Show HN: Nostr Web – decentralized website hosting on Nostr

[karihass]

We built Nostr Web, a new way to publish and host websites that live entirely on the Nostr network instead of centralized servers.

Each website is a collection of signed, verifiable Nostr events distributed across relays—so it can’t be taken down, censored, or lost.

It includes: • DNS TXT records for domain-based discovery (_nweb.domain.com) • CLI publisher tool for versioned deployments (nw-publisher) • Browser extension (nw-extension) for native browsing experience • Relay v1.3.5 support for Nostr Web event kinds

Try the live demo: https://nweb.shugur.com

Repos: https://github.com/Shugur-Network/relay | https://github.com/Shugur-Network/nw-nips | https://github.com/Shugur-Network/nw-publisher | https://github.com/Shugur-Network/nw-extention

Would love feedback from the HN community—on protocol design, relay performance, or UX ideas for improving decentralized web publishing.

[lbhdc]

Isn't website hosting already decentralized? I can host my site on one of the many different providers out there, I can host my own, or even deploy to multiple providers. Users can access my site without extra steps.

Why would I want to host my site on Nostr? What does it do better than the competition?

As a side note, your demo isn't viewable without the extension. Trusting a new browser extension has a high level of friction. It would be nice if your site gave some hint of why a user might want to jump through those hoops.

[karihass]

Nice observations

1- Hosting site on one of the service providers doesn't mean centralization, ex. these week amazon outage, if you are going to deploy to multi-providers it will costs much, in our solution we offer you freedom of hosting on whatever relays you prefer many relays are public which means 0$ cost, moreover you able to expand your deployment on more relays as you want.

2- You are definitely correct, We have just highlighted a small note in the landing page that end users need extension to access the website, to gain some trust we have published the extension to chrome and Firefox store so a code review is applied to ensure security.

Really appreciate your feedback we can add more informative details in the landing page to show why end user need an extension, also we are planning to build a gateway so end user doesn't need to install extension in order to to access nostr websites "Frankly speaking we don't prefer this way in favor of decentralization and it is planned just for demonstration purposes"

[shrubble]

You should expect a lot of friction around having to install the extension; if you can figure out how to do it without the extension, it will lead to faster uptake.

[karihass]

I wish it can be done like that, Actually we had 3 options:

1- To have a website that acts as a gateway for the nostr websites, but this way we will lose decentralization 2- To build an app that can directly access the websites "Nostr browser" 3- To have an extension that acts as the gateway for nostr websites

We went through the 3rd option which provide the easiest and mostly native way to access the websites

[RobGR]

In addition to the browser extension, you need a web proxy -- a bit of server side code that acts as the nostr client and gets the page, and displays it over ordinary http/https.

Of course this means the existing web will find multiple URLs to the same content, if many people run the proxy, but that can be mitigated in various ways, or just ignored.

[karihass]

The problem here that the website will act as a gateway which puts the nostr hosted websites in a SPOF risk

[karel-3d]

Is nostr related to bitcoin?

I always only see it with the same people that talk about bitcoin.

[DavidHaerer]

Nostr has built-in support (NIP idk) for Bitcoin Lightning payments. Bitcoiners see Nostr doing to social media what Bitcoin did to fiat.

[evbogue]

How does this handle changes to the website. Is the entire website re-uploaded to a Nostr relay, or is there some re-use of old material that's already been uploaded before?

[DavidHaerer]

Nostr is append only, if an event is published to someone else's relay, you can't delete it.

[seanclayton]

> Nostr is an apolitical communication commons.

Apolitical is starting to mean something rather political these days.

[gigatree]

Only because those who make everything political take it as an offense. See also “silence is violence”.

[verdverm]

> Each website is a collection of signed, verifiable Nostr events distributed across relays—so it can’t be taken down, censored, or lost.

How does Nostr deal with illegal content like CSAM?

[digitalbase]

This has been discussed/answered in other Nostr thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45300004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45299986

[iamnothere]

Individual relay operators must detect and block it on their own. Same as Mastodon servers or other social platforms.

Public relays take measures to deal with this. It was an issue early on, along with China spam.

[cranberryturkey]

Moderation happens at the relay level. So a relay operator would certainly ban someone posting CSAM content to their relay.

[dewey]

A website for people who don't want others to see their website.

[karihass]

Exactly! Same spirit as the first HTTP websites — simple beginnings that grew into the open web we know today.

[bryanrasmussen]

as I'm understanding this - it would be useful for having your intranet sites available to everybody without a VPN as long as people used the extension - EXCEPT that anyone with the extension would be able to see YOUR intranet sites.

That is to say one use case I can see would be that people could have the extension, log in, and get available the intranet published for that particular log in.

That is to say unless I have totally misunderstood what it does, and my idea is idiotic, both of which are probably true.

on edit: that is to say I say that is to say way too much because I'm used to having people misunderstand things I thought I said relatively clearly.

[karihass]

Hi Dear, Actually you don't need VPN to access the nostr web just the extension which translate the DNS to nostr events and vice versa.

[renshijian]

You're rebuilding trust online through decentralized identity. We're doing something fundamentally similar in AI: making machine honesty verifiable, not just trustworthy Our oracle system creates an "ethical black box" for AI conversations. If you believe transparency and verifiability are cornerstones of the digital future, perhaps our project resonates with you. I'd be happy to compare notes

[karihass]

Absolutely, transparency and verifiable integrity are the common thread here. We’re tackling it through decentralized identity, you’re tackling it through AI accountability — both sides of the same coin. Let’s definitely connect and exchange ideas.