Sure! NIP-42 is a way for clients to authenticate to relays. From the user perspective it’s seamless and invisible to you.
But it enables a relay to know what user/pubkey is connected to their relay. This is primarily used for paid relays (ex. filter.nostr.wine) or relays that only send your DMs to authenticated users (ex. nostr.wine).
filter.nostr.wine for example before NIP-42 required you to change the URL to include your npub so they knew who was connecting. However that isn’t very secure and it didn’t provide true authentication.
I’m sure there are a lot of use cases I’m missing. But at a high level it allows a relay to verify who a user/pubkey is that is connected to their relay.
Hopefully that helps explain it.
fishcharlie / Charlie Fish
npub16a…96569
2024-01-05 21:32:03
in reply to nevent1q…aesu
Author Public Key
npub16amr0pgqzl8l57npcupjmv8j3055042g07w4qj4tu3zf4yd48nlsh96569Published at
2024-01-05 21:32:03Event JSON
{
"id": "250aed372d53036ba2a21b6d0b75e9af72a7980a87a1a5a1f519e271f0d86bb9",
"pubkey": "d77637850017cffa7a61c7032db0f28be947d5487f9d504aabe4449a91b53cff",
"created_at": 1704490323,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"0000000204e9212cee5d7886bdedf4bd4470e5024ca09c4557005acda467cd81"
],
[
"e",
"a1570f13a8a083c4c3f4ad40187ea92a20622d9d549d527624d6e3cb97284922"
],
[
"p",
"32e1827635450ebb3c5a7d12c1f8e7b2b514439ac10a67eef3d9fd9c5c68e245"
],
[
"p",
"124b23f2f6755402aa7814b185ccd1066fbf0f9e2b7e563683c783db02455947"
]
],
"content": "Sure! NIP-42 is a way for clients to authenticate to relays. From the user perspective it’s seamless and invisible to you.\n\nBut it enables a relay to know what user/pubkey is connected to their relay. This is primarily used for paid relays (ex. filter.nostr.wine) or relays that only send your DMs to authenticated users (ex. nostr.wine).\n\nfilter.nostr.wine for example before NIP-42 required you to change the URL to include your npub so they knew who was connecting. However that isn’t very secure and it didn’t provide true authentication.\n\nI’m sure there are a lot of use cases I’m missing. But at a high level it allows a relay to verify who a user/pubkey is that is connected to their relay.\n\nHopefully that helps explain it.",
"sig": "a113294df126d3a1b23301a4dde0aff053051aec1c5fae5e0dbb099347c6163dae337e0806eb36a5a4da53b0ccc930d8477d89a788d802a0774b5dbd412af176"
}