First,
Key management.
When you “created” your NOSTR account, what you actually created was a cryptographic key pair. This consists of a private key, which starts “nsec” and a public key which starts with “npub”.
As the names suggest, your “nsec” key is private and you should never reveal it to anyone. Your “npub” key is your public key, feel free to share that everywhere.
Your “npub” key is used by others to verify your identity, through the signature added to your messages. It is also used by others to encrypt private messages to you.
We don’t have perfect key management yet and because of the limitation of smart phones and various eco systems, it often becomes necessary for you to copy and paste your private key into apps in order to use them. This is less than ideal, but until we have ubiquitous cross platform key management devices, this situation will remain necessary.
For the moment, consider using software key management options, some of which are listed under “signers” here: https://nostrapps.com/
N.B. We do have projects like Seedsigner that provide more secure hardware key management, but this isn’t for the faint hearted:
Secondly,
Lightning wallets.
It is common for most people to link a Bitcoin Lightning wallet to their NOSTR profile
N.B. Your profile is stored on relays and signed by your private key, which is verified by others through your public key.
You are not tied to any specific wallet for sending payments (called zaps), but you do provide a specific incoming LN address for receiving payments. This could be something like a wallet of Satoshi Address i.e. “randomname@walletofsatoshi.com” or could you be your own node with a connection to it via “Nostr Wallet Connect” a free plugin that connects a lightning wallet.
Enabling this allows people to “zap” any posts or content or even send you payments directly at any time or for any reason. N.B. It is called freedom money for a reason….
It also allows you to send small micropayments to posts or people you like.
Thirdly,
Paid Services
As you go deeper into the NOSTR ecosystem, you’ll notice there is no advertising being pushed at you and there are no algorithms manipulating the content you receive. This is because there is no company behind NOSTR, it is a protocol. Because of this, while all the ecosystem is free to use and will remain so for the foreseeable future, most of it is run by enthusiastic volunteers or developers and incurs a cost to them. For that reason many of us choose to support these #devs by paying for services. This can also enhance our experience, giving our “npub” greater reach and discoverability.
I, for example choose to pay for the following services:
https://nostr.wine/ - 120,000 Sats for 2 years relay https://relay.tools/ - My own relay - https://nortis.nostr1.com/ 12,000 Sats a month https://nostr.build/ - Media storage - 69,000 Sats for 1 year
Total: 22,750 Sats per month Approx $15 per month
This is not strictly necessary, but I decided to support the various developers behind these projects.
Do not feel any pressure at this early stage to pay for any service, but if you enjoy the freedom NOSTR brings, you may want to consider supporting the projects that become important to you going forward.