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Relays

Summary. Relays are the public servers that carry Goblin’s encrypted messages. Goblin ships sensible defaults, advertises a short DM-relay list (NIP-17 kind 10050) so others know where to reach you, and lets you edit the list. All relay traffic runs over the Nym mixnet.

Motivation

Nostr has no central server: reachability depends on sender and receiver sharing at least one relay. So a wallet must (a) start with good defaults, (b) publish where it listens, and (c) let advanced users or self-hosters point at their own relays. Keeping the DM-relay list small is deliberate: NIP-17 guidance is to advertise only a couple, both to limit metadata and to make delivery predictable.

How it works

  • Defaults. Out of the box Goblin uses a small set: a relay it operates (relay.goblin.st) plus large public relays (relay.damus.io, nos.lol). The Goblin relay is a stock strfry with a write policy restricting stored kinds to the handful Goblin needs (profiles, relay lists, gift wraps).
  • Advertising reachability. Your wallet publishes a kind 10050 DM-relay list (capped at 3) so a sender’s wallet knows which relays to deliver your payment to. nprofile shares carry relay hints too, so a fresh recipient is reachable without any lookup.
  • Editing. Settings → Nostr Relays shows your list and lets you add wss://… relays (URLs are normalized: a bare host gets wss://). “Save & reconnect” rewrites your kind 10050 and restarts the service on the new set.
Screenshot: Settings → Nostr Relays editor (list + add field + Save & reconnect), dark theme.

Note on the UI: the relay editor now lives in the Identity section of Settings, labelled “Nostr Relays” (it sits just above Name authority), so it’s clear these are Nostr relays, distinct from the Grin Node connection under Wallet.

Reference

  • goblin/src/nostr/relays.rs: DEFAULT_RELAYS, MAX_DM_RELAYS = 3, normalize_relay_url(); default name authority constants (HOME_NIP05_DOMAIN, DEFAULT_NIP05_SERVER).
  • Editor + “Save & reconnect”: the relays page in goblin/src/gui/views/goblin/mod.rs (SettingsPage::Relays, relay_summary()); the row that opens it is the Nostr Relays entry in the Identity card.
  • Relay transport: every socket runs over NymWebSocketTransport.

References