Fabric Fabric is an open DHT network for Nostr and Spaces to let you discover records and relay information using a sovereign handle (e.g. @example) or by a public key (an npub).

Note

Fabric is an experimental project and will see frequent updates. Expect some bumps as we refine it—join us to shape its evolution!

Fabric makes it easy to share who you are or find others in a decentralized world. It’s like an address book for the internet’s sovereign future—built on hyperdht, it links Nostr messages and Spaces (sovereign handles, like @example) so anyone can look up a name or an npub without needing a middleman.

Fabric is not a replacement for Nostr relays! It's intended for publishing small pieces of discovery information. For example, you could share a NIP-65 relay list for your npub! Fabric accepts replaceable and addressable Nostr events.

Fabric enables spaces to publish Nostr events and DNS records on the DHT without needing to store any bloat on the Bitcoin blockchain!

Installation

npm install -g @spacesprotocol/fabric

Querying Fabric with beam

beam is a query tool and publisher.

1. Querying Nostr events:

beam <pubkey_or_space> <event kind> <optional-d-tag>

2. Querying DNS records

beam @buffrr TXT

By default, beam grabs a list of trust anchors from your local spaces client at http://127.0.0.1:7225/root-anchors.json to verify spaces. This works if you’re running a spaces client with Bitcoin Core locally. But if you just want to try out Fabric, you can use an external service instead:

export FABRIC_REMOTE_ANCHORS=https://bitpki.com/root-anchors.json

Or add it when you run beam:

beam @buffrr TXT --remote-anchors https://bitpki.com/root-anchors.json

Note: This means you’re trusting BitPKI (or whoever you pick) to provide accurate anchors file, so its best to run your own Bitcoin full node + spaces client locally to generate your own, and keep it up to date.

Publishing Nostr Events for Your npub

For example, here’s how to sign and share a NIP-65 relay list tied to your npub (your public key):

1. Create the relay list (sign & save as nip65.json):

   {
     "kind": 10002,
     "created_at": 1679673265,
     "pubkey": "97c70a44366a6535c145b333f973ea86dfdc2d7a99da618c40c64705ad98e322",
     "tags": [
       ["r", "wss://alicerelay.example.com"],
       ["r", "wss://brando-relay.com"],
       ["r", "wss://expensive-relay.example2.com", "write"],
       ["r", "wss://nostr-relay.example.com", "read"]
     ],
     "content": "",
     "sig": "<signature>"
   }

2. Publish it with beam:

beam publish nip65.json

3. Look it up:

beam 97c70a44366a6535c145b333f973ea86dfdc2d7a99da618c40c64705ad98e322 10002

Records stay live on the network for up to 48 hours. To keep them active, re-publish periodically with the same command, or give it to some service to pin it for you.

Publishing events for a space

A DNS zone could be wrapped in a Nostr event and signed for publishing, alternatively you may sign any accepted Nostr event and publish it for your space.

1. Create a DNS zone file (e.g., example.zone):

@example. 3600 CLASS2 A   127.0.0.1
@example. 3600 CLASS2 TXT "hello world"

2. Sign the zone file with space-cli:

space-cli signzone @example example.zone > event.json

3. Publish with beam:

beam publish event.json

The network retains records for up to 48 hours. To refresh, run:

space-cli refreshanchor event.json
beam publish event.json

You can also distribute event.json to a Fabric service operator for continuous publication.

Running a Fabric Node

To contribute to the network, run a Fabric node by specifying a reachable IP and port:

fabric --host <public-ip-address> --port <public-port>

After about 30 minutes of uptime, your node becomes persistent.

Contributing Bootstrap Nodes

We welcome more bootstrap nodes. To contribute:

1. Run a node with a reachable IP/port using the --bootstrap flag:

   fabric --host <public-ip-address> --port <public-port> --bootstrap
   

2. Submit a pull request updating constants.js with your node’s details.

How does Fabric verify spaces?

1. The Spaces client performs Client Side Validation (CSV) reading Bitcoin blocks and verifying the protocol state, summarizing it all into a Merkle tree root
2. The client generates a trust anchors file that's used by Fabric to verify PUT requests.

Encrypted Noise Connections

Basic support for encrypted connections over named spaces is available. Use beam serve and beam connect—follow the CLI instructions.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please submit issues, feature requests, or pull requests to help improve Fabric.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. See the LICENSE file for details.