Its a compromise. You trust a nostr relay to keep something from others on your behalf.
Best case, you only auth on your own server. That is pretty good privacy.
Encryption is obviously the peak, but some things can't be encrypted: metadata, access logs, maybe private messages that can't be encrypted for some reason.
That's the stuff you want auth for.
To be fair, most nostriches treat a relay's ability to perform AUTH as a signal that it is trustworthy. We should probably use some other metric for trustworthiness and culturally make it popular.
Big Barry Bitcoin
npub1pk…tpxa6
2026-09-07 13:05:09 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…0t8h
Author Public Key
npub1pktmatjk0l8vn3jhfuwxaasjd65kn4ye9sce3egup7k993f8fg2q5tpxa6Published at
2026-09-07 13:05:09 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "8428ed5c7fc15ec759ca076f583a32f280428944a9a3553c4057a6aaba3909ce",
"pubkey": "0d97beae567fcec9c6574f1c6ef6126ea969d4992c3198e51c0fac52c5274a14",
"created_at": 1788786309,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"62aca41ecd0dd2e4a3908fa28d155902c55dc49dd883bc81e6e578f07f8753a3",
"wss://filter.nostr.wine/",
"root",
"40b9c85fffeafc1cadf8c30a4e5c88660ff6e4971a0dc723d5ab674b5e61b451"
],
[
"p",
"40b9c85fffeafc1cadf8c30a4e5c88660ff6e4971a0dc723d5ab674b5e61b451",
"wss://nos.lol/"
],
[
"client",
"Amethyst"
]
],
"content": "Its a compromise. You trust a nostr relay to keep something from others on your behalf.\n\nBest case, you only auth on your own server. That is pretty good privacy.\n\nEncryption is obviously the peak, but some things can't be encrypted: metadata, access logs, maybe private messages that can't be encrypted for some reason.\n\nThat's the stuff you want auth for.\n\nTo be fair, most nostriches treat a relay's ability to perform AUTH as a signal that it is trustworthy. We should probably use some other metric for trustworthiness and culturally make it popular.",
"sig": "22575cbddc3230d33ba108ef29ebf1bad6106d562c97ed816b9acb285c1484a5ccfac60eaeb018cf6e1d055c12a10a7304bc7728a916b9973e74956bebd0789c"
}