Nostr, which stands for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays“, is a social media protocol that doesn’t rely on a central server, nor is it a peer-to-peer architecture. It relies on distributed servers known as relays which allow users to exchange signed messages with one another.

Using these networks of relays, which are servers, anyone can install and run; content is distributed and duplicated across these relays. Decentralising content and ensure that your content is censorship resistant. As long as one relay remains active and hosts your content, there is still a way people can use Nostr clients to source the content and display it on their preferred device.

Relays come in a variety of types and can be run on different infrastructures, but by far, the most censorship-resistant of them all is the private relay.

What is a private relay?

A private relay is a personal server and storage that only you can grant access to, you select the users who can commit notes to this relay, and you control what data is stored on this relay. You can remove content, revoke (blacklist) users from your relay or only use it for your personal content.

The relay will only save notes from a specified private key and ignore all others but let anyone request the notes have been saved on this relay to allow it to be rendered and read by different clients. The software will accept settings from a file or environmental variables and be connected to a PostgreSQL database.

Private relays are great for:

Those who want to archive their complete Nostr accountThose who do not wish to use paid relaysThose who want a controlled backup copy of their Nostr accountThose who post content that might have themselves de-platformed by specific relaysHow to set up your private relay

Umbrel, the popular home server software that many bitcoiners use to run their bitcoin node or Lightning node at home, has recently added support for Nostr relays. Once installed and connected to your preferred client, you will be able to post content using the Nostr protocol and store the data on your own server and hard drive.

Clients would be able to fetch the data when needed and display it in feeds.

While running a private relay, you can still broadcast the same content to public relays or paid relays you are connected to. There is no limit to the mix of relays you can use, while the amount of relays you want to connect to is also a personal preference.