NIPs nostr improvement proposals

NIP-46 - Nostr Remote Signing

Table of Contents

Nostr Remote Signing

Changes

remote-signer-key is introduced, passed in bunker url, clients must differentiate between remote-signer-pubkey and user-pubkey, must call get_public_key after connect, nip05 login is removed, create_account moved to another NIP.

Rationale

Private keys should be exposed to as few systems - apps, operating systems, devices - as possible as each system adds to the attack surface.

This NIP describes a method for 2-way communication between a remote signer and a Nostr client. The remote signer could be, for example, a hardware device dedicated to signing Nostr events, while the client is a normal Nostr client.

Terminology

All pubkeys specified in this NIP are in hex format.

Overview

  1. client generates client-keypair. This keypair doesn't need to be communicated to user since it's largely disposable. client might choose to store it locally and they should delete it on logout;
  2. A connection is established (see below), remote-signer learns client-pubkey, client learns remote-signer-pubkey.
  3. client uses client-keypair to send requests to remote-signer by p-tagging and encrypting to remote-signer-pubkey;
  4. remote-signer responds to client by p-tagging and encrypting to the client-pubkey.
  5. client requests get_public_key to learn user-pubkey.

Initiating a connection

There are two ways to initiate a connection:

Direct connection initiated by remote-signer

remote-signer provides connection token in the form:

bunker://<remote-signer-pubkey>?relay=<wss://relay-to-connect-on>&relay=<wss://another-relay-to-connect-on>&secret=<optional-secret-value>

user passes this token to client, which then sends connect request to remote-signer via the specified relays. Optional secret can be used for single successfully established connection only, remote-signer SHOULD ignore new attempts to establish connection with old secret.

Direct connection initiated by the client

client provides a connection token in the form:

nostrconnect://<client-pubkey>?relay=<wss://relay-to-connect-on>&metadata=<json metadata: {"name":"...", "url": "...", "description": "...", "perms": "..."}>&secret=<required-secret-value>

user passes this token to remote-signer, which then sends connect response event to the client-pubkey via the specified relays. Client discovers remote-signer-pubkey from connect response author. secret value MUST be provided to avoid connection spoofing, client MUST validate the secret returned by connect response.

Request Events kind: 24133

{
"kind": 24133,
"pubkey": <local_keypair_pubkey>,
"content": <nip04(<request>)>,
"tags": [["p", <remote-signer-pubkey>]],
}

The content field is a JSON-RPC-like message that is NIP-04 encrypted and has the following structure:

{
"id": <random_string>,
"method": <method_name>,
"params": [array_of_strings]
}

Methods/Commands

Each of the following are methods that the client sends to the remote-signer.

Command Params Result
connect [<remote-signer-pubkey>, <optional_secret>, <optional_requested_permissions>] "ack" OR <required-secret-value>
sign_event [<{kind, content, tags, created_at}>] json_stringified(<signed_event>)
ping [] "pong"
get_relays [] json_stringified({<relay_url>: {read: <boolean>, write: <boolean>}})
get_public_key [] <user-pubkey>
nip04_encrypt [<third_party_pubkey>, <plaintext_to_encrypt>] <nip04_ciphertext>
nip04_decrypt [<third_party_pubkey>, <nip04_ciphertext_to_decrypt>] <plaintext>
nip44_encrypt [<third_party_pubkey>, <plaintext_to_encrypt>] <nip44_ciphertext>
nip44_decrypt [<third_party_pubkey>, <nip44_ciphertext_to_decrypt>] <plaintext>

Requested permissions

The connect method may be provided with optional_requested_permissions for user convenience. The permissions are a comma-separated list of method[:params], i.e. nip04_encrypt,sign_event:4 meaning permissions to call nip04_encrypt and to call sign_event with kind:4. Optional parameter for sign_event is the kind number, parameters for other methods are to be defined later. Same permission format may be used for perms field of metadata in nostrconnect:// string.

Response Events kind:24133

{
"id": <id>,
"kind": 24133,
"pubkey": <remote-signer-pubkey>,
"content": <nip04(<response>)>,
"tags": [["p", <client-pubkey>]],
"created_at": <unix timestamp in seconds>
}

The content field is a JSON-RPC-like message that is NIP-04 encrypted and has the following structure:

{
"id": <request_id>,
"result": <results_string>,
"error": <optional_error_string>
}

Example flow for signing an event

Signature request

{
"kind": 24133,
"pubkey": "eff37350d839ce3707332348af4549a96051bd695d3223af4aabce4993531d86",
"content": nip04({
"id": <random_string>,
"method": "sign_event",
"params": [json_stringified(<{
content: "Hello, I'm signing remotely",
kind: 1,
tags: [],
created_at: 1714078911
}>)]
}),
"tags": [["p", "fa984bd7dbb282f07e16e7ae87b26a2a7b9b90b7246a44771f0cf5ae58018f52"]], // p-tags the remote-signer-pubkey
}

Response event

{
"kind": 24133,
"pubkey": "fa984bd7dbb282f07e16e7ae87b26a2a7b9b90b7246a44771f0cf5ae58018f52",
"content": nip04({
"id": <random_string>,
"result": json_stringified(<signed-event>)
}),
"tags": [["p", "eff37350d839ce3707332348af4549a96051bd695d3223af4aabce4993531d86"]], // p-tags the client-pubkey
}

Diagram

signing-example

Auth Challenges

An Auth Challenge is a response that a remote-signer can send back when it needs the user to authenticate via other means. The response content object will take the following form:

{
"id": <request_id>,
"result": "auth_url",
"error": <URL_to_display_to_end_user>
}

client should display (in a popup or new tab) the URL from the error field and then subscribe/listen for another response from the remote-signer (reusing the same request ID). This event will be sent once the user authenticates in the other window (or will never arrive if the user doesn't authenticate).

Example event signing request with auth challenge

signing-example-with-auth-challenge

Appendix

Announcing remote-signer metadata

remote-signer MAY publish it's metadata by using NIP-05 and NIP-89. With NIP-05, a request to <remote-signer>/.well-known/nostr.json?name=_ MAY return this:

{
"names":{
"_": <remote-signer-app-pubkey>,
},
"nip46": {
"relays": ["wss://relay1","wss://relay2"...],
"nostrconnect_url": "https://remote-signer-domain.com/<nostrconnect>"
}
}

The <remote-signer-app-pubkey> MAY be used to verify the domain from remote-signer's NIP-89 event (see below). relays SHOULD be used to construct a more precise nostrconnect:// string for the specific remote-signer. nostrconnect_url template MAY be used to redirect users to remote-signer's connection flow by replacing <nostrconnect> placeholder with an actual nostrconnect:// string.

Remote signer discovery via NIP-89

remote-signer MAY publish a NIP-89 kind: 31990 event with k tag of 24133, which MAY also include one or more relay tags and MAY include nostrconnect_url tag. The semantics of relay and nostrconnect_url tags are the same as in the section above.

client MAY improve UX by discovering remote-signers using their kind: 31990 events. client MAY then pre-generate nostrconnect:// strings for the remote-signers, and SHOULD in that case verify that kind: 31990 event's author is mentioned in signer's nostr.json?name=_ file as <remote-signer-app-pubkey>.