They are different layers of abstraction. In bitcoin you also have raw addresses and the ones in bench32 format.
Hex keys are pure numbers so they offer a lot of flexibility.
npub/nsec make it easy to distinguish public from private keys so they have better UX.
A future really good client will abstract any of that away anyway and the user won't even know what a key is unless they specifically look for it.
sommerfeld
npub16r…kz5pl
2022-12-19 11:16:00
in reply to nevent1q…4vpc
Author Public Key
npub16r0tl8a39hhcrapa03559xahsjqj4s0y6t2n5gpdk64v06jtgekqdkz5plPublished at
2022-12-19 11:16:00Event JSON
{
"id": "658a306b44605195fdfe3892f6212300acd0949ed05d5bbe5efb0f0aa9041633",
"pubkey": "d0debf9fb12def81f43d7c69429bb784812ac1e4d2d53a202db6aac7ea4b466c",
"created_at": 1671448560,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
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[
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"content": "They are different layers of abstraction. In bitcoin you also have raw addresses and the ones in bench32 format.\n\nHex keys are pure numbers so they offer a lot of flexibility.\nnpub/nsec make it easy to distinguish public from private keys so they have better UX.\n\nA future really good client will abstract any of that away anyway and the user won't even know what a key is unless they specifically look for it.",
"sig": "c24a995707a3f33a8cfdfe9d518dee98d47fc8ce6a5f584ce6fc2f7b0912dc6c26c6fb4e17b829d65232b2ddd047e73acc0df06b3bfecb6d343f3bd8d7f3d9e4"
}