Nostr Relay Pools

Targeted Nostr Relay Connections

By default, the nostr object returned from useNostr uses the app's connection pool: it reads from one of the configured relays and publishes to all of them. For most features this is exactly what you want.

Use this skill when you need more granular control — talking to a single relay, a curated group of relays, or debugging a specific relay's behavior.

Single Relay: nostr.relay(url)

import { useNostr } from '@nostrify/react';

function useSpecificRelay() {
  const { nostr } = useNostr();

  // Connect to a specific relay
  const relay = nostr.relay('wss://relay.damus.io');

  // Query from this relay only
  const events = await relay.query([{ kinds: [1], limit: 15 }]);

  // Publish to this relay only
  await relay.event({ kind: 1, content: 'Hello from a specific relay!' });
}

Good fits:

• Testing a relay's behavior in isolation
• Debugging connectivity or rate-limiting issues
• Querying content that only lives on a specialized relay (paid relays, private relays, niche communities)
• Health checks / admin tooling

Relay Group: nostr.group(urls)

import { useNostr } from '@nostrify/react';

function useRelayGroup() {
  const { nostr } = useNostr();

  // Create a group of specific relays
  const relayGroup = nostr.group([
    'wss://relay.damus.io',
    'wss://relay.primal.net',
    'wss://nos.lol',
  ]);

  // Query from all relays in the group (deduplicated)
  const events = await relayGroup.query([{ kinds: [1], limit: 15 }]);

  // Publish to all relays in the group
  await relayGroup.event({ kind: 1, content: 'Hello from a relay group!' });
}

Good fits:

• Publishing to a curated set of trusted relays for a specific feature
• Community-scoped queries (e.g. a set of relays known to host a particular topic)
• Geographic/region-targeted delivery
• Load-balancing reads across a known-good subset

API Consistency

Both the relay object and the group object expose the same interface as the top-level nostr object:

• .query(filters, opts?) — request events matching filters
• .req(filters, opts?) — open a streaming subscription
• .event(event) — publish a signed event
• All other Nostrify methods

This means you can drop them into any existing hook or helper that expects a nostr-shaped object.

Choosing Between Pool, Group, and Single Relay

Tips

• Don't hard-code user-facing relay lists. If a feature should publish to "the user's write relays", read from AppContext.config.relayMetadata (NIP-65) instead of hard-coding URLs.
• Compose with TanStack Query. Wrap relay.query(...) / group.query(...) inside a useQuery hook exactly as you would with the default nostr object; the caching layer is identical.
• Handle unreachable relays. Specific relays can be offline, rate-limited, or slow. Always wrap calls in try/catch and respect the abort signal from the query function (c.signal).
• Avoid leaking subscriptions. When using .req(...) for streaming, always close the subscription on unmount (controller.abort() or the returned disposer).