A nostr relay built on the relayer framework. It supports several storage backends (SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL and OpenSearch) and can optionally back up its SQLite database with litestream.

• Install
• Configuration
  • Command-line flags
  • Environment variables
  • NIP-11 information
• Storage backends
• Deployment
  • systemd
  • Docker
  • Docker Compose
  • Kubernetes
• License
• Author

$ go install github.com/mattn/nostr-relay@latest

Or from a checkout of this repository:

$ make

A prebuilt image is published to the GitHub Container Registry:

$ docker pull ghcr.io/mattn/nostr-relay:latest

$ nostr-relay [options]

Any field of the relay's NIP-11 information document can be overridden with a NOSTR_RELAY_-prefixed environment variable:

NOSTR_RELAY_NAME="my relay"
NOSTR_RELAY_DESCRIPTION="a personal nostr relay"
NOSTR_RELAY_CONTACT="admin@example.com"
NOSTR_RELAY_PUBKEY="npub1xxxxx"

$ nostr-relay -database nostr-relay.sqlite

The connection string is a file path and may include go-sqlite3 options, for example nostr-relay.sqlite?_journal_mode=WAL.

Create the database first, then point the relay at it. The required tables are created automatically on startup.

$ createdb nostr
$ nostr-relay -driver postgresql \
    -database "postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/nostr?sslmode=disable"

$ nostr-relay -driver mysql \
    -database "user:password@tcp(localhost:3306)/nostr"

$ nostr-relay -driver opensearch -database "https://localhost:9200"

Create a dedicated user and a working directory, then install a unit file at /etc/systemd/system/nostr-relay.service:

[Unit]
Description=nostr-relay
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=nostr
Group=nostr
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/nostr-relay
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/nostr-relay -addr 0.0.0.0:7447 -database /var/lib/nostr-relay/nostr-relay.sqlite
Environment=LOG_LEVEL=info
Environment=NOSTR_RELAY_CONTACT=admin@example.com
Environment=NOSTR_RELAY_PUBKEY=npub1xxxxx
Restart=always
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

When using PostgreSQL or MySQL on the same host, add the database to the ordering, e.g. After=network-online.target postgresql.service. Then enable and start the service:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable --now nostr-relay
$ sudo journalctl -u nostr-relay -f

$ docker run -d --name nostr-relay \
    -p 7447:7447 \
    -v "$PWD/data:/data" \
    -e DATABASE_URL=/data/nostr-relay.sqlite \
    ghcr.io/mattn/nostr-relay:latest

A compose.yaml is provided that runs the relay together with litestream for continuous SQLite backup:

$ docker compose up -d

The kustomize manifests deploy the relay with litestream backup to S3.

1. Edit litestream.yaml

   dbs:
     - path: /data/nostr-relay.sqlite
       replicas:
         - type: s3
           endpoint: https://your-s3-endpoint
           name: nostr-relay.sqlite
           bucket: nostr-relay-backup
           path: nostr-relay.sqlite
           forcePathStyle: true
           sync-interval: 1s
           access-key-id: your-s3-access-key-id
           secret-access-key: your-secret-access-key

   • endpoint
   • access-key-id
   • secret-access-key

2. Create secret from litestream.yaml

   $ kubectl create secret generic litestream --from-file=litestream.yaml
   

3. Deploy with kustomize

   $ kubectl apply -k kustomize
   

4. Override NIP-11 information

   env:
   - name: DATABASE_URL
     value: /data/nostr-relay.sqlite
   - name: NOSTR_RELAY_CONTACT
     value: admin@example.com
   - name: NOSTR_RELAY_PUBKEY
     value: npub1xxxxx
   

MIT

Yasuhiro Matsumoto (a.k.a. mattn)