nips/46.md

NIP-46

Nostr Remote Signing

Changes

remote-signer-key is introduced, passed in bunker url, clients must differentiate between remote-signer-pubkey and user-pubkey, must call get_public_key after connect, nip05 login is removed, create_account moved to another NIP.

Rationale

Private keys should be exposed to as few systems - apps, operating systems, devices - as possible as each system adds to the attack surface.

This NIP describes a method for 2-way communication between a remote signer and a Nostr client. The remote signer could be, for example, a hardware device dedicated to signing Nostr events, while the client is a normal Nostr client.

Terminology

• user: A person that is trying to use Nostr.
• client: A user-facing application that user is looking at and clicking buttons in. This application will send requests to remote-signer.
• remote-signer: A daemon or server running somewhere that will answer requests from client, also known as "bunker".
• client-keypair/pubkey: The keys generated by client. Used to encrypt content and communicate with remote-signer.
• remote-signer-keypair/pubkey: The keys used by remote-signer to encrypt content and communicate with client. This keypair MAY be same as user-keypair, but not necessarily.
• user-keypair/pubkey: The actual keys representing user (that will be used to sign events in response to sign_event requests, for example). The remote-signer generally has control over these keys.

All pubkeys specified in this NIP are in hex format.

Overview

1. client generates client-keypair. This keypair doesn't need to be communicated to user since it's largely disposable. client might choose to store it locally and they should delete it on logout;
2. A connection is established (see below), remote-signer learns client-pubkey, client learns remote-signer-pubkey.
3. client uses client-keypair to send requests to remote-signer by p-tagging and encrypting to remote-signer-pubkey;
4. remote-signer responds to client by p-tagging and encrypting to the client-pubkey.
5. client requests get_public_key to learn user-pubkey.

Initiating a connection

There are two ways to initiate a connection:

Direct connection initiated by remote-signer

remote-signer provides connection token in the form:

bunker://<remote-signer-pubkey>?relay=<wss://relay-to-connect-on>&relay=<wss://another-relay-to-connect-on>&secret=<optional-secret-value>

user passes this token to client, which then sends connect request to remote-signer via the specified relays. Optional secret can be used for single successfully established connection only, remote-signer SHOULD ignore new attempts to establish connection with old secret.

Direct connection initiated by the client

client provides a connection token using nostrconnect:// as the protocol, and client-pubkey as the origin. Additional information should be passed as query parameters:

• relay (required) - one or more relay urls on which the client is listening for responses from the remote-signer.
• secret (required) - a short random string that the remote-signer should return as the result field of its response.
• perms (optional) - a comma-separated list of permissions the client is requesting be approved by the remote-signer
• name (optional) - the name of the client application
• url (optional) - the canonical url of the client application
• image (optional) - a small image representing the client application

Here's an example:

nostrconnect://83f3b2ae6aa368e8275397b9c26cf550101d63ebaab900d19dd4a4429f5ad8f5?relay=wss%3A%2F%2Frelay1.example.com&perms=nip44_encrypt%2Cnip44_decrypt%2Csign_event%3A13%2Csign_event%3A14%2Csign_event%3A1059&name=My+Client&secret=0s8j2djs&relay=wss%3A%2F%2Frelay2.example2.com

user passes this token to remote-signer, which then sends connect response event to the client-pubkey via the specified relays. Client discovers remote-signer-pubkey from connect response author. secret value MUST be provided to avoid connection spoofing, client MUST validate the secret returned by connect response.

Request Events kind: 24133

{
    "kind": 24133,
    "pubkey": <local_keypair_pubkey>,
    "content": <nip04(<request>)>,
    "tags": [["p", <remote-signer-pubkey>]],
}

The content field is a JSON-RPC-like message that is NIP-04 encrypted and has the following structure:

{
    "id": <random_string>,
    "method": <method_name>,
    "params": [array_of_strings]
}

• id is a random string that is a request ID. This same ID will be sent back in the response payload.
• method is the name of the method/command (detailed below).
• params is a positional array of string parameters.

Methods/Commands

Each of the following are methods that the client sends to the remote-signer.

Command	Params	Result
connect	[<remote-signer-pubkey>, <optional_secret>, <optional_requested_permissions>]	"ack" OR <required-secret-value>
sign_event	[<{kind, content, tags, created_at}>]	json_stringified(<signed_event>)
ping	[]	"pong"
get_relays	[]	json_stringified({<relay_url>: {read: <boolean>, write: <boolean>}})
get_public_key	[]	<user-pubkey>
nip04_encrypt	[<third_party_pubkey>, <plaintext_to_encrypt>]	<nip04_ciphertext>
nip04_decrypt	[<third_party_pubkey>, <nip04_ciphertext_to_decrypt>]	<plaintext>
nip44_encrypt	[<third_party_pubkey>, <plaintext_to_encrypt>]	<nip44_ciphertext>
nip44_decrypt	[<third_party_pubkey>, <nip44_ciphertext_to_decrypt>]	<plaintext>

Requested permissions

The connect method may be provided with optional_requested_permissions for user convenience. The permissions are a comma-separated list of method[:params], i.e. nip04_encrypt,sign_event:4 meaning permissions to call nip04_encrypt and to call sign_event with kind:4. Optional parameter for sign_event is the kind number, parameters for other methods are to be defined later. Same permission format may be used for perms field of metadata in nostrconnect:// string.

Response Events kind:24133

{
    "id": <id>,
    "kind": 24133,
    "pubkey": <remote-signer-pubkey>,
    "content": <nip04(<response>)>,
    "tags": [["p", <client-pubkey>]],
    "created_at": <unix timestamp in seconds>
}

The content field is a JSON-RPC-like message that is NIP-04 encrypted and has the following structure:

{
    "id": <request_id>,
    "result": <results_string>,
    "error": <optional_error_string>
}

• id is the request ID that this response is for.
• results is a string of the result of the call (this can be either a string or a JSON stringified object)
• error, optionally, it is an error in string form, if any. Its presence indicates an error with the request.

Example flow for signing an event

• remote-signer-pubkey is fa984bd7dbb282f07e16e7ae87b26a2a7b9b90b7246a44771f0cf5ae58018f52
• user-pubkey is also fa984bd7dbb282f07e16e7ae87b26a2a7b9b90b7246a44771f0cf5ae58018f52
• client-pubkey is eff37350d839ce3707332348af4549a96051bd695d3223af4aabce4993531d86

Signature request

{
    "kind": 24133,
    "pubkey": "eff37350d839ce3707332348af4549a96051bd695d3223af4aabce4993531d86",
    "content": nip04({
        "id": <random_string>,
        "method": "sign_event",
        "params": [json_stringified(<{
            content: "Hello, I'm signing remotely",
            kind: 1,
            tags: [],
            created_at: 1714078911
        }>)]
    }),
    "tags": [["p", "fa984bd7dbb282f07e16e7ae87b26a2a7b9b90b7246a44771f0cf5ae58018f52"]], // p-tags the remote-signer-pubkey
}

Response event

{
    "kind": 24133,
    "pubkey": "fa984bd7dbb282f07e16e7ae87b26a2a7b9b90b7246a44771f0cf5ae58018f52",
    "content": nip04({
        "id": <random_string>,
        "result": json_stringified(<signed-event>)
    }),
    "tags": [["p", "eff37350d839ce3707332348af4549a96051bd695d3223af4aabce4993531d86"]], // p-tags the client-pubkey
}

Diagram

Auth Challenges

An Auth Challenge is a response that a remote-signer can send back when it needs the user to authenticate via other means. The response content object will take the following form:

{
    "id": <request_id>,
    "result": "auth_url",
    "error": <URL_to_display_to_end_user>
}

client should display (in a popup or new tab) the URL from the error field and then subscribe/listen for another response from the remote-signer (reusing the same request ID). This event will be sent once the user authenticates in the other window (or will never arrive if the user doesn't authenticate).

Example event signing request with auth challenge

Appendix

Announcing remote-signer metadata

remote-signer MAY publish it's metadata by using NIP-05 and NIP-89. With NIP-05, a request to <remote-signer>/.well-known/nostr.json?name=_ MAY return this:

{
    "names":{
        "_": <remote-signer-app-pubkey>,
    },
    "nip46": {
        "relays": ["wss://relay1","wss://relay2"...],
        "nostrconnect_url": "https://remote-signer-domain.example/<nostrconnect>"
    }
}

The <remote-signer-app-pubkey> MAY be used to verify the domain from remote-signer's NIP-89 event (see below). relays SHOULD be used to construct a more precise nostrconnect:// string for the specific remote-signer. nostrconnect_url template MAY be used to redirect users to remote-signer's connection flow by replacing <nostrconnect> placeholder with an actual nostrconnect:// string.

Remote signer discovery via NIP-89

remote-signer MAY publish a NIP-89 kind: 31990 event with k tag of 24133, which MAY also include one or more relay tags and MAY include nostrconnect_url tag. The semantics of relay and nostrconnect_url tags are the same as in the section above.

client MAY improve UX by discovering remote-signers using their kind: 31990 events. client MAY then pre-generate nostrconnect:// strings for the remote-signers, and SHOULD in that case verify that kind: 31990 event's author is mentioned in signer's nostr.json?name=_ file as <remote-signer-app-pubkey>.