Amethyst and Coracle will likely be a bit slower than Primal, just by the nature of the fact that they are actually reading from Nostr relays in real time, and some of those relays will be slower to respond than others. Additionally, if you have any of Amethyst's Tor privacy settings turned on, it will be a bit slower.
Primal apps, by contrast, don't read from relays at all. They only read from Primal's centralized caching server that aggregates notes from the relays, which is why it generally works a bit faster than other clients.
On Primal, therefore, you only see what they have configured their caching server to show you. They can censor anyone at any time simply by not aggregating their notes onto the caching server, so that no one who uses Primal will ever see them.
You give up nearly all of the censorship resistant properties of Nostr by using Primal, other than the fact that they DO write your notes to the relays listed in your Network settings.
And that is the distinction between being just an app with good UX vs being an actual Nostr client.
Nostr clients do the following things:
1. Fetch notes from Nostr relays.
2. Verify the signatures of those notes locally, to ensure that the content hasn't been manipulated.
3. Display the verified notes to the user.
4. Provide means for the user to write their own notes to Nostr relays after they have signed them with their own private key.
Primal only does 3 and 4 above, offloading 1 and 2 to their caching server. So it's a half-client.
Additionally, and possibly more egregiously, if a new user sticks with Primal's defaults, Primal will be in control of their entire Nostr experience. Primal will control what they see via their caching server, Primal will also be one of their handful of write relays, Primal will be their media server, and Primal will be their Lightning wallet.
The entire point of Nostr is to separate control of all of those things, so they are not controlled by a single company, like legacy social media. Any Nostr client worth their salt should separate the ownership and control of each of these elements by default. And while it is true that the user CAN change all of these defaults in Primal, most users will simply stick with the defaults. Technically someone can even select a different caching server than the one Primal runs... Except that no other options exist.
Dikaios1517
npub1ku…v3lhe
2025-05-26 17:57:34
in reply to nevent1q…yznw
Author Public Key
npub1kun5628raxpm7usdkj62z2337hr77f3ryrg9cf0vjpyf4jvk9r9smv3lhePublished at
2025-05-26 17:57:34Event JSON
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"content": "Amethyst and Coracle will likely be a bit slower than Primal, just by the nature of the fact that they are actually reading from Nostr relays in real time, and some of those relays will be slower to respond than others. Additionally, if you have any of Amethyst's Tor privacy settings turned on, it will be a bit slower.\n\nPrimal apps, by contrast, don't read from relays at all. They only read from Primal's centralized caching server that aggregates notes from the relays, which is why it generally works a bit faster than other clients.\n\nOn Primal, therefore, you only see what they have configured their caching server to show you. They can censor anyone at any time simply by not aggregating their notes onto the caching server, so that no one who uses Primal will ever see them. \n\nYou give up nearly all of the censorship resistant properties of Nostr by using Primal, other than the fact that they DO write your notes to the relays listed in your Network settings.\n\nAnd that is the distinction between being just an app with good UX vs being an actual Nostr client.\n\nNostr clients do the following things:\n\n1. Fetch notes from Nostr relays.\n2. Verify the signatures of those notes locally, to ensure that the content hasn't been manipulated.\n3. Display the verified notes to the user.\n4. Provide means for the user to write their own notes to Nostr relays after they have signed them with their own private key.\n\nPrimal only does 3 and 4 above, offloading 1 and 2 to their caching server. So it's a half-client.\n\nAdditionally, and possibly more egregiously, if a new user sticks with Primal's defaults, Primal will be in control of their entire Nostr experience. Primal will control what they see via their caching server, Primal will also be one of their handful of write relays, Primal will be their media server, and Primal will be their Lightning wallet.\n\nThe entire point of Nostr is to separate control of all of those things, so they are not controlled by a single company, like legacy social media. Any Nostr client worth their salt should separate the ownership and control of each of these elements by default. And while it is true that the user CAN change all of these defaults in Primal, most users will simply stick with the defaults. Technically someone can even select a different caching server than the one Primal runs... Except that no other options exist.",
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