Parrhesia

Parrhesia is a Nostr relay server written in Elixir/OTP with PostgreSQL storage.

It exposes:

• a WebSocket relay endpoint at /relay
• NIP-11 relay info on GET /relay with Accept: application/nostr+json
• operational HTTP endpoints (/health, /ready, /metrics)
• a NIP-86-style management API at POST /management (NIP-98 auth)

Supported NIPs

Current supported_nips list:

1, 9, 11, 13, 17, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 59, 62, 66, 70, 77, 86, 98

Requirements

• Elixir ~> 1.19
• Erlang/OTP 28
• PostgreSQL (18 used in the dev environment; 16+ recommended)

---

Run locally

1) Prepare the database

Parrhesia uses these defaults in dev:

• PGDATABASE=parrhesia_dev
• PGHOST=localhost
• PGPORT=5432
• PGUSER=$USER

Create the DB and run migrations/seeds:

mix setup

2) Start the server

mix run --no-halt

Server listens on http://localhost:4000 by default.

WebSocket clients should connect to:

ws://localhost:4000/relay

Useful endpoints

• GET /health -> ok
• GET /ready -> readiness status
• GET /metrics -> Prometheus metrics
• GET /relay + Accept: application/nostr+json -> NIP-11 document
• POST /management -> management API (requires NIP-98 auth)

---

Production configuration

In prod, these environment variables are used:

• DATABASE_URL (required), e.g. ecto://USER:PASS@HOST/parrhesia_prod
• POOL_SIZE (optional, default 10)
• PORT (optional, default 4000)

config/runtime.exs reads these values at runtime in production releases.

Typical relay config

Add/override in config files (for example in config/prod.exs or a config/runtime.exs):

config :parrhesia, Parrhesia.Web.Endpoint,
  ip: {0, 0, 0, 0},
  port: 4000

config :parrhesia,
  limits: [
    max_frame_bytes: 1_048_576,
    max_event_bytes: 262_144,
    max_filters_per_req: 16,
    max_filter_limit: 500,
    max_subscriptions_per_connection: 32,
    max_event_future_skew_seconds: 900,
    max_outbound_queue: 256,
    outbound_drain_batch_size: 64,
    outbound_overflow_strategy: :close
  ],
  policies: [
    auth_required_for_writes: false,
    auth_required_for_reads: false,
    min_pow_difficulty: 0,
    accept_ephemeral_events: true,
    mls_group_event_ttl_seconds: 300,
    marmot_require_h_for_group_queries: true,
    marmot_group_max_h_values_per_filter: 32,
    marmot_group_max_query_window_seconds: 2_592_000,
    marmot_media_max_imeta_tags_per_event: 8,
    marmot_media_max_field_value_bytes: 1024,
    marmot_media_max_url_bytes: 2048,
    marmot_media_allowed_mime_prefixes: [],
    marmot_media_reject_mip04_v1: true,
    marmot_push_server_pubkeys: [],
    marmot_push_max_relay_tags: 16,
    marmot_push_max_payload_bytes: 65_536,
    marmot_push_max_trigger_age_seconds: 120,
    marmot_push_require_expiration: true,
    marmot_push_max_expiration_window_seconds: 120,
    marmot_push_max_server_recipients: 1
  ],
  features: [
    nip_45_count: true,
    nip_50_search: true,
    nip_77_negentropy: true,
    marmot_push_notifications: false
  ]

---

Deploy

Option A: Elixir release

export MIX_ENV=prod
export DATABASE_URL="ecto://USER:PASS@HOST/parrhesia_prod"
export POOL_SIZE=20

mix deps.get --only prod
mix compile
mix ecto.migrate
mix release

_build/prod/rel/parrhesia/bin/parrhesia foreground

For systemd/process managers, run the release command in foreground mode.

Option B: Nix package (default.nix)

Build:

nix-build

Run the built release from ./result/bin/parrhesia (release command interface).

---

Development quality checks

Before opening a PR:

mix precommit

For external CLI end-to-end checks with nak:

mix test.nak_e2e