yes and no,
and unfortunately I am bridging knowledge from bitcoin here and not aware of the details for nostr keys specifically so take this all with a huge grain of salt.
the (single) nsec is used to derive the (single) npub with secp256k1 cryptography, which is the same as bitcoin priv/pub keys. so it is one-for-one, and only the one npub will exist for the nsec.
in bitcoin, BIP-32 added hierarchical deterministic derivation, which treats the secret key as a master key and generates sub-keys (additional private keys) which are unique and can be used to generate their own public keys.
this is effectively unlimited.
but in nostr, there is no BIP-32 equivalent to my knowledge, meaning we do not have a standard for generating HD derivations.
in theory, you can still generate them yourself.
but in practice, because this is not a standard for the nostr protocol, this would mean you are creating multiple nsec/npub pairs and would have to figure out how to generate them in a compatible format to what your client is accepting for valid keys.
otherwise to integrate your “new keys” (which all come from and are usable with your “master” private key) in a seamless way you would have to create your own client and introduce a bunch of non-standard stuff..
i believe this is how it works but again could be completely wrong.
basically we need a NIP-32 equivalent and then HD derivations could allow all this “by default” for nostr clients
supermassive
npub105…aaru0
2025-04-28 17:58:42
in reply to nevent1q…qrpg
Author Public Key
npub10585tcghn40hc3cqz6zv05sw3su0sthxlkepq3sfchrpa0uah0yqyaaru0Published at
2025-04-28 17:58:42Event JSON
{
"id": "2ad36f315f9438e1df3cddabcc386575e9454ad70bc3ce47e439011e0b4c0343",
"pubkey": "7d0f45e1179d5f7c47001684c7d20e8c38f82ee6fdb2104609c5c61ebf9dbbc8",
"created_at": 1745863122,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
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"48e12b690610994aca5c39f3cff1c2b8330c5ccfccc1e23cf0e9f1f8950e329d",
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"root"
],
[
"e",
"c2007e8c4a40a2b2c371cf8d20fd3e597d5d954ed4e01e93a5ed6bd911ee0e23",
"ws://192.168.18.7:7777",
"reply"
],
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"5af0794606a15b5641e25aa23d04af4cb0d7d5e68b11cacb47e56a4698fca8c4",
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"content": "yes and no,\nand unfortunately I am bridging knowledge from bitcoin here and not aware of the details for nostr keys specifically so take this all with a huge grain of salt.\n\n the (single) nsec is used to derive the (single) npub with secp256k1 cryptography, which is the same as bitcoin priv/pub keys. so it is one-for-one, and only the one npub will exist for the nsec.\n\nin bitcoin, BIP-32 added hierarchical deterministic derivation, which treats the secret key as a master key and generates sub-keys (additional private keys) which are unique and can be used to generate their own public keys.\n\nthis is effectively unlimited.\n\nbut in nostr, there is no BIP-32 equivalent to my knowledge, meaning we do not have a standard for generating HD derivations.\n\nin theory, you can still generate them yourself.\n\nbut in practice, because this is not a standard for the nostr protocol, this would mean you are creating multiple nsec/npub pairs and would have to figure out how to generate them in a compatible format to what your client is accepting for valid keys.\n\notherwise to integrate your “new keys” (which all come from and are usable with your “master” private key) in a seamless way you would have to create your own client and introduce a bunch of non-standard stuff..\n\ni believe this is how it works but again could be completely wrong.\n\nbasically we need a NIP-32 equivalent and then HD derivations could allow all this “by default” for nostr clients",
"sig": "81a66b8234993cd7b0c1786c6c80a546b6c8f671b8d7504f236b0566811c9da68c9832954255b7b079730b04f7310027f087e9d15ffe5ab5f43e5aaf68497a8b"
}