I suspect this is not going to be a popular reply, but...
Why use nostr for IoT?
I don't see how it is better than existing standards like MQTT or Matter. It also basically means having to run a nostr relay, because the idea of broadcasting every IoT event to a remote server seems terible for privacy, reliability, performance... basically everything.
What would help this NIP out a lot is to clearly explain what problem it is trying to solve and lay out a example setup that makes it seem like it is not burdonsome on either users or developers.
If I were to take a stab at it, it might go something like this:
The IoT ecosystem has been plagued by a lack of interoperability. Some apps use bluetooth, others ise wifi, and still others use Z-Wave, Zigbee or LoRa. Furthermore, the component sometimes go over HTTP, and other times MQTT. In both cases traffic is unauthenticated, unencrypted and doesn't have integrity in the cryptographic sense.
This NIP intends to chip away at these problems by providing cryptographic authenticity and confidentiality without having to mess around with getting TLS certs from a publicly trusted CA, nor setting up a private CA.
A nostr relay would run on the hub of the IoT infrastructure, such as OpenHAB or Home Assistant. This is similar to the HTTP or MQTT servers run on existing solutions. Other processes could listen on other transports (BT, zigbee, LoRa, etc.) and send the nostr events to the relay. From there, events could be picked up and acted upon by any devices or clients.
There are four main advantages of this over MQTT:
1. Standardized events, instead of every implementation using different topics
2. Standardized data formats, instead of some implementations choosing JSON while others have more topics and plain text
3. Nostr events are signed, ensuring they ate authentic
4. Nostr events are encrypted with the public key of the intended destination.
(And then go on to describe the different kinds of events)
Note: I don't know if what I said about nostr or the NIP is technically accurate. I'm new here. But hopefully my idea of how to explain what it is solving and how is now clear.
Hestia Hacker
npub1ydh…erpq
2023-12-02 06:16:09
in reply to nevent1q…u6c5
Author Public Key
npub1ydhmq6k7zshd5chdfrmpqpy44jyn02z7amw98knaqascw2flnpzq5serpqSeen on
wss://relay.noswhere.comPublished at
2023-12-02 06:16:09Event JSON
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"content": "I suspect this is not going to be a popular reply, but...\n\nWhy use nostr for IoT?\n\nI don't see how it is better than existing standards like MQTT or Matter. It also basically means having to run a nostr relay, because the idea of broadcasting every IoT event to a remote server seems terible for privacy, reliability, performance... basically everything.\n\nWhat would help this NIP out a lot is to clearly explain what problem it is trying to solve and lay out a example setup that makes it seem like it is not burdonsome on either users or developers.\n\nIf I were to take a stab at it, it might go something like this:\n\nThe IoT ecosystem has been plagued by a lack of interoperability. Some apps use bluetooth, others ise wifi, and still others use Z-Wave, Zigbee or LoRa. Furthermore, the component sometimes go over HTTP, and other times MQTT. In both cases traffic is unauthenticated, unencrypted and doesn't have integrity in the cryptographic sense.\n\nThis NIP intends to chip away at these problems by providing cryptographic authenticity and confidentiality without having to mess around with getting TLS certs from a publicly trusted CA, nor setting up a private CA.\n\nA nostr relay would run on the hub of the IoT infrastructure, such as OpenHAB or Home Assistant. This is similar to the HTTP or MQTT servers run on existing solutions. Other processes could listen on other transports (BT, zigbee, LoRa, etc.) and send the nostr events to the relay. From there, events could be picked up and acted upon by any devices or clients.\n\nThere are four main advantages of this over MQTT:\n1. Standardized events, instead of every implementation using different topics\n2. Standardized data formats, instead of some implementations choosing JSON while others have more topics and plain text\n3. Nostr events are signed, ensuring they ate authentic\n4. Nostr events are encrypted with the public key of the intended destination.\n\n(And then go on to describe the different kinds of events)\n\nNote: I don't know if what I said about nostr or the NIP is technically accurate. I'm new here. But hopefully my idea of how to explain what it is solving and how is now clear.",
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