I suppose you would hit rate limits sooner with the shared key on a public relay, but I guess I'm assuming serious groups will have some kind of relationship with their main relays, paid or otherwise.

2025-10-23 20:34:46 UTC

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You wouldn't have to trust them not to accidentally leak messages to the wrong people but they would still need the encryption key in order to service membership changes right? I supposed you could use one encryption key for membership changes and another for content? 🤔

2025-10-07 20:20:55 UTC

Fun milestone for Keydex today: I had my first successful restore of data. I was able to fire up several copies of the app and create a lockbox, break it into shares, distribute them to peers via Nostr, initiate recovery, approve the recovery request, and reassemble the data.
There is still a ton of work to do but having the core flow working makes all the future changes feel small and incremental by comparison.
https://blossom.lorentz.is/be5d7d6161093d03ccc9513100ff0f255cdd2bf7f51fdd2cbcba66cd3950015a.png

2025-10-03 18:32:31 UTC

Keydex is going to be the first Nostr app I'm aware of that uses relays exclusively to relay data from one peer's device to another, not for long-term data storage. I'm going to use NIP-40 expiration tags on all events so that they only live on the relay for a few days, which makes Keydex closer to a peer-to-peer application that uses Nostr as the transport (and identity) layer.

2025-09-29 16:04:11 UTC

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Hm, should clients add an nsec field during bunker setup? Not for you to put your real nsec into, but rather one that you know is allowed to post to your relay. Then if the client becomes adversarial the worst they can do is post spam to your relay, which they can probably already do once they have remote signer permissions.
This is overbuilt but maybe there is a simpler solution inside. Maybe the bunker URL you paste initially should just include an nsec for the client to use?

2025-09-29 15:53:35 UTC

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oh interesting, I wonder if I've been hitting these rate limits and that's why I have so much trouble with signers.
I also have my own relay but I only allow events from my own pubkey to be published there. 🤔 So I could point clients to my own relay for NIP-46 messages but there's no easy way to add every client key to my allowlist... I guess I am running `nak bunker` on the same machine as my relay. Maybe I could jerry-rig some communication between nak and my relay config? Sounds fragile though.

2025-09-24 21:05:25 UTC

Day 2 using Github's spec-kit for development did not go as well. The AI and I got lost trying to write reams of overly generic TDD test stubs. It felt like the AI couldn't really get a clear picture from just the spec requirements what it should be testing before the actual implementation code was written.
So today I changed course and changed my constitution (the like underlying spec doc for the repo) to use an outside-in development approach instead of TDD and we made a lot of progress. I also got a new playwright MCP set up for browser automation and it's working a lot better than the last one I had. After some considerable setup the LLM was generally able to run the app in the web browser and click around to test its own changes.

2025-09-24 20:56:14 UTC

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I have not :(

2025-09-24 19:44:59 UTC

"any kind of decentralized, democratic or liberal political structure thrives best when defense is easy, and suffers the most challenge when defense is hard - in those cases, the far more likely outcome is some period of war of all against all, and eventually an equilibrium of rule by the strongest."
A good (but long) blog post on focusing our collective efforts on developing defensive technologies to slant the future away from dystopia.
https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/01/05/dacc2.html
Thanks @npub1yl8…vz34 for the link!

2025-09-24 14:12:21 UTC

@npub1g2j…yjj6 what tool are you using to cross post across Nostr, scuttlebutt, Mastodon, etc.? I have been using OpenVibe but it has been really buggy lately.

2025-09-23 13:22:27 UTC

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it's fixed for me now

2025-09-22 21:59:21 UTC

The official word is "no" 😢 (from telegram)
#nevent1q…g9q2

2025-09-22 20:13:58 UTC

@npub1u92…hr58 @npub12hc…rdp4 @npub1v0l…qj49 not sure where to report this but I am getting this error at https://zap.stream/nogood :(
Unexpected Application Error!
error loading dynamically imported module: https://zap.stream/assets/markdown-D8ImU_5Q.js

2025-09-22 18:43:23 UTC

Spent a couple hours setting up the Keydex repo with Github spec-kit. No code yet but I have 1000 lines of markdown to show for it 🤷‍♂️ https://github.com/mplorentz/keydex

2025-09-22 17:26:00 UTC

I'm back in the code editor for the first time in a few weeks. It feels good 😊
Trying out Github's spec-kit tool for spec-driven development with AI: https://github.com/github/spec-kit?tab=readme-ov-file#-core-philosophy

2025-09-18 18:37:45 UTC

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what do you mean?

2025-09-18 18:37:38 UTC

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Please flame me @npub180c…h6w6

2025-09-18 17:16:31 UTC

Sharing some wireframes I made for Keydex here, mostly because @npub1000…vwqk asked to see them but I figured why not share them publicly.
They have a watermark because I am using the trial version of the design software 😬
https://blossom.lorentz.is/938d7eabe684ee5a529f7a7d78feee31f0259d6ed674601baa4ba04cb3fa50e5.pdf
Thanks for the feedback on these @npub1jlr…ynqn, @npub1000…vwqk, and @npub1jr8…wwnw!

2025-09-17 20:32:15 UTC

I’ve been noodling on my OpenSats projects and one thing I wanted to hear people’s thoughts on is the idea of lightly encrypted groups vs. relay-based groups. And by lightly encrypted I mean that all group data is encrypted with a shared key that gets rotated, but without end-to-end encryption, forward secrecy, post-compromise security, and all the fancy stuff you get with MLS. Basically the unmerged NIP-87 (https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/875/files?short_path=ed261ea#diff-ed261eac15a3dc7dbd825342a3e89dc960824a52afd2dd032f30876fbfb25698)
I know this idea has been discussed a lot, and I have been pretty convinced that NIP-29 made the most sense for the most groups. I also know MLS groups are in the works, but they have a lot of downsides. So a few things over the past month are making me reconsider.
The main one was talking to @npub1vjh…ejkd from @npub1j4g…fuu4 who makes a good argument that groups should be a first class citizen on Nostr. This would enable groups of groups and potentially other innovations like putting the group master key in a FROSTR cluster. It also helps enable forkable groups and groups migrating between relays / sets of governing rules. (Great article from SocialRoots about their full vision https://www.socialroots.io/intimacy-gradients-the-key-to-fixing-our-broken-social-media-landscape/)
Another factor is that people keep asking me if groups are going to be encrypted in my new client and I don’t like saying no to that 😅. Even though I think the confidentiality guarantees of NIP-29 are good enough for most groups - that’s not what people want to hear. I used to think that getting a bunch of Nostr clients to all implement key rotation the same way was too much to ask, and I still think MLS is overkill for medium to large groups. But if you allow some privileged software to run with some kind of group admin key to do the rotation (an allowance that NIP-29 already makes) then it hugely simplifies the complexity for client developers and now you can say the magic word ✨encryption✨.
I also feel like I missed out a bit on the debate between these when it happened. What do you think?

2025-09-17 20:15:50 UTC

Today I discovered https://frame0.app for making quick wireframes. I used to love Balsamiq but the desktop app has been discontinued.
If you've never worked with this type of barebones wireframe before they are so valuable for getting feedback on high level UX without digressing into discussions about the size and colors and exact placement of things. When people see the handwritten font their brain switches into a different mode.

2025-09-15 18:18:43 UTC

I've finished my first round of interviews for Keydex and they were so enlightening. I'm so addicted to user interviews now, I don't understand how I made so much software without them.
The top insight from this round was clarifying the different use cases for Shamir's Secret Sharing. Here's what I came up with:
- inheritance planning
- corporate secret management for ultra-sensitive values i.e. root passwords
- border crossings
- web3/crypto/Nostr key backup
The most interest by far was in the inheritance planning use case. People have some digital stuff they want to pass on, but don't want it sitting in plaintext in the hands of (generally very normie) friends and family. Keydex will work for all cases listed above but I'm going to keep the inheritance use-case top of mind while developing. Which already invalidates some of the design work I did last week. I was going to make a fun retro/gamey UI, but now I'm going to shift towards something more calm and reliable.

2025-09-11 17:47:59 UTC

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Are you selling these?

2025-09-10 20:21:47 UTC

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Ah, I am remembering the iOS version where the extension wasn’t an option. I didn’t realize you could log in on nstart! I thought it was a very opinionated choice to push everyone to bunkers.
And I’ve been meaning to ask: do you keep your key in a bunker? And if so, which one are you using?

2025-09-09 18:29:58 UTC

I'm looking for folks to interview for the new app I'm working on. If you've ever needed to back up some sensitive data (passwords, crypto wallet key, "legacy planning" docs) but didn't just want to print it out and hide it then I'd love to talk to you. Just let me know here and I'll be in touch: https://formstr.app/i/keydex