Files
thePR0M3TH3AN 3220889f01 feat(nostr): NIP-32 labelling — the interop surface
BitGate read standard events but published a private vocabulary, making it an
island. NIP-32 (kind 1985) is the shared moderation vocabulary; BitGate now
reads and writes it. See ADR 0007.

The design keeps flexibility central, since the goal is a reusable building
block. A label is (namespace, value, target) and carries no built-in meaning —
"deny", "nsfw", and "MIT" are the same kind of object. What a label means is a
policy decision an application supplies via labelMapping { namespace,
denyValues, allowValues }. The codec itself is vocabulary-free; decodeLabels
returns every label regardless of namespace for generic use.

A matching label becomes a contribution authored by the labeller, gated
identically: it denies someone only if the labeller holds the capability in the
roster, exactly like a community source. An untrusted labeller's deny does
nothing, and labels fail closed without verification like any administrative
event.

- consume: ingestEvent maps kind 1985; loadLabels(labellers) fetches them
- emit: commands.publishLabel(target, value), gated by the same capability as
  denying, so the shared form is no weaker than the private one
- the widget bundle re-exports the label API for the drop-in path

Validated against 40 real kind:1985 events from public relays (ISO-639-1
language labels among them): all decoded with targets and namespaces, zero
throws. 897 tests; cold gates green; audit clean.
2026-08-10 10:01:34 -04:00

3.3 KiB

Nostr spec coverage

What BitGate implements, what it deliberately does not, and where the gaps are. Verified against the NIPs repository; specs move, so re-check before relying on this table for anything load-bearing.

Implemented

NIP Kind How BitGate uses it
NIP-01 — Event shape, replaceable selection with a deterministic same-timestamp tiebreak, and signature verification via @bitgate/verify (id recomputed, then schnorr-checked)
NIP-02 3 The viewer's follow list is the trust graph. Relay hints in the third tag position are captured as an outbox fallback.
NIP-19 — bech32 npub/note decoding at the codec edge, so the core stays hex-only
NIP-32 1985 Labels, both directions. Consumed as capability-gated contributions via a configurable namespace/vocabulary; emitted with publishLabel. See ADR 0007.
NIP-51 10000 Mute lists. Public p entries always; the viewer's own private entries decrypted through their signer.
NIP-44 — Decryption of the viewer's own private mute entries, delegated to the signer
NIP-56 1984 Reports. The report type is read from the 3rd tag position, with fallbacks for clients that place it elsewhere.
NIP-65 10002 Outbox model: each contact's mute list is fetched from their write relays
NIP-78 30078 Canonical governance documents — roles, policy, and contribution lists — under namespaced d identifiers

Deliberate choices

The viewer's private mutes are decrypted; nobody else's are. Another account's private list is none of our business, and the check lives at the codec boundary rather than relying on callers to behave. A user who mutes privately should still have their mutes take effect — ignoring them reads as the product being broken.

Report categories follow NIP-56 exactly in the social preset. Declaring a threshold for a category no standard client emits is dead configuration.

Commerce categories are non-standard on purpose. scam, counterfeit, and not-as-described have no NIP-56 equivalent. Reports from generic clients arrive as other and fall through to a default threshold, so they are never silently ignored — including at checkout, where an unclassified complaint earns review rather than an automatic denial.

Relays are transport, never authority. Signatures are verified through an injected verifier before anything authoritative is accepted.

Known gaps

Trust is binary. resolveTrustSet is "in the viewer's follows, or not". Most things called web-of-trust weight by hop distance — follows-of-follows at reduced weight. Adding depth naively would be wrong: a two-hop reporter would count the same as someone the viewer actually follows. It needs hop-weighted counting, which is a change to aggregation, not just to the set.

NIP-72 / NIP-29 communities. The role roster is a parallel invention to NIP-72's moderator p tags. Note NIP-72 is now marked "unrecommended: try NIP-29 instead", so a compat codec is only worth building against a specific target application.

NIP-86 relay management, NIP-70 protected events. Relay-side moderation is a different layer and out of scope; BitGate governs what a client shows, not what a relay stores.