Nostr Wallet Connect

Nostr Wallet Connect is a protocol that lets a Nostr client pay and receive Lightning payments through a user's own wallet, using Nostr relays as the transport. The client encrypts a payment request to the wallet's public key, posts it to a relay, and the wallet picks it up, pays the invoice, and returns a signed response.

A user pairs a client with a wallet once, by scanning a connection string that grants a limited budget or a specific set of permissions. After that, the client can zap, pay invoices, or fetch balances without ever seeing the wallet's seed and without running a Lightning node itself. If the user wants to revoke access, they do so in the wallet and the client immediately loses its rights.

NIP-47 is supported by Alby, Mutiny, LNbits, Phoenix, Zeus, and an increasing number of Lightning wallets. On the client side, Damus, Amethyst, Primal, and most zap-capable Nostr clients speak NWC out of the box.

References

• NIP-47
• docs.nwc.dev
• Alby NWC developer guide