About Shopstr

Shopstr exists to make commerce as free as the internet was originally intended to be. Traditional e-commerce platforms require merchants to register accounts, submit identity documents, and operate under terms that can be changed or revoked at any time. Shopstr removes all of those barriers.

Built on the Nostr protocol — an open, decentralized communication standard — Shopstr gives merchants permanent, censorship-resistant storefronts controlled by their own cryptographic keys. No one can delete your listings or freeze your funds.

All payments are settled in Bitcoin via the Lightning Network or Cashu, enabling sub-second, sub-cent transactions anywhere in the world with no chargebacks, no payment processor approval, and no mandatory platform fees on peer-to-peer transactions. Sellers may optionally set a donation rate to support the platform at their discretion.

Shopstr is built entirely on open standards. Product listings are published as Nostr kind-30402 events (NIP-99), meaning any Nostr-compatible client can display them. Payments use NIP-57 Zaps for Lightning invoices and NIP-47 for Nostr Wallet Connect, allowing buyers to pay directly from their own Lightning wallets without copying invoices.

Merchant and buyer communication is end-to-end encrypted using NIP-17 direct messages with NIP-44 encryption — the most secure Nostr messaging standard available. Reviews are implemented via NIP-85, allowing seller reputations to be portable across any marketplace that supports the standard.

The full source code is available at github.com/shopstr-eng/shopstr. Developers are encouraged to audit the code, report issues, and contribute improvements.