n3xB
naive nostr nym Exchange for Bitcoin
n3xB (pronounced nexbie) is a layer 2 open protocol inspired by, and runs on top of Nostr. n3xB aspires to become a standard language for making P2P trade orders, how to negotiate between maker and takers, and on how to take these orders. Allowing different Bitcoin P2P solutions to interoperate, enabling separation of concerns, resulting in a global order book of shared deep liquidity that is not wall-gardened by any one particular solution.
Goals
- Become the defacto global order book for P2P Bitcoin <=> Fiat trading
- Be an open protocol owned by no one, but enabling hundreds of projects to inter-operate on a common language and liquidity pool
- No specialty Nostr relays - should work with existing standard social media relays, and aspires to minimize new NIPs required
- Preserve the openness, transparency, separation of concerns, decentralization and censorship resistant properties afforded by Nostr
n3xB's position in the broader P2P trade software/protocol stack
Why?
Prevent fragmentation of liquidity
- Many ‘P2P’ solutions already exist, but each individually has poor liquidity. If we are able to aggregate them into a common liquidity pool, this will greatly improve competitiveness against centralized solutions
Reduce developer platform risk
- None of the existing P2P platforms have attracted 3rd party developers in building other projects on top of them. This contrasts with Nostr which has dozens of client and relay implementations within the span of 1 year. There is perception of platform risk and lack of ownership when building on another project with opaque protocol specification, vs on top of an open protocol.
Separation of concerns
- Developers can create projects which focus to innovate against a specific pain point (clients, relays, etc), without needing to create a completely new order-book or eco-system.
Mobile friendly architecture
- Nature of true P2P platforms usually prevents mobile clients from being a possibility, despite mobile being the most common and desired client platform. By using Nostr relays as a backbone, this much better enables development of mobile clients.
Maximize censorship resistance
- By building on top of Nostr, the decentralized and censorship resistant architecture of Nostr can be leveraged. This however can only be maximally achieved if existing Nostr relays can be usable for trading purposes without trade aware logic or trade specific NIPs. Protocol shall be built so any new NIPs proposed are not trade specific, and are only nice-to-haves and not required for core operations.
Protocol Proposal
1 - Architecture
2 - Make Order Note
3 - Peer Messaging
4 - Take Order Message
5 - Trade Response Message
Implementation & Demos
Crusty-n3xB - A Rust library implementing the n3xB protocol
OceanSea - Demo application trading fictional 'fiat' against Testnet Bitcoin
Other Implementation Possibilities
E1 - Onchain Multi-sig with trust limited Arbitrator
E2 - Lightning with Coordinator as Maker Proxy
E3 - Lightning with negotiated Coordinator
Feedback & Questions
The n3xB project is an early and mostly speculative proposal. The n3xB protocol specification, along with any derivative implementations are experiments in hope to better understand what needs there are in the Bitcoin ecosystem, along with what solutions might be wanted by the Bitcoin community. As such, any feedback or questions would be very valuable. Feel free to raise an Issue or start a Discussion here in Github. Or visit the n3xB Discord to start a conversation!