Without a doubt the most exciting thing about NOSTR is it’s smooth and almost seamless integration with what has come to be known as “Zaps”.

Tips

An appropriate name as it allows any user of NOSTR to quickly and almost instantly send a micro payment of Bitcoin to any other user in the NOSTR ecosystem, as long as they have their Lightning wallet linked to their account. Thanks to wallet extensions like GetAlby (image below), it has never been easier to create and link up a wallet in no time and start taking part in the most fun “social media” has offered in a long time. People are sending 5 sats, 10 sats or my favorite, along with many others, 21 sats (referencing Bitcoin’s 21 million supply limit).

So when I say micro payments, I mean “micro”, as in less than a penny because 5 sats isn’t even a penny. Far from it. You can send much more, but right now, it’s not about the amount as much as it is about the speed, convenience, and ease at which you are able to do it over NOSTR. Some have even started a hashtag called #OnlyZaps where people have opted to unburden themselves from the “like” button and only use zaps for their reaction of approval. Check out the post entitled “#Tag, You’re it, #Nostr. #Pure-Vida” for a fun list of popular hashtags and a brief description.

NIPs

This and many other interesting and ever-evolving ideas are brought to us by NIPs. The NOSTR community likes to have a lot of fun with this acronym for obvious reasons, but in actuality, “NIPs” stands for “Nostr Implementation Possibilities.” As it says on NOSTR’s NIPs GitHub page, “they exist to document what may be implemented by NOSTR-compatible relay and client software.” Just like with Bitcoin, developers can make proposals, changes, or additions to the protocol (rules) that NOSTR can operate on.

Sometimes this means adding new and exciting features like “zaps” (NIP-57), and other times it could be ideas to help better find people, like with NIP-05, which allows people to link their accounts with domains, giving them an email-like address people can use to find each other. And even fun things like “badges” (NIP-58), which anyone can make and then award to others, and of course claim any that have been awarded to you.

If you felt out of the loop when scrolling past a NIPs joke in your NOSTR feed, consider yourself now in on the joke.
If you want to learn more about NIPS visit their Github page or Nostr.com where they have more links and info available.

You can also zap: [email protected] any amount you like.