Nostr allows users to register an identifier for their Nostr profile. This digital identiy allows their account to easily be displayed, searched for, and provides a human readable format for their public key. You can read more about the spec here: NIP-05.
Hosting your own NIP-05 ID is fairly easy as long as you have purchased a domain name and have access to a webserver to host a small JSON file. While this is fairly easy and simple for technically inclined people, for the average person, it's not worth the hassle or headache. They just want an ID. They just want to be easily searchable. They just want to have their ID represent their PUBKEY in a human readable format.
Reminder: This is not verification. There is zero verification done here. This is just an ID. NIP-05 ID's are great in their design, but people have been trained over the last decade that a checkmark means verified. Where in the Nostr sense, that's not the case. NIP-05 ID's are just an ID and anyone and everyone can and should have an ID.
What started out as hosting a few ID's for friends has turned into a full fledged Nostr NIP-05 ID hosting service. Nostr ID hosting providers / domains will eventually be reputation based. Whether that be on your own private domain or through an identity provider. NostrPlebs.com hopes to be one of those ID providers for Nostr.
For just 10K sats, you can get started with your own NIP-05 ID with a @nostrplebs.com address. If you're not a fan of Twitter Blue, we have your covered! We have Nostr Purple! Twitter Blue would run you $8 a month, but Nostr Purple and a @nostrpurple.com address will run you about $21 (125K sats at current conversion prices) for life.
We have a fully automated NIP-05 ID registration system with Lightning payments and public key management system if you happen to change accounts/keys. We offer users support through our online chat service and will soon be launching a browseable directory of all users in the near future. We're just getting started. We hope to offer additional features in the future for our customers.
If you have any questions or feedback about NostrPlebs.com, let me know.
Great! Bitcoinonly Nostr is the Future The Future is Now
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Hmmmmmmm cool and all, but should one really outsource custody for ones identity?
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This does not outsource the custody of your identity, it only allows you to get a NIP-05 identifier (an alias for your pubkey, which is more memorable and short). Your private key is still only known by you.
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Yeah, but why outsource even that? are we gonna see people getting rugged off their alias?
I'm a little overdramatic, sure.
But the whole point of nostr is to not rely on single centralized entities for identity and publishing. If your alias is managed by someone else but you, you forfeit some of that. I know you don't give up your private key, but you do give up some control.
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because not everyone can set up their own NIP-05 identifier. and if your identity gets rugged, you still don't lose your followers, just an alias
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I guess it's the good ol' convenience-security tradeoff
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Very non technical person here, but could NIP-05 help fight spamming ? As it seems to cost a bit of money to grab a identifier, could relays ask for "verified" users only thus avoiding beiing spammed ?
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NIP-05 is just an identifier, for now. Relays can implement their own requirements for posting such as having a NIP-05 identifier.
For verification: Badges would be more useful for this. If you properly verified someone, you could give them a badge, and anyone's client that trusts you says "oh, okay, this person is verified by this person I trust, show a checkmark". Badges could also be useful for things like orange checks.
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Goto nip05.net Siim does it for free.
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