GM, Nostriches!
The Nostr Review is a biweekly newsletter focused on protocol updates, exciting programs, the long-form content ecosystem, and key events happening in the Nostr-verse. If you’re interested, join me in covering updates from the Nostr ecosystem!
Quick review:
In the past two weeks, daily active pubkeys reached 235, 921. New user growth increased, and pubkeys writing events increased over 20%. Note events totaled 6.6 million, zap volume slightly decreased to 16 million sats.
Additionally, 24 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 8 merged. A total of 85 Nostr projects were tracked, with 13 releasing product updates. During this period, 2 notable events took place, and 2 significant events are upcoming.
Nostr Statistics
Based on user activity, the total daily active pubkeys reached 235,921, reflecting a slight decrease of 2.1% compared to the previous period. The highest daily activity was recorded on 8th Aug , with 18,022 active users.
The number of new users overall is on the rise. In particular, the number of pubkeys writing events reached 213,438, marking a significant increase of over 24% compared to the previous period. Meanwhile, the number of profiles with bios and contact lists remained stable.
In terms of content publishing, approximately 6.6 million note events were published during this period, representing a stable trend compared to the previous cycle. Among them, Reaction, Repost, and Post all showed a slight decrease of about 2%.
For zap activity, the total zap amount is about 16 million, showing a considerable increase of over 13.4% compared to the previous period.
Data source: stats.nostr.band
NIPs
NIP-15: Extend event schema (payment_options, bond event, pickup_code, deprecate fiat fields) #2005
NOVMBILL is proposing a pull request that introduces several extensions and refinements to the NIP-15 event schema to enable expanded payment support, add bond mechanics, simplify privacy, and deprecate fiat-specific and plaintext address fields. All changes are implemented to optimize for sovereign payment flows and increase marketplace trust.
Add Live Event Consent (kind:30316) to NIP-53 #2006
is adding a Live Event Consent that provides a standardized, discoverable mechanism for participants to publish their agreement to join Live Events. is proposing a NIP that reserves 20 kinds for use-cases that may not want to be standard. It can be anything. it will be mostly specific apps for a specific group of people maybe. It can be internal or external tools and apps.NIP-37: Improving Draft events #2016
is proposing improving Draft events which improves theNIP in four ways: drops support for anchor tags due to complexity, privacy issues, and low utility, allowing clients to decrypt first and then anchor drafts from internal tags; clarifies terminology, renaming the outer event a "Wrap" and the inner event the "draft"; adds guidance for where the wrap should be sent and includes expiration tags; and it incorporates other minor text improvements.NIP Relay discovery via DHT #2018
is proposing a NIP which defines a distributed hash table (DHT) protocol for Nostr relays to enable decentralized relay discovery. The protocol allows a client to deterministically locate the NIP-65 relay list for a participating npub without first connecting to the npub's NIP-65 relay set and without centralizing on popular relays.NIP-25: Add External Content Reactions #2020
is proposing a PR that introduces NIP-73 as a way of reacting to any external content, whilst leaving the r tags for websites to maintain backwards compatibility.Modify NIP-87: General service discovery - adding Routstr discoverability #2024
is proposing a PR to modifie NIP-87, which now defines a standardized way to discover nostr services like ecash mints or routstr providers.NIP-XX: Smart Widgets - Interactive Components for Nostr #2025
Darecjo is proposing a NIP which introduces Smart Widgets (Improved version from #1454), interactive graphical components encapsulated as Nostr events (kind 30033), designed for seamless integration into Nostr clients. Smart Widgets enable rich, dynamic content that enhances user interaction through embedded applications, interactive forms, and mini-apps within the Nostr ecosystem. Various mini-apps smart widgets are available under yakihonne.com/smart-widgets to check from.
Notable Projects
Fountain 1.3 is live on iOS & Android. The latest update makes it easier to discover podcasts and music worth supporting - in the app and on the web.
- Likes – Easily like episodes or tracks; show up in your feed, profile, and power Trending.
- New Home tab – Personalized with Recently Played, Live Now, Trending; Feed has its own tab.
- Improved Search – Faster, more relevant results with keyword and history support.
- Nostr upgrades – Rebuilt database for speed and stability.
- Fixes & improvements – Card boosts, livestream fixes, playback saving, haptic feedback, follow/unfollow, better podcast import, and more
- Added a button in notifications and AppBar to restart connection to relays
- When connecting to relay try sending the subscription again
- If there’s a error sending a message to the relay try restarting it and sending again
- Check for encryption type again (not every app has support for nip44 yet)
- Revert QrCode reader support for multi-window (it was not reading inverted QrCodes)
- Generate a new event when there’s an error instead of trying to send the same event to avoid receiving duplicated messages from relays
- Send an error notification if it was not possible to send the event to the relays
- Close the app first and then try to send the event to the relays
- Get spoken alerts for incoming payments
- Pay straight from QR codes in images
- Smarter fiat handling + option to disable it
- Screen size fixes & other tweaks
FUTR 0.4.1 released - the nostr client for desktop (Linux & Windows)
- Introduced deferred pubkey-based profile update batching to replace immediate Qt signaling.
- Enhanced relay connection state tracking and rebalancing logic.
- Contact relays now exclude localhost, preserving own pubkey relays.
- InboxModel startup is now fully async, eliminating login delay.
- Integrated AppVeyor for Windows CI builds.
ZEUS v0.11.3 is now available.
- Feat: Peer management
- Feat: Swaps: rescue key
- Feat: CLN: BOLT 12 withdrawal requests
- Feat: CLNRest: routing history
- Feat: Fiat currency toggle on invoice creation
- Feat: Open channel modal
- Enhancement: dropdown tab for duration on Receive view
- Enhancement: tuck QR tabs and 'Receive via NFC' button under advanced toggle on Receive view
- Enhancement: lock invoice expiry time when LSP is enabled
Shosho for Web is released.
- You lives from the Shosho app appear here straight away, and as a streamer you can also share your profile with all your live streams and replays.
- Great on mobile, works as a PWA and responsive on larger screens too.
RoboSats v0.8.1-alpha is now out! What's new
- Brand new mobile app and mobile view
- New in-app private notifications system using nostr
- Revertible payments warning
For Users
- Nostr Notifications: Supports NIP-17 with a new notifications center (requires Coordinators upgrade).
- New Mobile App & View: Rebuilt for better performance, security, and instant notifications.
- Improvements: Enhanced robot profile window and library security updates.
- Payments: Added USDC and Paysend; PIX marked as reversible.
- Bug Fixes: Order data display, UI glitches, F2F coordinates, architecture signatures, and amount display all fixed.
PurrMint v0.0.5 is now live on ！
- Local + Tor modes
- NWC, LNbits, CLN, Fake Wallet
Chronicle v0.4.0 is out! The main new feature in this version is that you can enable backup of Blossom media from other authors' notes; this reinforces Chronicle's goal of being the relay where you can save what really matters, the full conversions you've participated in, pure signal.
Released applesauce v3. There were some breaking changes and a lot of exports were renamed. There are also a bunch of new features:
- New applesauce-wallet-connect package for client and provider NIP-47
- NostrConnectProvider class for the server side of NIP-46 signers
- Added "reconnect" option to publish, request, and subscription methods on relays
- Support for NIP-53 live streams
- Support for NIP-52 calendar events
- Support for NIP-84 highlights
- Support for NIP-88 polls
- Basic NIP-61 nutzap support
Fedimint Guardians now run on Start9!
- LNURL LUD-21 verify support ⚡️
- Big improvements to the WebSDK by our SoB interns 🏗️
- Fedimint-hosted Ioh infrastructure 🌐
- Nostr NIP-87 announcement support for Federations
- Referral QR Codes : No more copying links, just share your QR code and earn 5,000 SATS for every signup ⚡️
- Mention Badges : Now easier to spot when someone @'s you, no need to scroll or dig through chats
- Pin Chats : Keep important chats at the top
- Group Chat Descriptions:Set the vibe & rules for your group chats
nostrmusic v0.1.0 is now live on Zapstore and GitHub, a new Android client for Wavlake.
- The app focuses on music discovery, letting users find tracks and artists through boost activity or search.
- it supports NIP-38 status updates, allowing users to automatically share what they’re listening to and opening up new possibilities for music discovery.
Nostriches Global Meet Ups
Recently, several Nostr events have been hosted in different countries. Recently, YakiHonne hosted three Demo Days for Round 1 of the Agentic Mini Apps Hack on Nostr, focusing on building decentralized MiniApps around AI, payments, and social features. Developers including
, , , and , among others, presented their innovative projects and shared insights on their development work.Learning Bitcoin 2025 took place on August 16–17, 2025, in Canada. The event brought together individuals, families, and businesses to learn how to safely use Bitcoin. Day one featured hands-on workshops for beginners, covering wallet setup, exchange use, cold storage, and more. Day two offered keynote talks and panel discussions with leading experts on Bitcoin’s practical use and future potential.Speakers included
, , , , and more.Here is the upcoming Nostr event that you might want to check out.
Bitcoin Asia 2025 will take place from August 28–29, 2025, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). As one of the largest and most influential Bitcoin events in Asia, the conference will feature main stage keynote talks, enterprise Bitcoin workshops, hundreds of exhibiting companies, a digital art gallery, and official limited-edition merchandise. Speakers include
, , , , , and others.The 3rd Nostr & Bitcoin Asia Meetup will take place on August 29 from 4–7 PM in Hong Kong, focusing on the building of free expression and financial freedom. The event will feature two panel discussions: “Nostr in Asia: Builders & Backers” and “Bitcoin Asia: Community & Academic Innovation”, speakers including
, , , , , ,and others.Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.