Every Nostr event has a created_at timestamp. It's a Unix timestamp in seconds, and when you publish, your client sets this to roughly the current time. Relays can reject events with timestamps too far in the future, and some reject events too far in the past. This prevents backdating or future-dating abuse. But timestamps are self-reported, and a sophisticated actor can manipulate them within whatever bounds relays accept. Don't rely on timestamps for strong guarantees about when something was actually created. For ordering events, timestamps are usually good enough. For proving exact timing, you'd need external verification. Nostr timestamps are useful, not authoritative.

The gossip model is how Nostr spreads events efficiently. You don't need to be connected to every relay. Events propagate. Someone posts to their relays, those relays send to connected clients, and clients might republish to their relays. This means your content spreads beyond where you directly post. Coverage increases organically. But it's not guaranteed. If you post to an isolated relay that nobody else uses, the event might stay there. Publishing to multiple well-connected relays gives events the best chance to propagate. The network does the rest.

The outbox model is how clients find where people publish. When you follow someone, their relay list (NIP-65) tells you where they write, and your client connects to those relays to fetch their content. When you publish, your relay list tells others where to find you. This is more efficient than connecting to every possible relay. You only connect to relays where relevant people actually post. Clients that implement the outbox model handle this automatically. You follow someone, the client finds their relays, and you see their posts. It's a key piece of making Nostr scale. Follow anyone, discover their relays, stay connected.

Relays see a lot. They see your IP address when you connect, what events you publish, and what events you request. They can correlate this to build a profile of your activity. Using multiple relays doesn't fully solve this. You're spreading information, but each relay still sees their piece. Tor can hide your IP from relays and some clients support it, but Tor adds latency and complexity. The fundamental tradeoff is that relays are untrusted infrastructure that you depend on. They can't forge your posts, but they can observe your behavior. Pick relays run by people or organizations you have some reason to trust, or run your own.

Nostr and ActivityPub are both decentralized, but differently. ActivityPub (Mastodon, etc.) uses servers that federate. Your account lives on one server, that server talks to others, and if your server goes down, your account is stuck. Nostr uses keypairs and dumb relays. Your identity is your key, not your server. Relays just store and forward. Switch relays freely. No single point of failure for your account. ActivityPub has richer features out of the box while Nostr is simpler but more resilient. Both are better than centralized platforms. Different tradeoffs. Try both if you want.

📦 Signet commit Implemented switch_relays method e83318a https://github.com/Letdown2491/signet/commit/e83318a77c539a4d21e71f6bff6144f48b892fe5

NIP-26 defines delegation: letting another key sign on your behalf. You create a delegation token, signed by your main key, saying "this other pubkey can sign kind 1 events for me until this timestamp." The delegate can then post as you, and clients verify both the post signature and the delegation token. Use cases include bots, teams, and scheduled posting. Your main key stays secure while a less-privileged key handles day-to-day posting. Delegation has limits: you specify what kinds of events the delegate can create and for how long, and the delegate can't exceed those bounds. Not all clients support NIP-26 yet, so check before relying on it, but it's a powerful tool for managing access without sharing your actual nsec.

📦 Signet commit Added Trusted Relay Assertions scoring to relays in signet-ui sidebar, system status widgets, and NostrConnect connection screens to ensure users know if a relay can be considered trustworthy. ff910f9 https://github.com/Letdown2491/signet/commit/ff910f947e8ad34b1052a7cc9bc87821724e0f67

📦 Signet commit Implemented NIP-49 key encryption, plus additional UI tweaks and bugfixes. c9b5c39 https://github.com/Letdown2491/signet/commit/c9b5c39491e16bbab72e8f7997860d187de2f5cb

Replies on Nostr use e tags to reference parent events. When you reply to a post, your event includes an "e" tag pointing to the original event ID, and clients use this to build threads. Multiple reply levels create trees with the root post, then replies, then replies to replies. Tags indicate where in the tree a post belongs. Different clients display threads differently. Some show all replies while some collapse deep threads. The data is the same, but presentation varies. Understanding threading helps when something looks off. If a reply seems orphaned or misplaced, it might be a client rendering issue, not a data problem.