Technical Opportunities

Understanding the challenges and barriers to integrating Bitcoin Cash with the Nostr ecosystem

Current State

While the vision of Nostr BCH is compelling, there are technical obstacles that need to be addressed for seamless integration. This page outlines the key challenges and potential solutions.

Protocol Mismatch

NIP-57 (Lightning Zaps) is inherently designed for the Bitcoin Lightning Network. It relies on Lightning invoices (lud06 and lud16 in NIP-57 refer to Lightning URLs/Addresses), which are specific to the Lightning Network's payment channels built on top of Bitcoin (BTC).

Bitcoin Cash operates on a separate blockchain with its own transaction mechanisms, making direct compatibility impossible without significant protocol modifications.

Key Issues:

  • • Different address formats (CashAddr vs Lightning addresses)
  • • Incompatible payment request structures
  • • Separate blockchain validation requirements

Nostr Ecosystem Expectations

The current Nostr ecosystem, including relays and client implementations, largely assumes Lightning Network (BTC) for zaps. Users expect to provide a Lightning Address, and clients are built to generate and pay Lightning invoices.

Introducing a BCH-based "zap" would require significant changes to client-side wallet integrations and relay-side payment processing, creating a chicken-and-egg adoption problem.

Current State

  • • Lightning-first design
  • • BTC wallet integrations
  • • Lightning invoice expectations

BCH Requirements

  • • BCH wallet integrations
  • • CashAddr support
  • • New payment flow UX

Wallet and Infrastructure Support

To enable BCH zaps, significant infrastructure development would be required across the entire stack:

Client-Side Requirements

  • • Nostr clients to integrate BCH wallets capable of generating and paying BCH-specific payment requests
  • • Support for CashAddr format and future BCH layer-2 payment identifiers
  • • New UI/UX patterns for BCH payment flows

Relay Infrastructure

  • • Relays to support receiving and forwarding BCH payment requests
  • • Integration with BCH payment processors
  • • BCH transaction validation and confirmation tracking

Payment Processing

  • • BCH payment gateway integrations
  • • Real-time transaction monitoring
  • • Fallback mechanisms for failed payments

Relay Compatibility

Existing Nostr relays that support NIP-57 are configured to validate and process Lightning Network invoices. They would need significant updates to understand and handle BCH payment requests.

Current Relay Limitations

  • × Lightning invoice validation only
  • × BTC-specific payment verification
  • × No BCH address recognition

Required Updates

  • ✓ BCH payment request parsing
  • ✓ CashAddr validation
  • ✓ BCH blockchain monitoring

Standardization and Adoption

For BCH tips to gain traction, a clear standard (potentially a new NIP) would need to be proposed, discussed, and adopted by the Nostr community. This would define how BCH payment requests are embedded in Nostr events and how clients and relays should interact with them.

Potential Solutions

  • • Draft a new NIP for BCH integration (e.g., NIP-BCH)
  • • Extend NIP-57 to support multiple payment methods
  • • Create BCH-specific event kinds for payments
  • • Develop interoperability standards

Without this standardization, interoperability would be limited, and adoption would remain fragmented across different implementations.

The Path Forward

While these obstacles are significant, they're not insurmountable. The key is building a parallel infrastructure and standardization within the Nostr ecosystem, rather than attempting a direct plug-and-play replacement for the existing NIP-57 Lightning integration.

Short-term Solutions

  • • Manual BCH tipping via direct transactions
  • • BCH-focused Nostr clients and relays
  • • Community-driven proof of concepts

Long-term Vision

  • • Standardized BCH payment NIPs
  • • Universal client support
  • • Seamless multi-currency zapping