nips/43.md

NIP-43

Relay Access Requests

draft optional

This NIP defines a way for clients to request admission to relays enforcing authentication as defined in NIP 42 by signing an ephemeral event.

Access Request Event

This NIP defines kind 22243 events which are intended to allow clients to request admission to a relay. Access requests MUST have a claim tag containing an invoice, invite code, or any other arbitrary string.

The event's created_at MUST be the current time plus or minus a few minutes to prevent replay attacks. Clients MAY send a claim at any time, but MUST check for relay support via NIP 11 to avoid non-compliant relays broadcasting invites to subscribers.

This event should be sent to a relay using the standard EVENT verb.

{
  "kind": 22243,
  "tags": [
    ["claim", "<invoice id, invite code, or something else>"]
  ],
  ...other fields
}

Relay response

Upon receiving a claim, a relay MUST notify the client as to what the status of the claim is using an OK message. Failed claims SHOULD use the same standard "restricted: " prefix specified by NIP 42.

Some examples:

["OK", <event-id>, false, "restricted: That invoice is expired."]
["OK", <event-id>, false, "restricted: That is an unsupported claim."]
["OK", <event-id>, true, "claim-ignored: You are already a member of this relay."]
["OK", <event-id>, true, "claim-accepted: Welcome to wss://relay.bunk.skunk!"]