Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Nostrcoin (NSTC)
General Questions
What is Nostrcoin?
Nostrcoin is a fully decentralized, experimental cryptocurrency built natively on the Nostr protocol. Instead of using a traditional blockchain, it uses Nostr events as its ledger, allowing anyone to validate the entire transaction history independently.
Does Nostrcoin have any monetary value?
No. Nostrcoin has zero monetary value and is intended strictly for fun and educational purposes. It is a demonstration of how decentralized systems can be built on existing protocols.
How is it different from a traditional blockchain?
Traditional blockchains require specialized infrastructure and often require users to download massive datasets. Nostrcoin leverages existing Nostr relays for data distribution, meaning it doesn't need its own separate network of nodes to spread messages.
Mining and Rewards
How does mining work?
Mining is a Proof-of-Work (PoW) process where your computer attempts to solve a mathematical puzzle. You must create a Nostr event with an ID (a SHA-256 hash) that starts with four leading zeros.
What is an "epoch"?
An epoch is a 10-minute time window. In each epoch, only the first valid mining event found wins the block reward. If multiple valid events are found, the one with the earliest timestamp wins.
What are the block rewards?
The initial reward is 50 NSTC per block. Following the Bitcoin model, this reward halves every 210,000 blocks (approximately every four years).
Can I spam the network with mining attempts?
No. To prevent spam, the protocol enforces a limit of one mining attempt per user per epoch.
Economics and Supply
What is the maximum supply of NSTC?
The total supply is capped at 21,000,000 NSTC.
What is a "nok"?
A nok is the smallest unit of Nostrcoin, similar to a "satoshi" in Bitcoin. 1 NSTC equals 100,000,000 noks.
Privacy and Security
Is my activity private?
No. All activity is permanently public. Because Nostr is an open protocol, every block you mine and every transaction you send is recorded on public relays and linked to your Nostr public key (npub). Anyone can calculate your exact balance and view your full transaction history at any time.
Is Nostrcoin secure?
As an experimental project, users should expect chaos. The documentation warns that the system will likely experience bugs, crashes, data corruption, forks, and potential exploits.
Technical Participation
What is an "Indexer"?
An indexer is a node that listens to Nostr relays, validates events according to the protocol rules, and maintains a database of user balances. They provide the APIs that wallets and explorers use to display data.
How can I help the network?
The most valuable way to contribute is by running an always-on indexer node on a VPS to help keep the network resilient and decentralized. The more geographically distributed nodes there are, the harder the network is to censor or attack.
Where can I find the tools to use Nostrcoin?
The project provides a web-based wallet and explorer hosted at https://saccoci.github.io. For more technical users, the source code for the indexer, miner, and validator is available on GitHub.