Your Nostr key is your account. No email to hand over, no password to leak, no password-reset to phish. Your key is the login.
What this is:
- Nostr is an open, decentralized identity protocol. Your identity is a keypair you control: a public key (your npub) and a secret key you never share.
- Instead of proving who you are with a password we store, you prove it by signing a one-time challenge with your key. We only ever see signatures and your npub — never your secret key.
How to sign in:
- On the login page, choose Login with Nostr.
- Your browser's Nostr signer extension (NIP-07) signs the challenge and you are in. Your secret key stays in the extension — never typed into our site, never sent to us.
- No signer installed? The login page links you to a NIP-07 browser extension to set one up.
Signing up with Nostr:
- The first time you sign in with Nostr, we create your account on the spot — no email, no password, no forms. Authorize with your signer and you are in, with an account that is yours.
- Already have an email-and-password account? You can attach your Nostr identity to it: go to Manage Account, open the Authentication tab, and add your Nostr Identity there. From then on your npub logs you in.
- Email-and-password sign-in still works if you prefer it. Nostr is the sovereign option, not a requirement.
One practical note: a Nostr-only account has no email on file, so account and billing notices won’t reach you by email. If you’d like those, add an email address under Manage Account — it stays optional and is used only for notices.
Keep your key safe:
- Your secret key (nsec) is the account. Anyone who holds it can sign in as you.
- Keep a backup of your key somewhere only you control. Never paste your nsec into a website — SHC will never ask for it. We do not have it and cannot recover it, so if you lose it with no other login method on the account, we cannot restore access.
Want to pay in Bitcoin and skip handing over an ID too? See No KYC, no logging.
