Nostr Terms Explained
Part of our guide to understanding Nostr.
Flotilla is built to be usable without knowing anything about Nostr relays or cryptographic keys. Even so, a handful of Nostr-specific words show up in the app and across this knowledge base. This page isn’t a deep dive into any of them — it’s a quick-reference index. Each entry gives you the short answer in a sentence or two, then links to the article that explains it in full.
Space vs. Room
A Space is a community — the people and conversation you came for. A Room is a channel inside a Space, text or voice, much like a channel in Discord or Slack. See Spaces and Rooms Explained for the full mental model, including everything a Space can hold beyond chat.
Relay
A relay is the server that stores and serves a Space’s messages — think of it as the community’s backend. A Space isn’t a relay itself; it’s a community that’s hosted on one, whether that relay is self-run with zooid or a plan on Coracle Hosting. Flotilla is neither — it’s just the app you use to reach whichever relay a Space lives on. See Spaces and Rooms Explained for how the three fit together.
Key, npub, and nsec
Your key is your Nostr identity — not an account any app can suspend or delete. It comes in two halves: npub, your public key, which is safe to share like a username; and nsec, your secret key, which you never share with anyone or paste into a site you don’t trust. See Understanding Your Nostr Identity for what that ownership actually means and how to back your key up safely.
Signer
A signer holds your key and approves sign-in requests on your behalf, so you never have to paste your raw nsec into Flotilla. It can be a browser extension, a mobile app like Amber, or a remote “bunker” signer running elsewhere. See Ways to Log In to Flotilla for every login method Flotilla supports and which ones are safest.
NIP
A NIP — short for Nostr Implementation Possibility — is one of the shared specifications that define how Nostr works. Each NIP is a numbered agreement covering a single feature, so independent apps can build the same capability and still work together. You’ll see them referenced by number: NIP-05 for a Nostr address, NIP-07 for signing in with a browser extension, and so on. You never need to know any of them to use Flotilla — they’re just how the protocol’s features are catalogued.
NIP-05 / Nostr Address
A Nostr address (also called a NIP-05) is an optional, human-readable identifier for your key. It looks like an email address, e.g. you@example.com, and points back to your npub so people can find and verify you more easily. It’s separate from the key itself and isn’t required to use Flotilla. See Setting Up Your Profile for where to add one.
Zap
A zap is a Lightning payment — a tip in sats you can send on a message, thread, event, or fundraising goal, instead of a reaction or alongside one. Zaps are optional wherever they appear, and they’re turned off entirely in the iOS app because of App Store policy. See Zaps and Your Wallet for how to send one and how to connect a wallet.
If a word you’ve seen in Flotilla isn’t listed here, it’s probably specific to one feature rather than the protocol itself. Check the article for that feature directly, or start from What is Flotilla? for the bigger picture.