Dominion Protocol

Nostr: npub1mgvlrnf5hm9yf0n5mf9nqmvarhvxkc6remu5ec3vf8r0txqkuk7su0e7q2

Your content. Your keys. Your rules. No platform required.

Protocol Spec · NIP Draft · LLM Reference · Contributing

The Problem

Nostr content is either public or NIP-44 encrypted to specific recipients. There is no native mechanism for:

• Audience tiers — different groups seeing different content (family, close friends, subscribers)
• Revocable access — removing a recipient's ability to decrypt future content
• Scalable encryption — encrypting to hundreds of recipients without per-recipient encryption operations

Per-recipient NIP-44 encryption works for DMs but doesn't scale:

| Recipients | NIP-44 approach | Dominion | |-----------|----------------|----------| | 1 | 1 encryption | 1 encryption + 1 key share | | 10 | 10 encryptions | 1 encryption + 10 key shares | | 100 | 100 encryptions | 1 encryption + 100 key shares | | 1,000 | 1,000 encryptions | 1 encryption + 1,000 key shares |

Content is encrypted once with an epoch-based Content Key. Only the lightweight key distribution scales with audience size.

How It Works

Dominion introduces vaults — encrypted content containers on standard Nostr relays:

1. Derive a Content Key (CK) from your private key, the current epoch, and the tier
2. Encrypt your content with the CK (AES-256-GCM) and publish to any relay
3. Distribute the CK to each tier member via NIP-44 encrypted, NIP-59 gift-wrapped events
4. Rotate — new epoch, new CK. Revoked members don't get the new key

No custom relay software. No middleware. No platform. Just standard Nostr events and proven cryptography.

Combine with nostr-attestations to gate vault access on verified credentials (e.g. only verified professionals can decrypt tier-2 content).

Use Cases

| Use case | How Dominion helps | |----------|-------------------| | Creator paywall | Encrypt to paying subscribers; revoke on cancellation | | Family sharing | Private family tier; rotate keys weekly | | Close friends | Share selectively without making content public | | Institutional access | Tiered access with automatic key expiry | | Paid newsletters | One encryption operation, unlimited subscribers |

For scenarios requiring instant revocation (custody disputes, institutional SLA), the designed warden relays extension provides true revocation using NIP-42 AUTH. The extension is on the post-v1.0 roadmap; v1.0 ships with forward-only revocation only.

Install

npm install dominion-protocol

Quick Start

Encrypt Content for a Tier

import { deriveContentKey, contentKeyToHex, getCurrentEpochId, encrypt, decrypt } from 'dominion-protocol';

// Derive this week's Content Key for the "family" tier
const epochId = getCurrentEpochId();  // e.g. "2026-W11"
const ck = deriveContentKey(privateKeyHex, epochId, 'family');

// Encrypt content — one operation regardless of audience size
const ciphertext = encrypt('Hello family!', ck);  // base64 string
const plaintext = decrypt(ciphertext, ck);         // "Hello family!"

Manage Your Vault

import { defaultConfig, addToTier, removeFromTier, revokePubkey } from 'dominion-protocol';

let config = defaultConfig();
config = addToTier(config, 'family', alicePubkey);
config = addToTier(config, 'close_friends', bobPubkey);
config = revokePubkey(config, formerFriendPubkey);  // excluded from next rotation

Distribute Keys via Nostr

import { buildVaultShareEvent } from 'dominion-protocol/nostr';

// Build a kind 30480 vault share (caller handles NIP-44 + NIP-59 wrapping)
const event = buildVaultShareEvent(authorPubkey, recipientPubkey, ckHex, epochId, 'family');

Shamir Secret Sharing

Split Content Keys across multiple parties or relays for redundancy:

import { splitCK, reconstructCK, encodeCKShare, decodeCKShare } from 'dominion-protocol';

const shares = splitCK(ck, 2, 3);           // 2-of-3 threshold
const encoded = shares.map(encodeCKShare);   // ["1:ab12...", "2:cd34...", "3:ef56..."]

const decoded = encoded.slice(0, 2).map(decodeCKShare);
const recovered = reconstructCK(decoded);    // original CK

Architecture

Two-layer exports — use what you need:

• dominion-protocol — universal crypto primitives. Pure functions, zero Nostr knowledge. Works anywhere.
• dominion-protocol/nostr — Nostr event builders and parsers. Returns unsigned, unencrypted events. The caller handles NIP-44 encryption and NIP-59 gift wrapping.

Cryptography

| Primitive | Implementation | |-----------|---------------| | Key derivation | HKDF-SHA256 (@noble/hashes) | | Content encryption | AES-256-GCM, 12-byte random IV (@noble/ciphers) | | Secret sharing | Shamir over GF(256), irreducible polynomial 0x11b | | Epoch format | ISO 8601 weeks (YYYY-Www) |

Nostr Integration

| Kind | Type | Purpose | |------|------|---------| | 30480 | Parameterised replaceable | Vault share — epoch CK for a specific recipient | | 30078 | NIP-78 app-specific data | Vault config — self-encrypted tier memberships |

Built on NIP-01, NIP-09, NIP-40, NIP-44, NIP-59, and NIP-78. No new cryptographic primitives.

Protocol Spec

See spec/protocol.md for the full v1.0 protocol specification: epoch rotation, tier management, individual grants, revocation, and Lightning-gated access. Designed extensions live in spec/extensions/ — currently warden relays (instant revocation) and quantum vault (post-quantum CK derivation).

Part of the ForgeSworn Toolkit

ForgeSworn builds open-source cryptographic identity, payments, and coordination tools for Nostr.

| Library | What it does | |---------|-------------| | nsec-tree | Deterministic sub-identity derivation | | ring-sig | SAG/LSAG ring signatures on secp256k1 | | range-proof | Pedersen commitment range proofs | | canary-kit | Coercion-resistant spoken verification | | spoken-token | Human-speakable verification tokens | | toll-booth | L402 payment middleware | | geohash-kit | Geohash toolkit with polygon coverage | | nostr-attestations | NIP-VA verifiable attestations | | dominion | Epoch-based encrypted access control | | nostr-veil | Privacy-preserving Web of Trust |

Licence

MIT

Support

For issues and feature requests, see GitHub Issues.

If you find Dominion useful, consider sending a tip:

• Lightning: [email protected]
• Nostr zaps: npub1mgvlrnf5hm9yf0n5mf9nqmvarhvxkc6remu5ec3vf8r0txqkuk7su0e7q2