nom-04.md

NOM-04

Relay-published indexes

Nomen indexers may provide their data in different ways, such as an API, a web page or an archive. However, as Nomen is intended to be a Nostr-native protocol, it would make sense for indexers to publish their data to Nostr relays in a well understood format. This will allow Nostr clients that support Nomen to go to relays as the sole source of data without needing to make further external network calls.

Event structure

Nomen indexers should publish a single event per name. It will be a parameterized replaceable event, per the NIP-01 specification. When name data changes (e.g. new records or ownership transfers) then the event will be republished and replaced.

The fields to be aware of:

Event field	Expected value
pubkey	The indexer's pubkey
kind	38301
d tag	the indexed name
content	JSON serialized name object (see blow)

The content will be a serialized form of the following data:

{
  "name": "indexed named, should match the d tag",
  "pubkey": "hex-encoded pubkey of name's owner",
  "records": {
    "KEY1": "VALUE1",
    "KEY2": "VALUE2"
  }
}

r should be replaced with the canonical records as understood by the indexer.

DNS-based indexer pubkey

For an indexer with a web presence, such as the Nomen Explorer, they may respond to GET requests under: https://<domain>/.well-known/nomen.json with a JSON object like this:

{
  "indexer": {
    "pubkey": "indexer's hex-encoded pubkey",
    "relays": ["wss://relay.example.com"]
  }
}

Clients may choose to check this convenience to locate the pubkey to use when searching for relay-published indexes. Additionally, the indexer can list the "officially" supported relays.

Changes and updates

2023-11-21:

• The "relays" key was added to the .well-known/nomen.json document.