1.1 KiB
NIP-45
Event Counts
draft optional author:staab
Relays may support the COUNT verb, which provides a mechanism for obtaining event counts.
Motivation
Some queries a client may want to execute against connected relays are prohibitively expensive, for example, in order to retrieve follower counts for a given pubkey, a client must query all kind-3 events referring to a given pubkey and count them. The result may be cached, either by a client or by a separate indexing server as an alternative, but both options erode the decentralization of the network by creating a second-layer protocol on top of Nostr.
Filters and return values
This NIP defines a verb called COUNT, which accepts a subscription id and a filter as specified in NIP 01.
Counts are returned using a COUNT response in the form {count: <integer>}. Relays may use probabilistic counts to reduce compute requirements.
Examples:
# Followers count
["COUNT", "", {kinds: [3], '#p': [<pubkey>]}]
["COUNT", "", {count: 238}]
# Count posts and reactions
["COUNT", "", {kinds: [1, 7], authors: [<pubkey>]}]
["COUNT", "", {count: 5}]