NSite-RS: NIP-5A Gateway

A high-performance Rust gateway that serves decentralized websites published as Nostr events, implementing NIP-5A (Content Hosting).

What is NSite?

NSite transforms your Nostr relays into a decentralized web hosting platform. Websites are published as signed Nostr events and served via subdomains, enabling:

• Censorship-resistant hosting - Content is distributed across Nostr relays
• No infrastructure - Sites are served directly from Nostr events
• Built-in identity - Public keys serve as domain ownership proof
• Zero configuration - Subdomain routing handles site discovery automatically

Quick Start

cargo run -- --relay wss://relay.damus.io

The gateway will:

1. Connect to specified Nostr relays
2. Listen for site events (kinds 15128, 35128)
3. Serve sites via subdomain routing
4. Display a directory at the root domain

Site Types

Type	Kind	Subdomain Format	Use Case
Root Site	15128	npub1...	Personal sites, blogs
Named Site	35128	<pubkeyB36><dTag>	Projects, organizations

Named Site Example

• Pubkey (hex): 9ec7a778167afb1d30c4833de9322da0c08ba71a69e1911d5578d3144bb56437
• d tag: aa
• Subdomain: 3ygtacgoaw2nnorgkiatssdw30bzgikmmveotztz116wa7fkfraa aa
• URL: http://3ygtacgoaw2nnorgkiatssdw30bzgikmmveotztz116wa7fkfraa aa/

Publishing a Site

Create a Nostr event with:

{
  "kind": 35128,
  "tags": [
    ["d", "myproject"],
    ["path", "/index.html"],
    ["source", "https://github.com/..."]
  ],
  "content": "..."
}

Required Tags

• d - Unique identifier (for named sites)
• path - File path mapping (e.g., /index.html, /style.css)

Optional Tags

• source - Link to source code/repository

Architecture

┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐
│   Browser    │────▶│  Axum Router │────▶│ Site Handler │
└──────────────┘     └──────────────┘     └──────────────┘
                    (subdomain-based)           │
                                                ▼
                                       ┌──────────────┐
                                       │ Nostr Relay  │
                                       │ (manifest +  │
                                       │  content)    │
                                       └──────────────┘

Request Flow

1. Browser requests http://<subdomain>/path/to/file
2. Axum extracts pubkey from subdomain
3. Site handler fetches manifest (kind 15128/35128) from relays
4. Manifest maps paths to content hashes
5. Content fetched from Blossom servers or relay attachments
6. Response cached for subsequent requests

Features

• Concurrent loading - Multiple assets loaded in parallel
• Transparent caching - Content cached to temp directory
• Multiple relay support - Fallback across relays for resilience
• Profile integration - Displays author avatars and names from Nostr metadata
• Directory page - Auto-generated site listing at root domain

Development

# Build
cargo build

# Release build
cargo build --release

# Check formatting
cargo fmt --check

# Lint
cargo clippy -- -D warnings

# Run with custom relay
cargo run -- --relay wss://relay.damus.io --relay wss://nos.lol

Dependencies

• Rust: Axum, tokio, reqwest, nostr-sdk
• Frontend: Preact, @snort/system, @scure/base
• TLS: rustls with aws-lc-rs

NIP-5A Compliance

This gateway fully implements NIP-5A:

• ✅ Root site events (kind 15128)
• ✅ Named site events (kind 35128)
• ✅ Subdomain routing based on pubkey encoding
• ✅ Path tag resolution
• ✅ d tag validation for named sites

Live Demo

Visit https://nwb.tf to see the directory in action.

License

MIT