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About townstr

What is townstr?

townstr is a decentralized community forum built on the Nostr protocol. Unlike traditional social platforms, your posts aren't locked in a single company's database - they're stored across the Nostr network, giving you true ownership of your content.

Communities are created organically through hashtags. Post with #townstr plus any community tag like #bitcoin or #nostr, and your post appears in that community.

How to Post

From townstr (easiest)

  1. Sign in with your Nostr key or extension
  2. Complete verification (one-time)
  3. Click "Create Post"
  4. Enter a community name and your content

From other Nostr clients

Your kind 1 event must include proper t tags:

{
  "kind": 1,
  "content": "Your post content here",
  "tags": [
    ["t", "townstr"],
    ["t", "your-community"]
  ]
}

Both tags are required. The townstr tag identifies the post for our relay, and the community tag determines where it appears.

Important: Some clients only add hashtags to content text without creating actual tags. Verify your client adds them to the tags array, not just the content.

Reputation System

Each user has a reputation score per community. Reputation is displayed next to usernames and helps the community identify trusted contributors.

How reputation is earned

Action Points
Account verification (Turnstile) +10
Your first post +5
Receiving an upvote on your post +1
Receiving a downvote on your post -1
Someone replies to your post +1
Inactivity (per year) -1

Global reputation

Your reputation is global across all communities. Good contributions anywhere build your overall standing on townstr.

Why verify?

Verification gives you +10 starting reputation and unlocks posting and voting. Both actions require verification to prevent sybil attacks (fake accounts gaming the system). The verification is privacy-preserving - we don't store personal info.

Technical Details

Relay

townstr runs a specialized Nostr relay that only accepts posts tagged with #townstr.

Public Relays

Posts are also broadcast to public relays for redundancy:

  • wss://relay.damus.io
  • wss://relay.nostr.band
  • wss://nos.lol

Event Kinds

townstr currently supports kind 1 (text notes) events only.

Built with Nostr. Your keys, your content.

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