Follow List

A special event with kind 3, meaning "follow list" is defined as having a list of p tags, one for each of the followed/known profiles one is following.

Each tag entry should contain the key for the profile, a relay URL where events from that key can be found (can be set to an empty string if not needed), and a local name (or "petname") for that profile (can also be set to an empty string or not provided), i.e., ["p", <32-bytes hex key>, <main relay URL>, <petname>].

The .content is not used.

For example:

{
  "kind": 3,
  "tags": [
    ["p", "91cf9..4e5ca", "wss://alicerelay.com/", "alice"],
    ["p", "14aeb..8dad4", "wss://bobrelay.com/nostr", "bob"],
    ["p", "612ae..e610f", "ws://carolrelay.com/ws", "carol"]
  ],
  "content": "",
  // other fields...
}

Every new following list that gets published overwrites the past ones, so it should contain all entries. Relays and clients SHOULD delete past following lists as soon as they receive a new one.

Whenever new follows are added to an existing list, clients SHOULD append them to the end of the list, so they are stored in chronological order.

# Uses

# Follow list backup

If one believes a relay will store their events for sufficient time, they can use this kind-3 event to backup their following list and recover on a different device.

# Profile discovery and context augmentation

A client may rely on the kind-3 event to display a list of followed people by profiles one is browsing; make lists of suggestions on who to follow based on the follow lists of other people one might be following or browsing; or show the data in other contexts.

# Relay sharing

A client may publish a follow list with good relays for each of their follows so other clients may use these to update their internal relay lists if needed, increasing censorship-resistance.

# Petname scheme

Clients can use follow-list petnames as local names for profiles. A petname is stored as the fourth value in a p tag:

["p", "21df6d143fb96c2ec9d63726bf9edc7121df6d143fb96c2ec9d63726bf9edc71", "", "erin"]

Here, the pubkey is known and can be displayed as erin in the current user's context. Likewise, if Erin has a petname of charlie assigned to one of her contacts, that Charlie can be displayed as ~/erin/charlie in the current user's context.

Petnames can also work on the other direction and resolve a pubkey from a name path. A path is resolved one component at a time: each component is looked up in the follow list of the profile resolved by the previous component.

For example, if the current user's follow list gives a profile the petname erin, and Erin's follow list gives another profile the petname charlie, then ~/erin/charlie resolves to Charlie.

If no user is logged in or the current user context is not relevant, an absolute root can be specified:

~npub1.../erin/charlie
~carol@names.com/erin/charlie

In order to qualify for petname resolution they must have only ASCII letters, numbers or _.