Relay and community policy

What our Nostr relay accepts, what we index from other relays, what moderation can and cannot do, and how long things are kept. The relay is wss://relay.btcintel.io (also reachable at wss://api.btcintel.io/relay), operated by Satsboard LLC under the terms of use. Community content is indexed from Nostr and not endorsed by btcintel.

in forceEffective 2026-09-24. Adopted by the operator on 2026-09-24 (decision P54 in the btcintel codex); the account terms were added on 2026-09-29 (S5.5), approved by the operator on 2026-09-30 (P61) and apply once accounts open (features.accounts); a lawyer's review is on the launch checklist. Changes are published here with their date.

What the relay accepts

Kinds: 1111 comments (NIP-22), 1985 labels (NIP-32) and 5 deletions (NIP-09). Nothing else.
A Bitcoin subject: every comment carries a root tag I = bitcoin:tx:<txid>, bitcoin:address:<address> or bitcoin:block:<hash> (with K = bitcoin:tx, bitcoin:address or bitcoin:block); every label carries the namespace L = io.btcintel, at least one l value in it and a NIP-73 i tag naming the subject. Subjects must be canonical: mainnet addresses, 64-hex ids. Events about other networks or without a subject are refused.
Proof of work (NIP-13): the committed difficulty — the leading zero bits of the event id, with a nonce tag whose target is at least the floor — must reach 20 bits. Under attack we raise the floor to 24 bits; the current floor is in the NIP-11 document (limitation.min_pow_difficulty) and in the API's status. An event whose id happens to qualify but whose nonce commits to less is refused.
Time: created_at at most 15 minutes in the future and 30 days in the past.
Size: content up to 16 KB, at most 100 tags, messages up to 64 KB.
Rate: 30 events per pubkey and 60 per network address every 10 minutes; new connections are rate-limited per address.
Deletions: a kind 5 by the author of an event we hold marks that event deleted; a deletion of someone else's event is refused; a deletion of nothing we hold is not kept.
Banned pubkeys are refused at the door.
Read-only mode: the relay may stop accepting writes at any time (maintenance, abuse, legal reasons). Reads stay open.

Refusals carry the NIP-01 prefixes (blocked:, invalid:, pow:, rate-limited:) with a reason.

What we index from other relays

We follow a small set of public relays (today: relay.damus.io, nos.lol, relay.nostr.band, relay.primal.net) for comments with a Bitcoin subject, labels in the io.btcintel namespace and deletions of either. Every event is verified (id and signature) before it is stored; events under the proof-of-work floor are stored but hidden by default; events whose subject we cannot canonicalise are stored and shown nowhere. Our relay serves only what it accepted itself; indexed events are served by the API and the site, always marked as community content, never as ours.

Labels and labelers

Labels are shown through a lens. By default a page shows labels from listed labelers: pubkeys added to our directory by our operators, each with a name and a link to its criteria. A reader may choose other labelers, or all of them (with a warning). No labeler is a default, and being listed is not an endorsement of any label. Requests to be listed: [email protected] or the feedback channel.

What moderation can and cannot do

Can: hide an event from the site, the API and our relay; refuse a pubkey (ban); lift either; switch the relay to read-only; raise the proof-of-work floor. Every action is recorded with its reason and its operator; only humans act.
Cannot: edit, forge or sign events; delete anything from other relays; make a note ours. A hidden event stays in our store for the dispute trail.

Moderation reasons come from a fixed vocabulary: spam, harassment, doxxing, illegal_content, impersonation, malware_link, legal:<reference> (a takedown or court order) and other:<free text>.

Retention

Events are kept indefinitely, as published, until their author deletes them (NIP-09, honoured for the author's own events) or a takedown applies.
Content hidden by moderation or by a legal request is kept, invisible, for 90 days so that a dispute can be heard, then purged from our store. Foreign relays are not ours to purge; the notice says so.
Deleted events are shown to nobody; the fact that an event existed is not shown either.

Zaps and ordering

Zaps are shown as a number and offered as an optional ordering, captioned as a community signal, never as an endorsement and never as the default order. Self-zaps do not count; one pubkey counts once per event; only receipts whose invoice commits to the zap request count.

Contact and appeals

Takedown requests, corrections and appeals: the takedown process. Legal notices: [email protected].